The Eastern Bay Greenhouse had closed three years ago, and no one had taken care of the plants inside it when the owners shuttered its doors. Consequently, the plants had continued to grow unchecked. Of course, over time, they’d all eventually died and dried out. Now, the brown stalks and intertwined vines tentacled up to the ceiling, nearly filling some of the glassed-in enclosures. When you looked at them, it brought a touch of cognitive dissonance: the buildings are greenhouses; you expect green life. Here, you found only brown death.

Six structures stood on the property: five sprawling, abandoned greenhouses that’d been built decades ago, and one recently renovated office building that was finished not long before the business closed its doors for good.

Despite their age, each of the tent-shaped, thick-glassed greenhouses still had its ventilation fans. Three still had their climate control units in place. Garden tools, scattered pots for the plants, and stacks of replacement windows lay stored at the end of one of the greenhouses.

In some cases, the buildings’ glass panes had shattered and fallen in, and wedge-shaped shards of glass were still embedded in the soil of the dead plants that’d climbed and entwined their clinging death grip on the tall wooden stakes meant to guide their growth.

No one ventured onto the deserted, fenced-in property anymore. Six months ago, Blake had purchased it and found it a useful place to regroup when the heat was on inside the city.

Also, this was the location where the mannequins would be treated, as soon as the shipment of chemicals arrived from Phoenix. It’d taken some work, but the sprinkler system in one of the greenhouses had been reconfigured and retrofitted so that it could be used to spray down and prepare the silent ladies for shipment.

A group of eighty of them stood in two obedient lines, patiently awaiting their turn beneath the sprinklers. With a street value north of thirty grand per kilo, it was a sizable stash of Selzucaine.

More than enough to do the trick.

On its own, Selzucaine gave a powerful short-term high. But when it was treated with Tranadyl, things took a turn in a more permanent direction.

It was similar to when a chemist in the 1970s tried to create synthetic heroin and contaminated it with 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine, otherwise known as MPTP. It crossed the blood-brain barrier and metabolized into 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium, or MPP+, which caused the user to develop a severe form of Parkinson’s disease. Victims were completely conscious but unable to move. The user was trapped inside himself and was left knowing that he had imprisoned himself by his own decision.

Terrifying.

In this case, the user wouldn’t experience that specific result but, because of the interaction of the two drugs, would very likely slip into a coma. Or, the drug cocktail would prove fatal.