CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Celebrity Stalker
Back when the Dragon Genome Project wrapped up, a dozen startups were established, all of them vying to create a living creature from the recently assembled dragon genome. But Simon Redwood had a key advantage: access to a curated version of the dragon reference that was much higher quality than the public release. Yet even with that, the eggs he created from it were sterile. It seemed like no one would be able to bring the creature of myth to life.
Right up until Redwood built his Codex. That wire-and-plastic fire hazard ensconced at the heart of the God Machine made dragon eggs viable. I still hadn’t figured out how. Evelyn was fuzzy about the details.
My guess is that it had something to do with the epigenetic code—various chemical modifications of DNA that didn’t change its sequence, but controlled which genes were activated, and when. The epigenetic code was like Mother Nature’s special sauce: a series of subtle changes required for life. It would take a half-crazy genius to figure out how to replicate it.
After Robert Greaves had ousted him from the management team, Redwood basically took a leave of absence and retreated to his home out in the desert. That’s where I’d have to find him.
The problem, of course, was that no one seemed to know where he lived, and asking too many questions about him might draw attention.
Luckily, Simon Redwood’s status as a kind of celebrity meant I didn’t have to do all the legwork myself. I disabled the “safe search” options on my phone and plunged into the dark, obsessive corners of the internet.
Deep in a forum on celebrity stalking, I found my first clue: some nut calling herself “FutureMrsRedwood” had tracked down the man’s residence in Arrowhead Ranch. The post was a couple of years old, but that was about as warm a lead as I could get. A late-night, caffeine-fueled data-mining operation followed. To his credit, Redwood surfaced from the waters of insanity long enough to guard his privacy rather well. I couldn’t find a single property registered in his name in Arrowhead Ranch, nor anything with obvious ties to Reptilian Corporation.
I dug deeper.
Arrowhead Ranch’s elite, gated neighborhoods had evolved and expanded into a few distinct communities over the past two decades. The most desirable and exclusive of these was the Enclave. Roughly speaking, the cheapest house there cost about ten times what I’d paid for my condo. Yowza. Now, to the satellite imagery. God bless all those spy satellites with their high-resolution cameras. Twenty or thirty houses sprawled inside the Enclave’s luxurious borders. I pored over them, looking for something that fit my mental image of the old kook.
Most of them had the immaculately trimmed hedges and perfect landscaping that spoke to hired gardeners. Redwood wouldn’t have manicured lawns or sculpted stone lions. All of these did. Then I spotted a stone mansion set apart from the others, surrounded by rugged terrain in the southernmost edge of the Enclave. I’d almost missed it because there wasn’t even a driveway leading up to the house, just an old gravel road hardly wide enough for my Tesla. Between that, the haphazard landscaping, and the general feel of abandonment to the place, I figured I’d found the home of our company’s founder.
Who probably didn’t want to be found.
Next up, infiltration. Gated communities were fine and good until you had to reach someone on the other side. Quietly. The ironic thing, though, was that the gates only restricted vehicle access on the main road. They counted on the rugged desert terrain to deter anyone from trying to enter on foot. Fortunately, negotiating such terrain had recently become part of my skill set.
I parked the Tesla in a bank parking lot between a Mercedes and another Model S. I figured it’d be as safe there as anywhere else. Luxury car camouflage.
The Tesla wasn’t the only thing I wanted to keep out of sight. The courier’s jumpsuit I’d ordered from the internet was olive green—a recognizable corporate color that just happened to blend in with the desert landscape across the road. I tucked a narrow rectangular package—completely empty—under my arm and plunged down a narrow trail into the scrub-brush. My GPS watch started beeping, a soft, persistent tone. I had it on passive tracking mode, with Redwood’s house already plugged in. I wouldn’t even have to look at it—the beeps increased in frequency while I stayed on track.
On a difficulty scale, the buffer land around the Enclave scored closer to “picturesque” than “challenging.” Compared to some of the terrain I’d crossed for my geocaches, it was a walk in the park. Hell, I didn’t even need my hiking boots. What a relief that I’d not brought Octavius. He’d never let me live it down.
Stucco walls loomed ahead, and the beeping of my watch reached a fever pitch. I’d come within a hundred yards. I hit the reset button on my watch and skirted southeast. Where was the door? I was focused so much on it that I didn’t see the dragon until the last second. Its brown-and-green scales made it hard to see against the landscape.
“Whoa!” I froze. “Uh, hey there.”
The dragon made no reply but crouched with a jaguar’s readiness. Its dark eyes narrowed. That, and half a dozen other telltale signs told me this wasn’t one of our domesticated models.
It’s a prototype. Like one of the dragons Evelyn had shown me when I first interviewed at Reptilian Corporation. I forced myself to meet its gaze, then I backed off. Nice and slow. Hoping, praying that it wouldn’t follow. Its tongue flicked out once, twice. Then it rolled into a slow, steady step toward me.
I kept backing up and reached behind me to flail around for the boulder I’d just passed. If I slipped around it and out of view, I’d have a few seconds out of the dragon’s view to make a break for it. The only good thing about the wild prototypes is that they had short legs. They could run fast in one direction but weren’t good at turns. I might be able to zigzag away fast enough to reach the road.
My hand found the edge of the boulder. I edged around it, on the cusp of my break for safety. A flicker of movement from behind made me stop short. A second dragon crept into view, cutting off my escape and boxing me in with the first one. Almost like they planned it. Son of a bitch. I scooped up a fist-sized rock from the ground and tried to look threatening. They stared at me, tongue flicking in and out.
A whistle shattered the quiet of our little standoff. A human whistle. The dragons both cocked their heads at it, then bounded off in unison. Startled me doing it, too. I turned back toward the house, where a man in an honest-to-god brown bathrobe stumbled toward me on shaky feet. I watched in paralyzed fascination as he shuffled closer to me.
“The hell are you doing here?” he demanded. The bathrobe was stained and torn; it couldn’t be less than a decade old. But the grizzled white face rang familiar to me, as if seeing someone I’d known in elementary school.
Oh my God. It’s him.