Unlimited (12 page)

Simon scrambled backward, crablike, until a space opened between two houses. He wedged himself inside and crouched as the SUV rocked back and forth, turning around in the tight lane. The dark vehicle had a massive motor that roared as the hunter finally managed the turn and raced away.

When the motor's noise faded, Simon rose from the shadow. Across the street, Pedro did the same. Simon walked over, expecting rage, fear, anything but how Pedro greeted him.

Pedro smiled. His grin was infectious. “Do you do this often? Scare people half to death?”

Only then did Simon realize his legs were weak and shaking. He gripped the side wall. “I thought you'd be furious.”

“
Amigo
, I am too scared to be angry. But give me a few minutes. Maybe I will recover.”

Simon had to fight down a case of the giggles. He was afraid if he started laughing, he wouldn't be able to stop. “Let's go check it out.”

The giddy feeling did not last. The professor's front door was solid wood, very thick, with iron bars crosshatched over a small portal at head height. The door was locked. Simon used the key on the chain around his neck and unlocked the door. He was instantly confronted by all he had lost.

The first thing that met him was the smell of cherry-flavored pipe tobacco. Vasquez did not often light up. The occasional pipe was his way of marking a truly good day. And by the strength of this cold odor, Vasquez had known many good moments recently.

Pedro asked, “How do you have a key to this house around your neck?”

“Vasquez made every lock work to just one key. Lab, filing cabinets, clean room, home. The works.”

“But how is it . . . ?”

“Later, okay?” Simon moved deeper into the house. There was no way he was going to be drawn into that discussion.

The place was an utter wreck. Vasquez had never been neat and tidy. On the best days, his office resembled a tsunami zone. Which was hardly surprising. Many great scientists were abysmal housekeepers. What made Vasquez unique was how precise and methodical he was when it came to records. Which was why Simon was here. Vasquez would have been keeping records to the last possible moment, to his dying breath.

If Simon was going to make any headway, he needed to find out not just the professor's final entry, but the last established pattern.

Vasquez's latest research had undoubtedly taken a different turn. Simon had no idea what that was. In order to continue, he first had to determine which course of action to follow. Hundreds of possible variances existed. Thousands. Simon kept tossing up different potential avenues of research, unexplored directions that could have potentially resulted in success. But he had no idea which one Vasquez had identified. That was why he came. To find out.

Pedro walked through the foyer and whistled softly. “Who did this?”

“Your friend and mine, most likely. The guy in the leather jacket.”

“But why? The professor did not have an enemy in the world.”

“Apparently Vasquez had at least one.” Simon continued down the narrow hall that led into a living-dining area. The L-shaped room had an array of windows fronting a back porch. All the windows framed spectacular views of the mountains.

The room had not merely been searched. It had been completely torn apart. Holes were banged in all four walls at odd intervals. The sofa and padded chair had been ripped open. The carpet had been peeled off the concrete floor. The wallpaper fell in ragged strips. The ceiling was gouged like the walls. Every light was shattered.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Pedro said but did not retreat. Instead he turned to the right off the front foyer rather than following Simon into the living room. Pedro's feet scrunched over glass. “Simon.”

“What.”

“Come take a look.”

Through a side door, Simon spotted what looked like Vasquez's office. “In a minute.”

“Simon. Now.”

Reluctantly he retraced his steps down the central hall and entered the kitchen. “Whoa.”

The cabinets and fridge and stove and tiled floor were all porcelain white. Every cupboard was smashed beyond repair. The fridge door hung on one hinge. Again, every light was shattered.

The door leading from the kitchen to the rear veranda had an upper portion of glass. The smoked glass was impact resistant, two panes with thin wire crisscrossed through the central seam. The glass on the floor came from the ceiling lights and a second window, narrow and long and set above the stove.

The second window was framed by iron bars. No doubt the hunter had tried this one first, then realized he could not pry back the bars so he turned his attention to the door. What made the scene almost ludicrous was how the door was now shut. No doubt the hunter still had some childhood habit of closing the door behind him. Under different circumstances, Simon would have laughed out loud.

Pedro looked aghast at a red stain that swept like an evil rainbow over the wall and the stove and the sink and the fridge. “They said Vasquez had a heart attack.”

“Who told you that?”

“The police, soon after it happened. I work for the mayor. I asked, they told me. His heart.” He tracked the stain's broad arc. “Why would they lie?”

Simon backed out of the room. “You're asking the wrong question.”

“What do you mean?”

He did not answer. That discussion needed to wait. Simon retraced his steps back through the living room and entered the study. Here the professor's imprint was most visible and the damage most total.

The professor had taken out the rear wall and extended the home. His office had once been the garage. The concrete floor remained, but the roof had been perforated by two sparkling new skylights. The office area contained a desk and shelves and a faded Oriental carpet that Simon remembered from Cambridge. The new extension held a pair of lab tables, an industrial generator, high-speed ventilators, compressors, and strip lighting connected to adjustable chains. The lighting was shattered and the shelves beneath the lab tables smashed open.

Simon's attention was held by the one item in the entire house that remained intact. The professor's laptop sat in the middle of the desk. It stood out like a jewel on a ruined stage. Every side of the desk had been hammered open, no doubt searching for hidden compartments. But there on the top was the laptop. Undamaged. Waiting.

