"They could call it the a.s.s-Lamp," McMullan said.
Chuckling, they reached the arch over the street that marked their exit from the Gaslamp Quarter. Directly in front of them, the jutting peaks and gla.s.s curves of the San Diego Convention Center punctured the sky.
"So, this is where the convention center is..." McMullan mused.
"Yep, this is where the biotechnology convention will be. I bet all the hotels in this area are already booked solid for that entire week. My personal favorite is the Hyatt, down the street." She pointed along the coast to the pair of skysc.r.a.pers that distinguished the skyline of downtown San Diego. "There"s a gorgeous view from the bar at the top, and I hear they make one h.e.l.l of a martini. I"ve never tried one though..."
They began walking up the several flights of stairs that led to the balconies of the convention center. "It looks so futuristic," McMullan noted, his eyes wandering over the layers of curving gla.s.s.
"You should see the UCSD library," Katrina said.
"I have seen it. I jog by there almost every day. Thanks for the tip on that route, by the way. It"s awesome, as long as you aren"t intimidated by naked strangers." He glanced over at her. Was that a blush?
They reached a semi-circular balcony and for a moment, neither of them spoke as they took in the view of the bay. To their left, the Coronado Bridge formed a gentle arch, its lights speckling the sky over the horizon like an unusually ordered arrangement of stars.
Katrina shivered and wrapped her thin sweater around herself once again. McMullan stepped toward her to block the breeze as he had on the crowded street. She leaned in toward him, her eyes tipping upward to meet his, but when he bent down to kiss her, she stepped away.
Katrina cleared her throat and spoke curtly. "So, you think I should just be a bit more prudish?"
McMullan stepped back. "Huh?"
"With Gilman. If I let him know I actually have pretty old-school values, despite being a scientist, do you think Gilman will lighten up on me a bit?"
McMullan pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. "Ahem... ah, yes, that will probably help. Good idea." He ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair.
"Shall we keep walking?" Katrina asked.
"Sure. Where are you parked? I"ll walk you to your car."
"I"m all the way up by your gym."
"Oh, yeah. Me too."
They walked in silence back down the flights of stairs leading back down to the street, a full three feet of s.p.a.ce between them. Once back on the street, they stopped at the traffic light intersecting West Harbor Drive and Fifth Avenue.
"I"m a little lost," McMullan said. "So we cross here, and then walk back up Fifth Avenue and that will take us back to E street, right?"
"Yep," she said.
A gust of cold wind blew across West Harbor Drive, and Katrina shivered so hard her teeth chattered. She clamped them together. When the light changed, she stepped into the crosswalk. McMullan remained motionless behind her. Katrina turned and gave him a questioning look.
He gestured toward the Hyatt Hotel. "You know what, I think I wouldn"t mind trying one of those martinis."
For a moment, Katrina stood immobile in the crosswalk. The crosswalk signal changed from flashing green man to flashing red hand, and then to solid red hand. The traffic light turned yellow. As it turned to red, she stepped back out of the crosswalk and took McMullan"s arm, and the two slowly turned to walk up West Harbor Drive toward the Hyatt.
Except for candles on the tables and a few, dim sconces on the walls, the bar at the top of the Hyatt Hotel was dark. An invisible sound system played a soft selection of romantic music.
The bar was attended by two handsome gentlemen in tuxedos. A smattering of patrons, some in jeans, others in slacks or dresses, populated the tables and the bar in the center of the s.p.a.ce. McMullan looked down at his gym shorts and T-shirt. "Ya think I"m a little under-dressed?" he laughed.
"Um, yeah. But don"t worry about it. You don"t stink too badly."
He opened his mouth in an exaggerated gesture of shock, and then gave her a soft shove. Katrina chuckled and ducked away.
A few moments later with c.o.c.ktails in hand, they wandered around the room, peering out the windows at the panoramic view. McMullan sipped lightly at his martini. "Well?" Katrina asked. "How is it?"
"I think I"d rather have gone for a beer." He laughed. "Oh, wow, there"s the balcony we were just on." He motioned through a window to direct Katrina"s gaze downward. Beyond the balcony, the Coronado Bridge sprawled behind the convention center.
