CRISPR - Chapter 3: Human Trials

"You're looking me up, aren't you?"

Lyle froze, fingers hovering over the keyboard.

"Uh, what? Why would you say that?"

"It's what I would do with someone I don't know. A full background check if possible."

Lyle sat in the front seat of the little Chevrolet Cruze they had rented for their cross-country excursion. It turned into an exhausting and hot drive with Kate determined to make the trip in one straight shot with no breaks. Which meant a whole lot of driving and not a lot of sleeping. Twenty-five hours straight, so far, in separate shifts, and for some reason, Lyle had taken the brunt of night driving.

Finally, they had crossed into Texas about an hour ago, and the change had hit like a wall. The flat Louisiana marshland gave way to a different kind of flat—dry, open, and baking under a winter sun that had no business being this warm. Even in December, the temperature read seventy-eight on the dashboard display. Heat shimmered off the blacktop ahead of them, and the Cruze's air conditioning labored against it, rattling in the vents with a whine that suggested it wasn't up to the task. The landscape spread out in every direction: brown grass, oil pump jacks nodding like mechanical birds in the distance, and the occasional cluster of live oaks draped in Spanish moss that marked where some creek or bayou cut through the scrubland. They'd passed a roadside stand selling kolaches and breakfast tacos a few miles back, the hand-painted sign advertising both Czech and Mexican food in the same breath—the kind of cultural collision that only happened in Southeast Texas. Now they closed in on their destination. Kate drove this shift, Lyle rode in the passenger seat, and Malcolm lay in the back. He barely registered the gunshot wounds anymore, and Lyle wondered just how many times this man had gotten shot in his life.

"Actually, I've finished the background check on three international servers and am waiting for a full facial scan on two more. I don't trust readily-available information, so I'm running it through deeper layers—the kind of databases that don't show up on a standard query."

"Honest, huh? That's refreshing."

Lyle shrugged. "What can I say? I'm an honest guy."

"Find anything interesting?"

"Six aliases and a sordid history, but all of the identities I found are fakes."

"My real name is Malcolm."

"Malcolm Caldwell," Lyle said, nodding. "Six years in the military before going private, but even that identity is forged. At least partially."

"How can you tell?"

"I cross-referenced your known contacts against event timestamps. About half of them are mocked-up—the metadata doesn't sync. The fakes, though not easy to spot, don't hold up under intense scrutiny."

"Ah. So, you figured out the family is false?"

"Yeah," Lyle said. "But I haven't managed to find your real one yet."

"Would it be impolite of me to ask you to stop searching?"

Lyle gave another shrug. "No, but I can't promise I won't. Nothing nefarious, just curiosity, like a puzzle. I'd like to figure out which pieces of this puzzle are real and which ones are just clever fakes."

"You could ask me instead."

"I didn't say I wanted the answer. I enjoy the challenge, but I don't care as much about the result. How much did it cost to create these forgeries?"

"Enough," Malcolm said, sitting up in the seat. "Too much, maybe." He groaned, clutching his side, and then leaned forward.

"You all right?" Lyle asked.

"Operational." Malcolm's jaw tightened, and he repositioned himself with the careful economy of someone used to functioning through pain. "To answer your question: I don't have much family. Just my parents, and I had them cut out of my life to keep them safe. The military deployments and contract work both exist, as do certain criminal actions you'll find in a deeper search. The social life is bogus, but the person is real."

"Why would you create a fake identity using your actual name and real details from your life?"

"A good lie feels more real when the truth gets sprinkled throughout. How deep did you have to dig before you realized the identity was a fake?"

"Point taken."

"Plus, I like my name. Easier to remember, and most people don't even care."

"Sure. The one thing I haven't found is any reference to your current or past crews. How do you know Kate?"

"We're old friends."

"Friends?"

"I'm sitting right here," Kate told them.

Lyle kept his focus on Malcolm. "Friends?"

"Just friends," Malcolm said. "If that's what you mean."

"I'm trying to figure out why I've never heard of you before."

"Not relevant." Kate's eyes stayed on the road. "I haven't spoken with Malcolm in years."

"But you were willing to risk everything to come rescue him when he got in trouble?"

