Engines of Destruction excerpt

From the animal experiments, Neil Lawrence guessed he had two or three more hours to live. Christmas decorations hung from the distant streetlights, out of place in the tropical St. Petersburg, Florida 2062 night. Gravel crunched under Neil’s Italian loafers. Surfacing into a lucid moment, he reached a hand out to steady himself. Rough concrete block walls stretched out on either side into the darkness ahead. Neil looked around. Above, palms waved gently in the temperate breeze. The movement of his head made his vision spin and his confusion worse. Instinctively, he reached for the name tag on the lanyard around his neck but it was gone.

The scientist in him struggled to focus on the symptoms. Sweat flowed from every pore and his heart pounded so rapidly he lost count. He had to get back to the lab. Strict isolation was the only chance for containment, and that chance slipped further away with each second of fevered delirium. A wave of nausea hit like a fist, twisting his guts into a tight knot.

Neil opened his eyes. He was on his hands and knees. Another spasm tore through him. His vision cleared, revealing a puddle of bloody vomit. This was an observed late reaction. Maybe he’d misjudged the time he had left. He was surprised this didn’t upset him.

Neil struggled to his feet, stumbled, and fell against a rough surface, the cinder blocks scraped against his face. Ten feet away, a young woman stood in a pool of lamplight, hands covering her mouth. His thoughts fogged over again as the ground tilted up on end. Neil’s last thought was pity for the woman.

****

A cool St. Augustine, Florida breeze stroked a loose screen in Detective Nicole Piricelli’s open bedroom window. Along with the sound, a chill snaked its way through her. Her eyes popped open. Disoriented in the darkness for a terrible moment, she was once again on that same terrazzo floor in the stuffy rental property behind boarded-up windows, covered in her abductor’s blood. It was a place she’d woken from many times. Heart thumping in her ears, she stiffened, afraid to move as the memory faded.

Forcing a breath, she moved her hand, the microfiber smooth under her fingertips. The top sheet twisted around her. She exhaled slowly. She was in her own bed. Listening for, but hearing no telltale sounds outside the window, she told herself there was no reason to be awake. Yet she was. She willed her muscles to relax.

It had been months since she’d last fought through the terror-filled nightmares into the shaking hope that they would eventually pass. And so they had. Until tonight.

This was different.

Nicole untwisted the sheet coiled around her, found her blanket where she’d kicked it in her sleep, and glanced at the clock on the dresser. Across the room, glowing blue numbers painted two-fourteen on the gloom. She let her dark-adjusted attention move around the room. No stray shadows. Rolling out of bed, she stripped off the sweat-soaked Tinker Bell pajamas Carter had given her for Christmas two years ago and dropped them on the floor.

Her eyes flicked to the security pad on the wall. Thirteen tiny LEDs shined steady green except for the one blinking amber, indicating her open bedroom window. That space was limited to a four-inch opening by steel bars bolted to the frame on either side. She moved to the brass headboard and found the holster hanging in its spot. Thumbing the quick-release, she pulled her Glock-19C into her hand, grateful for its familiar weight. On the way to the kitchen, a shiver caused her to grab the faded blue bathrobe that hung on the back of the bedroom door. She shrugged into it to ward off the goose flesh and tightened the robe’s belt.

Nicole moved quietly through the darkness with heightened awareness that fit like a second skin. She sniffed, checking for telltale scents that didn’t belong. Using her peripheral vision, she scanned the living room for any movement or a change in the shadows. She listened past the beating of her heart for stray noises, straining to detect any dissonant presence.

She moved from room to room, silent as the surrounding shadows. Each of the other two bedrooms in her house held a strategically placed, motion-activated, tiny LED nightlight, which she kept to her back. Neither contained any furniture that might conceal an intruder. Her finger moved off the trigger.

Satisfied the interior was empty, she used her smartwatch to check the cameras mounted on the eaves outside the house. The surrounding yard was silent. She relaxed and slipped the Glock into the gun-oil stained pocket of her robe before heading to the kitchen.

“House,” she said. “Kitchen lights up, twenty-five percent over thirty seconds.” As the light gradually increased, Nicole stepped into the kitchen, “House. Coffee, four cups.” The auto-coffee unit measured the correct amount and started heating water, while Nicole dropped two pieces of bread into the toaster. She was up for the day, no matter what the clock read.

She propped her chin on her hands, leaned on the cast resin counter, and stared at the slowly filling carafe. Her mind drifted on the night tides until once again she was taped to that wooden chair in that awful, sweltering rental, surrounded by walls covered in cheap paneling. The left side of her face over her fractured cheekbone throbbed. She brushed her fingertips over the spot. Her heart pounded in her chest as she thought back to the times she’d considered ending the nightmares with a finger pull of her gun’s trigger. Dread leeched into her, bone-deep, heavy and oppressive as the St. Augustine heat from that August afternoon two years ago.

“No.” She shoved the memory aside with a little more ferocity than was probably necessary. Her imagination was not going to push her around. She’d worked too hard, fought too long. The past two years had been a climb back from hell, and she’d earned every step of whatever peace had come with the ascent.

A gurgle from the coffee maker signaled it was done. She poured a cup, creamed and sweetened it, and grabbing the toast when it popped up, padded to the French doors at the rear of the house.

“House,” she said. “Lights fade to off. Security disarm. Voice code recognition, Piricelli, Nicole.”

In response, the light in the kitchen dropped into darkness over the next few seconds. The column of steady green LEDs on the security pad next to the back doors switched to amber. Nicole stepped onto the old-style, southern, wide back porch. Cool night air enveloped her, and she shivered once inside her robe. She took a deep breath, taking in the rich scents of the wetlands bordering the rear of her property. The musky scent mixed with faint salt air from the Florida coast a dozen miles to the east.

She settled into the rocking chair, propped her feet on the banister that ran the length of the porch, and sipped her coffee. Beyond the far edge of her yard, silhouettes of water oaks and pines reached toward the overturned bowl of stars. Above, the cratered face of the moon silvered the cloudless night sky. In the distance, the croaking of alligators rode over from the wetland on a westerly breeze. Alligators made perfect neighbors, she mused. Quiet and well-behaved, as long as you didn’t have small pets, they were better than guard dogs and didn’t need to be taken for a walk. She smiled at the thought. The familiar sound helped settle her nerves.

It was nothing, she told herself. Just a case of insomnia. That could happen. Everybody woke up in the middle of the night sometimes for no reason, sheets twisted into knots. No reason to make it more important than it was.

But it was important. She knew it.

Nicole blew across the lip of her cup. Her thoughts gradually turned to Carter as they often did. It was time. She’d followed his life surreptitiously since he left–since Anne Warwick, the department psychiatrist, had sent him away. Nicole read everything he wrote for his current paper, stopping just short of obsession, she hoped. His writing had gotten better with time. His ability to weave a story into the news he covered had always been good, but lately… She’d bring that up when she talked with Warwick. That must’ve been what had her awake in the middle of the night–the need for resolution. Old baggage. Had to be it. Warwick would get it.

Malone would be a harder sell. Her trainer for the past five years and her partner for three of those five, he could read her moods like the Sunday comics. There’d be no bullshitting him and Nicole knew it. She needed to do this, though. Needed to find out. Malone would understand. He’d have to, or she’d just break his legs.

She absent-mindedly stroked the scarred bed of the missing nail on her left little finger as she chewed a bite of toast. She settled in the rocker and stared to the east, waiting for sunrise.