Free Mortal Fear by Greg Iles Page A

up the plates. Which reminds me. Tomorrow you face yours.
    I feel a sudden chill. What are you talking about?
    Take it easy, she says, giving me an odd look. I meant the biweekly burden. Sunday dinner with your in-laws.
    She turns away and moves through the screen door, but my chill does not dissipate. Over her shoulder she says, Lately youve acted like its a trip to the dentist or something.
    If only it were.
    I rise from the porch and head for my office. Combined with the stress of the past weeks, the trip to New Orleans has exhausted me. After months of anxiety, I have finally done what I should have done long ago. For months Ive stayed up far too many hours and slept too few, lurking in Level Three in the hope of recognizing the error-freetransmissions of David Strobekker. But tonight I will sleep.
    As I strip off my clothes, Drewes last comment echoes in my mind. Lately youve acted like its a trip to the dentist or something. In reality the trip to her parents house is a trip into a minefield. A place where one wrong word or too open glance could cause instant devastation. Drewe does not know this. Like the most dangerous mines, these were laid long ago by people who scarcely knew what they were doing. No maps exist, and disarming them is impossible. Once I thought it might be, but now I know the truth. When we seek to resurrect the past it eludes us; when we seek to elude the past, it reaches out with fingers that can destroy all we know and love.
    Tonight I leave David Strobekker to the FBI.
    I have my own demon.

CHAPTER 7
    Dear Father,

    We landed near Virginia Beach at dusk, riding the scent of ocean to the earth.
    We misdirected taxis to bring us within range of the patients house, then walked.
    No EROS dalliances with this one. Shes a Navy girl, young and simple and tough. I was lucky to have Kali with me.
    We entered while she showered, and what a specimen she was. Firm pink skin shining in the spray. For a moment I wished we were there for the old protocol.
    But
    After her scream died, I tried a little humor. Hello, Jenny, were from DonorNet. Ill bet you didnt think we made house calls.
    She tried to fight us in the bedroom, making for a dresser (in which I later found a pistol). Kali brought her down with a knife slash to the thigh. Lots of blood, but essentially a superficial wound. It will have no effect on her role in the procedure.
    Kali helped her dress, then forced her to give us her car keys. Jenny didnt whine or beg, like some. She was trying to think of a way out.
    I drove her car to the airstrip, Kali guarding her in the backseat. At the plane Id planned to inject a mild sedative, but despite my reassurances the patient would not submit. I was forced to shoot her with a Ketamine dart. I also had to leave her car at the runway. Eventually it will be found. But there isno record of our landing. No note. No trace of our passing. Another question mark for the police.
    Kali has the controls now. My dark Shakti shepherds me through the stars. We hurtle into history at two hundred miles per hour. The patient lies bound behind us, silent as death, as blissfully unaware of the contribution she will make as the monkey that gave Salk his poliomyelitis vaccine.
    Ive been thinking that I should present an edited version of these letters as an addendum to my official findings, or perhaps they belong with my curriculum vitae. Shocking to the unprepared mind, I suppose, but highly edifying for the medical historian.
    But enough of that.
    Things are where they are, and, as fate has willed,
    So shall they be fulfilled.

CHAPTER 8
    Its that damned nigger contractor, says Bob Anderson.
    Robert, not in front of Holly, scolds Margaret, his wife.
    Bob Anderson is my father-in-law. He points across his Mexican tile patio toward a small girl child splashing in the shallow end of the swimming pool.
    She cant hear me, Marg. And no matter how you cut it, it all comes back to that nigger contractor .
    Patrick Graham, my