"He's saved my life many times before," Kate said. "Returning the favor. Move on."

"That's not what this is, though." Lyle kept his voice even. "You went dark for two weeks. No check-in, no signal. You don't do that for favors, Kate. You do that when something scares you."

The car went quiet. Kate's hands adjusted on the steering wheel—not the subtle grip shift of irritation but something tighter, whiter across the knuckles. In the rearview mirror, Lyle caught Malcolm glancing between them with something like surprise.

"What did you find out about our actual job?" Kate said, quieter this time. "You know, what I actually asked you to look into."

Lyle shrugged. "Oh. That? I did that yesterday."

"Did you, now? And, what, you forgot to tell me?"

"You were sleeping. I guess I did forget."

"You could have woken me."

"Wake you up? Not a chance—I don't want to die."

She groaned. "Fine. What did you find?"

"Not a lot. Wallace Blake, oil mogul worth about fifty-million dollars in off-shore accounts and investments. Keeps to himself, donates a lot to charity, and likes to go to ritzy parties."

"Enemies?"

"None that I can find."

"Family?"

"One kid, nine-years-old. At boarding school. And has minimal contact with his father. Wife passed away during childbirth. Both of Blake's parents died of natural causes before he reached twenty-five, and no brothers or sisters. A couple of cousins but with almost no ties. In general, he keeps to himself."

"There has to be something. Dig deeper. Why would he want to hire us?"

"I dug," Lyle said. "His digital footprint is too clean—like someone scrubbed it. Not even a sealed juvenile record. That in itself is a red flag. Nobody's this spotless without help."

"We'll get that chance any minute. Ten minutes out."

"You said he wanted us to steal something for him?"

"More or less. Slight risk."

"And he'll pay us two-hundred-thousand dollars for a one-day job? My threat assessment is pinging on that. Seems a bit ridiculous."

"Would you like to help him negotiate the price downward?" Kate asked. "Maybe we can get him to agree to twenty thousand?"

"Funny," Lyle said. "Something just seems off about this."

"It's an easy win," Kate said. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

"That saying refers specifically to the fact that you should look a gift horse in the mouth. It comes from the idea that you should look at a horse's teeth to determine its age because a gifted horse might be a much older horse than you think."

"You can tell a horse's age from its teeth?" Malcolm asked.

"I can't," Lyle said, "but that isn't the point. The point is that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is. The saying contradicts the point you're attempting to make."

"So, what you're saying is we should only take jobs that seem impossible?"

"At least then we would understand what we were in for. This just bugs me. I don't even know what the job is."

"What if it is as simple as Peter said? We pick up a package, drop it off to the guy, and then collect our money."

"Can't be that easy."

"Do you mean to be so negative?"

"I want to be realistic. No one is this clean, and it's the squeaky-clean people who usually have the darkest secrets."

"Confirmed," Malcolm said. "It's never the ones you expect."

"See? Even the bullet sponge agrees with me."

"Look, we've almost reached his place. Let's meet the guy, talk to him, and if you still think he's hiding something, we can take a pass on the job."

"Really?"

"Hell no," Kate said, laughing. "Of course we're taking it. I just want you to shut up."

2

"Wow, I guess that's what fifteen million gets you," Lyle said, whistling as they pulled up at the Blake family estate. The place sprawled before them—enormous, comprised of the main house, two guest houses, and an employee cottage in the back. Four fountains decorated the front lawn, a twelve-foot-tall gate fronted it, and countless security cameras surrounded it all.

The architecture screamed Texas oil money—limestone and stucco, terra-cotta roof tiles, arched colonnades that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Spanish hacienda. The kind of ostentatious wealth that Houston's petrochemical elite built along their private roads, monuments to fortunes pulled from the ground. Even the landscaping had that distinctly Texan ambition: manicured St. Augustine grass fighting the heat, beds of lantana and Mexican sage blazing purple and orange, and a row of towering magnolias lining the drive that must have cost a fortune to transplant at that size.

