Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

phone privileges and just said, “Yes.”

 

And before he could ask anything more, she jumped in again. “I need you to do me a favor.”

 

“Is this one of those ‘no questions asked’ favors? And when the bodies start piling up, I’m going to get disbarred kinds of things?”

 

Becky wondered why he’d had to use that reference to bodies. As if he knew more, or could read more from her tone, than he was letting on. So again she just said “Yes.” She tried to put a little laugh in it, but she wasn’t that good of an actress.

 

The yellow suit man gave her a stare, but she shrugged at him, like what was I supposed tosay? And she asked Aaron to go out and recheck the boundaries of the site.

 

“Becky, are you in trouble? Am I going to regret this?” His voice was a hiss and the irritation and tired humor that had spun through his words even just a few exchanges ago was gone.

 

“Aaron, I’m okay.” It was the best she could tell him, not knowing if she was sitting around waiting to die. “And you might help a lot of important research with this. Thank you.”

 

He said a quick goodbye and hung up.

 

Looking up with a conjured smile, Becky handed the disconnected phone back to the suit, knowing they’d return with it when Aaron called her back. And she waited.

 

An hour later the suit came back in with the phone. “Hello?”

 

“Becky? Why the hell did I have to go through some sort of security check to get to you?”

 

Aaron was clearly worried. And there was nothing she could really do about it.

 

“Because you did. How’s the site?”

 

“Nothing.” She could hear the chirping of cicadas in the back ground and the usual woods noises. He was there now.

 

“So it’s all the same.” She let out a breath, startled by its release.

 

“No, there’s nothing here. The compass needle doesn’t move at all. I walked the whole boundary twice.”

 

Her brows pulled down, and her fingernail tried to compete with her words for space between her teeth.

 

“So north is north and the whole site is just a staked out boundary?”

 

“Looks like it to me … wait. No, north is still south according to the compass.” He sounded as perplexed as his words were making her. “But it’s not changing at the boundary line. Not like before. It was real clear, now … nothing.”

 

Her heart raced, throwing a lump up into her throat. She couldn’t even think of the implications of what Aaron was telling her. So she asked the obvious. “Can you find the edge?”

 

Through the cell phone connection she could hear his boots crunching through the undergrowth. “Already looking for it… wait. Got it!”

 

“Where are you? Where is it?”

 

“About ten feet out.”

 

“God. Aaron, just get out of there. Go home.”

Chapter 9

Jordan woke to the sound of sledgehammers keeping cadence inside his head. It was their third day here, and nothing was new. Oh, except the mysterious Brookwood-Abellard had struck Florida again. One of the coma victims had slunk off into quiet death yesterday morning. And fate was claiming another. Maxie Londers had only had ear pain prior to this. But quickly the vomiting that had begun at four a.m. had changed and Maxie was now on a ventilator, awaiting her turn into the kingdom of whatever god she chose.

 

He ached for the Levinsons. Art was less obvious in his grief than Maddie, but maybe more touching for that exact reason. Rolling his face into his pillow, Jordan made a half-assed attempt at self-suffocation. He should get up and brush his teeth and get dressed like every other day of his life. But unlike every other he would breathe a little harder down David’s neck, begging and praying for a resolution to this thing.

 

On the one hand he wanted the problem to be the magnetic reversal. Problem solved. The bug they couldn’t find didn’t exist. Not their fault. But that would leave holes of uninhabitable space on earth. Surely all the hotspots couldn’t be in North America, right? There had to be others elsewhere, right? And at that point the problem went way out of his scope. Hell, it had been out of his scope a week ago.

 

David was trying. Becky was trying. Jilly’s fingers were about bare to the bone and his own back was about to break. He could simply cry foul and give up. He and Jillian had kept sharing a room, leaving the second free as workspace. So he could just not go into the workroom again. Simply ignore all of it.

 

“It’s like there’s nothing here to find.” Her voice was soft in the false darkness created by the blackout curtains. It came from over his shoulder and the rhythm and timbre told him she’d been awake for a least a while. “I’ve kicked myself a dozen times this past week for not being a pediatrician.”

 

He couldn’t suppress the small laugh, and he finally rolled to face her. Somehow she was bundled under the covers with the look of a child huddled against the cold of winter. “What do you say we just leave and go set up a practice together? We’d be good.”

 

“No, we’re just missing something. I know it.”

 

He sat up, letting the sheet slide down him, fully awake. If Jillian thought there was a connection they were missing, if it was niggling at the corner of her brain, then he trusted that it was there.

 

She sat up too, holding her head as though to keep the information from sloshing out.

 

“There’s a numbers issue that we’re missing here.”

 

Jordan’s feet hit the less than plush carpet and he started pacing, energy renewed at even this slight prospect. “We aren’t at quarantine, and we’re way too populated here. It’s too high profile to swarm down in yellow suits.”

