A quick peek around the corner showed Sarita that even the men at the front door had gone in search of their meal. She'd always assumed that because the men inside waited to eat in the second shift, that the men outside would too, but it seemed not. Pondering that, she broke away from the house and hurried across the lawn, heading for the path through the trees to the labs.
Sarita expected to be stopped at any moment, but she made it all the way to the tree line outside the fence without encountering anyone. Pausing just inside the trees, she eyed the fenced-in buildings that made up Dr. Dressler's labs. From the air the half a dozen long low buildings had made her think of army barracks. Now, as her gaze slid over the towers on each corner of the high fence surrounding the buildings, she decided it looked more like a prison.
She looked at the men in the towers again, this time checking each one more carefully. Sarita couldn't be sure in the dying light, but it seemed to her that their attention was focused inside the fence rather than out. As if they were guarding against someone escaping rather than intruders. Thinking that could only be good for her, she straightened her shoulders and approached the gatehouse at the fence entrance.
Sarita prepared herself for a verbal battle as she crossed the short distance, expecting whoever was guarding the gate to refuse her entry. But she was determined that she would at least make them call Dr. Dressler out to the gate. She would get him to tell his men to take her to the mainland in either the helicopter or a boat so that she could see her grandmother. It was why she was here in Venezuela. And Sarita was pretty pissed about being made to cool her heels here on the island for three days when her grandmother was in a hospital on the mainland.
In the end, Sarita didn't have to argue with the man in the gatehouse. She walked up to the window, opened her mouth to explain herself, and then closed it without saying a word as she noticed that the blond man inside wasn't even looking her way. He was sitting with his back to the window and gate, earbuds in his ears as he watched a movie on the computer on the counter in front of him.
A porno, she saw as her gaze slid to the computer screen.
So much for security, Sarita thought dryly and glanced to the gate. There was a large gate, presumably for vehicles, and a smaller one for people to pass through. Sarita walked to the smaller gate. When she found it wasn't even locked and opened easily, she shook her head with disgust and slipped through, then pulled it gently closed. She headed for the nearest building at a quick clip and was more than halfway to it before a shout sounded. It was followed by another, and then another as others heard the call and noticed her.
Sarita ignored them and kept going, but she did move a little faster. She made it to the door, and a glance around as she slipped inside showed her that while one or two men were climbing down the ladders on the towers, the man in the gatehouse still had his head down as he watched his porn. Apparently, he hadn't yet noticed anything amiss. She suspected he'd be in a heap of trouble for it.
Pulling the door closed, Sarita turned to survey the room she'd entered. It was a lab, all white with upper and lower metal cupboards on two walls, a large industrial refrigerator as well as a large industrial freezer along another and a desk against the last wall. Two small, wheeled tables sat a little distance apart in the center of the room, and those caught and held her attention at once.
Having trouble accepting what she was seeing, Sarita moved slowly across the room to the first table and stared down at the top half of the corpse lying strapped on it. It was a man who was probably about twenty-five. His hair was short and blond, his face handsome but bloodless, and his upper body was in perfect shape . . . except for the fact that it ended just below his belly button where he appeared to have been cut in half.
Sarita stared at him blankly, noting that there were a couple dozen metal straps rising out of the table, crossing over his body, and then disappearing through slots in the table surface. There was one across his forehead, and then at his throat, his shoulders, under his armpits, and another every couple of inches down his torso after that for the length of the table. There were also half a dozen smaller metal straps holding his arms down from his armpits to his wrists.
Sarita turned her head to peer at the second small table where the lower half of his body lay. A small towel was draped over his groin, and there were even more straps running over his lower body, with a great gaping wound where his body had been separated. It looked as if he'd been sawn in half like a tree.
As she studied the open wound on the lower half of the body, and the one on the upper body, Sarita had to wonder why she wasn't freaking out.