As they drove up to the main entrance, they passed by dozens of workers tending the grass. Mowing, trimming, and mulching: it looked like a never-ending job. The air shimmered above the blacktop driveway, and Lyle could hear the sprinkler systems hissing somewhere beyond the hedgerows, fighting the same losing battle against the Texas sun that everything else out here waged. Lyle absorbed it all with a bit of envy. One day, this might have become his life before everything went to hell. He'd been on course to make a fortune and retire at thirty-five.

That was before he made it on the FBI's most wanted list.

"I bet he has a huge pool," Kate said.

"Three of them, actually." Lyle glanced at the satellite image of the property again. "One of them is indoors."

She muttered something he couldn't make out, pulling the car to a stop in front of the large double-door entrance of the manor. A valet hurried over and opened the driver's door for her. Another man, this one dressed like a butler, who had a bald head and trimmed goatee, opened Lyle's door, and he climbed out. The heat hit him like stepping into an oven—heavy, damp, thick with the smell of freshly cut grass and the faint petroleum tang that hung over everything in this part of Texas. Somewhere nearby, a mockingbird ran through its repertoire from the top of a crepe myrtle, cycling through stolen songs with the manic energy of a bird that never ran out of material.

"Welcome," the man said. "Mr. Blake awaits you inside."

"He's expecting us?" Lyle asked.

"Of course."

"Then I guess we shouldn't keep him waiting."

The butler moved to the backseat and opened the door, but Malcolm didn't climb out right away. Instead, he assessed the property with a slow sweep of his eyes—the sightlines, the camera positions, the distance to the gate. "I'll hold position here," he said.

The valet frowned at him. "Mr. Blake would prefer to have you come inside—"

"I'll stay in the car." Malcolm's tone carried no aggression, but it left no room for negotiation either. "And the car will stay right here."

The man gulped and nodded. "Of course. I'll be right over there if you need me."

Lyle and Kate followed the butler up the steps toward the front door. By the time they reached the top, Lyle stood panting.

"That out of shape?"

"Screw you."

"Are you about done giving me crap about Malcolm?" Kate asked.

"Almost," Lyle said. "I just wish you had told me something about all of this beforehand."

"If I'd had time, I would have," she said. "I hadn't planned to keep him a secret."

"But, you did."

"Boy, it would be nice if you trusted me occasionally."

"I trust you," Lyle said. "I just don't trust him yet. When did you become so sentimental, anyway? I thought you didn't like people?"

"I like you, don't I?"

"That's different."

"Is it?"

"Yep," he said. "Totally different."

The butler opened the door and held it. They walked past into the manor. Enormous, the foyer sprawled around—three stories high with a balcony and split staircase climbing to the second floor. Everything ran in muted browns—uninviting. The central air conditioning hummed powerfully, dropping the temperature thirty degrees from the furnace outside, and the sudden chill raised gooseflesh on Lyle's arms.

Lyle hated it. His version of this mansion would have much more vibrancy. "Nice place," Lyle said, regardless. "Spacious. The gas bill must be astronomical."

The butler ignored him, turning and gesturing down the hallway to the right. Lyle and Kate moved deeper into the building and found themselves in a living room with multiple couches and chairs. It also sported the biggest fireplace Lyle had ever seen; a tall man could stand up straight inside it, and his head still wouldn't reach the top.

It held no fire just now, and the room itself carried a persistent draft. Above the mantel, a framed photograph caught Lyle's eye—a man kneeling beside a small boy on a rocky lakeshore, both of them grinning at the camera. The man held up a tiny fish on a hook while the boy threw his arms wide, miming something enormous. The warmth in that image struck an odd note against the cold, impersonal grandeur of the room. Beside it, a child's crayon drawing had been mounted in an expensive frame—a stick-figure man and a smaller stick-figure boy standing under a yellow sun. "Dad and me" was scrawled across the top in wobbly handwriting.

A lone man sat in one of the chairs, holding a notepad and jotting notes into it, oblivious to their arrival. He wore a bathrobe and had a gray beard.

This version of Wallace Blake did not look like the pictures Lyle had found. The beard was new, as were many gray hairs. It appeared as though he had become a recluse sometime in the last couple of years. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes, and the bathrobe—fine silk, monogrammed—was rumpled and stained at the cuffs, as though he'd been wearing it for days. On the side table beside his chair, a half-empty bottle of bourbon sat next to a child's toy soldier, the kind a boy might leave behind when heading off to boarding school.

