“Exactly. Dylan was protected from things you weren’t. But given my experience of him, I don’t imagine it was a very pleasant upbringing.”
She gently slides the picture page to one side; sees what looks like the records of Dylan’s military service Kayla couldn’t find. References to kills and assassinations with the word CLASSIFIED stamped across the top, which seems pathetic. The word should be red, but instead it’s black and white, which means these documents are photocopies made by someone who wasn’t supposed to have them. Too dense to read through now. But it’s something. Far more than she expected out of the guy sitting across from her.
“And what’s your experience of him?” she asks.
“Dylan was one of my father’s last hires before he passed away. When I became CEO, Dylan came to me with video evidence of animal testing he’d done on a new drug. He’d been trying to advance antianxiety medications beyond what he called the realm of alcohol in a pill. He was searching for a compound that suppressed certain panic responses in the brain that can lead to paralysis and other fear responses he deemed . . . ineffective.
“Given what I’ve just shown you, it’s not a mystery where this obsession came from. I know you were very young, and I know you weren’t involved in any of their murders, so I’m not sure how much time you spent researching the details of their crimes, the statements Abigail has made in prison.” She nods weakly. “Then you’re probably aware Abigail Banning told authorities and several journalists that Lilah Turlington froze up when they attacked her boyfriend. That they almost bungled it, and there was a moment when she could have got away, maybe even saved Eddie Stevens. But she was paralyzed by the shock of it all. Two perfectly nice people she thought were fellow backpackers sharing a campfire suddenly turning on her boyfriend with a rock. She froze.”
“Abigail lied about a lot of things.”
“Even so, the story seems to have had a particular effect on the man we know as Dylan Cody, born Noah Turlington in Asheville, North Carolina.”
“I knew him as Dylan Thorpe.”
“Indeed. It’s been hard to keep track of everyone’s name of late.”
“I only have one, and it’s Charlotte Rowe.”
Cole smiles nervously, nods. “Of course.”
“These animal tests. What did they show?”
“In two hundred of them, Dylan matched prey and predator in a contained environment after dosing the prey subject with Zypraxon. In only five of them did the predator survive.”
“What did you do? After he showed you these tests?”
“I made arrangements to begin human testing. On willing volunteers.”
“I’m going to assume this trial was off the books.”
“It was.”
“How did it go?”
“Not well.”
“How not well? Is that explained in this file?”
“It went so badly I shut down Project Bluebird six months later. Pulled all Dylan’s funding and denied him access to his labs.”
Bluebird. The word lances through her. The bird in the cage. The bird waiting to be set free. The bird she almost killed as a child. Anyone who knows her story would know the symbolism, and Dylan picked it as the name for the most important work of his career.
“So, very badly. What happened to the subjects? These willing volunteers?”
“Charley—”
“I thought we were trusting each other,” she says.
While none of the men across from her reaches for a weapon, they stiffen at her volume; this subtle reminder of what she’s capable of, and how they’re trapped in a confined, airborne space with those skills.
“They tore themselves apart,” Cole answers. “Quite literally. We called it going lycan.”
He lets her absorb this. Lets it sink in—how much danger Dylan put her in by giving her the drug without her consent. The possibility of being raped by Jason Briffel was the least of it.
“We conducted extensive psychological profiles on each man to determine what his fears and phobias were. We tried to avoid asking the question directly, because we didn’t want them to anticipate the tests that lay ahead. Once the profile was complete, we took them to a secure location and set them loose in a kind of obstacle course, where they were presented with different physical variations of their greatest fears. For some it was confined spaces; for others it was the possibility of drowning. A snake in an unexpected place. We called it the Fear Matrix.”
“But it worked,” she said. “They each got triggered.”
“Yes. But unlike in the animal testing he’d done, they didn’t direct their aggression outward. They directed their aggression at what they saw as the real source of their fear. Themselves. Their minds and the bodies those minds controlled. We did everything we could to stop them. But imagine the strength you just showed Frederick Pemberton channeled entirely into self-destructive impulses, along with aggression toward anyone or anything who tried to block those impulses once they were triggered. And imperviousness to any drugs we could dart them with. Imagine that, and you will have some sense of the nightmare Dylan Cody unleashed in our labs.”
Our labs, she thinks. A secure location. Where? An island? She doubts that’s in the file, and she doubts he’d tell her the truth if she asked.
“You tested all these men at once?” she asks.
“No. The second, third, and fourth all went in believing there was something inherent in their character that would allow them to improve on the results of the man who went before. After Dylan convinced them of this, of course.”
“And then you shut it down?”
“And then Dylan came to me and told me he thought the problem was that we were only testing it on men. And that we should start testing it on women. And then I shut it down.”
“So he left the company?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t have him followed?” she asked.
“For a time. He bounced from city to city. Worked odd jobs so far beneath his pay grade I thought he might disappear forever. He was drinking heavily. It was clear there was no connection to family. No friends. His uncle passed away several years ago. There’s an inheritance of some kind stashed away. But he doesn’t spend it very often. If there’s a lot to spend, that is.”
“Not a lot to a man with his own helicopter, probably,” she says.
“Touché.” Cole smiles, but his smiles are becoming more strained with each passing minute of this flight. “I thought his failure, what happened to those men, had broken him.”
“And you were wrong,” she says.
Cole sits forward, resting his elbows on his knees and staring directly into her eyes. “If I’d had one inkling of what he was going to do to you, Charlotte, I would have stopped him. You must know this. You must believe this.”
“How?”
“I would have had no shortage of ideas on that front. I guarantee you. I don’t run a convenience store. I’m the CEO of one of the most powerful companies in the world.”
There’s no arguing with the icy conviction in his tone.
“So that’s why Zypraxon works on me?” she asks. “Because I’m a woman?”
“No.”
She must be visibly startled by his answer. He gives her a few seconds to recover.
“Dylan says he altered the formula a bit and tested it in another woman before you. The results were apparently as catastrophic as he should have expected.”
“Did she . . .”
“He says she agreed to it, knowing the risks. But I no longer put much stock in anything Dylan says. Do you?”
“You tell me. Your history with him is . . . longer than mine.”
Is he wincing or smiling or both? She can’t tell.
“What do you want from me, Cole Graydon? Just my blood?”
“You’re angry with me. Even after all I’ve told you. Can you tell me why?”
“You allowed him to do this.”