by Rachel Caine
Riley knew what she was doing, even if Joe wouldn’t have; they exchanged nods, and Joe went on checking their downed enemies for pulses. He looked up when he reached the last one and shook his head. “Okay, officially it’s a bloodbath, and ladies, I am a little creeped out,” he said. “Time to get the hell on the road. We’ve just become public enemies.”
Bryn agreed. There were two menacing-looking trucks outside belonging to Jane’s people, but she had no doubt they’d be jacked up with GPS; stealing them was a nonstarter, unless she wanted to lead Jane right to them. “Let’s go.”
On the way out, though, she picked up the phone and dialed 911. “Seven gunmen dead at the Underground Salt Museum,” she said. “Two security guards alive but in need of assistance below.” She hung up as soon as she was sure the operator had gotten the information, and joined Riley and Joe, already halfway across the parking lot.
They headed out on foot.
There was no real cover out here, but they used what there was—trees, mostly, and some ditches. They intersected the main road, and looking back toward the museum, Bryn spotted a black SUV heading toward them at high speed. The timing was nearly perfect.
The SUV barely hit the brakes long enough for the three of them to pile in.
Brick looked up from his map as Bryn slammed the door shut, and the truck accelerated smoothly forward. “Any problems?”
“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Riley said. Joe didn’t say anything, but there was a tight muscle in his jaw. He hadn’t liked any of that, but he was professional enough to keep it to himself. “Any sign of pursuit?”
“Jane’s people are converging,” Brick said, “but they split up chasing the other vehicles. The ones you killed back at the museum would have been in charge of this side of the box.”
So, he knew there had been trouble, and the question had just been to establish how fast they’d lie to him. A test they’d failed, of course. Riley’s gaze brushed over Bryn’s, and she saw the FBI agent was aware of that, too. “Sorry,” Riley said. “But I meant what I said. We handled it.”
“You’re leaving a messy trail of bodies,” he pointed out. “And some of them were back at that train, and might point straight to me. So excuse me if I’m not feeling the love and trust right now.”
“Are we breaking up, Brick? Because I’d like to keep my engagement shotgun,” Joe said. He sounded flippant, but he wasn’t. The atmosphere inside the truck was grim and tense, and there was a moment when it felt like things might come to violence.
And then Brick smiled. A false smile, but a signal he was willing to let it go. “Date night’s not over yet, Joe,” he said. “I’ll let you hang on to it for a while. But fair warning: don’t you ever lie to me again, any of you, or this ride ends. Got me?”
“Yes, sir,” Bryn said. Riley was a little late, but she nodded, and so did Joe. “Sorry. It’s been a little bit more than we bargained for, and we thought we knew what we were getting.”
“No plan ever survives the first engagement,” Joe said. “The great ones are the ones who can change the plan and keep moving toward the objective. We’re doing it, Bryn. Chin up.”
She forced a smile, one she didn’t much feel, and closed her eyes for a while, as the SUV rocketed toward the next destination.
* * *
Surprisingly—and menacingly—there were no further attacks on them, all the way to Wichita, and then to Kansas City. No one mentioned it, but they all took it for an ominous sign. Still, maybe it meant that lack of military support had knocked the props from under Jane’s response plans, and losing so many foot soldiers so early had forced her to reassess her strategy.
Bryn hoped for that, anyway. But she didn’t count on it.
Brick’s SUV made some turns once they’d entered suburbia, and pulled into an industrial area—aging, mostly deserted, filled with unrentable factory space and weeds. There was another SUV waiting there, engine idling.
“Right,” Brick said. “It’s been nice, but this concludes our business arrangement. Riley, love you—don’t call me again. It ain’t worth it.”
“I owe you for the SUV,” Riley said, and offered her hand. He shook it, and smiled.
“You owe me a lot more than that, and it’ll be on the bill,” he said. “Vehicle’s fully stocked, clean, can’t be traced back to any of you. It’s got a laptop in it that’s clean, too. If you need more than what’s there, I hope you’re as resourceful as you are lucky.” He offered his hand to Joe next, and they shook solemnly. “Job offer’s open anytime, man.”
