“That makes two of us.” She got into the driver’s seat. “Get in, Lynch. We’ve got to get going.”
“Why the hurry?”
“Get in.” The car roared as she turned on the ignition. “I have to know…”
Coachella Valley, California
KENDRA PUT ON THE BRAKES, and the car skidded to a stop. She stared out into the darkness, her hands clenched on the steering wheel.
Fear.
Death.
It was here again, taking her breath, assaulting her.
“May I ask where we are?” Lynch asked. “What is this place?”
“Hell,” Kendra said unsteadily. “It’s hell.”
“Hell?” Lynch gazed thoughtfully at the cliffs and the rutted landscape. “Everyone has their own hell. I should have guessed this would be yours.” He gazed down into the deep gully a few yards away. “That’s the place where they discovered all those bodies. The place where you captured Colby.”
“Yes.” She couldn’t take her gaze from the gully. “The bodies have been gone a long time. Why do I still smell the stench?” She had to move. She couldn’t just sit here. She grabbed her computer and got out of the car. She knelt in the sand and flipped it open. She stayed there, staring blindly at the screen.
Do it.
Her shaking hands flew over the keys. She pulled up the site and scrolled down.
Find the name.
Find the name.
Find the name.
Halfway down the page she found the name.
She couldn’t breathe. She felt sick.
“Okay. Tell me. Let me do something besides worry, dammit.” Lynch was a shadow standing over her.
She nodded jerkily. “I was looking for a name. The name that was in Chatsworth’s notebook. I … found it.”
“Where?”
“San Quentin personnel.” She was dialing her phone. “But I have to be—it doesn’t have to be true. I have to call Warden Salazar.”
Salazar answered in three rings. He sounded drowsy. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you this soon, Dr. Michaels. And certainly not at this hour of the night. Is there something I can do to help you?”
“Yes. I need information about someone on your staff. Edward Pralgo. Does he have a wife or daughter named Maria?”
“Yes, Maria Pralgo is his wife.” Salazar answered, puzzled. “Do you need to talk to her? I can give you Pralgo’s phone number, but he may be difficult to reach. He and Maria left on vacation this morning. Hawaii, I think. He said he needed it.” He added grimly. “I can’t blame him. We all need a spot of paradise after the ugliness we’ve gone through.”
“Give me the number.” She quickly took it down. “Thanks.”
“Do you need their address?”
“No, I have the address.” She hung up. The next moment, she was dialing the number she’d been given.
No answer.
No voice mail.
“The phone’s been turned off,” she told Lynch as she hung up. “And I’d bet that so have Pralgo and his wife, Maria.”
“Pralgo?”
“Dr. Edward Pralgo, the physician who was in attendance at Colby’s execution. It wasn’t coincidence that name was in Chatsworth’s notebook. He had a duty to perform.”
“Colby ordered him to kill the physician who was scheduled to perform his execution? Some kind of weird revenge?”
Kendra didn’t answer. She was once more delving into information on her laptop. She had to be sure she wasn’t mistaken.
Tetrodotoxin.
There it was, in as much detail as was available.
She carefully scanned the info, then slowly closed the computer. “No revenge. Not on Pralgo. He was just a means to an end.”
“What end?”
Her head lifted, and she gazed down at the gully. “Colby is still alive, Lynch.”
He was silent, his body stiffening with shock.
“No way,” he finally said. “It couldn’t happen. There are too many checks and balances. Even Salazar examined his dead body.”
“He’s alive. Chatsworth whispered two words to me before he died. One was Mereor. The other was tetrodotoxin.”
“Mereor means I win. The other?”
“The explanation of why he thought he and Colby had won. Tetrodotoxin is a substance sometimes called the Romeo drug because in the death scene Romeo used a drug that faked his death. It’s also known as the poison in pufferfish and has been used by voodoo shamans to induce zombification. It lowers your pulse and body temperature while also creating an artificial coma. Unless screened for, it can easily be mistaken for death. But it has to be properly administered, or it can cause the paralysis of the diaphragm and can actually cause death.” She swallowed hard. “Colby had no intention of dying in that execution chamber. He set Myatt to seeing that he had an out.”