Bloodline (Sigma Force #8)

Then again, the complex was owned by a subsidiary of a Gant family enterprise, one dedicated to biotech and genetic engineering. The clinic, established in the early eighties, was the end result of much of that research, offering the latest innovations to the public. The clinic also employed its own research protocols, drawing reproductive scientists from as far away as Japan. The place continued to be at the forefront of fertility studies and stem-cell research.

Over the past eighteen hours, Kat had investigated the clinic extensively—from its staffing and clientele down to its latest tax filings. She knew everything about the clinic: where they got their bed linens, the average weight of their hazardous waste material per day. The deeper she delved, the more certain she grew that the reason for Amanda’s kidnapping lay hidden somewhere within the four buildings that made up this facility.

This conviction came not from anything she uncovered—but from what she didn’t. After a full decade gathering global intelligence, she had developed a nose for when something was being hidden from her. During her investigation, she had reached too many dead ends that made no sense, certain matters that didn’t balance in her head. Worst of all, she stumbled across an impenetrable corporate firewall at one point, employing encryption algorithms that were military-grade. Even if she could, she feared smashing through it. The act alone could set off too many alarm bells, alerting the powers that be at the clinic that someone was sniffing at their door.

So she opted for a more direct approach.

On foot.

She reached the parking lot and spotted the rental car, a silver Audi A6 sedan. Lisa Cummings had beaten her here, but her friend hadn’t had to navigate through two bus transfers from the airport to reach the clinic. They had come separately, each with her own mission.

Kat climbed the steps to a wide porch that fronted the main building. It looked nothing like a medical facility. The façade was typical for Charleston: a Georgian stone mansion with wrought-iron railings, three floors of balconies, and a gambrel roof covered by mossy-fringed slate tiles.

She stepped through the doors into an air-conditioned main lobby, refreshing after the hot bus ride and short walk. A reception desk beckoned. She approached it, noting out of the corner of her eye that Lisa sat in the waiting area, a space as sumptuously furnished as would be expected from the exterior, decked out in velvets and overstuffed cushions.

Lisa matched the décor in a handsome St. John platinum dress with a drawstring waist. Her blond hair hung loose and shone under the soft lights; her makeup was flawless. She came posing as the private doctor for a select Washingtonian clientele, coming to interview the clinic for possible referrals for her patients. She had an appointment to meet with the head of the facility in a few minutes.

Lisa was conducting this cursory investigation from the top down.

Kat was taking the other extreme.

“How may I help you?” the receptionist asked. She was a small woman with large eyes, made even more prominent by her harsh eye shadow.

Kat moved closer to the desk, pressing against it, leaning a bit too forward as if trying to keep the conversation from being overheard. “I heard … someone told me … that you all are looking for donors.”

The receptionist’s brows pinched in irritation.

Kat pushed even closer, glancing surreptitiously over her shoulder, raising an embarrassed blush to her cheeks. “You know. Looking for a woman’s eggs. I heard you pay good money.”

The receptionist sat straighter, her voice growing hushed, if not a touch condescending, made worse by the patronizing tone of her Carolina accent. “Hon, that’s handled elsewhere. This is for patient intake. If you’ll stand over there …” She waved a manicured hand away from the waiting area, toward a corner. “I’ll have one of the staff assistants come fetch you and bring you to the donor facility, if that’s all right?”

Kat nodded and slunk back. “Thank you.”

The woman made a noncommittal noise and picked up the phone.

As Kat retreated to her corner, she met Lisa’s gaze. At the moment they were divided by a cultural and financial gulf. Lisa represented the end buyer; Kat embodied the product to be sold. There continued to be much ethical and moral debate about the sale of human ova. Once a price tag was put upon such a commodity, it became tied to the power of supply and demand—and the inherent abuse.

In much of the Third World, entire villages now sold kidneys or became surrogate mothers, selling rental space in their wombs. It was called the red market—the wholesale buying and selling of body parts—and it was a booming business, both legally and illegally. She had read a report of Bolivian murderers who sought out victims to sell their fat to European beauty supply companies. In China, prisons were harvesting the organs of dead inmates, gutting them out, with whispers that some prisoners were being purposefully killed for profit. And in one case in Nepal, a dairy farmer had turned from delivering milk to supplying blood. He captured local hikers, imprisoned them in his barn, and repeatedly drained his new livestock of their blood, keeping them forever at the edge of death.

