“Go to hell,” Jessica replied.“I’m going with you.”
Faith raised an eyebrow.“To hell?”
“Sure.Why not?I hear the hot springs there are to die for.”
Faith burst into laughter.She pressed a hand to her face, and her lips trembled as her laughter threatened to turn to sobs.Jessica wrapped her arms around her and pulled her close, saying nothing.Turk pressed his body to her and looked up with his perfect eyes, strong and loyal and kind.Faith let the embrace happen, thanking God for good friends.
And praying that the hell she had dragged them into wouldn’t consume them.
***
“Jesus,” Faith whispered, “God damn.”
She, Michael, and Jessica were eating a very late dinner—or at this point a very early breakfast—and drinking unhealthy amounts of coffee in the hospital cafeteria.Rogers, Hammerton, and Turk was upstairs in David’s hospital room.He was asleep thanks to heavy sedation by the hospital, not quite a medically induced coma but close.His injuries weren’t life-threatening, but there was enough damage that the hospital wanted him asleep for at least the next twenty-four hours to give his body time to catch up.
Faith and Jessica were staring blankly ahead while Michael gave them time to process the story he’d just told.
“And you’re sure he’s dead?”Faith asked.
“Yeah.He wasn’t breathing when I carried David to the car.”
Faith lifted her coffee cup to her mouth as she considered the implications of this.She didn’t feel guilty for the man’s death.He was a CIA agent and a government employee who was no doubt only following orders, but his orders were to kill her husband to keep him from exposing an illegal CIA operation that tortured dogs to turn them into…
“This mind-control thing is real?”Jessica asked.
“Well, they sure seem to think it is,” Michael replied.“They seem to have latched onto some research by a guy named Martin Ramsey that suggests that dogs are telepathically sensitive and that the right combination of drugs and conditioning can unlock that ability.”
Faith and Jessica both stiffened at the mention of that name.Dr.Martin Ramsey was an animal behaviorist they had both suspected of murdering psychologists in Miami.He had not only believed in the possibility of telepathy with dogs but also believed that he could communicate with dogs himself.He claimed to have spoken telepathically with his own dog and with Turk.Faith had just written him off as a crackpot, but now…
Well, now he was still a crackpot.It was ludicrous that the CIA actually believed his bullshit.But then again, this was the organization that thought pumping people full of LSD would let them spy on Russia from the other side of the world and kill enemy agents with their minds.
“So, Ramsey’s working with them?”Faith asked.
“No,” Michael replied.“He was found dead in his home a few weeks ago.It was ruled a suicide.”He smiled thinly.“It wasruleda suicide.”
“So, they killed him,” Jessica said.
“I leave you to draw your own conclusions,” Michael replied, “but I conclude that yes, they did.”
Faith took a shuddering breath and bit her lip hard so she didn’t cry.The CIA had killed a man who wasn’t investigating them.Or maybe he was.Faith didn’t know.The point was that they were definitely willing to go that far.They had succeeded in killing Ramsey, and if Michael hadn’t shown up in the nick of time, they would have succeeded in killing David too.
“Shit,” she whispered, rubbing her forehead.“Shit.”
Jessica leaned back in her chair, shaking her head.“Jesus.The fucking CIA.Why?”
“Who knows why they do anything?There’s a reason they’re called spooks.They don’t think like normal people.I guarantee this dog project is only one of dozens of things they have going on that would make the rest of us scream in horror.”
“But why?”Faith asked.“Why telepathically control animals?What do we gain from that?”
Michael smiled again, but his eyes were hard.“I stopped asking myself why when I walked into a shed in Salinas and found the bodies of nineteen headless women hung on hooks so the meat could ‘season’.”
Faith remembered that case.It was when she was still in training.The killer was known as the Butcher of Monterey, and he’d led the FBI on a merry chase for several months before Michael found receipts from a convenience store in Salinas and suggested that the Butcher of Monterey might actually be from that town.
“Yeah, but… this is theCIA,” Jessica exclaimed.“They’re the good guys.”
“They pledge allegiance to the same flag,” Michael replied.“Doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good.”
Faith took a deep breath and straightened.“Philosophy aside, we have to decide what we’re going to do.Michael killed a CIA agent.It’s probably going to look to them like David killed him.There won’t be any more warnings.We’re officially at war with the most powerful intelligence agency on Earth.”She looked at Jessica.“This is your chance to back away.What comes next is going to be very dangerous and will probably result in the deaths of all of us involved.”
