Mastermind: A Theo Cray and Jessica Blackwood Thriller Read online

  “Some people are vindictive.” And strangely obsessed with me.

  “I guess so. I’m embarrassed they went along with this. I had to pull every string I could to come see you. Have you been able to talk to anyone else?”

  “They let me send basically a form letter to Jillian.”

  “I talked to her. I explained the situation as well as I could. She already knew about Heywood. That’s another thing. The asshole hired some elite publicity firm to promote him and his cure system. It’s insane. Thankfully some people are calling it bullshit. But a lot aren’t. Anyway, she sends her love.”

  Of course she does. But I know it’s a different kind of love now. When Jillian responded to my letter, she said that there would always be a room for me when I get back.

  She used to tell me her bed would always be waiting. Offering me a room is her way of telling me that she’ll be there for me as a friend, but not as a lover. In a way, it’s the most loving thing she could say. She’s releasing me from the guilt of holding her back emotionally. Jillian deserved so much better than me. They all did.

  “You okay, Theo?”

  “I’m fine. Everything is fine. I should go now.”

  “Go? Where? Oh crap, Theo, are you okay?”

  I wish the hood were back on so she couldn’t see me like this. “Everything is fine,” I say again, trying to convince myself.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  PALACE

  Sometimes I lie in bed at night and try to see the entire world. Instead of creating a memory palace, in which I could store and organize memories and experiences, I try to remember the world in its entirety, every place I’ve visited, every person I’ve ever known.

  I visit my mother and stepfather, who are so used to my infrequent visits that often our only communication is a Christmas card listing the places we’ve been.

  I watch Jillian in her bakery as kids in dusty baseball uniforms crowd the glass cabinets, pointing at cupcakes.

  I imagine Hailey at her company, eating lunch and tossing insults back and forth with Mylo.

  I travel back in time and sit in Amanda Paulson’s living room and watch a slideshow of some subterranean ecosystem that my mentor explored.

  I follow Johnny as he rides his grandmother’s bicycle, making deliveries.

  I follow Jessica on her run around the lake near her apartment complex.

  Then I imagine him. Heywood. The Warlock. My enemy.

  He’s sitting behind some computer at a secure facility, typing away, knowing he’s being watched but also knowing they’re too afraid to do anything to stop him if he veers off course.

  I see that blank face and try to peer inside that brain, which is impossible . . . but I still try to understand him by attempting to make sense of the things he’s done.

  I have no trouble accepting the idea that some kind of trauma or brain defect impaired his ability to feel compassion. It’s the only way I can conceive of a mind doing the evil things that he’s done.

  We’re both men driven by curiosity, but mine has limits. I’ll kill to protect the innocent.

  But I won’t kill the innocent to protect myself, except for in the most ridiculous hypothetical cause-and-effect scenarios.

  If I found out that right now Jillian was in the arms of another man, I’d only want to know that he treated her well. In fact, the idea that someone else was looking after her would relieve me beyond words.

  All this is why I can’t understand why Heywood fears me. If his neural network is bogus, artificial-intelligence researchers will figure that out. If his cures are snake oil, the doctors testing them will cry foul.

  Moreover, if it’s a sham, why turn himself in? It doesn’t make any sense. The only conclusion I can come to is that it’s only part sham and Heywood is trying to buy time because he thinks he can make it work.

  But that still doesn’t explain his hatred of me. Jealousy’s part of it, perhaps, but long before Jessica and I had our embrace in the elevator, Heywood still wanted me eliminated.

  Why?

  What does Heywood see in me that I don’t?

  I ask that question over and over and can’t find a single answer. Maybe I’m asking it the wrong way . . .

  I slip back into my mental model of the world and start watching someone I’ve never watched before.

  Myself.

  What do I see?

  A man sitting in a prison cell that he accepted as his home because he thought he was doing the morally correct thing.

  A man who breaks laws and lives by his own moral code.

  An intelligent man who sometimes lets his arrogance lead him into trouble.

  Perhaps the better question is, what do other people see?

  To some I’m brilliant.

  To others I’m dangerous.

  This is how people see the Warlock as well. From a certain perspective, we have a lot in common.

  If you were one of the child-torturing soldiers I killed back in Myanmar, you wouldn’t feel much different about me when I slit your throat in the latrine than Heywood’s victims felt about him when he killed them for his stunts.

  Heywood is afraid of me because he fears I think like he does . . . that I understand him. He doesn’t realize that I can’t possibly fathom his twisted mind.

  The difference between us is easy for me to see. Jessica sees it. Jillian saw it.

  I can’t think like Heywood because, no matter how dark I get, how much wrath I feel, I never see the innocent as pawns. Every life is precious. I only kill to protect life, and even then with conditions.

  That’s the line he doesn’t understand.

  Or does he?

  What if what he’s really afraid of is me learning to cross that line?

  Let’s imagine the world again. This time we’re picturing a man named Theo Cray who sees people not as lives to protect, but as objects whose innocence has no meaning or value.

  What would the world be like for that Theo? What dark things would he do? What great things could he do?

