Adrian Phoenix: In the Blood

Special thanks to: Sean and Rose Prescott, Karen Abrahamson, and Dean Smith for being my first readers; to my editor, Jen Heddle, and my agent, Matt Bialer, for their passion and for encouraging me to remain true to my vision. It’s still one helluva kick-ass ride!

Thanks to: Mippy Carlson, Judi Szabo, Sheila Dale, Louise Robson, and all the members of Club Hell and my street team for your support, enthusiasm, and for giving me even more reason to keep my fingers on the keyboard. Merci beaucoup , y’all!

Thanks also to: The members of OWN and Jeri Smith-Ready for friendship and cheerleading; to my sons, Matt Jensen and Sebastian Phoenix and their partners, Sherri Lyons and Jen Phoenix, and my book-loving little Kylah Phoenix, for all their encouragement and love.

Thanks also to: Abulia Paroxysm (Sebastian Phoenix) for creating music that is original and heart-felt and true. And, last, but never least, Trent Reznor, whose music always provides an emotional soundscape and is a source of inspiration, and whose live NIN shows are not only kick-ass, but relevant and ground-breaking. No one does it better. Period.

And, again, thanks to you, the reader, for picking up this book and plunging back into Dante, Heather, and Lucien’s world. If this is your first time, bienvenue . Enjoy. Please visit me at www.adrianphoenix.com or at www.myspace.com/adrian nikolasphoenix.

Outside Las Vegas, NV

March 15

JON BRONLEE CRACKED OPEN the door and peeked out into the motel parking lot. Car bumpers and hubcaps gleamed in the bright Nevada sunshine, flashed dazzling light into his slitted eyes. Perched atop a weathered-wood telephone pole, a crow caw-cawed.

Nothing moved. At least, nothing Jon could see.

He wished he’d never slipped that damned security disk into his pocket. Wished he’d never smuggled it and the padded mailer he’d discovered on Moore’s desk out of the center. Wished to hell he’d never looked at either.

As if on cue, and for the thousand-millionth time, his mind chanted: Gonna sell it and make a helluva lot of moolah. Enough to retire decades early, enough for me and Nora to live easy, enough to send Kristi to gun-free private schools .

Greed was one helluva con artist, convincing him to pooh-pooh the consequences— you’ll be rich and long gone before anyone even notices —until everything had gone to shit.

Yeah, a big old explosion of shit—a regular shitplosion—and then greed suddenly had nothing to say.

The nightmarish images captured by the med unit’s security camera flared behind his eyes again for the thousand-millionth time. The woman’s scream looped through his mind on endless repeat, a scream that had abruptly ended in a wet gurgle.

And a splash.

Jon desperately wished he could go back in time, back to D.C., back to that night, and rewind events. But since he couldn’t…

With a fresh mailer tucked under his arm, he stepped outside and sweat instantly sprang up on his forehead. He caught a whiff of Old Spice as his deodorant kicked into overdrive. The rumble of a diesel being downshifted on the highway behind the motel rolled through the taut, heated air like a steel barrel across blacktop.

He hurried to the motel office, pushed the door open, and walked inside. The AC-cycled air cooled his face. He stopped at the counter and a balding man reeking of BO and nicotine bellied up against the other side.

“Help you?”

Jon placed the mailer on the counter. “You have mail service here?”

“Yup.”

“Great.” Jon poked the mailer with a finger.

With a sigh, the man scooped up the mailer, strolled to a box marked MAIL at the end of the counter closest to the door, and dumped it inside.

With muttered thanks, Jon left the office and sprinted back to his room. He chained and locked the door, then collapsed on the bed and stared at the water-stained ceiling. He needed to plan his next move, but his mind refused to move forward. Instead, it kept padding back to the center, snuffling at the past like a nose-to-the-ground dog.

Jon had scooped up his share of corpses during his ten years on the interagency cleanup crew, and the cleanup at the Bush Center for Psychological Research had been routine. Bodies outside in the snow, a pair of security guards—one slashed throat and one broken neck. Two more bodies inside; one dead agent, one dead serial killer. Hard to say what killed the agent, but bullets had done in the bad guy.

Routine had ended at med-unit one.

Had ended in a exam room inexplicably filled with twisting, thorned blue vines.

Had ended in a puddle of liquid gleaming on the tiled floor.

Stomach acid burned the back of Jon’s throat and he swallowed hard. He tried to shut out the scream drilling through his mind. Managed only to muffle it. He wondered what it’d be like to gaze into that pale, beautiful face as you disintegrated.

Moore had screamed. Loud and long and liquid.

A dark thought slithered through Jon’s restless mind: Maybe he’d been meant to find the disk. Maybe it’d been fate , and not just greed. His hand, guided.

During cleanup, his crew had discovered that lightning or something had zapped the center’s main transformer. The surge had fried almost everything; the computers, the security cameras, you name it. Everything except the med-unit cameras; apparently they’d been wired to a different system.

And then curiosity or greed or fucking fate had crooked its finger….

In the days following the cleanup, his team had started dying, one by one. Heart attack, unforeseen, what a shame! Husband caught her with another man and shot her, then himself. Can you believe it? In debt, committed suicide, man, unbelievable !

Yes. Yes, it was. Unbelievable.

Jon had gone on the run. Across the country. Dashing from one dingy motel to the next, terrified to look in the rearview mirror or even out a café window as he scarfed down a meal. Afraid of who he might see.

He’d considered giving the disk to the media, but realized they’d think him a wack job with too much free time and the newest version of Final Cut Pro to play with. He’d even considered sending it back to the center, but suspected that it would be too little, too late. Then, last night, it had dawned on him who needed to see the disk.

Dr. Robert Wells.

Even after Wells had retired from the center and the FBI and moved to Oregon, Jon had kept in touch. His little girl, his honey-haired Kristi, was alive and healthy because of the genetic work Wells had performed while the baby had still been inside Nora’s womb, defective and doomed. As far as Jon was concerned, he owed the doc a debt beyond measure. He hoped that the disk and its contents would help Wells prepare for what was coming, equip him to survive it.

After all, Bad Seed had been Wells’s creation. If anyone knew how to contain Dante Prejean or S or whatever the fuck his name might be, it would be the doc.

Jon closed his burning eyes and prayed his absence had saved Nora and Kristi.

Knuckles rapped against his door.

Jon’s eyes flew open, his heart pounding hard and fast. Shadows hid the water stain on the ceiling. The light had faded from the room. He’d fallen asleep. Knuckles rapped again and a voice, low and confidential, spoke his name. “Bronlee? It’s Cortini. Open the door. We need to talk.”