Life Force: Deccorah Security Series, Book #25, page 1
Life Force
Decorah Security Series, Book #25)
A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel
)
REBECCA YORK
Ruth Glick writing as Rebecca York
Copyright © 2021 Ruth Glick
Published by Light Street Press
This is a work of fiction, a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental. This novel may not be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author.
Chapter One
He felt a whoosh of air. Then somebody spoke in a grating voice.
“We’re too late. They’re all dead.”
The words drifted toward Matthew Carter as though they were part of a dream. Or a nightmare.
An all-to-familiar nightmare.
Other people spoke–the sound reaching him in a confused babble.
As he hovered in a twilight zone between life and death, paralysis held him in a viselike grip. He couldn’t move. Not even twitch a finger. He knew he wasn’t breathing because a terrible weight pressed against his chest, holding his lungs immobile. And his limbs might have been sunk into cement.
Don’t panic. You know you can get through this. Don’t panic. He repeated the words over and over in his mind, fighting to ground himself.
A commanding voice cut through the shock and confusion of sound around him.
“Get them out of there.”
The order came from . . . .
Matthew should know the man’s name. He tried to call it up, but his mind had turned into a pool of treacle.
He felt hands on his body–tugging. Someone grabbed him under the arms and pulled him from the experimental submarine, then laid him on the metal deck of the . . .
Again, he drew a blank.
He could feel hot sun on his face. And the boat rocking under his body. More sensations. Good signs. Maybe.
“Get the doc.”
“It’s too late for that.”
His mind struggled to make connections. What language was the man speaking?
Farsi Eighteenth-century French Russian?
“Get the doc?”
“Get the dock?”
The words fell into a recognizable pattern. The man was speaking English. Late twentieth century. Or maybe twenty-first.
Twenty-first century. Yes. That was the time period. He remembered that now. And he clutched at it. Another fact.
But what kind of dock?
A sudden coughing fit shattered his concentration.
He heard excited exclamations.
“Carter’s alive.”
Matthew’s eyes blinked open, and he stared up into the face of . . . Ken Dupont. The doctor. The doc.
When Matthew struggled to sit up, the man put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t move.”
He tried to speak and was caught in another coughing fit as his lungs struggled to function again.
Someone else spoke. “When we lost communication, we thought you were all dead. How did you get the sub out of there?” Captain Sampson was asking the question, his voice sharp. He was the one who had given the orders before.
Matthew focused on him. “I . . .” Again he started coughing, cutting off his explanation. But the whole picture was coming back to him now.
He was off the coast of Grand Cayman Island, on a scientific exploration ship--Neptune’s Promise. The mission was to test an experimental submarine called the Fortune.
This was the second day of diving. He and three other men had gone down into the 25,000 foot trench off the island. Everything had been fine, until Eddie Stanford had gotten overenthusiastic and maneuvered them into a passage between two rock formations–where the sub had gotten stuck. They’d tried everything they could to get out. But the craft wouldn’t budge, and they were running out of air.
There was no other submarine in the area that could dive so deeply. Nobody who could rescue them.
When the rest of the crew had passed out from lack of oxygen, Matthew had willed himself to stay conscious. He’d staggered to the controls and made one last desperate attempt to free the machine. He remembered silently saying a pray to any god who would listen as he backed up and rammed forward, like the driver of a car stuck in the snow. Apparently the maneuver had freed them, rather than rupturing the craft’s skin.
After that, everything was pretty fuzzy. But he must have set a course for the surface, because the sub had made it up here. Only it sounded like it had been too late for the rest of the crew.
Damn. They were all good men. Lost. Because he’d dragged them down there with him.
He caught himself up short in the middle of the accusation. They’d jumped at the chance to crew the sub. They just hadn’t realized the risks.
He heard people talking in the background. Talking about him.
“Something I didn’t like about that guy.”
“He thinks he can do anything he wants because he’s got the big bucks.”
“Probably hogged the oxygen.”
He understood the need to assign blame. And understood that the rich, handsome adventurer, Matthew Carter, was a convenient target.
Still, he heard himself protesting, “No.”
The captain’s voice cut through the muttering of the crew, telling them to cool it until they had the full story.
Two men brought a stretcher and lifted Matthew onto it. He knew it wasn’t easy maneuvering his one hundred seventy pound, six foot frame down the companionway, but they managed to do it without dropping him.
Below deck, he lay on the exam table in the infirmary, letting Dr. Dupont poke and prod him.
“You’re in good shape. It looks like you were damn lucky,” the medic said.
Matthew pushed himself to a sitting position. “I’ve got an iron constitution. And that rebreather thing kept me going.” His voice caught. “I’m just sorry it didn’t save the others.”
“Yeah.” Dupont walked to the door and stuck his head out. “You can talk to him now.”
Captain Sampson came in, his gaze hard. “Do you remember what happened?”
