The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [54]
Bastien’s death had been a blow, later expanded tenfold by the discovery of the sensors’ hidden role, as was Russo’s appalling condition. Palmer felt outraged by the transmitters’ deception and overwhelmed by the young lawyer’s death. He would mourn Bastien, the dear boy, for the rest of his life. In his grief, Palmer would reach for an end to justify the means he’d used. But if he didn’t succeed, if Russo’s deterioration or the sensors were their undoing, Bastien’s death would serve no purpose. It would be put down to the deranged idealism of an old man, and Palmer wouldn’t be able to live with that.
Laurel, Raul, and Russo, with Dr. Carpenter and Lukas Hurley tagging along, were still in the sewers, perhaps a little more comfortable thanks to Shepherd’s agencies but still holed up. Springing them through the formidable gauntlet the DHS had thrown around the city while keeping Russo alive would require a regrettably scarce commodity: a miracle.
He stepped over to the sliding doors that opened to the garden and pushed them aside. The sky was the color of peat. Overhead, clouds marched quickly through thick air and against an increasingly angry sky.
At intervals during the previous hours, Palmer had heard muted thumps. He panned over the lawn, rosebushes, trimmed paths, and across the clump of trees until he spotted the culprit. Someone, probably Timmy, had left the door to the garden shed ajar. Not that it mattered, but it was an unkempt detail in an otherwise spotless garden, and a playful wind had nothing better to do than to bang it against its frame at intervals.
The gravel crunched underfoot as he walked to the shed. The pronouncement from Shepherd replayed in his mind. Police patrols have sealed all roads and Russo is dying, tied to a stretcher in an abandoned subway tunnel. My contact there will try to spring them.
At the shed, he peeked inside to check for Bum, Timmy’s dog, just in case he had resolved to spend the night among the tools and his archenemies: two squat robotic lawn mowers that drove the nervous beast mad as they entered and left the shed from a trapdoor on one side. But everything looked fine. The lawn mowers were suckling their power from outlets on one wall, and Bum was nowhere in sight. As Palmer was about to latch the wooden door, he spotted a basket of bulbs on a shelf, packages of dormant life, and an image of Hypnos’s tanks intruded in his thoughts. He leaned on the open door and made up his mind.
On his way back to the study, Palmer glanced up. The night was heavy, blanketed by featureless clouds. He glanced at his reflection on the windowpane. Sometimes he didn’t recognize the face looking back at him from mirrored surfaces. “I can stand the thought of someone dying, but not for nothing,” he whispered to the gods of the stars, if there were any. Then, with a conscious effort, he fought to marshal his thoughts.
One of the finest cures for a headache was a hammer blow to a finger, or so the joke went. Fresh agonizing pain soon replaced a dull head throb. Palmer stepped inside, closed the doors, and drew the curtains, shutting out the night.
chapter 21
08:46
Laurel awoke to the smell of frying bacon. Scent sometimes triggered half-forgotten scenes in her mind. Details became fresh, moments she’d never paid attention to as they slipped by remembered. When walking through a department store past the men’s section, a whiff of an ex-lover’s cologne could bring a flash of memory, how he looked and felt. Now the smell of Washington sewers had so overwhelmed her pituitary that she wondered if she would ever smell anything without the tang of lanolin or shit again.
Her neck ached—a dull throb in the spot where Floyd had removed the sensor earlier. “Just a nick,” he’d said, but it had hurt like hell. Nursing a neat sterile pad over adhesive stitches, she’d wedged her back into a corner to rest for five minutes, but the anesthetic must have knocked her out. She didn’t remember falling asleep.
Laurel flicked her eyes open for a heartbeat, two, three, before closing them again