Blind Eye Read online

  Praise for the novels of

  JAN COFFEY

  “Coffey’s trademark elements are here: a fast pace, complex plot and interesting characters. What makes this story so intriguing are the questions it raises about ethics—or lack of them—behind closed doors everywhere.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Puppet Master

  “Timely subject matter, explosive action and quirky characters make it a splendid read…Coffey weaves a swift, absorbing tale.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Triple Threat

  “Jan Coffey…skillfully balances small-town scandal and sexual intrigue with lively plotting and vivid characterizations.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Twice Burned

  “An all-consuming, passionate, and gripping story!…Make a note to yourself to pick this one up. You’ll really be sorry if you miss it.”

  —Romance Reviews Today on Twice Burned

  “Well paced, suspenseful, and sometimes startling, Coffey’s latest unexpectedly pairs a mystery filled with graphic violence and explicit sex with a sensitive love story…. An intense, compelling story that will keep most readers guessing until the very end.”

  —Library Journal on Twice Burned

  “Fantastic…a nail-biting, page-turning thriller! Definitely a keeper!”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer on Trust Me Once

  “A fast-paced, impeccably plotted story with a terrifyingly credible premise.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Deadliest Strain

  “Lightning-paced and gripping, with a cast of intriguing characters.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Project

  Also by

  JAN COFFEY

  THE PUPPET MASTER

  THE DEADLIEST STRAIN

  THE PROJECT

  SILENT WATERS

  FIVE IN A ROW

  FOURTH VICTIM

  TRIPLE THREAT

  TWICE BURNED

  TRUST ME ONCE

  JAN COFFEY

  BLIND EYE

  To Lisa and John Lombard

  No one could ask for better friends than the two of you.

  and

  To Miranda Stecyk Indrigo—Our Editor and Friend

  We have been partners together from the first days of our journey into the world of suspense fiction, and we’ve been so grateful for your insight and your continuing encouragement, and for your belief in our storytelling abilities.

  As you cross this new threshold in life, we wish you and your beautiful family the blessings of health and happiness…and of nights filled with sleep.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Author Note

  1

  St. Vincent’s Hospital

  Santa Fe, New Mexico

  “You’re awake.”

  Lying on his side, Fred Adrian became aware of the sensation of movement before knowing where he was. The starched white pillowcase was cool against his cheek. The smell of plastic registered in his brain.

  The gentle roll of the bed along a smooth floor, the blink of the lights overhead, the words on the intercom that he couldn’t exactly make sense of, they all made him want to go to sleep.

  “You were a trouper during the procedure,” the same woman’s voice said cheerfully.

  Then he began to remember. The hospital. He was in for the procedure. He was lying on a hospital gurney. Fred’s mind was slow to catch up, but things were starting to make sense. He was in to have a routine colonoscopy.

  “I’m nervous about it.”

  “No reason to be nervous. It’s over.”

  “When do you start?” he asked.

  She chuckled. “It’s all over. You’re done.”

  He wasn’t hearing her right. He wanted to go to sleep. “What time is it?”

  “It’s ten past eleven,” the same voice, pushing the gurney along the corridor, told him.

  Eleven. Last time he’d looked at the clock it was a few minutes past eight. He couldn’t remember anything after that. He lifted his wrist to check his watch. He wasn’t wearing it. Fred held his hand up against the passing lights on the ceiling. They were so bright.

  “Easy now. You’re still hooked up.”

  He squinted at the IV hanging from a shiny chrome hook near his head. The tube snaking down from it disappeared and then reappeared before terminating under some tape on the back of his hand. His first time under anesthesia. He’d put off having the colonoscopy for a very long time.

  “I made it. It’s over,” he said to the voice, as if that should be news to her.

  “You made it through with flying colors,” the woman said in an entertained tone.

  She slowed down to negotiate a turn.

  “I’ll be fifty-nine next week,” Fred said to her.

  “Happy birthday.”

  The bed bumped its way through a door. Fred didn’t mind. The residual mellowness from the anesthesia was taking the edge off of every sensation. His hand flopped onto the pillow and he slipped it under his head. He looked up at the ceiling. He couldn’t quite focus yet.

