Shadowfires. By: Dean R. Koontz

back from the dead?”

She jerked in surprise and gaped at him. She tried to speak but

couldn’t get any words out.

He had never in his life elicited such a rewarding reaction from anyone

else, and he took enormous pleasure in it.

At last she said, “But. .. but how. . . when.

what…

He said, “How do I know what I know? When did I figure it out? What

clued me in?”

She nodded.

He said, “Hell, if someone had stolen Eric’s body, they’d surely have

come with a car of their own to haul it away. They wouldn’t have had to

kill a woman and steal her car. And there were those discarded hospital

whites in the garage in Villa Park. Besides, you were scared witless

from the moment I showed up at your door last evening, and you aren’t

easily spooked. You’re a very competent and self-sufficient woman, not

the type to get the willies. In fact, I’ve never seen you scared of

anything except maybe… Eric.”

“He really was killed by that truck, you know. It isn’t just that they

misdiagnosed his condition.”

The desire for sleep retreated a bit, and Ben said, “His business-and

genius-was genetic engineering. And the man was obsessed with staying

young. So I figure he found a way to edit out the genes linked to aging

and death. Or maybe he edited in an artificially constructed gene for

swift healing, tissue stasis . . . immortality.”

“You endlessly aWare me,” she said.

“I’m quite a guy.

Her own weariness gave way to nervous energy. She could not keep still.

She got up and paced.

He remained seated, sipping his Diet Coke. He had been badly rattled

all night, now it was her turn.

Her bleak voice was tinted by dread, resignation.

“When Geneplan patented its first highly profitable artificial

microorganisms, Eric could’ve taken the company public, could’ve sold

thirty percent of his stock and made a hundred million overnight.”

“A hundred? Jesus!”

“His two partners and three of the research associates, who also had

pieces of the company, half wanted him to do just that beeause they’d

have made a killing, too.

Everyone else but Vincent Baresco was leaning toward going for the gold.

Eric refused.”

“Baresco,” Ben said. “The guy who pulled the Magnum on us, the guy I

trashed in Eric’s office tonight-is he a partner?”

“It’s Dr. Vincent Baresco. He’s on Eric’s handpicked research staffne

of the few who know about the Wildcard Project. In fact, only the six

of them knew everything. Six plus me. Eric loved to brag to me.

Anyway, Baresco sided with Eric, didn’t want Geneplan to go public, and

he convinced the others. If it remained a privately held company, they

didn’t have to please stockholders. They could spend money on unlikely

projects without defending their decisions.”

“Such as a search for immortality or its equivalent.”

“They didn’t expect to achieve full immortality-but longevity,

regeneration. It took a lot of funds, money that stockholders would’ve

wanted to see paid out in dividends. Eric and the others were getting

rich, anyway, from the modest percentage of corporate profits they

distributed to themselves, so they didn’t desperately need the capital

they’d get by going public.”

“Regeneration,” Ben said thoughtfully.

At the window, Rachael stopped pacing, cautiously drew back the drape,

and peered out at the night-cloaked motel parking lot.

She said, “God knows, I’m no expert in recombinant DNA. But… well,

they hoped to develop a benign virus that’d function as a carrier’ to

convey new genetic material into the body’s cells and precisely place

the new bits on the chains of chromosomes. Think of the virus as a sort

of living scalpel that does genetic surgery. Because it’s microscopic,

it can perform minute operations no real scalpel ever could. It can be

designed to seek out-and attach itself to certain portion of a

chromosomal chain, either destroying the gene already there or inserting

a new one.

“From Geneplan,” she said, still full of nervous energy, pacing again.

“I recognized the car. It belongs to Rupert Knowls. Knowls supplied

the initial venture capital that got Eric started. After Eric, he’s the

chief partner.”

“A rich man… yet he’s willing to risk his reputation and his freedom