Breaking into his father’s emails had been no trouble at all. The stubborn bastard still hadn’t bothered to change his password. Breaking into the clinic’s records had taken a little more nerve, but once Jonas had decided to do it, it had been easy enough. Their codes were even lamer than his father’s. It was always that way. Once you got more than two people sharing a password, they got a case of collective amnesia and couldn’t remember anything more complicated than Password01. Unless, of course, there was a major security breach, and then they mixed things up big time by changing it to Password02. The clinic was already up to Password17, and still no one could think of being as creative as using someone’s pet’s name instead.
“Find something intriguing? A terrorist chatroom on the dark web? Nude pictures of Miley Cyrus? A bonus level of Candy Crush Saga?”
The old man’s voice came out of nowhere, causing Jonas to knock the keyboard off the table. Christ, you’d think after all these years, he’d finally be used to the old man sneaking up on him, but the bastard still managed to blindside him with those rubber wheels.
“Checking to see if you’d changed any of your passwords yet,” Jonas lied. “You know, it’s really going to catch up with you one of these days.”
“Jonas, hacking is a serious business.”
“Why do you have to assume I’m hacking every time you see me at a computer?”
“Mostly because that’s what you’re usually doing,” the old man sighed. “Most recently into your high school registrar’s office to change your grades, if I recall correctly. Honestly, Jonas did it ever occur to you that it would take less effort simply to make honor roll?”
“Yessir,” Jonas said. “Guess I just like to give myself a challenge, sir.”
Lucas closed his eyes a moment as if to compose himself and then said, “I admit I’ve had a rather trying day, and my temper is somewhat short,” he said. “So I would appreciate it, if we could dispense with the pleasantries and keep this simple. What are you looking for on my computer?”
Jonas decided to dive right in, willing himself to say what he had been working up to all day. “I’m trying to find a way to delete my name from the Lazarus Vector records,” he said with a calm he didn’t feel.
He had braced himself against his father’s rage. Threats. Sarcasm. But Lukas showed no more passion than if he had been asking some bum down at the shelter whether he knew the difference between a deer tick and a head louse. His father said, “And why would you want to do a thing like that?”
This was it. Ground zero. The real reason Jonas was here, to ride to his father’s rescue. To his embarrassment, he felt his ears go bright red. “Look, I heard that asshole the other night. I know I wasn’t supposed to be listening, but I did. Couldn’t help it really. You can hear anything through those heating ducts.” Once he got started, the words tumbled out in a rush. “I know he’s holding it over your head, even though this is all my fault. My screw-up. And that’s not fair. I’m not going to let that happen. I’m just trying to make things right.”
“So you decided to handle things by screwing up even more?” Lukas’s nostrils flared, the sure sign of a tirade. Then, abruptly, his jaw clamped shut. And, incredibly, impossibly, he said, “I’m sorry. You’re trying to do the right thing; it’s unconscionable of me to bite your head off. Please chalk it up to the fact I’m under considerable stress at this moment ...”
“Stress I caused.” Jonas’s ears burned. “No, you were right in the first place. You should just go ahead and say it. I fucked up.”
“I have no desire to say any such thing.”
“Then why do you look like you’re choking on your dinner?”
A moment’s thunderous pause. And then unexpected humor flashed across Lukas’s face. “Because I’m not sure how to say what I want to say. Expressing my feelings is not exactly my wheelhouse, if you will.” He paused, browed furrowed, carefully considering his next words. “So I will just do my best. I am trying to find a way to tell you how touched I am at your trying to protect me. Actually, you will never know how much.”
He spoke with no more emotion than if he were deciding which meal to pull out of the freezer for dinner, and it took Jonas a moment to register what the old man was saying. Was his father actually attempting to ... share? To bond? The possibility was so seriously awkward that it was a relief when the doorbell rang, the front door crashed open, and heels clacked down the hall.
A moment later, Marie, the crazy lady, was standing on the threshold. And Lukas looked at least as relieved to see her as Jonas was. “Mrs. Carey,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
She stepped into the lab, and Lukas moved reflexively to protect his equipment, but she seemed to be balancing a little better than usual. She barely swayed as she rummaged in her purse and pulled out a cell phone.
“This,” she said, tossing it to him.
Lukas raised an eyebrow as he glanced at it. “And this is?”
“It’s Trey’s old phone,” Marie said. “I stole it months ago, but he never canceled it.”
“And why is that?”
“Because he’s a lazy bastard.”