  “I’m the first one of us to reach the age of fifty-nine,” he told her.

  “The first one?” she asked.

  They made it through the door, and the nurse parked him. He wanted to talk, to tell her how special this was. His mind was slow to keep up, though. He didn’t know if she’d asked the question now or at eight o’clock this morning. He decided to say it, anyway. He had to share the news.

  “I’m the first male in my family…” He chuckled, remembering how nervous he’d been befor
e today. He was sure this would be it. Today, he’d die. “I’m the first one to reach the age of fifty-nine. My father…he was forty-two when he died. Brother…fifty. Now maybe I’ll live to be sixty. My daughter is getting married next year…and I’ll be sixty.”

  There were two other patients in the room. Fred looked over. Another bed was rolled in after him. Or maybe he was there before him. He was an old man, sound asleep. Fred was tired. Maybe he should sleep, too.

  “You’re just starting to wake up, but there’s no hurry,” she told him. “Do you have someone waiting for you in the reception area?”

  For the first time he saw his nurse. She was moving the IV from a hook on the gurney to some stand next to it. She was young, not too pretty. She could be, he thought.

  “I need a date for my daughter’s wedding,” he told her.

  “Do you have someone in the waiting area, Mr. Adrian?” she asked again. She wasn’t smiling now.

  “Yeah…she should be out there.”

  “She?” The nurse picked up a chart and read something on it before putting it back down. “Why don’t you rest, and I’ll go and get Mrs. Adrian? But don’t try to get up or move until I come back to take out the IV, okay?”

  “Rest…” he whispered under his breath. His throat was dry. He wanted something to drink. He stared at the table with rolling wheels beside his bed. There was a cup sitting on top. He wondered if there was something in it to drink. The nurse had said not to move.

  The guy next to him was snoring. Fred wondered if he’d been snoring while under anesthesia. He’d made it. Made it.

  Five minutes later…or three hours. He didn’t know. Fred opened his eyes and saw her coming into the room.

  “I made it,” he said, yawning and closing his eyes.

  “You did,” the woman said in a low voice. “Your nurse said as soon as you’re awake, they’ll bring you some coffee and a piece of toast.”

  “I’m thirsty. Hand me that cup of water.” His hand hung in the air.

  He heard a soft plastic-sounding snap near his head. She was standing too close to the bed. Fred could smell her perfume. He opened his eyes and saw her take something out of the tube going into his arm.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  Her hand moved to his forehead and she covered his eyes. “Why don’t you get some rest until it’s time to take you home?”

  The other patient was still snoring. He didn’t want to sleep. Fred felt his limbs getting heavy.

  “Take me home…I can sleep there.”

  “Shh…soon.”

  His heartbeat started drumming in his ears. Suddenly, he didn’t feel right. There was something different. The right side of his face felt numb, like he’d been slapped.

  “Is he ready for coffee?” Fred heard the familiar voice of the nurse coming back into the room.

  Coffee…yes. He wanted to wake up. He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to answer for himself. His tongue felt swollen in his mouth. His eyelids were too heavy to lift. He opened his mouth but he could push no sound out.

  Something wasn’t right. She’d put something in the tube in his arm.

  Then, in a moment of clarity, he thought of Cynthia, and the box he’d shipped his daughter.

  “I think he’s fallen back to sleep. Should we give him some time?”

  “That’s fine. Come and get me when he’s awake.”

  No. He wanted to wake up now. He wanted to live. He’d be fifty-nine next week. He needed to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding. Fred lifted his hand off the bed to tell the nurse to stop, but cold fingers took hold of his and pressed them down into the sheet.

  The kick of his foot at the table was a feeble effort, at best. Like a last gasp for air before drowning.

  “Is he okay?” he heard the nurse’s voice from far away.

  “Yes, he’s fine. I’m the klutz. I just leaned against the table.”

  Vaguely, he heard the sound of footsteps moving into the distance. Hope slipped away like a lifeline through his fingers and was gone.

  2

  New Mexico Nuclear Fusion Test Facility

  More than halfway home.