What, Lyle wondered, had triggered that?

Finally, Wallace spotted them and stood quickly, setting his notepad down and striding across the room eagerly to greet them.

"Ah," he said. "Thank you so much for coming. It's good to see you again."

"Again?" Lyle asked.

"Of course," Kate said, ignoring Lyle and shaking the man's hand.

"How was your flight?"

"We drove," she said. "Scenic."

"Excellent. Please, have a seat."

Lyle picked the comfiest-looking chair in the room, which still ended up too hard and cold for his butt. He'd never understood why people insisted on filling their residences with aesthetically pleasing and entirely uncomfortable furniture.

He hadn't sat down for more than a second before a servant appeared at his arm with a tray. It held biscuits, cookies, tea, and coffee.

"Oh, thank you. I'm starving."

Lyle took a handful of cookies and a cup of tea. Without a table nearby, he laid them out on his lap with a napkin.

Kate and Wallace each waved away the offered tray.

"I asked you here today so that—"

Lyle took a bite of his cookie, and the crunching sound echoed throughout the spacious room. He stopped, mouth filled with crumbs and stickiness, and the other two turned to face him. Kate looked extremely annoyed.

"Sorry," he said with his mouth full, chewing slowly. Even then, each time he bit down, the sound carried. Kate narrowed her eyes, watching him chew. Finally, he swallowed the mushed food and took a sip of his tea.

"Are you quite finished?"

"One more bite?"

"No more bites."

He sighed, wrapping the cookies in the napkin and sliding them into his pocket for later. Sarcastically, he muttered under his breath, "No more bites."

"I heard that," Kate said, turning back to face Wallace. "Please, continue."

Wallace glanced between the two of them, frowning. "Yes … um … where was I? Ah, yes, the reason I asked for your help today was that I have a job for you. There is a package I would you like you to … err … steal for me."

"What does it contain? Are we talking something like an Amazon box?" Lyle asked. "I told Kate already that I would love to steal one of those."

Wallace didn't crack a smile. "It isn't any of your concern. It is a strictly need-to-know item. I have the route through which it will be transported in five hours' time. All I need for you to do is pick it up and bring it to me."

"But you won't tell us what it is?" Lyle asked

"You will find out as soon as you collect it."

"Then tell us now," Kate said. "I don't walk into situations blind."

"No one must know until the item is secured. Even my servants and employees do not know. I'm sorry, but I will not budge on this issue. Hence why I've offered so much money."

Wallace's hand drifted to the armrest, and Lyle caught the briefest tremor in his fingers. The man's composure held, but something behind his eyes looked fractured—the kind of controlled desperation Lyle had only seen in people who'd already made peace with losing everything. Wallace's gaze flicked toward the photograph above the fireplace, toward the grinning boy with outstretched arms, and then pulled away just as quickly, as though looking too long might break something inside him.

"Is it drugs? It's drugs, isn't it?" Lyle asked.

Kate flashed Lyle a quick look, and he fell silent, holding up his hands in submission.

"Payment," Kate said.

"Two hundred thousand, all on delivery."

"Half up front."

Wallace shook his head. "I negotiated the terms with Peter, just like the last job. Upon successful and safe delivery of the package to me, I will pay the full amount. He assured me that my asking price included this term."

"Fine. We bring it here?"

"Yes. Bring the package to me immediately after acquiring it, and I will have the money ready. All cash, non-sequential. You can get paid and go on your way by tonight."

Kate hesitated for only a second before nodding. "Done. Give us the details."

"Wait a second," Lyle said. "You need to tell us what this package is."

"Lyle." Kate scowled.

"No, I'm serious. I need to know. The fact that he doesn't want to tell us means he thinks we might turn the job down if we found out. Or that he doesn't trust us, and I'm not sure which is worse. So, what is this mysterious package? Is it a biological weapon? Are we stealing something from the military to help you become a domestic terrorist?"

Wallace studied Lyle. "I assure you, it is nothing of the sort."

