chapter fifty-eight

It was seven as I raced into the Genesys parking lot. The gate was up. The guard was gone. Not a good omen.

The lot was nearly empty. A few cars clustered just inside the security gate, a few more near the entrance to the building. No sign of Nieto, but I tensed at the sight of a black Bentley X20 parked in the spot reserved for the CEO: Maclaren’s car. Next to it stood Jo’s green solar Prius. And perched up on the roof of the building—a chopper car.

Shin called as I roared to a stop and parked across the handicapped spot by the door.

“No sign of Nieto here,” Shin said, circling the Burbank Airport. “You?”

“No. But the Genesys CEO is inside with Jo.” I told Shin what had happened. How Nieto had Maclaren in a vise and was using Jo to lure me here. “I’m going in.”

“Wait for backup,” Shin said. “Units are on route.” He turned the nose of the detective sedan around and headed towards Sun Valley and Genesys.

“No time,” I said, checking my Laser-Glock before re-holstering. “They’ve got Jo. There’s a helipad on the roof. With a chopper car.”

“Eddie, listen to me,” Shin said. “Sandy Rose didn’t die in that airport explosion.”

“What?”

“The body in that Mercedes wasn’t hers. It was another girl from her club.”

Another innocent life added to Nieto’s body count. I flipped the Glock’s laser option to hot. “Sandy contact you?”

Shin shook his head as he barreled down the road, lights and siren blaring. “She’s in the wind. Don’t expect we’ll hear from her anytime soon. Forensics made the call. Over and out.”

As I leapt out of my Porsche, a middle-aged man in a white coat was scurrying out of the building. When he saw me, he dropped his backpack. I stooped to retrieve it. His biometric identification card told me his name was Dr. Lozano.

“Where is everyone, Doctor?” I handed him his backpack.

“The boss sent everybody home early.” Lozano nodded thanks and hurried to his car. He didn’t notice his biometric I.D. had slipped into my hand.

His I.D. gained me entry to Genesys. Skipping the elevator, I raced up the three flights of stairs to Maclaren’s office. No sign of Nieto. Or anyone else.

The door to Maclaren’s office was wide open. But Maclaren wasn’t in it. I looked past the coffee table with the katana and short sword mounted atop it near the door, to the leather couch nearby and the desk at the other end of the room. Holographic computer files floated in the air over the desk. Blood spots. And there, seated in a ghost chair and staring blankly up at the files, sat Jo. No Nieto. No Maclaren.

“Where is he?” I said, stepping into the room. “Maclaren.”

Jo whirled around like she’d been struck. “Eddie. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I came for you.” I crossed the office and knelt beside her. “Has he hurt you?”

She looked away, pained.

I took her pale face in both my hands and forced Jo to look at me. For the first time, she flinched at my touch. Standing, I took a step back. “Jo, we need to go now.”

“Not yet.” Jo gestured for me to take a seat in the matching ghost chair next to hers. “I suppose you had to know sometime.”

As I sat, her eyes returned to the floating files above us.

“Jo, what’s going on?”

“You remember when I told you I’d had a miscarriage in my teens? That there were complications?”

There wasn’t time for this, but I nodded and played along. “You thought it’d made you infertile. But you’re fine. You’re pregnant.”

Jo winced. I took her hand and started to pull her out of the chair. She tore her hand free.

“There were complications, Eddie. I lied about the miscarriage. Oh, I’d had one, but that was later, in my thirties. You know I’m older than you.”

I nodded. “Let me take you home. We can talk later.”

Jo shook her head. “You know I left home and came out west when I was sixteen.” She fingered the tiny white scars on her forearm. Ghosts from her past.

I nodded, confused, but I let her talk.

“Had to,” she continued. “My father, he was like yours. Violent. And worse. When I left, he was furious. Cut me off, so I needed to earn money. My brother put me up, but college was expensive. Coke offered to help.”

“Coke?”