  What holds me back that doesn’t hold back Dark Theo?

  If I wanted people’s awe and respect, I wouldn’t need to steal supercomputer time and build a massive neural network to cure disease.

  I’d do it myself.

  I’d make the world my laboratory. I wouldn’t waste my time tweaking the parameters of a neural network and laboring to find precise data to fine-tune its training. I’d take the most promising ideas in research journals and go straight to human trials. Many would die. Many would also live. I could advance medicine by decades.

  All I’d have to do is . . .

  I bolt upright out of bed.

  That goddamn monster . . .

  I pound my fists on the door to my cell and scream, “I have to talk to someone!”

  The guards probably think I’m going mad. They don’t realize that this is the clearest my mind has ever been.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  MEMETICS

  My desperate attempt to find someone to listen to me didn’t fall on deaf ears. Unfortunately, it fell on the wrong ears. After pounding on my cell door, demanding to talk to someone, I saw Dr. Diane’s face appear on my video screen.

  “What’s the emergency?” she asked.

  “I need to speak to Agent Blackwood.”

  “We can provide you a form to relay a message.”

  “No. It has to be now. It’s about Heywood and what he’s been up to,” I added hastily.

  “I’ll see if there’s someone who can assist with that.”

  Eight hours later, Lagrange and another guard were at my door with the hood. This time I wasn’t taken to another room. I was led down a corridor and into a garage and placed into a van and driven for two hours.

  The hood was removed when we neared the processing center for the Stone Creek ADX, a supermax federal prison in Pennsylvania. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad that I’d finally been transferred to a public facility and out of the black-box detention center.<
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  Here I’d have the right to counsel and to send messages. I’d be able to tell Jessica what I realized and what we needed to do to stop Heywood. For the first time, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

  That light went dark the moment I was handed over to the Stone Creek correctional officers. I was told to lie facedown in the back of the van—I assumed to change my restraints. A moment later, I felt a sharp stab in my neck as a hypodermic needle found a vein.

  The man’s face is blurry. He’s sitting on the fixed stool by the metal desk. He has a clipboard in his hands. He’s been talking to me, and I’ve been nodding.

  “. . . any violation will result in you losing privileges. Any attempt to communicate with other inmates will also result in punishment. No outside communication without prior approval,” his voice drones.

  Drool is sliding out of my mouth. I’m upright and have some control, but I can’t seem to make sentences more complex than yes or no. I’m on a psychoactive I’m unfamiliar with, no doubt courtesy of the same minds that thought up the Death Star.

  I make out the other words the man is saying and slowly grasp what he’s telling me. I’m in the secure wing of this ADX. No visitors. No communications. I won’t be able to talk to anyone.

  “With good behavior we’ll allow you limited access to the other facilities. Do you understand, Mr. Cray?”

  I try to form words. I want to tell him what’s really going on. I want him to understand why they drugged me. All I can do is nod.

  “I’ll take that as an affirmative,” he says.

  The blurry man leaves and the cell door is shut, making an echo that reverberates around the tiny room. The reality of what is happening to me is starting to come into focus.

  I wasn’t transferred from the Death Star for my benefit. I was transferred so that whoever’s strings Heywood is pulling could have me killed.

  They couldn’t do it at the Death Star because it would have raised too many questions. If I died there, Jessica would no longer have any reason to keep her mouth shut, and others at the FBI would begin to wonder what kind of deal the Department of Justice made. Someone would talk.

  The longer I’m still alive here, however, the greater the risk for Heywood that I’ll get to talk to somebody from some other agency, even if it’s to interrogate me. Which means that someone will be coming for me soon. Possibly as soon as this drug wears off and breaks down in my system so it won’t be detected in an autopsy.

  I have two options. One is a set of small cylinders that I inserted into the inside of my right forearm several years ago. I consider those my nuclear option.

  The other is an implant in my left arm the size of a quarter and twice as thick. Wrapped in layers of silicone to prevent it from creating an odd indentation on my skin, it’s close enough to my elbow that when it occasionally sets off metal detectors at close range, the assumption is that I have a metal pin in my joint.

  I’d considered less invasive measures, but I knew that if I found myself in a worst-case scenario, I’d be subjected to a thorough exam that would reveal anything I’d swallowed or tried to retain rectally.

  Hence, my under-the-skin solution.

  Fortunately, in this age of body modification and biohacking, others did the pioneering work for me. The challenge was deciding what to implant myself with.

  I decided on a tiny microcomputer that would find any open Wi-Fi network and send out a blast message to a list of people, giving them my location. I put Jessica at the top of the list.

  It was a clever idea.

  I can tell from the bandage on my arm that they removed my little device before I left the Death Star.

  Now I think I have a better idea who that facility was meant for. It wasn’t hackers, terrorists, or drug lords. It was built for spies.

  The cylinders still remain in my other arm. They’re plastic and would only show up on a close X-ray. I’m tempted to cut them out and mix the contents. But we’re not there yet.

  I have one other trick left for getting a message out of here. It involves my fingernail and the skin of my left forearm.

