Rx Missing (Decorah Security Series, Book #10): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel (16 page)

She sighed. “I know. But don’t remind me of that yet. Let me be happy for a little while.”

“Happy,” he echoed. He’d given up on the idea of being happy long ago and settled for a job he loved. Now he felt a little spark of hope inside his heart, like the first flickers of flame when kindling catches. It could still go out, or it could spread and grow. He wanted that to happen so much, but he could hardly dare count on it.

Lily rolled to her side, then began searching around the floor and couch for her clothing. “In case someone comes in.”

“Yeah, right.”

He found his pants and pulled them on. When he reached to retrieve his shirt, she pressed her palm against his chest, and he looked up to see that she was half dressed. They both went still.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“For lying to you. For pretending to be one of the patients—when you kept giving me opportunities to come clean with you.”

“I understand,” he said quickly, perhaps too quickly.

“Do you?”

“You were committed to the project. Hamilton convinced you that you had to play the role he assigned to you in here.”

“I should have done more thinking for myself, but I was excited that Hamilton had chosen me for the team. There were a lot of candidates, but he picked me.”

“Because you’re good.”

“And maybe because he knew he could keep me focused on his plans.”

She turned away and found the rest of her clothing.

“What would you have done differently?”

“Told them the truth about this place,” she said with jerky movements as she dressed.

“You don’t think they would have freaked out?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have blurted it out. I would have eased into it. Preston kind of made that impossible for me—or anyone else. On the other hand, he made it easy to believe that the Hotel Mirador is some kind of super video game.”

“Yeah.” He swallowed hard. “Are you sorry about this?”

He heard her voice go soft, like an old fashioned lacy valentine. “Making love just now? Absolutely not. You don’t know how relieved I was that you still wanted me.”

“I never stopped.”

“But you were angry.”

“Yeah.”

She reached for him, clasping him in her arms, and he did the same. They held each other for a few moments before he asked the question that had been churning inside him.

“Do you think I can get out of here?’

He heard her swallow hard. “From the first, I thought you had a good chance of recovery. You had a good Glasgow Coma Scale.”

“What’s that?”

“A test we administer to patients in a coma. You get a numerical score for things you can do, like open your eyes, make sounds, respond to painful stimuli. The scale goes from three to fifteen. You were up to twelve. I told Hamilton you shouldn’t be here, but I think he’d already gone to a lot of trouble to get you.”

“Right. He stole me.”

She made an angry sound. “I believe he thinks this project is going to make him a superstar in the field of coma treatment. Too bad he has no scruples about how he accomplishes his goals.”

He nodded, then said, “You were handicapping my chances.”

“You were always different from the other patients. You were always responsive to me. I knew I was getting . . . attached to you. Then when we all woke up here—there you were, the man I’d been longing to meet. And there’s another good sign. After I came back to the lab and Grant was there, you responded to both of us. You opened your eyes, looked at us, and said something.”

He thought about that. “Maybe I remember. I mean I remember something strange happening before I talked to Grant on the monitor. It was like this world faded around me.”

“Yes.”

He hung on to her, longing to reassure her that they’d figure a way out of this situation for the two of them, but he couldn’t get the words past the lump in his throat. And he couldn’t say something that might turn out to be a lie.

Mack forced himself to focus on solving the current problem. “We have to go back and join the group.”

“And what?”

“You said someone in here isn’t who we think they are. We have to figure out who it is—and why.”

She spread her hands helplessly. “But how?”

“Too bad there’s not some kind of test we can administer. Did any of them strike you as ‘off’?”

She laughed. “To use a technical term, most of them are kind of weird.”

“Right. I keep wondering if Tom Wright is lying about his background. And it’s pretty clear that Jenny Seville is hiding something.” As he spoke, another thought struck him. “Didn’t Hamilton have patient records that gave their background?”

She dragged in a breath and let it out. “Yes. I asked for that, and he gave me detailed records, but now I don’t know if they were real. I mean he could easily have changed their names and how they’d gotten injured. He could have changed anything in their backgrounds.”

“Great.”

She went on. “There was a lot of information on you. I copied your file and brought it home.”

“Oh yeah?”

She flushed. “I was praying you’d get better.”

He wanted to proclaim that he would. He didn’t bother with the affirmation. Either it would be true or not.

“Now I’m thinking others could have been stolen for the project. Only their relatives didn’t open a closed casket like your brother did.”

“I hope Grant doesn’t regret it.”

“Why would he?”

“He’s gotten himself into trouble. Here and in the real world.” He glanced toward the door, then back at Lily. “When we were out there, we saw a devil.”

“What do you mean a devil?”