“Maclaren. He was a med-student and something of a science geek back then. He’d made money donating sperm. Coke told me about this clinic that would pay handsomely for donations. Egg donations.”

My hands started to go numb.

“I put myself through college that way,” Jo said. “They made embryos from my eggs and cloned them. They told me they’d use the embryos for research only. But one of their fertility doctors working at the clinic had a problem with alcohol. Dr. Singh implanted some of the research embryos in infertile women by mistake. The babies were born healthy, so the clinic let it slide. But another research scientist kept track of them. One of the implanted embryos cloned for research turned out to be very special.” Jo turned to look at me. Her eyes were brimming with tears. She gestured to the floating files, the blood spots.        

“The resistant source genome for Alz-X,” I said. My voice sounded very far away and my head was buzzing. Dr. Lee was the research scientist who kept track.

Jo nodded. “You know the rest. Dr. Lee acquired the clinic’s embryos and brought his research to Genesys. He developed the cure to Alz-X using the resistant genome. And then everything went to pieces.”

“When did you find all this out?”

“Today. When Coke called me. You see now why we can’t be together.” She hung her head and crossed her arms, rocking slightly back and forth.

That’s how Maclaren had pressured Jo. He’d told her we were tied by more than love. We were blood. That my birth mother wasn’t my genetic mother. That Jo . . .

“No.” I shook my head. “It’s a scam. They’re using you to get to me. Nieto has Maclaren in a vise. They lied to get me here. We have to go. Now.”

“None of this was my idea,” said a voice from the back of the room. Maclaren. “This was never supposed to happen.” He walked towards us. With a fluid movement, he ran a hand through that salt and pepper hair and leaned against the desk. He looked from Jo to me. “But mistakes were made. And here we are. I can’t sacrifice the research.” Maclaren closed his eyes. His lip curled slightly. “What good would that do anybody? Millions will live because of that research. The research is what turns it all around. The only thing left is to focus on the positive and move on.”

“Move on.” A short burst of bitter laughter erupted from Jo.

“I know right now this is traumatic,” Maclaren said, leaning towards Jo. “But I’ll see you both get a fair percentage of the profits. It’s the only thing to do. Let me take care of things.”

“You’ve taken care of enough already,” I growled. “Where’s Nieto?”

Maclaren’s shoulders dropped in a shrug. “I don’t know. Why don’t we have a drink and talk this through like adults?” In slow motion, he pulled a bottle of whiskey and three squat glasses out of the desk.

“We’ll talk down at the station,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“There’s no need for that, detective. Let’s work this out.”

I stared at him. “You’re like a lot of players, Maclaren. Spinning all these plates in the air. You keep spinning even when all the plates have crashed. I’ll ask you again. Where’s Nieto?”

“I have no idea.”

With one sharp backhand, I swept the whisky glasses off the desk. They tore through the holographic blood spots and smashed into the wall.

“We all need to stay calm,” Maclaren said, drawing out the syllables of each word. “Nobody needs to get hurt. His pale blue eyes were glued to my hands.

My gun was still holstered, but my hand was on it.

“Tell that to Frank, or Britney Devonshire and Dr. Lee.”

Maclaren blinked. “Eddie, you have to believe me. I never wanted anyone to get hurt. Especially not you or Jossie.” Maclaren blinked.

Jossie—I’d never heard anyone but Craig call Jo that.

“Shut up,” I said. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

From the corner of my eye I saw Jo staring at me with a look of mingled terror and pain. I was afraid of what I might do if I met her gaze head on.

“I’m going to be sick,” Jo said. She ran towards the door.

Maclaren opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. The shrill sound of his glove phone cut the air.

Maclaren made a sudden move, reaching across his body. I saw the glint of steel leave his desk. My gun left its holster. Glock in hand, I broke his nose and hammered his gun hand down hard on the desk. Maclaren cried out.   

The .9mm clanged as it skidded across the office floor. I kicked it away.

In the second it took for me to whirl back around, Nieto was standing in the doorway, a .45 pointed not at me, but at Jo’s head.