"Is it something I can carry, or do we need a truck to get it? Here, I'll guess: does the name of this item start with a 'D'?"

"I apologize for my associate here," Kate said, staring pointedly at Lyle. "He's never been good at keeping his mouth shut."

"I don't think we should take the job."

"It is nothing dangerous," Wallace said. "You have my word."

"Then why won't you tell us?"

"Lyle," Kate said, softly. "Outside."

He began to open his mouth to speak up again, but the withering look she shot him shut him right up. He threw his hands in the air. "Fine."

He stood and headed for the exit. Along the way, he spotted the tray of leftover cookies. He shoved all the remaining biscuits into his pocket in protest, making sure to do it loudly, and then headed back out the main entrance of the manor.

The car still sat out front, and Malcolm had laid out in the backseat, fast asleep. Pointedly, the valet ignored Lyle, facing away and reading a magazine off to the side of the steps. The heat pressed down again the moment Lyle stepped outside, thick and soupy, carrying the faint sulfur bite of refinery exhaust from somewhere down the coast. Cicadas droned from the magnolia trees in waves—the sound rising and falling like breathing, a white noise so constant it became part of the air itself. By the time he reached the car, sweat had already started to bead along his hairline.

Lyle climbed into the passenger seat, shutting the door quietly so that he wouldn't wake the other man. Then he sat in the car, fuming and annoyed.

He didn't have as much experience in this life as Kate, sure, but that didn't make him any less of a partner in this venture. Lyle had lost practically every aspect of his old life when Kate had first shown up, and even though it wasn't her fault, and she had saved him, a twinge of anger still pricked him whenever everything that had been taken from him surfaced.

He could have started over, changing his identity and moving out of the country, but he hadn't. Instead, he had stayed with Kate, becoming her partner in crime and putting his computer skills to use. Two years of sharing hotel rooms and getaway cars. Two years of knowing exactly how she took her coffee—black, no sugar, except she'd stir in a packet when she thought nobody was looking. Of cataloging the micro-expressions that meant she was lying, amused, or about to do something reckless. Of watching her fall asleep in the passenger seat with one hand still resting on her weapon, jaw tight even in dreams.

He'd stayed because the alternative—some quiet apartment with a forged identity and no one to argue with—sounded worse than running. And because somewhere along the way, he'd stopped being able to imagine a version of his life that didn't have Kate in it.

He'd never named the feeling out loud. Didn't need to. It lived in his chest like a low-grade bruise, constant enough that he'd stopped noticing most days. Kate trusted him with her life but not with her secrets, and he'd accepted that imbalance as the cost of being close to her.

Except now, watching her shut him out over Malcolm, watching her kiss him goodbye and then lock him out of every conversation that mattered, Lyle wondered if the cost had been higher than he'd calculated.

"I can hear your brain gears grinding up there," Malcolm said.

Lyle jerked in his seat, letting out a shocked gasp.

Malcolm chuckled then said, "Sorry, didn't mean to scare you."

"Yeah, you did."

"Maybe a little. What's on your mind?"

"Nothing."

"Sure there is."

"Nothing that concerns you, then."

"Want to talk about it?"

"What part of 'nothing that concerns you' did you not understand?"

"You're pissed about something, and clearly, you want to talk about it."

"No, I'm not, and I don't. And, again, it is none of your business."

"No, it isn't." Malcolm nodded. "But if you want something to distract you, how about you help me out with something."

"Like what?"

"Figure out who did this to me. Who burned me and killed my team. The op was solid, but someone had advance intel on our movements."

"What were you stealing, anyway?"

"Destroying not stealing. Some cargo, pharmaceuticals, but that's as far as I knew. Standard contract work. I didn't think it was a big deal, and I definitely didn't expect a secondary force on site."

"You lost your team?"

Malcolm didn't respond for a while. Then he said, "Affirmative. Both KIA. I wasn't sure at first, but I sent out a couple of messages last night through channels only they would recognize. Nothing came back."

"Maybe they haven't seen it yet."

"Negative. If they were alive, they would have responded. Those channels are monitored continuously."

"Sorry to hear it."

"Me too. That just means I need to figure out who did this so I can get justice for my team."