Matthew struggled not to tense up. He had nothing to hide. Well, nothing that mattered to Sampson or the rest of the crew of Neptune’s Promise.
“It got pretty fuzzy at the end. I was functioning on hardly any oxygen, so I don’t know if I can be perfectly accurate. The Fortune wedged into a rock formation. After Eddie passed out, I was able to shake us free.”
“I thought you were just financing the expedition. I didn’t realize you could operate the sub.”
“I’ve picked up a lot of skills over the years,” he clipped out, hoping that was enough of an explanation–and hoping he wasn’t going to have to fight his way out of here. He knew it was natural to resent his miraculous escape and his money. He was alive. The crew who had gone down with him in the sub were dead. But that wasn’t his fault. All he’d done was survive.
###
Neptune’s Promise returned to George Town. As soon as the craft docked, Matthew left the ship and headed for the luxury B&B where he was staying.
He knew the captain had already informed the men’s families of their deaths. After closing the door to his room, he made condolence calls to the widows.
The deaths were like a raw wound in his gut. He couldn’t bring the men back, but he could arrange to transfer a million dollars to each of the wives. At least that would make the next few years easier for them and their children.
Guilt gnawed at him. He and the crew had carefully gone over procedures, and the craft should have been safe, but maybe if he’d used another pilot, they would have avoided disaster.
Matthew had liked Eddie Stanford–liked the man’s sense of humor and sense of adventure. Now Matthew was second-guessing himself and thinking that the guy was too reckless to have been at the controls in a tight situation. If he’d stayed in open water, everybody would have come back alive.
Well, live and learn.
Twenty minutes after he’d closed the door to his room, a two-man team from the local constabulary showed up. One was a brisk little dark-skinned cop named Inspector Dangerford. In his fifties and balding, he was accompanied by a younger, taller assistant named Sergeant Wilkins, who mostly let his boss do the talking.
Matthew knew the inspector’s type. Nice and polite–until he thought he had something on you. Then he’d get his sidekick to whip out the handcuffs and march you off to an interrogation room where you might or might not undergo some physical persuasion.
Matthew had vast experience answering questions–hostile and otherwise. Dangerford asked a lot of them in his soft island accent, approaching each point from several different angles, but he couldn’t shake Matthew’s story that he’d strapped on the rebreather and hoped for the best.
From the first, it was clear the cops were just on a fishing expedition, hoping Matthew would make some kind of mistake and incriminate himself in the deaths of the other men.
But he stuck to his guns–repeating the same story over and over. He hadn’t done anything illegal or immoral. He didn’t know why he was alive and the other men were dead.
Strictly speaking, that was the absolute truth.
At the end of the interview, Dangerford asked him to stay in town until the investigation of the incident was completed.
He politely declined. Since he wasn’t under arrest for anything,
When they asked for his address, he gave them the condo he owned in San Francisco. He wasn’t there often, but he paid the security staff to maintain his privacy.
Although he’d planned to stay on the island for a couple of weeks, he booked a flight to the West Coast with a company that sold shares in private jet planes to rich passengers who wanted to travel in comfort to various destinations around the world.
###
Matthew landed in Santa Barbara and collected his luggage from the flight crew, then picked up his Lexus hybrid in the private lot. Once he was on the highway, he pulled his cell phone from the glove compartment, plugged it into the charger and called home.
His man, Thomas Northrop, answered.
“I’ve landed. I’m in the car, and I’ll be there in about an hour, depending on the traffic.”
“We’re glad to have you back.” Thomas paused. His voice was sober when he began to speak again. “I’m sorry about what happened on the Fortune. I know you have to be grieving for those men.”
“Yes, thanks,” Matthew answered. He and Thomas were old friends. Or at least as friendly as a man like Matthew could get with anyone.
“Anything I should know about?” he asked.
“You have four e-mail messages from that doctor--Sidney Hemmings.”
“Is something wrong?”
“He’s inviting you to a medical research conference in Las Vegas. He says that would be the perfect opportunity for the two of you to meet. He’s holding a complimentary place for you.”
“Yeah, he mentioned it a couple of months ago. I’m still thinking about it,” Matthew answered. He’d been corresponding with Hemmings for fifteen years–first by mail and then by e-mail. The doctor was doing some of the most interesting work in the field of longevity, and he was a presenter as well as an organizer of the international conference.
Matthew was caught between his innate caution and his desire to met the brilliant researcher face to face.
“I’ll think about it,” he said. He’d detected a subtle note of disquiet in Thomas’s tone. “Anything else?”
His chief of staff cleared his throat, then spoke in a halting voice. “Simon is home.”
Matthew sucked in a breath. Simon was Thomas’s oldest son. And in following long-standing tradition, he should have been the one to take over from his father. But Simon had never been an easy child to deal with, and in his teen years, he’d exhibited some mental instability–which had evolved into paranoid schizophrenic episodes.