Katrina walked over to an open table with two plush chairs beside it. She set her drink onto the table and sat down, and a waiter approached to ask if they needed anything else. Katrina leaned forward and whispered in the waiter"s ear as McMullan sat down at the table next to her.
A few moments later, the waiter returned with a pint of beer for McMullan. He laughed when he saw it, but then drank deeply and smiled. "Much better," he said, "and you nailed my favorite variety. You must have been a good bartender." He offered a wry smile.
Katrina looked up at him, at first surprised. Slowly, she realized that the man in front of her knew almost everything about her. The thought was both unnerving and oddly comforting. "And you must be a good FBI agent," she said.
"How"s yours?" McMullan asked, motioning to her drink.
"Actually, I kind of wanted to taste yours," she said and leaned in to steal a pa.s.sionate kiss before he could remind her that it was probably a bad idea.
JANUARY 17, 2016.
7:31 A.M. PST.
The plastic chair of the visiting area creaked as the muscular prisoner sat down. Today, he was expecting a different guest.
The visitor arrived and sat down across from him, and the mirror image from the neck up was striking. Except for a small scar above the right eye of the prisoner, the dark faces of the two men were indistinguishable.
The prisoner wore the standard-issue pale blue of the San Quentin minimum-security wing. His visitor wore a black muscle shirt. Underneath, both men bore the same signature, etched in bold arcs across their powerful chests: MORALES.
"Thanks for coming, hermanito," the prisoner said.
His visitor chuckled. "Four f.u.c.kin" minutes apart and I"ll always be hermanito. What do you need?"
The prisoner brought a hand up and across the visiting table. "First, give me some skin," he said, raising an eyebrow.
The visitor"s hand rose to meet his, and when he lowered it once again, it was closed. "What was that for?" He pocketed the money his brother had just handed him.
"I need you to take care of something for me. Or maybe I should say, "someone." "
A guard approached and casually stood nearby. After a moment of silence, both brothers looking defiantly at the guard, they began to speak again. But this time, it was in a language that only existed between the two of them. A language they had invented as children. A language of twins.
"Who?"
"She"ll be here in a minute."
"She?"
"Yeah, is that a problem?"
The guard walked away, and the visitor switched back to English. "Course not, bro. As long as you tell me why."
The prisoner smiled. "Because she"s the only link between me and the unfortunate incident that happened in the death row wing a while ago. If this b.i.t.c.h is gone, I"m in the clear."
The visitor thought for a moment. "So what"s the plan?"
"Follow her. Find out where she hangs. Then when you can do it, do it. And be careful. Remember that she knows my face-your face. I don"t want my baby brother in the other wing of this f.u.c.kin" h.e.l.l hole."
Carlos "Chuck" Morales had been instructed by his four-minute-older brother Oscar to follow the ugly b.i.t.c.h with the thick black hair. He had no idea he would be following her for more than eight hours and five hundred miles.
Fortunately, the b.i.t.c.h"s beat up piece-of-s.h.i.t car had been bright red in its earlier days. It was easy to keep an eye on. The red Honda left San Quentin and crossed over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, then crawled its way through the Interstate 580 cl.u.s.ter-f.u.c.k of San Francisco. Once the 580 turned eastward and headed inland, the traffic lightened up considerably, and by the time they were merging onto Interstate 5 south, Chuck was on autopilot.
For more than two hundred torturously boring miles between Tracy and Bakersfield, Chuck kept his eyes glued to the rear b.u.mper of the red Honda. When the b.i.t.c.h finally stopped for gas just north of Grapevine, Chuck pulled into the gas station across the street to fill up as well. He was sure she would notice him. She didn"t appear to.
The free-for-all traffic of Los Angeles woke him up temporarily. But as he followed the b.i.t.c.h through Orange County and into San Diego, Chuck was ready to kill his brother. He was more than five hundred miles from home, he was hungry, he had no place to sleep, and he desperately had to take a p.i.s.s.
The red Honda headed eastbound on Interstate 8 for ten miles and exited at College Avenue, where it turned right onto the San Diego State University campus.
And then he ran into the roadblock.