 

“No, it’s not about quarantine. It’s about numbers I saw somewhere.”

 

They needed to be up and dressed and in the other room where all the numbers were lined up in neat rows and gathered on charts waiting for them. He forced a deep breath into his lungs. “I’m going to get dressed and go down and grab some food, then I’ll bring it back-”

 

“No.” It was positively frantic. “You can’t leave me alone. Just keep talking to me. It’s like a word on the tip of my tongue.” She was throwing off the covers and stepping out in her shorts pajamas that sported a squinty-faced redhead and the words bad hair day. At another time it would have made him laugh.

 

“Okay.” And even as he extracted himself from her grasp she re-clung to him. “What’s wrong, Jilly? Are you all right?”

 

She waved her hands in front of her face. “It’s here. And if I don’t solve it people will die!”

 

The starch left him. Perhaps Jillian didn’t have any answers. She just had fear and guilt the same as him. “Let me go into the bathroom and get dressed. Then we’ll go down and get breakfast.”

 

He didn’t mention numbers again or solving anything. He didn’t really think they would.

 

“I’ll change out here while you’re in there.”

 

He nodded. Even in a panic, and buried under a brickload of guilt, Jillian was efficient. Closing the door behind him, Jordan allowed himself a brief measure of time where he could ignore the fact that Jilly was close to tears just beyond the wall. And that the hallway door would only open to a host of other responsibilities and problems.

 

They wandered down for the continental breakfast, and were heading back, food balanced in their hands when she stopped, almost causing him to put steaming coffee down her back.

 

“Room numbers.” She pointed at the numbers they were passing with each door down the hallway. “But not numbers.” With no warning she went from off to on and started back down the hall. “Not numbers.” Again she muttered, and Jordan knew that he would be the one to set down his carefully balanced breakfast and fish out the magnetic room key.

 

She was passing him into their room when her head snapped up. “Room colors!”

 

He nodded, his brain catching on to her excitement. As though he, too, could now see light at the end of the tunnel. He just didn’t know what was producing that light. “The Levinsons colorcoordinate the bedrooms so the guests don’t have to remember anything but their color.”

 

She ungraciously unloaded her food onto the side table. “All the patients were in color coordinated rooms.

 

And if we go back and check I’ll bet they’re all at one end of the house.”

 

He mentally tabbed through what he remembered of each of the patients, calling up a face, and a mental picture of the room. One blue, one pink, one purple, all at one end of the long house.

 

“They were all in the north end. Even the new ones.”

 

They nodded at each other with Jordan supplying the words. “Another physical anomaly. But then why hasn’t David found anything?”

 

Heavy breathing sounded in the open doorway over his shoulder and Jordan leaped around to find David hanging in the gaping space, sucking in air even as he spoke. “David has.”

 

“What?” Jordan took in the wrinkled and filthy khakis and the bags under his eyes. Whatever David had been up to he hadn’t been dressed for it.

 

“There is just now a start of a reversal at the north end of the house. It’s a small spot. With a small field.”

 

“Why didn’t we see it before?” Jillian walked toward David, but it was Jordan who handed over his coffee with an “I didn’t drink any of it” to a grateful David.

 

“I’m used to seeing this stuff in deep layers. There’s a history of reversal here, but no one ever recorded it before. All the strata tell the story. But, right now the top layer is showing the shift, too. Not my forte, but I found it.” He took a sip of the steaming silt water and had the wherewithal to thank Jordan.

 

“So why are you just telling us now?” Jillian shook her head, still looking inside, not focused on either of the men in front of her, Jordan knew the signs.

 

“Because, sweetcheeks, I was up all night playing in the dirt.”

 

Yup, Jordan thought to himself, that matches the appearance.

 

“And I only just now found it.” He tipped up the cup, draining the last of Jordan’s coffee.

 

“So you two can call the old doc and tell him it’s high time to move these people out! And I am now going to sleep.”

 

With that, he practically rolled out of view and Jordan heard the metallic click of his door closing just a second later.

 

Jillian stood stock still, thinking. “We’re missing somebody.”

 

Not able to help her think, Jordan called Atlanta, but not Landerly. “Mike, it’s Jordan.”

 

“All our numbers exactly match yours.” Something about the tones in his voice made Jordan sure that Mike was in the lab.

 

“Yeah, I figured they’d match.” His hand went automatically through his hair, a gesture of frustration. “But I’ve got another set of info for you to run.”

 

“Lay it on me, I’m going to be sitting on my assays here in a few minutes.”

 

Jordan laughed. “That’s funny.”

 

“What?”

 

“Sitting on my ass ays.”

 

“Oh.” He could hear the shrug in Mike’s voice, as though the thought had never occurred