"You mean vengeance?"

"One and the same right now."

Lyle sighed. "Fine. I already ran a parallel search while I was looking into your background, but I haven't had any hits yet. There's only so much I can do, though, without more data points to work with."

"What do you need to know?"

"Who hired you? What was the job? Who might have it in for you? We don't know that the hit was even related to the job you were on, or if it was because of something else."

"You mean like an enemy from my past?"

"It's possible, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Did you get a good look at the people who shot you?"

"One of them I can positively ID, but the rest of the engagement is fragmented. Pieces missing."

"Retrograde amnesia. It'll come back to you slowly. Who is the one person you know for definite was involved?"

"Jeff Tripp," Malcolm said. "But I'm pretty sure he's dead."

"What? You killed him?"

"No. I'm also not sure who did. I just get this … feeling. I'm sure he's dead, I'm just not sure how I know."

Lyle tapped on his laptop, drawing up reports around the incident and parsing through information. After a minute, he turned back to face Malcolm.

"Nothing useful in police reports. I scraped all incident and hospital records for gunshot wounds within a hundred miles of the shooting, cross-matched against timeline and caliber data. Nothing stuck out. A couple of bodies, but no way to verify them right now."

"So, we have no leads?"

"Nothing confirmed," Lyle said. "But having a name to work from helps. I'll map out Tripp's known associates and run pattern analysis on his communications. I've got a few dozen automated queries running already, so hopefully, something will surface."

"Thanks."

Lyle shrugged. "Don't mention it."

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Lyle tapped on the computer and searched for further information about Wallace Blake and his business interests. He wanted to know what the man was doing and figure out what he was after. What might someone as rich as him want to steal?

Lyle must have missed something because the job nagged at him. It sounded too easy, which meant there was an important detail they didn't have.

Something else bugged Lyle, though; why had he said it was nice to see them again? Had Kate worked for him in the past? While driving down here, she'd acted as if she didn't know Wallace, but clearly, they had some history there.

Recent or distant, though? How many more secrets had Kate kept from him? What could this package hold that had such value?

"Why would you help me?" Malcolm asked.

"What?" Distracted, Lyle jerked.

"You said you've searched things about the hit already. Even before I asked, you'd looked into it. You don't know me, so why help?"

"Your team got murdered, and you were burned, so I figured—"

"You don't even know me," Malcolm said. "I get why Kate's helping me. We're old friends. But not you. You don't even seem to like me that much."

"Kate and I are a team," Lyle said. "She might not trust me, but I trust her, and if she says you're worth helping, then I'll help."

"Last I checked, Kate wasn't big on teams. That's why we stopped working together. She couldn't trust anyone, and I got tired of the lies."

Lyle's teeth ground together. What Malcolm had said struck a little too close to home.

"Either way, I trust her," Lyle said. "She isn't one to take in strays, either, so you must be important to her."

"Maybe once," Malcolm said.

The front door of the mansion opened, and Kate walked down the steps. She climbed into the driver's seat and handed Lyle a USB drive.

"Location and timing," she said. "Let's move."

Lyle plugged it into his computer and synced up the map. It looked about an hour's drive from their current location, somewhere in the middle of back country roads. He skimmed through the rest of the information.

"A moving truck," he said. "Are we sure this object isn't huge? Are we stealing the truck?"

"No. They'll track something that big. The item isn't large, and Wallace assured me that we will find it easy to transport."

"We trust his assurances?"

"We trust his money."

"Do we?"

"Yes," Kate said. "We haven't had a high-paying job in six months, and something this easy only comes around occasionally. Peter vouched for Wallace, and even if I don't trust the client, I trust Peter."

"It still doesn't feel right," Lyle said.

"Your call," Kate said. "I can handle it solo."

"No. I'll help. I won't leave you out there on your own."

Kate turned to Malcolm, "What about you? Want in?"

"Negative." Malcolm shook his head. "Last thing you need is my face showing up on someone's radar right now. Plus, my side is killing me, and I could use some rack time."

"Copy. Let's find a hotel for you and then get this done. Once we drop off the package, we'll turn all of our attention to your situation."

"Appreciated."

"Don't mention it."