Aaron stepped into the room behind Parkman, followed by his three employees.
“Hey, how did you guys get here?” Sarah asked, on the edge of passing out. At any second she was about to be pricked by the needle and succumb to its poison. She recognized the baseball cap Alex wore. “You guys followed me.”
“We couldn’t let you walk into trouble,” Aaron said. “I’m sorry.”
Sarah’s eyes watered. “You gotta stop apologizing.” She met Parkman’s eyes and smiled. “And you brought Parkman?”
Aaron nodded.
“This isn’t the time,” Simon yelled. “Step back, all of you. Get out, or Sarah dies.”
“Okay,” Parkman said, aiming his weapon at the ceiling. “Take it easy. All we want to do is talk.”
“Then drop your weapon.”
Parkman looked at Sarah. She nodded subtly with her eyes. Parkman slowly lowered his weapon to his side.
“What now?” he asked. “What do you want?”
“I want you to leave. Sarah and I were just finishing our conversation.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
Aaron’s friends fanned out along the wall but Simon didn’t appear to notice. She was pretty sure she would still walk away from this, even though a lethal needle was pressed against her neck. Vivian would’ve set it up right. Wouldn’t she?
“You’ve got five seconds to get out, or I plunge this needle in her neck and no amount of bullets will stop my thumb from depressing this plunger.”
Parkman raised both hands. “Okay, okay, take it easy.” He stepped back. “We’ll move into the hallway. Let’s talk about this. Maybe there’s something you want.”
Parkman continued to back up, as did Aaron. His three friends remained near the far wall. Sarah was completely drenched in sweat. Simon didn’t hold her with any kind of force, just the needle tip touching her skin. She didn’t want to move in case he panicked and jabbed her. She remained absolutely still as the sweat poured into her eyes. Her stomach remained unbelievably calm for what she faced. Maybe it was the buildup to violence that got people on edge. In that moment, she saw the room, felt it, became a part of it.
Just as Parkman backed into the hallway, there was a commotion on the stairs behind him. He looked over and raised his hands in that direction.
“Hold on, Waller. I got this.”
From behind the wall, Waller’s deep voice said, “Step aside, Parkman, I’m coming through.”
Then Waller showed his face and pulled his weapon.
“I see you’ve got your gun back,” Sarah said.
“Game over,” Waller said. “Drop the needle and step away from Sarah. There’s nowhere for you to go. No escape.”
Simon jammed the needle into Sarah’s neck and depressed the plunger without warning.
Sarah fell to the side and hit the floor. A gun fired. Someone screamed. Glass broke. Commotion all around. The lights flashed. Her hands went numb. Parkman shouted ‘no’ over and over.
Then darkness.
Chapter 30
Parkman went into shock at the sight of the needle stuck in Sarah’s flesh.
“No, no, no …” he shouted over and over.
Waller’s gun had fired once, but the shot went wild, hitting the mirrors behind Sarah and her attacker. Parkman had recognized the man who had held Sarah from the security footage at the mall. The ugly one who suffered from ectodermal dysplasia.
He ran to Sarah, her face now peaceful. Waller walked up behind him, his gun still out.
“Look what you’ve done,” Parkman said. Waller tried to respond, but Parkman shouted over Waller’s voice. “Look what you’ve
fucking
done!”
Waller stood more than a foot over Parkman and probably weighed double, but he stepped back when he saw the look on Parkman’s face.
“Everyone out,” Parkman shouted. “This is a crime scene now.”
Tears poured down Aaron’s face. Or maybe it was sweat.
Waller hadn’t put his gun away. He kept it trained on Ugly who lay behind Sarah’s body. Parkman followed Waller’s gaze.
Ugly lay on his back, his body convulsing.
“What’s wrong with him?” Parkman asked.
Waller shrugged.
Waller’s probably afraid to speak
, thought Parkman.
Ugly shook more violently, as if having an epileptic seizure. His eyes rolled back in his head and then he was still.
“Did he prick himself with that needle?”
Waller shrugged again. He lowered his weapon as Ugly didn’t appear to be a threat anymore.
“Don’t move him until the medics get here,” Parkman said. “Call the coroner.” He slapped Waller’s arm. “This is your jurisdiction. Clean your fucking mess up.”
Parkman dropped to his knees and leaned over Sarah.
“I’m so, so sorry. I failed you. It’s not right that you’re the victim here. It’s not right.”
Parkman fell to the floor and wept, tears and sweat streaming down his face.
Sarah Roberts was dead and he would never forgive himself.
Chapter 31
The press conference came to a close. Waller walked off the little stage and away from the podium. He made his way to the back room where his guests waited with refreshments.
He was happy the way things had turned out. The police funerals had come and gone, successful in every way. He hadn’t been an embarrassment to his colleagues as the Allandale Centre massacre was solved before the first batch of officers from around the globe arrived for the funerals.
It had been a full week since the incident in the yoga studio and with the funerals done and the paperwork all filed, the media had just been brought up to speed on what they needed to know.
He opened the door and stepped into the cavernous room that held the people waiting to hear more of the story.
“Good afternoon, everyone. Let me get a drink for my parched throat and I’ll tell you the rest.”
Heads nodded. No one said a word. They were all eager to hear the details Waller had held close for the past few days.
After pouring a large cup of coffee, Waller moved to the head of the table where he remained standing, sipped his coffee and then set the cup down.
“As you all know, Parkman received a call from a medical specialist a couple hours after the incident at the yoga studio.” Waller paused and nodded at Parkman. “The man who had changed his name to Simon Peter was in fact suffering from something called ectodermal dysplasia, as Parkman had suspected. According to our sources, it affects over seven thousand people worldwide. Parkman, do you want to do the honors on this part?”