Joe nodded. “Good to work with you.”
Last, he focused on Bryn, and she said, “You won’t sell us out, will you?”
He laughed, but oddly enough, he didn’t take offense. “I get bought, I stay bought,” he said. “If somebody hires me to take you out in a year, that’s a different thing, but I’m not going to change into the other team’s jersey right now. And I promise, nobody in my organization will sell you out.”
“Okay,” she said, and took a deep breath. “One more thing. Could you check on my family? I’m worried Jane might come after them as leverage. I’ll pay.”
His eyebrows twitched, just a little, and he was silent for a minute, then said, “Your relatives are just normal folks?”
“Normal is a stretch. I have an aunt with four thumbs. But they’re not involved in any of this, and I’d like to keep it that way if I could.”
He thought about it for a moment, then said, “I’ll look into it. Fair warning: I may not take the job. But I’ll consider it, and if I don’t, I will let you know what’s happening with them. Deal?”
“Deal,” she said, and they shook on it. “Thank you, Brick. I’m sorry we met like this.”
“Yeah, me too. I might like you otherwise, sunshine.”
She nodded, grabbed the backpack he’d given them before, and bailed out. As she, Riley, and Joe walked toward the other vehicle, the driver of it got out and crossed in the opposite direction, like a prisoner exchange. It was all done silently and efficiently, and by the time Joe had taken his place behind the wheel, and Bryn in the front passenger seat, Brick’s vehicle was already cruising smoothly out of the parking lot. One quick turn, and it vanished.
“Suddenly I feel jilted,” Joe said, and put the truck in drive. “Strap in, ladies. Bumpy ride ahead. Bryn, navigate me.”
She’d already found the address that Pansy had sent, and punched it into the truck’s GPS positioning system. “It’s five miles away,” she said.
“Outstanding. We don’t have to wonder long what kind of reception we’ll get.”
He pulled the truck out to the street and followed the map’s glowing directions. Bryn took deep breaths and looked out; it was late afternoon, sliding toward evening, and traffic was light in this area even during rush hour—whatever rush hour meant, in Kansas City. Around them, people were living normal lives, even if normal life here in this part of town involved pushing a rusty shopping cart and scavenging from trash cans.
Speaking of that . . . Bryn hated to do it, but she grabbed her backpack, unzipped it, and took out one of the tubes of lukewarm hamburger meat. “We’d better power up,” she said to Riley, who nodded. Riley sliced open the tube with a knife, and took a handful of the raw beef. Bryn made a face and plunged her own fingers in; it felt . . . gross. But the smell hit her in a wave, and woke an insane tsunami of red-hot hunger that made her jaw ache, and suddenly, she was shoveling the slippery meat into her mouth and chewing, and the taste was like ambrosia and honey, like the best and rightest food in the world.
She ate four handfuls of it, then forced herself to stop. Riley took an extra. There wasn’t much left in the tube.
Bryn wiped her mouth and sat back, and caught Joe staring at them. The expression on his face wiped out to impartiality, but there was no doubt that he’d found what he’d just seen disturbing, at the very least.
“Sorry,” she said, and swallowed the taste of iron and meat. “Bette
r to go in full strength.”
“Copy that,” he said, and put the truck in gear without another word.
The elation the meat brought with it was unsettling. Despite that, Bryn felt sad and disoriented, and realized that it wasn’t so much for herself—she’d given up hope that she’d come out of this in any way normal—but for the world around her that had no idea it was on the verge of change. Because change it would; it wouldn’t have a choice. Whatever happened, even if they miraculously stopped the Fountain Group dead in its tracks, word about Returné would begin to creep out. People would seek it out of desperation and pain and anguish. And someone, somewhere would meet that need.
It would turn clinging to life into a drug-addicted plague.
She blinked as Joe steered the truck to a stop, and looked around. “We’re here,” he said, and nodded ahead. “See that building? That’s the address. Call me crazy, but it doesn’t exactly look like the high-dollar establishment I was expecting from these guys.”