  I bite away the tip of the fingernail of my right pinkie, giving it a jagged edge, then stick it into my flesh. The first line is just a red mark. I have to scratch it repeatedly until it bleeds. Then I move on to the next mark.

  If I had time to secure a needle or, even better, a prison tattoo gun, I could do a better job of this. But I don’t know how much longer I have. I need to get the message out while I’m still alive.

  As I carve the last letter into my arm, drops of blood begin to drip down onto the floor and form a tiny puddle. My skin is on fire; I need to wash it to prevent an infection.

  But first I have to get the message on my arm outside the walls of this prison. I need someone to see it other than me. Hopefully at that point it will become a kind of mind virus that will force the powers that be to do something. The message is my version of the Cordyceps fungus, which turns ants into zombies to spread its spores. My message will work the same way to a lesser degree, but it should still serve my purpose . . . assuming anyone sees it.

  There are footsteps in the corridor and the jangling of keys. The slot slides open, and a guard yells at me to stand in the circle by the far wall with my hands interlocked behind my head.

  I comply. Blood drips down onto my shoulder. Plastic cuffs are fastened around my wrists, and I’m placed onto a gurney, cuffed to its rail, and rushed out of the cell.

  “Why wasn’t this asshole on suicide watch?” one of the guards asks another.

  “Special case,” replies the one pulling the gurney forward.

  I’m moved to a clinic at the end of the block and placed in a room where a male nurse who apparently bodybuilds is waiting.

  “He’s a no-contact,” says a guard.

  “I understand the protocol,” the nurse replies.

  “Prisoner, will you cooperate? Answer only in the affirmative,” says the guard, shining a light in my eye.

  “Yes.”

  “I just want to take a look at that arm. Can you uncuff him?”

  One guard releases my bloody arm while another watches a few inches from my head, ready to take me down with a stun gun. All their procedures are airtight—developed over decades of containing the most dangerous elements of society.

  The nurse, his face obscured by a mask, pours water over my arm, cleaning away the blood. “What is this?” he asks.

  The cold metal tips of the stun gun are shoved into my neck—a warning that if I speak, I’ll experience an incredible amount of disabling pain.

  Whoever planned my detention here wanted to take absolutely no chances that I would speak to anyone. Which only reinforces my certainty that I now know what has Heywood scared shitless.

  Why didn’t he kill me in the penthouse? I can only guess that it would have jeopardized his attempt to come to an agreement with the government and, worse, set Jessica against him even more than she already was.

  The nurse dabs my arm with gauze, wiping away the blood. The writing is clearer now and the incisions mostly clotted.

  He walks over to a cabinet and takes out a camera. “Hold your arm out.”

  “That’s not permitted,” says a guard.

  “Actually, I have to photograph every wound,” says the nurse.

  “He’s a no-contact prisoner,” the guard fires back.

  “Fine. Then you take care of him.” He sits on a stool in the corner of the office. “He’s all yours.”

  “All right,” says the guard. “But the photo goes to the warden only, and he can decide if it stays in the record.”

  The nurse stretches out my arm and takes several snapshots of the wound with his digital camera. He then sprays my arm with disinfectant and wraps it in a bandage.

  “He’s yours now. Take him to iso.”

  They wheel me out of the room and down another corridor. Instead of returning me to my room, they place me in a much smaller one with my arms and legs
strapped to the rails of the bed. “Twenty-four hours of isolation for self-harm,” says a guard. “Try it again and it’s seventy-two.” He shuts the metal door, and the lights go out.

  This is how they treat me for going crazy . . . by driving me even more insane.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  ISO

  As I lie in the dark, trying not to let the itching and the smell of my own urine get to me too much, I realize that the self-harm incident may have bought me more time. If someone wants to kill me, they will need to put me in a position where another inmate can commit the act.

  The majority of correctional officers in charge of me do not want me to die under their supervision. A prisoner death leads to questions and paperwork. If one of them is found to have been culpable, then they’d face an even more serious investigation and possibly charges.

  As vulnerable as I am right now, I don’t think my concern is some guard slipping in here with a pillow and suffocating me. An autopsy would reveal quite a lot and would almost certainly be performed in such an instance.

  An injection of some drug that could stop my heart is another possibility. But that has its risks, too. A guard has to come here and administer it, in full view of security cameras, including the one that’s watching me right now.

  The way to kill me is to make a simple mistake, like with Heywood’s prison transfer. One administrator somewhere in the prison system has to put in an order that I’m to be transferred to the general population. From there, snuffing me is merely a matter of economics.

  One study found that the average price paid for a professional hit was approximately fifteen thousand dollars—which coincidentally is the average amount of money a person can withdraw on their credit card.

  I don’t know what the average price is in a prison. If it’s not less, it can’t be too much more. While killing someone inside a prison increases the chances of the killer being caught—and therefore, rationally, should command a higher fee—prisons aren’t full of rational people.

  Given Heywood’s resources, I suspect that more than one inmate may be prepared to kill me as soon as I’m free from isolation. Once they escort me out of here, I have to be ready for anything.