Read The Black Silent for Free Online

disconnected. It happened all the time on the island. "Hello, hello .. ." She tried for a minute and gave up.
    "Was it Ben?" Sam asked.

    He must be on a Russian spy ship.
    "Yeah, but he disappeared. I just caught a few words, but he sounded stressed. Maybe things aren't going well in the lab. It's past lunch. I think I'll take him something to eat and see how he is. Maybe after, we can have a cup of coffee."
    "I'll be here," Sam said, walking back to his chair.
    Haley turned to leave.
    "Say, Haley," he said as she left. She paused and turned. "Give me a call and let me know that everything's okay with Ben."
    She nodded and left.
    Haley parked in the lot behind Oaks, the building that housed Ben's office and lab.
    Clouds were now starting to blow across the sky and making intermittent showers in the distance. At the moment the rain clouds formed a dark band up Lopez and all the way to Orcas, maybe beyond. Over on the far side of San Juan Channel, it looked like heavy rain.
    She wrapped her coat around herself and walked through blowing leaves. Down the way, at the main building, she saw much more activity than she would have expected on the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving. At the gate she held a plastic card that Ben had given her up to the electronic detector and passed through a heavy revolving gate.
    Months ago Garth Frick had taken her original key card with great fanfare. That had been the final humiliation.
    Haley knew that she needed to be careful here. She didn't really like coming to Sanker.
    Those old feelings of self-doubt threatened her every time she walked in the place.
    Worse, if she were caught inside, Frick would seize the key card that Ben had loaned her for just such occasions. Fortunately, Ben's fellow scientists, although mostly against her, really weren't the sort of people to fight over entry privileges and they had ignored her on the few times that she had come. Their shunning only added to the pain.
    She walked through some attractive gardens, with some artificial ponds and flowing water, and up to the glass revolving door, where she used the card again. Downstairs things appeared empty. As she mounted the stairs, she looked from a lower-floor lab's open door, through the window, and onto a small garden area. She saw a man running across the front of the building, apparently headed for the forest. That was strange.
    Coming back down the stairs, she walked into the waterfront lab space and looked to the right, down the building. Sure enough, she saw a couple of men putting up yellow tape. Immediately she thought of the crime scenes seen on TV She went back and ran up the stairs. The halls were half-dark, the labs all silent. Turning around, she looked for a sign of someone, anyone. Nothing. As she walked down the hall toward Ben's office and lab, shadows and dark corners and the occasional watchman making the rounds replaced her memories of cheery, collegial greetings and chats and the perpetual movement of people.
    The lights were off in the organics lab too. She turned them on. What she saw was appalling, as if someone had gone on a rampage. Had something happened to Ben?
    "Hello?"
    She jumped, badly startled by a sound. It was Frick, behind her, leaning against the doorway.
    Garth Frick looked the part of an unpleasant cop. He smoked small cigars and told jokes, but his cadaverously wiry body expressed menace that outweighed any efforts at geniality. Frick's hair was black, drawn back and tied in a small ponytail. His sallow skin matched the gaunt look of his frame and his crooked teeth—a man who looked fit, lethal, and unwell all at once.
    "Where's Ben?" she asked.
    "Come with me." He walked up to her and put his hand in the small of her back, as if she were a girlfriend. She removed his hand, but he only chuckled. He led her to the storage room.
    She followed a short distance behind. "Where are we going?"
    "Relax," Frick said. "I want to show you something."
    "No." She stopped at the door.
    He