It was a clinic. A free clinic, one of those charity operations that served the down and out and disenfranchised. Bryn felt a sudden sweep of chill, as she thought about the sick, old people who’d been used so cruelly at their supposedly safe memory care unit by the Fountain Group. “They like to pick off the weak,” she said. “Use them. This is a place they might find attractive.”
“Or maybe it’s a person we’re looking for,” Riley said, leaning forward. “Call Pansy.”
Bryn dialed the burner phone, and it rang three times before Pansy picked up, sounding breathless. “If you’re calling to offer me low rates on my credit card, it’s not a good time,” she said.
“It’s me,” Bryn said. “Everything all right?”
“That all depends on your definitions,” Pansy said. “Manny’s come out of his bunker, so that’s good. Your sister is bored out of her skull, which is bad. Liam is making amazing meals out of our food stores, and did you know he could cook? I think we might keep him. Oh, and we’re completely surrounded, and Jane’s people are trying to dig us out.”
Bryn took in a sharp breath and looked at Joe. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Sure. Nothing we can’t handle,” Pansy said. “Not if you can do your job and get this thing resolved within the next week, anyway. That’s about how long it’ll take them to break in, we think. What do you need?”
“We’ve reached the address you sent us to. What are we looking for?”
“All I was able to get was a last name: Ziegler. He, or she, was specifically named in Fountain Group comm that we decrypted. But I don’t know what role this person plays, only that he seems highly involved.” There was a shout on Pansy’s end of the phone, and her sunny tone grew brisk. “Okay, Manny’s calling, gotta run. Good luck, Bryn.”
“You too,” she said, but Pansy was already gone. Bryn shook her head, folded the phone, and relayed the information to her two remaining allies.
“Well,” Riley said, “I’m the logical choice to go collect intel. My new look fits in.”
She was right; the punk esthetic she’d put on would probably blend better than either Joe or Bryn could. “Keep your phone on,” Joe said. “We’ll be fifteen seconds away.”
Riley nodded, concealed the handgun under her shirt at the back of her pants, and bailed out of the van. She walked the short block, hands in the pockets of her jacket and head down, with slow, wandering steps.
If Bryn hadn’t known who she was, she’d have missed her altogether. “She’s good,” she said.
“Surprised?”
“A little.”
“By the time she reaches the door, she’ll already have a backstory worked out for her character, and she’ll have some specific medical problem that fits in with what they normally see.”
“But she won’t be sick.”
“Doesn’t matter. A lot of people coming into these places aren’t, they just want drugs. It’s pretty much foolproof,” Joe said. Just then, Bryn’s phone rang, and she put it on the console between them and pressed the speaker button. “Riley, you’re on, we’re here.”
Riley must have been holding the phone to ear while standing at some sort of reception desk, because she said, “Hold on,” and then, “Yeah, I need to see a doc. My back hurts real bad.”
The receptionist sounded muffled and world-weary, but clear enough. “Fill in these forms here. Have you been before?”
“Yeah, I saw Doc—um, Ziegler, maybe?”
“Dr. Ziegler’s here,” the receptionist said. “Take a seat. We’ll call you.”
Riley’s clothes rustled, and then she said in a low voice, “I’m on the list. Will redial when they call me back.”
“Riley, no, don’t hang up—” But it was too late, and Bryn was talking to a dial tone. “Dammit.”
“She’s trying to save on battery power,” Joe said. “It’s a clinic. Could be an hour before she sees anybody but homeless dudes and crying kids.”
“It could be seconds before they drag her off, if Ziegler was a hot name,” Bryn said. “Right?”
“Not arguing that, but we have to let this play out. It ain’t Riley’s first prom.”
“Maybe not, but this is the Fountain Group, and they’re not playing, Joe.”
He thought about it for a second, then sighed and nodded. “Okay, you win. Check that first aid kit there for bandages.”