  Even at forty-eight days into the project, Marion Kagan didn’t mind working seven days a week, sixteen hours a day. She didn’t have time to think about sun and clouds and trees. Sometimes, lying in her bunk, she did have to shake from her mind how much she missed the sting of the wind on her face as she whipped along on her scooter back and forth from her apartment to the UC Davis campus. Down here, there was no sunrise, no sunset. But no commuter traffic, either.

  Buried in the underground research facility with eight other scientists, Marion only considered the passage of day and night when she made her journal entry at the end of a shift. The group worked in shifts around the clock. Eating and sleeping happened between shifts, and everyone reported for duty when it was time.

  She was fine with all of this. They were over the hump. Only forty-two days left. And anytime she got too restless, she simply reminded herself what a boost it was in her curriculum vitae to be the only graduate assistant chosen for this highly selective project. A project that was already producing groundbreaking results. In the scientific world, the eight academics in her group were already stars; this project would make them superstars. As for Marion, after this she didn’t believe she’d have any difficulty finding a job once she had her Ph.D.

  Everything was great except for one thing. She just couldn’t get used to the ongoing surveillance. The cameras were everywhere, mounted in the hallways, the laboratories, the control room. Marion couldn’t see them in the bunk room or the bathroom she shared with Eileen Arrington, the only other female researcher on the team, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t there.

  Truth be told, the cameras made her self-conscious. They recorded everything. Of course, the only camera with a live feed to the world above was by the elevator. Connected to the security station on the ground floor, that hookup provided a quick way to communicate with the outside world in case of emergency.

  The rest of the cameras were for documentation, she’d been told. It eliminated a lot of the paperwork that otherwise Marion would have to do. That thought helped to make the surveillance bearable, at least. It had taken only a couple of hours on the first day of the project for her to realize that, as the only member of the team lacking a doctoral degree, she was expected to be servant, gofer, slave, chief cook, dishwasher and, of course, lab assistant for the other eight making up the team.

  Marion made a face at the camera in the hallway before punching in the security code on a pad to get into the control room. Hearing the click of the lock, she pulled open the door.

  Five of the researchers were already in there, gathered around a rectangular conference table in the center of the room for the morning update. Dozens of computer screens and accompanying electronic apparatuses were scattered around the spacious room. This was the place where most of them spent the day. They worked in overlapping shifts, but each had their own workstation. At any given time, six researchers were on duty and three were off. Glancing around the room, she realized she never ceased to be amazed at the way the personal peculiarities of each individual were so clearly demonstrated by the condition of their personal work space.

  Robert Eaton, the project manager, stopped what he was saying and looked up at Marion.

  She nodded. “The nine containers are in the test fixtures and set to go,” she told him, going around the table and taking her customary seat.

  Marion was part of the team, but she wasn’t one of them. The hierarchy was clear. The rest sat in their personal faux-leather rolling office chairs with the comfortable cushions. She sat on the single folding metal chair placed at the corner of the conference table. That was her chair and God forbid she should sit in anyone else’s.

  Eaton motioned to the man sitting to his right. “Arin, why don’t you start the countdown?”

  Arin Bose had an aversion to walk
ing, due in part to his three-hundred-plus pounds. Holding his omnipresent Cal Tech coffee mug steady on his belly, he wheeled his chair backward to his station and began tapping on one of his keypads to start the sequencing.

  Marion looked up at the three-dimensional fracture-mechanics analysis on the projector screen. They’d been looking at a rotating image of a pressurized nuclear-reactor container ring. Currently, the smallest commercially mass-produced reactors were between ten feet and fifteen feet in diameter and were used on smaller naval ships. In the team’s experiments, however, size was a major factor. The difference with their ring was that its diameter was about the same as a one-gallon paint can.

  “Here are the characteristics of the nine identical test samples,” Eaton continued, reading the file, journal number, date and time for the sake of the cameras before motioning to Marvin Sheehan, the metallurgist at the other end of the table.

  Sheehan’s thin frame straightened in the chair, looking like a runner ready to sprint. The man adjusted his spectacles, his excitement shining through the thick lenses.