Worst of all, such a marketplace moved in only one economic direction: from the poor to the rich. It was an unfortunate side effect when a price tag was placed on organs. Inevitably, flesh moved only up the social ladder, never down.

Movement across the room drew Kat’s attention. A mahogany door opened and a rugged-looking man in his midforties stepped into the waiting room. He had jet-black hair, stood six feet tall, and was decked out in a knee-length white lab coat over expensive navy-blue trousers, a crisp white shirt, and a crimson tie. His smile was overly broad as he approached Lisa, who stood to greet him.

“Welcome to NCFC,” he said and shook her hand.

It was Dr. Paul Cranston, head of the clinic. Kat knew everything about him, even his social security number and where his passport had last been stamped: New Zealand.

He led Lisa out of the waiting room and into the inner sanctum of the facility. As that door closed, another opened. A man, likely a hospital orderly, stood at the threshold of a doorway neighboring the front desk. He looked like a pit bull in scrubs. The receptionist beckoned to Kat.

She stepped forward.

“If you’ll follow me,” the man grunted, not bothering with her name.

She hurried forward but stopped at the reception desk to grab a business card. She fumbled and purposefully knocked the holder off the counter and onto the reception desk.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching over to help collect the scattered cards.

The receptionist sighed heavily and picked a few cards off the floor by her chair. Kat used the moment to slip the ballpoint pen palmed in her hand into the receptionist’s cup. It held a tiny camera that recorded audio and video passively to a micro SD chip. A small antenna allowed burst transmissions of the saved data with the pinged call from a cell phone.

She had four more pens in her purse, with the goal of strategically placing them in key locations throughout the facility—or, at least, where she could reach without raising an alarm. If given the chance, it would be easy for a confused girl to get lost in here and wander where she didn’t belong.

But first she had a role to play.

“Just go,” the receptionist said and pointed to the side door.

Kat apologized meekly and followed the orderly waiting for her. He led her out of the world of gardens and velvets and into a sterile environment of vinyl floors and stark white walls. Here was the hospital hidden behind the façade: sparse and utilitarian.

They eventually reached and entered a short enclosed walkway that connected the main building to a more drab structure at the back of the grounds. As she marched, she noted each of the four clinic wings was connected in a similar manner. It seemed there was no need to leave the air-conditioned splendor for the summer heat. She also eyed the windowed walls to either side. The glass was thick, appeared bulletproof.

Then again, the clinic’s clientele were often celebrities or foreign dignitaries. Maybe the extra protection was necessary.

Still, a chill that had nothing to do with the air-conditioning swept through her. The space felt less protective than it was imprisoning.

They entered the next building, and Kat was taken to a small examination room, one of a long row of them in this wing. The orderly handed her a series of forms to fill out, secured on a clipboard.

“Fill everything out. Someone will be in to talk to you in a few minutes.”

He left, looking as bored as when he’d first collected her.

She began to fill out the forms when she heard a small click at the door. Stepping forward, she tested the handle.

Locked.

She frowned, fighting back a flicker of panic. Securing the door might be protocol, to maintain confidentiality. Either way, she was committed. She’d have to keep playing her hand—but something was definitely wrong about this place.

She hoped Lisa was faring better.

12:18 P.M.

“As you can see, we do all of our work in-house,” Dr. Paul Cranston said, stopping before a window that looked into a sealed in vitro fertilization lab.

Lisa studied the space with a critical eye. The room was state-of-the-art, with enclosed workstations equipped with laser oocyte scanners and Narishige micromanipulators for egg fertilization. Nothing was substandard, from Makler counting chambers to automatic sperm-analyzers, advanced warming blocks, and cryogenic chambers.

Her guided tour had already included the surgical suite, used for both egg collection and embryo implantation. The clinic’s high-tech operating theater would put most hospitals to shame. Even the neighboring recovery rooms were private spaces that could have graced the pages of Architectural Digest, with fine linens, subdued lighting, and tasteful decorations.

Clearly this tour was meant to impress.

And it did.

“We are a one-stop shop,” Cranston finished, offering a beaming, self-effacing smile. “From sperm and egg collection, to fertilization and implantation. We do all of our own patient monitoring, but we’re certainly happy to work in collaboration with a primary care physician.”