“Uh—okay?” She opened the kit built into the wheel well and pulled out a roll of gauze. “This?”
“Yep, that’ll do. Spool some off and get ready.”
“For what?”
“This,” he said, and pulled out his combat knife from a wrist sheath. Before she could ask what he was about to do, he sliced a cut in his forehead, above the eyebrow. It was about half an inch long, but the blood immediately sheeted out down his face in a shiny red stream, pooling around his eyes, snaking down his chin and pattering in thick drops on his shirt. It kept coming, a steady red rain, and she was mesmerized by it. Glad I ate, she thought, because the smell of the blood tantalized.
“Old fighter trick,” he said. “You can give me the gauze now.”
She blinked, flinched, and handed it over with guilty haste. He pressed it to his forehead and said, “How do I look?”
“Gruesome,” she said.
“Excellent. I’m just going to lurk. This cut’ll seal itself in about thirty minutes; all I need is a couple of butterfly bandages and a cleanup, but it gives me an excuse to sit and watch Riley.”
“Be careful,” she said.
“My phone will be on,” he said. “You hear me say the word wife, get your ass in there, because something will be on fire. Probably me.”
She nodded, and then Joe got out and walked toward the clinic. Like Riley, he did a good job of selling his distress, but instead of looking like someone in need of a fix, he walked fast, a little unsteadily, like a man urgently in need of help.
Her phone rang when he was still outside the door, and when she put it on speaker he said, “Going in, radio silence.”
She listened as he did the same exchange with the receptionist, who sounded just as disinterested with a bloody man as she did with drug-seekers, though at least she asked him a few more triage questions. He sold it just enough to need to see a doctor but not enough to be rushed through to the front of the line, and Bryn heard him settle into a chair. “In place,” he said in a low voice. “Riley’s secure. . . . Wait one.”
In the distance, Bryn heard a voice calling a name she didn’t recognize, but Joe muttered, “She’s going back. Hang on. Stepping it up.”
He must have stood up, because she heard him say, in a louder voice, “Hey, can I get some help here? I feel kinda—”
And then there was a loud, concussive thud, as if he’d keeled over and hit the floor.
Bryn resisted the urge to speak, but she quickly armed herself with a handgun and extra ammo, and got out of the vehicle. She took the keys with her, and locked it, since there were weapons inside she
didn’t want to see walking away in the hands of scavengers. Then she faded into the shadows of a doorway, well out of range of the fading daylight, and watched the clinic’s brightly lit entrance.
She heard sounds and mumbling that signaled Joe being escorted to the treatment area, she guessed; within about thirty seconds he was professing that he was fine, and they must have left him alone because he muttered, “In the back. Riley’s got a bed across from me, but she’s curtained off. Will try to get a look.”
“Careful,” she whispered back, but she wasn’t sure he could hear her, and it was superfluous advice, anyway. He rose, and she heard the scrape of curtain rings as he exited his treatment area, then another similar sound as he entered Riley’s.
And then he said, in a slurred, confused voice, “Wait’ll I tell my wife about this!”
Wife.
She gasped in a breath and burst from cover, crossing the thirty feet to the clinic in seconds. The swinging door slammed open under the force of her outstretched arm, and she vaulted over the reception desk feet first, sending the openmouthed lady sitting there over backward in her rolling chair.
Bryn didn’t stop for more than an instant to get her bearings, and didn’t need to, because she could hear the sounds of things falling and breaking from her left. She charged that way, just in time to catch Joe as he staggered backward down the hall. His head wound was still bleeding, but he was now also sliced down the arm, and it looked deep. She steadied him and pushed him behind her, and took in what was in front of her.
It wasn’t good.
Riley was pinned down in her bed by a man in a lab coat armed with a scalpel. He was an older man, maybe in his early fifties, with a graying fringe of hair that clung to the curve of his skull and desperate dark eyes shining behind wire-frame glasses.
The scalpel was at Riley’s neck, pressing hard enough to draw a red bubble that burst and ran threads down her pale skin. She was absolutely still, but her eyes were open and burning.
