Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(104)

He smiled. It’s all right, my lover. It’s okay to want without yet knowing who it is that you want.

The worm fiber formed in the air before him, the gravitational improbability swirling as he brought the incredible power of the Rho Ship to bear on it, stabilizing the instability, directing it according to his will.

The parlor inside the McFarland house swam into his vision, empty and dark, except for a small light from the kitchen. Moving his viewpoint into the kitchen, he found it empty, the light coming from the illuminated time display on the microwave oven. 7:14 p.m.

Odd. It wasn’t that late. The McFarlands should be at dinner. Where was everyone?

Raul moved the fiber upward until it passed through the ceiling into Heather’s room. Empty. The bed perfectly made. No sign of after-school activities, no tossed aside backpack, no books scattered on the desk. No clothes scattered about. What the hell?

Raul moved down the hallway to the bathroom. Nothing. No naked girl in the shower. Nothing.

In growing desperation, he swept into the master bedroom. On the bed, fully clothed, Mr. McFarland held his wife, who sobbed inconsolably on his shoulder, his face a mask of despair. The combination of the Heather’s empty bedroom and the looks of loss on her parents’ faces could only mean one thing.

The stunning realization hit Raul in the chest like a sledgehammer. Heather was gone.

The worm fiber collapsed. Hanging in the air of the Rho Ship’s inner chamber, Raul screamed. And as he screamed, the electrical energy built in the air around him until it arced outward, connecting the walls to his fingertips in one undying arc of lightning that failed to diffuse the shock of loss that drained his soul.





107


Without taking a break for lunch, Jennifer sat at the keyboard, working her magic. Five million dollars. That was the amount she had transferred from three Swiss bank accounts controlled by the Espe?osa drug cartel into a handful of separate Cayman Island bank accounts. If it had simply been direct transfers, Jennifer would have been finished long ago, but that would be stupid. Instead, she had moved the money through a web of transactions around the world, all recorded over the last week, deals that included arms purchases in the Middle East to commodities options on the Chicago Board of Trade.

She was a time walker. At least, Jennifer could make her data trail walk back through time, searching out all records of transactions and inserting new ones, careful to trace the entire audit trail. When in doubt that she had tracked down all the related computer records, she inserted a virus, corrupting records in a way that would make a trace of her activities almost impossible.

The Espe?osa Cartel was just the first of many such thieves’ dens she planned on inflicting financial pain upon in her need to establish a financial empire. A growing dread forced her to hurry. The new president had pledged to release the nanite formula for distribution to Africa on Friday, announcing that millions of doses were already on navy ships headed in that direction. He had chosen Africa because it, of all continents, was the most desperately afflicted by the scourge of disease, especially AIDS. It had also been the most ignored by past US administrations. Now it was to become the model for American humanitarian efforts.

Jennifer shuddered. Those poor people. So desperately willing to take any risk in order to survive. But what choice did they have? In their situation, she would probably do exactly the same thing.

Not all addictions were chemically based. How many people could get by without their cars or air conditioning or refrigeration or electricity? The truth was that mankind was addicted to technology. What Dr. Stephenson and the president offered was only the next logical step in that addiction. But it was a step that horrified Jennifer beyond words.

Hearing a knock, Jennifer pressed the key sequence that locked out her computer, then walked to the door.

“What is it?” she called out.

“Complimentary turndown service,” came the woman’s voice from the other side of the closed door.

“No, thank you.”

“Hello?”

“No, thank you,” Jennifer said again.

The key turned in the door. As it opened, Jennifer stopped it with her foot.

“I said, no, thank you!”

“Perdón, se?orita,” the maid said, bowing her head. But when she raised it again, a spray of mist squirted into Jennifer’s face.

Before she could grasp what was happening, Jennifer felt her legs buckle. As everything faded around her, a redheaded man stepped forward to catch her.

“Hello, young lady. You have a lot of explaining to do. But first you are going on a little trip.”

Jennifer felt herself stuffed into the bottom of the maid’s cart. Then, as it rolled back out into the hallway, everything went black.





108


Janet slipped the end of the key device into the car ignition switch, pressing a button on the side that engaged the tumblers. With a twist of her wrist, the lock turned, sending the engine of the Ford Explorer rumbling to life. God she loved civilization, if you could call Santa Fe, New Mexico, civilization. The place felt like she had been swept back in time five hundred years, the narrow streets of old town Santa Fe certainly never designed for the modern automobile, much less two lanes of traffic.

She was tired, more tired than she had been in weeks. But Jack needed her and so sleep would have to wait. Her first priority was to get herself to a safe spot where she could establish an Internet connection. Then she could uplink the information that would give Jack what he needed to know. After that, well, she would think about that when she got to it.