“A creature that looked like a devil, with a tail and horns. Wearing black tights and hurling fire. It was either a projection like the things in the woods, or it was Preston himself in that persona. This time he had a lot to say.”

“What?”

“He demanded that everyone come out on the lawn. When we said it wasn’t gonna happen, he made the earth open up onto a pit of boiling lava. I almost went in, but Grant grabbed me.”

She gasped, reaching for him and holding tight again. “Oh my God.”

“Unfortunately, this time Preston came through the gate and onto the lawn. And the pit was at the edge of the hotel.”

She made a low sound of distress. “That’s bad.”

“Yeah. I’m surer than ever that we can really get hurt—or killed—in here.”

“I didn’t think so when Hamilton described the protocol. I’ve changed my mind,” Lily said.

“Just because of Preston?”

“I don’t know. I thought the designer, Sidney Landon, knew what he was doing. At least he sounded pretty awesome when he described the environment to me. Now I know there are too many unknowns to be sure of anything, at least with Preston assaulting the program.”

“Then we have to be careful.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t even know what the dangers are until they happen.”

He nodded, then glanced toward the door. “I’m thinking we might want to go upstairs and look out my bedroom window. It’s got a view of the grounds and the woods beyond. Maybe we can see what Preston’s up to now.”

“Good idea,” she agreed.

“But I want to let Grant know.”

They both walked into the lobby and crossed to the room where they’d left the others. When Mack knocked on the door, Grant called out, “Who is it?”

“Santa Claus,” Mack answered.

His brother opened the door and gave them a long look. “Everything okay?”

“Yes.”

Mack studied the faces turned toward him. Most looked worried, but Grant had apparently done a good job of keeping the panic down to a manageable level.

“We thought we might . . .,” he stopped talking aloud and finished the rest of the sentence in his mind, sending it to Grant.

His brother’s eyes widened. Then he looked up.

Mack felt a spurt of elation. Once again, his brother had heard him. At least something good had come out of getting stuck in a computer game. He and Grant were reestablishing the silent communication that they’d shared when they were kids. Or was it only because his body was asleep in a lab, and his mind had an unaccustomed freedom? He hoped that wasn’t the reason.

“Do what?” Tom Wright, the car salesman, asked from where he stood with his shoulder propped against the wall. When Mack had first seen him, he’d seemed pretty laid back. Now he seemed to be struggling to maintain that posture, under the pressure of the attacks from Preston.

“I’d rather not say,” Mack answered. “In case Preston’s listening.”

“Then how does your brother know?”

“Sometimes we read each other’s minds.”

“Yeah, right.”

Mack shrugged. “We’ll be back in a little while.”

“I’m tired of being cooped up in here,” the car salesman, if that’s what he really was, said.

There were murmurs of agreement.

Wright started for the door and pushed past Mack into the lobby where he looked around like he expected to find that Mack and Lily were hiding a nasty surprise from the rest of them.

Roper and Todd marched out after him like little boys who were determined to get their share of whatever privileges were being handed out. The women were not as quick as the men to leave the sheltered area. But Paula Rendell stepped through the doorway and looked around. Mack glanced at Lily, and she gave him a look that said, “We can’t force them to play it safe.”

The rest of the group had trailed out, although Jenny Seville stayed near the door. Grant moved to her side and put his arm around her.

She gave him a grateful look.

“Stay in the hotel,” Mack warned.

“Maybe,” Roper answered.

oOo

Persistence had paid off. That last blast of energy with the devil fire had burned a hole in the barrier between Danny Preston and the hotel grounds. Now he stood with his eyes closed, a look of deep concentration on his face as he aimed a life energy field meter at the hotel wall. He figured it was as good a device as any for pulling thoughts from the hotel guests whose privacy he hadn’t already invaded.

When he clicked off the meter, a broad grin spread across his face. He would have whooped in triumph, except that he still wanted to conceal his presence for a little while longer. He wasn’t going to go sneaking in there. He was going to make sure he entered as Caesar returning to Rome after conquering Egypt.

He’d scanned the minds of everyone inside the hotel, excluding Bradley and Wardman because he’d already done them. He hadn’t been able to probe the others as deeply as those first two, because he wasn’t doing it face to face, so to speak. But he’d gotten enough to know which guest was the one he’d been sent here to interrogate.

He turned and headed back to his base of operation, planning the details of his grand entrance.

oOo

“Back soon,” Mack said. Before Wright or anyone else could ask more questions, he turned toward the steps.

He and Lily climbed the broad stairs to the second-floor hallway. As he reached the landing, he looked around at the patterned wallpaper, the thick carpet, the marble balustrade. This place was as elegant as a palace—and could be his home for the rest of his life. If you were objective, it wasn’t such a bad living environment. And think of the advantages. You could have anything you wanted to eat—assuming the kitchen was open, and you would never get fat. On the other hand, he didn’t like looking over his shoulder all the time waiting for Preston to pull a new trick,

He glanced at Lily and caught her watching him.