Chuck was three cars behind the red Honda when he realized that a guard was monitoring the pa.s.sage of cars up the hill to the buildings overlooking the freeway. The Honda was waved through.
Before he had time to come up with a reasonable purpose for being there, Chuck was stopped by the guard. After five hundred miles of driving, he had no choice but to watch while the b.i.t.c.h slipped up the hill, around a bend, and out of his sight.
The Doctor was waiting in an underground parking lot when the old, red Honda arrived.
The driver stepped out of the battered car and the long, black skirt draped almost to the concrete floor.
"Have you kept up the payments to the prisoner?" the Doctor asked.
"Of course."
"And?"
"Morales doesn"t suspect a thing. He still thinks he has me over a rail."
After the red Honda drove away from the parking structure, the Doctor stood reflecting for a moment. Oscar Morales would not be killed just yet. Morales was still needed. He still had something important. Morales had several vials of anthrax left, and more importantly, he had the skill to keep them contained until the time of release.
Aside from that, Oscar Morales did not even know the Doctor existed.
JANUARY 18, 2016.
9:35 A.M. PST.
The next morning, Chuck was staring at the monitor of a rented computer in the pay-per-use business center of a postal annex. All he knew from Oscar was that the b.i.t.c.h worked with anthrax. What he had learned for himself was that she was affiliated with San Diego State University. From there, it was easy to find her.
Every faculty member at San Diego State University had his or her own laboratory website, linked to a professional bio and photograph. Chuck scrolled through the various pages until one caught his eye, and he smiled.
Katrina Stone, Ph.D. Professor of biology. Research focuses on anthrax biology and pathogenesis of bacterial/host interactions, including high throughput screening for anthrax lethal factor inhibitors.
Chuck scrolled through the remainder of the faculty listings for the same department. There were no other researchers at SDSU involved in anthrax work. He clicked on the link to Katrina Stone"s web page.
The page contained detailed contact information, including a building and room number for her lab. Chuck looked around and found the employee who had seated him at the computer. In his most polite voice, he said, "Excuse me, sir?"
The employee turned around. "How can I help you?"
"I was wondering if I can print something."
"Of course," the employee said, his eyes falling onto the web page. "Well, you"ll want to use that printer over there." He motioned across the room. "May I use your mouse for a moment?" The employee reached over and used the mouse to locate the correct printer. "That is our photo printer. It will make this page come out the clearest." The employee printed the page, and then walked over and picked it up off the printer. After a final glance at the page to ensure the quality of the print job, he handed it over to Chuck.
The employee had been right. The color photo of the woman named Katrina Stone, Ph.D. was faithfully reproduced in the printout. Chuck thanked the employee and paid, then exited the building and began walking out to his car. As he walked, he studied the photo intensely.
The woman in the picture had long, reddish hair. The hair of the woman he had followed from San Quentin had been raven black. Dye job? Wig? Chuck racked his brain to accurately remember the face of the woman he had followed. As he stared at the photo, he could not. But he did remember one detail: The b.i.t.c.h from the prison was uglier than a bucket of armpits. This chick, Katrina Stone, is hot. He briefly wondered how well the average woman could disguise her face with makeup and realized that he had absolutely no idea. Female habits were a total mystery to Chuck, whose transient interest in any woman tended to eject from his body along with his s.e.m.e.n.
No matter. It was the best lead he had. And San Diego State University was only a couple of freeway exits away.
This time, Chuck left his car behind the checkpoint. He skirted his way up through the landscaping to approach the building from behind. Then he slipped past a pair of guards when they were looking the other direction.
Chuck took the elevator to the indicated floor of the North Life Sciences building. When he stepped out, he scanned the various hallway doors for the lab with the correct number. It was then that he realized that the lab he needed was the only one being guarded.
b.i.t.c.h must be pretty important, he thought. He briefly remembered what Oscar had told him about live anthrax. Not very many people-even scientists-have access to it. Chuck was certain that he had found the right woman.
He approached the guard at the door.
"Do you have an ID?" the guard asked. "n.o.body is allowed in this lab without an ID."
"Oh, I didn"t know that. I"m looking for Katrina Stone. I"m an old friend of hers."