Stigma by Philip Hawley Jr

Author:Philip Hawley, Jr. [Jr., Philip Hawley,]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2011-03-20T19:08:17+00:00

The only precaution he’d taken was to bar any communications. Earlier, the woman had asked to call Zenavax’s S T I G M A

361

U.S. headquarters, to tell her company about the melee at the lab, but Luke had not allowed her to make the call.

There were still too many unknown risks—his enemy had already demonstrated that they could tap a phone line—

and he didn’t want to risk giving his adversaries any more information than they already had.

His only concession to the woman had been delaying their departure from the lab for the few minutes it took to release her monkeys from their cages.

“Our guards, Miguel and Eduardo, you did not kill them, did you?” she said. It sounded more like a statement than a question.

“Does it matter?”

“To me, it does.”

“I shot one of them in the shoulder.”

“That would not have killed him.”

“I was aiming for his chest.”

The edge of the dirt road floated in and out of Luke’s view. One of the truck’s headlights was broken and the other lolled to the side like an eye hanging from its socket. His only view was through a gaping hole in the shattered windshield. Insects streamed in through the opening and ricocheted off his face.

“My name is Rosalinda,” she said.

“Luke.” He offered his hand.

She took it. “Luke, I know the executives who run our company. They are aggressive business people, and sometimes unpleasant, but they are not killers.”

It had already occurred to him that Zenavax might be a pawn in this drama. The men guarding the forest facility had displayed total surprise, and the killers had shown no regard for anyone at the laboratory—gunning down two of Rosalinda’s workers in cold blood. If the company was trying to conceal something, why bring 362

Philip Hawley, Jr.

attention to itself by staging an attack on its own site?

But if Zenavax wasn’t at the center of this maelstrom, the chegan foundation seemed even more implausible.

A healthcare organization doing relief work in remote Indian villages was hardly the profile of a violent cabal.

“What are you going to do when we get to Río Dulce?”

she asked.

He’d been mulling that question for the past hour and still hadn’t come up with anything resembling a plan.

“Follow the only lead I have.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket on which Rosalinda had written the Río Dulce address for chegan.

“I have no idea what is there. It is simply the address I had in my records.”

“I need to see what’s there.” He glanced over at her.

“And I’ll need your help, at least to drive by and scout the place. You blend in better than me.”

Frankie stuck his head through the porthole between the cab and the truck bed. “Boss, where we going?”

“Stop calling me ‘boss.’ ” Luke reached into the foot well on Rosalinda’s side of the cab, grabbed his pack, and fished out Sammy’s phone.

He had missed that evening’s call from Sammy, but they were passing over the crest of a mountain and Luke thought he’d try for a satellite connection while he could.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.