“I apologize. I wasn’t clear. I meant, why did you steal his phone?” “Why else? I was trying to catch the bastard sexting.”
“Sexting?” Lukas rolled the world around in his mouth as if it were a questionable wine.
“The technology changes. Men don’t.”
“Present company excepted, of course.”
Marie’s gaze flashed to the wheelchair, and her face fell. “Oh, God! I didn’t think ...” she stammered. “Oh, Christ, how could I be so stupid ... I’m sorry—”
“That was not what I meant,” Lukas snapped.
Shit. No. They couldn’t be headed there, could they? That was beyond seriously awkward. But Marie’s face was flaming as bad as Jonas’s ears, and she stared straight down at the floor, refusing to meet the old man’s eyes as she muttered, “I was saving it for the divorce. I don’t know why. There was nothing on it. Not even internet porn. Big surprise there. The bastard’s got about as much sexual imagination as—”
A strangled noise cut her off. “Perhaps you could just tell me what you think you found on this cell phone?” Lukas asked with preternatural politeness.
She finally looked up, her face still red. “Michael threatened Trey somehow,” she said. “Made a scene down at the Yacht Club. As soon as he left, the phone started lighting up like a Christmas tree.”
“And do you have any idea what that threat was?” Lukas asked, with as much clinical detachment as if he were asking when a patient had first noticed his boils beginning to ooze.
“Not really.” She shrugged, and suddenly she looked a lot less steady on her feet than before. “For all I know, it’s completely useless. But you said Trey had something over you. I thought ... I mean, I hoped that maybe this will give you some leverage back.”
“I see.” Jonas saw Lukas’s nostrils flare—a sure sign his father was savoring the chance to ream her out with the kind of gleeful precision he usually reserved for his son—and bit back a grin despite himself. Actually, when you weren’t on the receiving end of it, it was kind of fun to watch Lukas Croswell in action.
But just as he had with Jonas, the old man seemed to change his mind and stop himself. Instead of tearing her a new one, he pocketed the phone and said with careful courtesy, “Thank you, Marie. I appreciate your thoughtfulness.”
And as Jonas tried to get his head around the possibility that his father really had been abducted by aliens and replaced with a simulacrum that was more capable of human behavior than Lukas Croswell had ever been, Marie shook her head. “I’m not being thoughtful. You’re ... decent. You did the decent thing by me. I just wanted to return the favor,” she said. She started to leave, then turned back and added with peculiar dignity, “And before you start to wonder, I’m stone sober.”
“I never had any doubt,” Lukas said.
Her mouth twisted into a smile at the obvious lie. “I owe you,” she said. “My father taught me a Grinnell always pays his debts.”
“And here I thought that was a Lannister.”
Jonas stared at his father incredulously as Marie’s footsteps clattered down the hall and the front door closed behind her. He knew his dad didn’t spend Sunday evenings watching TV, and he’d never seen a stack of Game of Thrones books hanging around. So did Lukas have a serious midnight HBO binge-watching habit? Someday, Jonas would like to know a lot more about that—especially whether he had any theories about who would end up on the Iron Throne. But right now, he had another, slightly more pressing, question.
“So, are we going to look at the phone?” he asked.
“Of course not,” the old man said. His eyes didn’t move from the doorway where Marie had vanished, as if he were studying a symptom he had never encountered before.
“Why not?”
With a sigh, Lukas turned back to his son. “I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining how stupid Marie’s suggestion really was. But her heart was in the right place.”
Her heart? Would the old man even recognize one of them, if it wasn’t dried up and locked in a reliquary?
“Then maybe you ought to respect her efforts by doing something about it.”
Lukas made a strangled noise, but Jonas didn’t care. The time was now. The die was cast. Or as the old man would insist on correcting him, alea iacta est. “Seriously, sir. I know it’s my fault that that asshole is pushing you around, but now you’ve got a chance to stop it. So why not at least look and see what you’ve got?”
For a moment Lukas stared at his son in shock, as if Jonas had suddenly begun to speak a foreign language. After a moment of absolulte stillness, he spoke. “Maybe, because I already know what’s on that phone. I already know exactly what kind of threat Michael is holding over Grinnell’s head.”
Oh come on. Did he really think he could brush Jonas off like that? “You gonna tell me what that is or am I just supposed to take it on faith?”
Lukas leaned forward. “If I hadn’t intended to, I would never have brought it up,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, the military got involved in Michael Grinnell’s case. They asked one of the doctors who examined him to determine whether a miraculously-cured teenager had any sort of potential as a super-soldier or even a weapon. I trust you can see why they might be reluctant for that to get out. It could prove as big an embarrassment as Psy Ops or the CIA experimenting with LSD.”