Simon opened the laptop. It hummed out of sleep mode and the screen lit up. The first thing that popped up was the last e-mail. The one that had invited him to Mexico. The e-mail was dated three days ago. Telling Simon to hurry. Repeating the confirmation of the city council's funding but warning that their patience was wearing thin, and they needed to hear from the American scientist who was working with Vasquez.

Someone who spoke precise enough English to mimic the professor's way of writing had lured him to Mexico. Simon slapped the laptop shut. He would go through the files later. He scouted around, trying to see beyond the mess.

As Simon surveyed the demolished chamber, Pedro stepped toward the left-hand wall. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were torn out. Holes had been punched in the wall behind. The floor was littered with books and manuals and sheaves of printed data and the sort of debris that every successful scientist gathered over a lifetime. Pedro gingerly picked up a broken picture frame and shook away the glass before extracting a photograph.

Simon stepped to where he could look over Pedro's shoulder. “I know that woman!”

Pedro said nothing.

“She's the woman who ran the city council meeting. She lied to my face!”

“That sounds like her.” Pedro's voice had gone flat. Toneless.

“Who is she?”

“Her name is Dr. Clara. She is the dark face of Mexico. The public figure who will do anything, say anything, for those who remain hidden. Enrique fights against her a great deal.” Pedro shook his head slightly, little more than a twitch. “Professor Vasquez saw something in her. He claimed she was the most misunderstood woman in all of Ojinaga. In this, the professor was very wrong.”

“You think she was behind the attack on the highway?” When Pedro did not respond, Simon added, “She was behind the professor's death?”

Pedro sighed. “We may never know. But yes. I think it is possible.”

“What was Vasquez doing with someone like that?”

“The professor knew Dr. Clara since childhood. We heard they had been seeing each other. Sofia tried to warn him, but it was too late. Vasquez was growing very close to Dr. Clara. I heard a rumor they were engaged.”

Simon shot him a look. There had never been a woman in Vasquez's life. Simon had asked him about it once, and the professor stared sadly into the distance and spoke about a woman he had left behind when he came to America. Simon had never mentioned it again. The thought that Dr. Clara, who had cheated them both and possibly caused the professor's death, was who he had spent years pining over left Simon queasy. “Is that a joke?”

“No joke.” Pedro folded the photograph lengthwise and stowed it in his pocket. “Can we go?”

“Not yet.” Simon started to turn away when he spotted a second photograph. He slid it out from underneath a pair of textbooks, brushed away the glass, and lifted it free of the frame. The picture was of the professor and him, taken on a snowy morning in front of the main physics lab. The professor had his arm around Simon's shoulders. They both were laughing. “I remember when that was taken.”

“He would like you to have it. Come. We should go.”

“In a minute.”

“Every instant we stay here is a risk. To everyone.”

Simon nodded but did not speak. He had not found what he came for. It had to be here. It
had
to.

Then he saw the globe.

“What is it?”

“The professor kept this in his office.” Vasquez had found it in a Boston flea market. The hand-painted surface was battered and deeply dented. But Simon knew the antique globe held a very special secret.

For the second time that afternoon, Simon slipped the key from around his neck.

The lock was hidden under Antarctica. The continent had to be pressed in a special manner or else the spring didn't give. The professor had reworked the lock so it opened to the same key. The professor had been obsessed by this notion. Vasquez was always losing everything. Especially keys. He had made a joke of it as he handed Simon the key. The only other person in the world who had a duplicate. It was as great a gift as Simon had ever received.

Which was why Simon's vision was none too clear as he unlocked the globe.

The secret compartment was not large and held only two items. One was his personal Bible. The other was a set of lab papers containing long lists of numbers. At the top of the first page, two lines were scrawled in Vasquez's almost illegible script.

Don't let me down.

I wish you every success.

Simon knew exactly what he held. He whispered, “Bingo.”

Which was the moment when everything changed.

The front gate squeaked.

A shadow crossed the narrow window facing the street. The glass was milky white, intended to let in light but not permit passers-by to see into the professor's office and lab.

As the shadow swept by, Simon recognized the man's profile. The bulky jacket, the round head, the scraggly contour of a closely trimmed beard. Pedro stared at Simon, helpless in his fear.

Simon's response could not have been more different. He felt the familiar wash of adrenaline, the heightened awareness, the sudden ability to pierce the moment and see things most people remained blind to. He knew the hunter had not tried the front door, which could only mean one thing. The hunter often came here and assumed the front door was still locked. Which was why the upper glass in the kitchen door had been broken out. This was where the hunter was headed now. Back along a path that had become familiar. The hunter did not yet know they were inside.

There was only one logical course of action. Simon ran for the kitchen.

As he raced across the lab's concrete floor, he scooped up a black cable. The hunter had probably used it to shift the generator, moving it far enough to ensure nothing had been hidden underneath. And had torn it out in the process. The cord was supple and covered in woven cloth.

Simon reached the kitchen before the hunter. He quietly slipped the door's dead bolt into place. The hunter's footsteps moved down the side of the house. The man whistled softly, a pair of notes, up and down. Simon doubted the man was even aware of the sound he made.

Simon fashioned a noose from the cable. He had always been good with knots. It had been his one merit badge as a Boy Scout, before he had been kicked out for fighting. He then tied the cable's other end around the copper gas pipe where it ran out of the wall. And waited.

The hunter tried the door, found it locked, and grunted softly. He reached inside and fumbled blindly.