by Jamie Quaid
The argument in the corridor didn’t seem to be coming closer. Paddy probably had to stick with his comrades, so we couldn’t count on backup from him.
I’m a lawyer, not an engineer. I couldn’t figure out how the lousy door worked. Or if Paddy’s blueprints were all wrong or if he was just crazy. Frantically, I tried visualizing a door opening while muttering, “Open sesame,” and pounding the wall. Nothing happened, not even a pink iceberg. Not surprising. Door opening didn’t involve issues of justice, apparently.
“Stand back,” Schwartz whispered. “I’ve got it.”
I scuttled out from under the table and out of the way as Schwartz slid back a well-oiled door, with lab table attached. Devious. And obviously designed for secrecy. I’m in favor of an everything-in-the-open policy myself. Secrecy just isn’t healthy. It means someone is doing something they shouldn’t be.
Before Schwartz could order me to stay behind or lab coats could show up to ask what we were doing, I dashed through the opening, hitting the wall in search of a light switch. Found it in one. An ecologically sound fluorescent bulb whimpered on, giving off just enough light for me to see the stairwell.
At the bottom of the stairs, I cursed when faced with green concrete blocks and the same Lab A and Lab B layout as upstairs. Unimaginative bastards. Was it my imagination, or did I feel the rumble of machinery?
Not wanting to imagine being blown to hell while we were so close to it, I hastily took the A side. Schwartz turned left to the B side.
I opened every unmarked door in my path. No machinery. I wondered if I could visualize disintegrating bombs but figured inanimate objects were probably not on Saturn’s duty roster.
The room below Paddy’s was a supply closet down here. I debated dropping my dangling gas mask and donning a lab coat and surgical mask but figured I wouldn’t fool anyone without a more official badge than my visitor’s one.
As I approached the main lab, I heard more voices. Damn, we’d known it wouldn’t be easy. I was supposed to just locate Bill and Sarah and scram before anyone knew we were here. There was no way I could throw them over my shoulders and carry them out. Especially not with people guarding them.
My mind churned as I explored farther down the corridor, past the main lab. Nobody came out to ask me what I was doing. I figured I could always tell them I’d gotten turned around and lost. What could they do, call a senator’s guest a liar?
Well, yeah, if they recognized me. Last I’d heard, they’d labeled me Max’s bitch. Oh well.
I hit pay dirt on the last door, the one on the same side as Lab A. Head Honcho’s office, I diagnosed, even in the dark. Big shiny desk, lots of plaques and certificates—and a big old two-way mirror overlooking the well-lit lab.
Well, looka there, would you? I mentally imitated John Wayne, even though the Duke would never have come close to a setup like this one.
No explosive chemical tanks, but through the mirror I could see lab tables of unidentifiable equipment and an array of computer monitors. In between the tables, they’d hastily erected a row of cots—six that I could see. Instead of nurses or physicians walking among the patients, people in lab coats monitored machinery attached to each comatose body. They whispered among themselves as they recorded heartbeats and blood pressure. All the patients lay still as death, even when one of the coats prodded and pricked them, testing for reflexes.
Then I noticed a particularly luscious tech lady patting Bill’s springy ginger hair. He might not mind waking up to that.
I couldn’t immediately find Sarah, until I noted a curtain erected in a far corner. Outside the curtain was what might have been a portable blood-testing table, with more lab coats huddling around it. Gotcha! Maybe I couldn’t save the world from Acme, but I intended to save it from Sarah. The world wasn’t prepared to see whatever was in her DNA.
I rummaged through Honcho’s desk, hunting for anything that screamed “official.” I collected a tablet computer, a remote-control device, and a name badge with a purple frame. I slid my visitor’s badge into the fancy frame. Then I returned to the supply closet in the hall for a lab coat and a surgical mask. I clipped the remote device to the coat pocket to complete my appearance of authority.
And then, as a last-minute thought, I grabbed a handful of rubber gloves and paper slippers and shoved them in one of the coat’s pockets. Sarah couldn’t thank me, but they might make our escape easier.
As I emerged from the closet, Schwartz strode down the corridor in my direction, narrowing his eyes at my getup. In his spiffy blue uniform and shiny badge, dangling his gas mask, he was my final piece of armor.
I gestured at a folded gurney in the supply closet. “We’re getting Sarah out now.”
It hurt like hell choosing psycho Sarah over my good friend Bill, but we could only move one patient, and Sarah was the loose cannon. Sometimes I’m rational, even if I resent it.
Before Leo could give me any male guff, I struggled with the gurney hinges, giving the good detective something more useful to do than question or complain. He finished unlatching it while I played with the tablet.
I couldn’t afford fancy tech, not even a smart phone, but I grasped the basics. I played with the keyboard until I hit the right button, and Head Honcho’s preprogrammed password fed itself in. Voilà. I was sooo keeping this.