What the fuck? Did the old man have a stash of Dan Brown novels he sneak-read at night when he got tired of binge-watching Game of Thrones? “How can you know that?”
Lukas shook his head in puzzlement. “I thought that much would be self-evident,” he said. “Because I’m the one they asked.”
Jonas just stared at his father. Talk about speaking foreign languages. That answer wouldn’t have made any more sense if Lukas had lapsed into Greek or Aramaic or any of the languages in the dozen or so dictionaries that were lined up on the shelf above the old man’s desk.
“I thought you investigated saints. For the church.”
“There’s ... crossover.”
“Seriously, sir? You want me to believe the government’s interested in miracle cures?”
“Theoretically, I can think of nothing the government would be more interested in.”
“Theoretically?”
“Theoretically—hell, practically, for that matter—the government only ever cares about two things. What kills men. And what makes them tick. Death. And life. And if some autistic teenager who starts miraculously speaking in tongues might provide even the hint of an answer to either of those questions, the government wants to hear it.” Suddenly, the old man was off on a roll. “Hell, look at the places we’re fighting wars. Crypto-archaeology central. Do you know the secrets that are supposed to be buried there? The lost tribe of haumavarka. An angel’s wing. Reptilians beneath the Gates of Ishtar. Noah’s Ark—or maybe it’s the Ark of the Covenant. I can never keep them straight ...”
A question was beginning to formulate in the back of Jonas’s mind. A question he wanted to hear the answer to, but actually, honestly, wasn’t sure he did. Because the answer would explain everything. But it would also mean...
“So that’s it?” he asked. “That’s the reason for the lockdown? The secrecy? You were the one who examined Michael Grinnell? You’re the one who tried to figure out a way to turn him into a weapon. And now you’re afraid that if they find out what happened back there at the shelter, they’d want you to do the same with me?”
The old man flinched. “That’s a touch hyperbolic.”
“I don’t care. In fact, I don’t even really know what that means.” Once again, Jonas’s ears went red. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I guess that’s one more of the many apologies I seem to owe you,” Lukas said. He fell silent, like he was considering saying something more, then shook his head. “In any case, the whole thing was over and done with twenty years ago. It’s all water under the bridge now.”
“Oh, come on, sir. Even you can’t believe that.”
The old man favored him with a withering glare. “I beg your pardon?”
“Listen to yourself, sir. Listen to what you just said. Would they honestly get this upset over water under the bridge?”
“You don’t understand,” Lukas snapped. “The entire project was destroyed. The lab records and samples were quite literally burned. The only way someone could start the whole thing up again would be by capturing Michael Grinnell. And he isn’t showing himself to be particularly amenable in that regard.”
“Then why are you so afraid to look at those records?”
A long moment passed, while Lukas studied Jonas as if he was trying to figure out how this stranger had appeared in his house. Then he pulled out the phone.
A couple of swift taps, and the cell phone screen was blinking with records. He wheeled himself to his desk and put on his half glasses, and suddenly it was if none of this had happened, and they had gone back to their old life together, when the two of them had shared every evening in silence, each engrossed in his own private world. Then Lukas laid the phone on his desk, and ran his hands back through his hair, rumpling it unmercifully. Which was basically the equivalent of anyone else hurling the phone against the wall.
“The bastard,” Lukas said without emphasis.
“What bastard? With respect, sir.”
“Ezra Grinnell,” Lukas said, his gaze and voice equally distant. “He goddamned well lied to me. He told me he burned all of it. And I was stupid enough to simply take him at his word.”
“Why, sir?”
“At the time, it only seemed logical.” An odd look crossed the old man’s face. “There was a bit of a ... hiatus. When I returned to Grinnell, Michael was long since gone, but he did not exactly go gentle into that good night. His farewell tour reportedly included a fist fight in the board room, and a drunken interruption of a shareholders’ meeting. He may have even gone so far as to offer interviews to the tabloids. The military couldn’t afford that kind of publicity and had no choice but to insist Ezra shut the entire operation down and destroy all evidence as if it had never existed.”
Another long moment of silence, then Lukas shook his head. “Of course, Ezra never did it. I should have seen that right from the start.”
“Seen what, sir? Not sure I’m following, sir.”