Parkman pushed away from the table and stood. He adjusted his jacket and scanned the faces in the room. “Usually there are abnormalities of two or more ectodermal structures such as teeth, digits, cranial-facial structure, hair, skin and sweat glands. In Simon Peter’s case, he had most of those abnormalities. The important one was the lack of sweat glands due to an inactive protein. This means he could not perspire. If he can’t sweat, the body can’t regulate its own temperature properly. Overheating becomes an issue that can lead to brain damage and even death, which is what happened in this case. Some of you who were present in the yoga studio a week ago might remember seeing Simon with the red-tipped ears and reddening face, even pinkish in color, more so than the rest of us. When Simon started having a seizure after injecting Sarah, he was in the final stages of heat stroke. We didn’t know that at the time and he was left to suffer in the one-hundred degree temperature for another hour or more until he was removed on a stretcher, already dead.”
Parkman sat down and gestured with his hand for Waller to continue.
Waller tapped the notebook on the table. “You’re probably all aware by now that this was Brother Philip’s notebook. Inside, we found his journal with notes on everything Simon was getting his group of Rapturites to do for him. James doubted their methods and approached Philip with his concerns, thinking that Simon would get rid of him if he was more vocal. So Philip wrote everything down in case they ever got arrested, which Philip did.”
Waller took a sip of his coffee. Others around the table did the same.
“After the Allandale Centre attack, Philip had huge reservations about what they were doing, even though Simon could predict the future by supposedly talking to his dead brother, Matthew, but no one knew where Simon hid the batch of needles that were filled with pavulon, or pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant. It is so potent at one hundred milligrams that it completely relaxes all the muscles in the body in less than ten seconds, even the heart muscle, causing death. Simon found a way to add a little potassium chloride to the mix. What he had was basically a lethal injection found in any Texas death row prison. They use this stuff to execute prisoners.”
He drank more coffee and then continued. “According to Philip, once Simon showed him the storage unit in the basement of their apartment building, Philip had a way to stop him. When they were worried we would come and arrest them after what happened to Thomas, they ran. Philip was ordered to grab the needles from the storage unit. He did, but he had filled them with saline solution the previous evening, replacing the lethal chemicals.” Waller nodded at his esteemed guest who sat beside Aaron and his three instructors from the dojo. “That’s what saved your life, Sarah.”
Sarah Roberts brushed a strand of hair out of her face and leaned forward. “My hands went numb after the injection. I think Vivian shut me down to control the scene better. But you and I still have a problem to solve, Waller.”
He nodded. “You’re right, we do. The Americans fed us a bunch of shit about you being the target.” He looked down at the notebook. “This documented proof of their plan to kill you, oh, excuse me,
Rapture
you, absolved you of any wrongdoing. In the end, you were the victim here. The Americans were after you, the bad guys were after you and I was too. I’m sorry, Sarah Roberts, for my part in that.”
“I’m getting used to it. Only Parkman has ever known that I’m the innocent one.” She winked at him. He tapped her hand.
“What I still don’t get,” Waller said, “was how you knew to lead Simon to the hot yoga studio. That was brilliant. Then you stalled him long enough with your lies of the
sins
you’ve committed. By doing that, you were killing him. How did you know?”
“I didn’t know. Vivian told me to not shoot them. She also told me to lead them to the yoga studio. I trust her. I don’t always need to know everything. I leave that up to my sister.”
“Your dead sister?” Waller asked.
“Yup.”
“I have a hard time believing that, since there’s nothing out there beyond this life,” Waller said, waving an arm in the air.
“You don’t have to believe it. It’s only important that I do.”
He stared at her a moment longer, the room silent. “I guess you’re right.”
She smiled for a second, then her mouth dropped back into a flat line. Waller looked away.
“That about sums it up,” he said. “We have Philip and Thomas in custody. They’re both charged with multiple counts of first degree murder. A lot of planning went into snatching Rod Howley, killing Hank’s wife, killing Drake Bellamy and then Sarah’s friends south of the border. I’m sorry for that, too, Sarah. It sounds like it’s been a long, tough few weeks for you.”
“Yeah, I just want to go home.”
“That’s been arranged. We have a car waiting for you and Parkman to take you to the airport. You fly out in a few hours.”
Sarah stood and walked out of the room, Aaron on her heels. Waller stayed behind to talk to his superiors as Parkman still wanted to know where Waller had planned on taking Sarah that night he picked her up at the hotel on Yonge Street. Waller was prepared to tell the truth.
But first he pulled his badge out and placed it on the table beside his gun.
“I’m resigning.”
Waller went to his office to empty his desk. He left his coffee on the conference room table.
He knew Parkman would be happy, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t remain on the force after what he had planned to do to Sarah.
The innocent Sarah Roberts.
Once he had his desk cleaned out, he would direct investigators to the secluded farmhouse with the basement where he planned on taking Sarah that night. The basement with the cage and chains where he would victimize her for a few weeks for what she had done to his platoon. His men would have been proud. Officers protect their own.
Now that he learned the truth, it would have been the wrong thing to do.
He was an embarrassment.
Waller walked to his desk, head down, Parkman on his heels.
Chapter 32
Sarah Roberts fired up her BMW F800R, put on her helmet and backpack, straddled the bike and set off.
With her parents’ blessing, it was time for Sarah to hit the road, see her country the way it was meant to be seen. She had traveled to Europe, spent over a month in the Toronto area, but had never toured America. It was the first time in a long time that no one hunted her. She had no outstanding arrest warrants and the Sophia Project had died with Hank’s and Rod’s deaths.