Shadowfires

secret of Wildcard was theirs alone. They were
unaware of the federal agents and stoolies among them. And they did
not realize how quickly government computers had ascertained their
intentions merely by surveying the research they farmed out to other
companies and extrapolating the purpose of it all.
    These civilian types just could not understand that when you
bargained with Uncle Sam and eagerly took his money, you couldn't sell only a small piece of your soul. You had to sell it all.
    Anson Sharp usually enjoyed bringing that bit of nasty news to
people like Eric Leben. They thought they were such big fish, but
they forgot that even big fish are eaten by bigger fish, and there
was no bigger fish in the sea than the whale called Washington. Sharp
loved to watch that realization sink in. He relished seeing the self-
important hotshots break into a sweat and quiver. They usually tried
to bribe him or reason with him, and sometimes they begged, but of
course he could not let them off the hook. Even if he could have let
them off, he would not have done it, because he liked nothing more
than seeing them squirm before him.
    Dr. Eric Leben and his six cronies had been permitted to proceed
unhampered with their revolutionary research into longevity. But if
they had solved all the problems and achieved a useful breakthrough,
the government would have moved in on them and would have absorbed
the project by one means or another, through the swift declaration of
a national defense emergency.
    Now Eric Leben had screwed up everything. He administered the
faulty treatment to himself and then accidentally put it to the test
by walking in front of a damn garbage truck. No one could have
anticipated such a turn of events because the guy had seemed too
smart to risk his own genetic integrity.
    Looking at the broken china and the trampled food that littered
the floor, Gosser wrinkled his choirboy face and said, “The guy's a real berserker.”
    “Looks like the work of an animal,” Peake said, frowning.
    Sharp led them out of the kitchen, through the rest of the house,
finally to the master bedroom and bath, where more destruction had
been wrought and where there was also some blood, including a bloody
palmprint on the wall. It was probably Leben's print: proof that the dead man, in some strange fashion, lived.
    No cadaver could be found in the house, neither Sarah
Kiel's nor anybody else's, and Sharp was disappointed. The nude and
crucified woman in Placentia had been unexpected and kinky, a welcome
change from the corpses he usually saw. Victims of guns, knives,
plastique, and the garroting wire were old news to Sharp; he had seen
them in such plenitude over the years that he no longer got a kick
out of them. But he had sure gotten a kick out of that bimbo nailed
to the wall, and he was curious to see what Leben's deranged and rotting mind might come up with next.
    Sharp checked the hidden safe in the floor of the bedroom closet
and found that it had been emptied.
    Leaving Gosser behind to house-sit in case Leben returned, Sharp
took Peake along on a search of the garage, expecting to find Sarah
Kiel's body, which they did not. Then he sent Peake into the backyard with a flashlight to examine the lawn and flower beds for signs of a freshly dug grave, though it seemed unlikely that Leben, in his current condition, would have the desire or the foresight to bury his victims and cover his tracks.
    “If you
don't find anything,” Sharp told Peake, “then start checking the hospitals. In spite of the blood, maybe the Kiel girl wasn't
killed. Maybe she managed to run away from him and get medical
attention.”
    “If I find her at some hospital?”
    “I'll need to know at once,” Sharp said, for he would have to prevent Sarah Kiel from talking about Eric Leben's
return. He would try to use reason, intimidation, and outright
threats to ensure her silence. If that didn't work, she would be quietly removed.
    Rachael Leben and Ben Shadway also had to be found soon and
silenced.
    As Peake set out on his assigned tasks-and while Gosser waited
alertly inside the house-Sharp climbed into the unmarked sedan at the
curb and had the driver return him to the bank parking lot off Palm
Canyon Drive, where the helicopter was still waiting for him.
    Airborne again, heading for the Geneplan labs in Riverside, Anson
Sharp stared out at the night landscape as it rushed past below the
chopper, his eyes narrowed as