“Ezra would never have destroyed my research,” Lukas sighed. “Especially after Michael left home. Because destroying my research would be tantamount to giving up on his son. And in his heart, Ezra never gave up the hope that Michael would come back to claim his legacy. How could I, of all people, have been fooled into thinking otherwise?”
“Because you needed to be?”
Lukas shot Jonas a don’t-go-there look. “Let’s not overindulge in sharing, shall we? I think karma has already made that point quite sufficiently.”
“Karma?” Jonas said. What came next? He was going to find out the yoga instructor had had her way with the old man after all, and now he meditated?
“I took Ezra’s word the project was shut down.” His eyes cut to Jonas. “Arguably yes, because I needed to. Needed to believe something like Michael would never happen again.” He shook his head. “But I can’t believe they’re thinking about resurrecting it. Do you have any idea what kind of scientific mind that would take?”
“One like yours, sir?”
The old man’s face set. “I investigated Michael Grinnell,” he said. “I did not create him.”
“If you say so, sir. In any case, that’s not what matters. What matters is what you’re going to do about it now.”
“About the most sensible thing I can think of doing would be for the two of us to sit down and polish off a bottle of scotch.”
“Sorry, sir?”
Lukas’s hand ran through his hair again leaving Jonas to wonder if the earth had tilted off its axis. “To rephrase things only slightly, what on earth do you think I can do?”
“Dunno. But I heard the guy, sir. Heard him call you Doogie Howser.
Heard him say that you were some kind of fucking genius once upon a time.”
“Reports of my genius, like so much else, have been greatly exaggerated.” Yeah, sure. “I don’t care. The point is, if anyone can stop them, it’s you.” There was a pause. And then Lukas shook his head. “Maybe once upon a time. Now, I’m just ... old. And science is a young man’s game.”
“Seriously, sir?” Jonas said. “Seriously? Maybe you can believe that kind of crap when you’re tanked up with scotch, but when you’re sober, seriously?”
Lukas shot him a sharp, startled glance. And then the ghost of something strange—could it have been an unwilling smile?—flickered across his father’s face.
“Actually, being sober makes it all the more glaringly obvious. But you’re right. I will do what I can. I’ll clean out the medicine cabinet at the Outreach Center, and ask Father Gregory to have a quiet word with Trey Carey.”
“The hell with a quiet word.” Jonas grabbed the old man’s arm, which was about as fucking awkward as a group hug, but he didn’t care. “Come on, Dad. We’ve gotta stop this.”
Lukas froze. “No,” he said very calmly. “I’ve got to stop this. You are going to go up to your room and forget you ever saw that phone.”
Jonas crossed his arms. “Why? You don’t think I’ve earned the right—”
“This has nothing to do with rights. This has everything to do with the fact that you’re still sixteen and still my son. And you will do as I say.”
Well, so much for the honeymoon. Looked like the lame bonding was right out the window, and his evil bastard of a father was back in town.
“Yessir. Of course, sir. And welcome back, sir. Nice to see that deep down you’re still the same old asshole.” Jonas snarled. “Christ, are you really that afraid of me being right for a change?”
“I’m not afraid of you!” Lukas exploded. “I’m afraid of them! And of what they can do to you. Do you really want them to cut the brakes on your car to keep you quiet? Or maybe they’ll bollix the job as bad as they did with me, and leave you a cr...”
Lukas stopped mid-sentence, but it was too late. Jonas stared at the wheelchair as pain and anger knotted his stomach. A secret military project? Followed by—what had the old man called it?—a hiatus? Those bastards. Those lousy, mean bastards. Was that what had happened to the old man? To his old man? To his father?
“They did this to you?” he breathed. “Because of Michael Grinnell?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lukas said. “It was a long time ago.”
Really? Jonas didn’t think so. Instead, what he thought was that, for once in his life, the great Lukas Croswell was wrong. It might have been a long time ago, but it sure as hell did matter.
“We’ll pay them back, Dad,” Jonas said softly. “With interest. We’ll take them down. We’ll pay them back for what they did to you, I swear it.”
His father turned on him, his green eyes distant. “No one is paying anyone back,” he enunciated. “Especially me. Doctors don’t engage in payback. Doctors heal. It’s in the job description. To the point where I would heal that pernicious half-wit who attacked you if the situation arose. Before I made sure he was locked up in jail for good. So I will do what I can to clean this cancer out of the Outreach Center. And you will go to bed or play video games or whatever it is you prefer to do upstairs—I won’t insult you by adding the caveat as long as it is legal. And that is not open to discussion. Do I make myself clear?”