“Maybe I can read your mind—like your brother.”

“Yeah. If I have to stay here, we’re going to have to talk to Landon about what food to stock,” he quipped. “Even if we don’t really need it.”

“For the record, I’m an excellent cook. I love coming home and fixing something good.”

He would have liked to stand there talking about making the environment more livable, but he had come upstairs for a reason. Turning, he started rapidly down the hall to his room, knowing Lily was having trouble keeping up.

His key was in his pocket. He might have thought he’d lost it, but maybe it always came back to the pocket like a homing pigeon when you were out and about.

When he’d opened the door, they stepped into the sitting room. Lily reached for his hand, and he knitted his fingers with hers.

“Too bad we don’t have time for anything besides business,” she whispered.

“Maybe a little bit of time,” he answered, swinging her around and wrapping her in his arms as he lowered his mouth to hers. He’d thought it would be a quick kiss. It lasted longer than he intended, and when they finally broke apart, they were both breathing hard, and his erection was straining against her middle.

He held her for a moment longer, wanting more but knowing that was impossible now.

Finally, he eased away. “Sorry.”

“For what?” she asked.

“That I can’t take you in the bedroom right now and fuck your brains out.”

She laughed. “That’s how you think about it?”

“At the moment—yes.”

A flash of movement outside the window caught his attention, and he tried to snap his mind back to business as he looked out. He’d thought he’d seen a bird. Instead it was a blue- and silver-winged creature with a long snout that looked like a trumpet. In fact, the instrument was blasting away triumphantly, playing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy slightly faster than the usual tempo.

Mack crossed to the window as he took in the view below. “What the hell?”

Lily followed.

There were several of the creatures flying in a circle above the open area of the lawn, blasting their loud music, and the door in the wall was wide open.

As Mack and Lily watched, the man they’d seen in the tree came through. He was dressed like a biker again. In fact, he was riding a honking big red and chrome bike that gouged a muddy tire track as it crossed the lawn. Behind him marched a contingent of the little men Mack had seen earlier, ammunition belts slung across their chests like old-time Mexican soldiers. They all held automatic weapons in firing position, as though they were ready to fight off a screaming mob—not a group of unfortunate patients trapped in the hotel lobby.

Mack struggled to draw in a full breath as he tried to comprehend what was happening. “Jesus, he’s figured out how to get all the way in here.”

The biker stopped on the lawn, cocking his head to the side as though listening to something only he could hear. After a few moments, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call. It was very brief, but he looked like he’d won a victory as he put the phone away.

“What was that all about?” Lily asked.

“I don’t know. I’m guessing he was making a report to someone.”

“Sterling?”

“That’s my best guess. We have to go down and warn the others that he’s gotten onto the grounds.”

He charged back to the door, and turned the handle, but it seemed to be locked from the outside.

“Jesus,” he said again. “He must have seen us up here. He wants to keep us from going down and telling anyone what’s happening.”

Mack looked toward the phone on the desk.

“Too bad it doesn’t work,” Lily said, answering his unspoken question.

They both turned back to the window and stared down again. The honor guard of little warriors was marching after Preston as he headed for the entrance by the bar.

Mack tried the door again. When it wouldn’t open, he cursed and looked around for a battering ram. He picked up the heavy, carved desk chair, lifted it over his head and smashed it at the door. The first time it bounced off, but he kept lifting and smashing, and finally he’d made a hole large enough to reach through. Fumbling for the keycard again, he managed to angle his hand around and swipe the plastic through the slot.

The door whizzed open, almost hitting him in the face as he worked the mechanism.

“Come on,” he shouted to Lily.

They both raced down the carpeted hall and pounded down the marble steps, but before they reached the main floor, Mack could already see it was too late. He stopped short, taking in the scene in the lobby.

Preston had driven right inside, the bike leaving a nasty brown streak across the beautiful Oriental carpet.

People tried to scatter as the hacker drove toward the center of the group. But the fully-armed men lowered their automatic weapons, training them on the group.

Grant was still trying to herd people back into the smaller room, but a couple of warriors blocked the way.

Preston sprang off his motorcycle, propped it against one of the marble columns in the lobby, and reached for Paula Rendell who had apparently lost the ability to move.

That changed as he grabbed her. She started flailing, and he shook her hard.

“Cut it out.”

“Let go of me.”

Ignoring the plea, he turned her back to his front. When she was secure in his clutches, he pulled out a curved knife with a jeweled handle and flourished it in the air before pressing the edge of the blade against her throat.