Matthew had paid for his treatment at a very expensive private mental hospital in the Bay Area. With medication, he’d been able to leave the hospital and had been living in Half Moon Bay, working at one of the many garden centers in the town.
“He quit his job and came home,” Thomas said. “I think he might be off his medication.”
“Thanks for the heads up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. We’ll deal with it.”
“He’s been asking questions about you,” Thomas continued. “Questions I won’t answer.”
“I’m sorry to put you in that position.”
“As you said, it’s not your fault.”
They talked for a few more minutes about the young man as Matthew drove north, looking with disgust at the brown haze hanging over the coastline, remembering a time when the air was sparkling clean. But no longer. Modern living was taking its toll on the environment, and the planet was definitely changing.
By the time he reached the mountains, the sky looked better. He turned off on a two-lane road that wound through stands of sycamores, live oaks and mounds of pampas grass.
It was a landscape he liked, a landscape he hoped he wouldn’t have to abandon any time soon.
He had a good chance of realizing that ambition, since the location of his home was secret. When he’d changed his name twenty-five years ago, he’d made sure that nobody knew where the man named Matthew Carter really lived. His mail came to a post office box. His bank was out of state. And he handled transactions over the Internet. In fact, there were no clues leading to his current location, and he meant to keep it that way.
###
Gary Stanford arrived on Grand Cayman just after Matthew had checked out of his bed and breakfast. Gary was the brother of Eddie Stanford, the man who had been piloting the Fortune when it had gone down.
Eddie and Gary had been close, and he was having trouble coping with his brother’s death. He was also wondering why Matthew Carter felt compelled to transfer a million dollars to the widows of the men who had been in the submarine with him.
As soon as his plane landed, Gary went directly to the police station and tried to get the straight scoop on what had happened below the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.
The cops were sympathetic, but they wouldn’t give him anything beyond basic information because the incident was still under investigation.
Next he talked to the captain and crew of Neptune’s Promise, which was docked in George Town.
There were mixed reactions from the crew. Some thought the rich man who had backed the expedition, Matthew Carter, had sacrificed the other men to save himself. And some thought Carter was just a lucky son of a bitch.
Whichever it was, Gary wanted to talk to him. But nobody seemed to have his address, and nobody knew how to get in touch with him.
After thirty-six hours on the island, his anger and frustration building, he knew he wasn’t going to get any information on his own. He wasn’t a patient man under the best of circumstances, and he suspected his grief was affecting his judgment. Before he could do something stupid, he turned around and went home.
But he wasn’t willing to drop the inquiry into his brother’s death. Back in Baltimore he called around to get the name of a detective agency that handled baffling cases and got the name of Decorah Security. After talking to the owner, Frank Decorah, he hired the outfit tell him where to find Carter.
###
Stopping at the entrance to his estate, Matthew used his remote control. The gate swung open, then closed behind him as he drove toward the sprawling house.
Inside the walled estate, the landscaping along the winding driveway took advantage of the dry climate, interspersing huge boulders with yuccas, cacti and native plants like manzanita. Rounding a curve, he caught sight of the house which was mostly one story but jutted up to a second floor in several locations.
Home!
It was based on the design of an ancient pueblo village that he’d seen long ago and admired for the simplicity of its lines. He’d drawn up plans and started building the house himself, on acreage he’d acquired years earlier–using a different name. It was the site of an old ranch where the family had never been able to turn a profit. They’d been glad to unload it to the eccentric gentleman from San Francisco. Matthew had found it the perfect solution to his need for privacy. An estate out in the dry, brown hills.
The first dwelling had consisted of five rooms, but he’d added onto it over the years–hiring local workmen to help him with the construction. The house wasn’t the only building on the grounds. He had a workshop, a lab, a stable, a number of storage buildings and a fully equipped gym spread out around the property.
Thomas must have been waiting for a signal from the gate because he stepped outside the front door and waited for the car to pull to a stop.
Matthew slowed, studying the man as he walked toward the Lexus. He’d been with Matthew for a long time, and now he was in his sixties. He worked out regularly in the gym, he still stood straight and tall, and his mind was as sharp as ever. But there were little signs that he was getting on in years, like his receding hairline and the sagging skin under his chin. He wouldn’t be here forever, and Matthew would have to face that sad truth sooner or later.
He pulled to a stop, put the vehicle in park, and pressed the button to open the trunk.
Thomas stepped forward. “Let me help you.”
“No need.”
As Matthew walked around to the trunk, he caught a flash of movement and looked up to see Simon appear in the doorway.
Walking slowly and deliberately, he approached Matthew and his father.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“It’s good to see you,” Matthew answered evenly, as he studied the son of his old friend, trying to figure out how this would go. One thing he knew, he didn’t like the look in the young man’s eyes or the tone of his voice.