Not if Schwartz could help it. He was still eyeing me suspiciously. Hiding my fear and my larcenous distraction, I straightened my lab coat, made certain my fancy badge was visible, placed the tablet in the crook of my arm, and marched into the lab across the green hall, a uniformed policeman pushing a gurney trailing behind me.
The coats inside the lab glanced up in surprise. I rudely ignored them and gestured at the curtained area. “Hurry,” I ordered brusquely. “We don’t have time to waste.”
Bless Schwartz’s pea-pickin’ heart, he followed orders as if he were made for them. Ex-military, I surmised. One of these days, I’d have to get to know him better instead of just lusting after his bod. I handed him the rubber gloves and gestured for him to steal Sarah while I stepped between him and the huddle of coats.
“What are you doing?” one of the female lab coats demanded. “Who are you?”
She had a long syringe in her hand. I remembered those needles with a shudder. What did she have in this one?
“Just following orders,” I said in my most officious voice. “Senator Vanderventer said this was a matter of national security.”
Max would probably kill me, but the coats stepped back, out of my way, to consult with each other. Someone pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. Not good.
“I’ll need your names,” I commanded, forcing cell phone guy to stop what he was doing and look at me. “The senator is grateful for your promptness in an emergency situation. He will see that you receive appropriate recognition for your help with this very dangerous matter.”
I might have been shaking in my shoes, but I didn’t get to be a lawyer by being stupid. Their ears perked right up. The syringe disappeared back into the pocket. I scribbled names in the tablet with a stylus, nodded curtly, and gave them another officious speech.
After taking one wistful look at poor Bill, I deposited the tablet in my lab coat pocket and marched off after Schwartz. All I could see of Sarah was a sheet covering most of her body, thank goodness. We didn’t need to attract any more attention than necessary. If Schwartz had pulled the gloves and slippers over her chimp appendages, she would be less conspicuous.
I couldn’t damn innocent scientists so I could save Bill. Wouldn’t it be convenient if I could wield constructive instead of destructive justice? Experimentally, I whispered as we hurried down the hall, “Bless Sarah and Bill and let them wake up.”
Nothing happened.
“Pretty please, Saturn? Just let them wake up?”
Nada.
Maybe I needed red rage to reach Saturn, but at the moment, I was too terrified to be angry. I never wanted to enter these bowels of hell again. Sc
ientists with needles and hidden cellars were a Frankensteinian death trap if I ever saw one.
Leo had the gurney halfway down the hall and was hitting buttons to summon a hidden elevator he must have discovered in his search, when we heard a shout.
“Wait a minute!” We heard footsteps pounding from the other end of the corridor—just as the elevator door opened.
This was the reason I hadn’t dared rescue Bill, too. He was too heavy for running like hell.
I glanced at Schwartz. He nodded and, clenching his jaw, shoved the gurney into the elevator. Remembering his request that I not get him fired, I hit the up button and prayed to escape from the antiseptic depths of hell. Not that I expected prayers to be answered.
7
“Gas mask.” I pointed at Schwartz’s, reminding him to cover his face. “Security clearance.” I held up my purple badge.
I could tell he got my message because he scowled as he adjusted his mask, and I whipped out my phone. Did cell reception even reach through this bloody building? Better yet, would the Zone let me call out?
I hit Andre’s number. I got voice mail for a cheese shop in Wisconsin. Worried that I was about to blow this, I tried to think of some way to carry Sarah out of there without better transportation than Leo’s cop car.
She seemed pretty pale, and my gut knotted. What had they done to her? She was the only person remotely like me that I knew, and I felt more than a little protective. Schwartz had managed to pull the gloves over her paws, because one dangled outside the sheet. I had just carefully tucked it under when my phone played “Here Comes the Judge.”
Unhappy with the inappropriate interruption, I seriously considered getting the hell out of the Zone if this electronic comedy routine continued. Wondering how Acme operated computers if I couldn’t even use a phone, and realizing that I could not not answer the Judge’s call if I wanted to still remain a lawyer, I punched the button just as the elevator doors opened on the main floor. No welcoming committee. Yet.
My employer’s secretary spoke in clipped tones in my ear. “Clancy, Judge Snodgrass needs you to research a case this afternoon. Can you be here by two?”
I glanced at my watch as we rushed the gurney down the main hall of offices. It was after one already, and it was just research. On a weekend. “We’re having a bit of a public emergency down here, Jill,” I told her. I knew she wouldn’t like it. She didn’t like me. She liked men and didn’t think women ought to be attorneys—or near her favorite judge. But I needed this job. “Can this wait until tomorrow?”
“I’m not coming in on a Sunday,” she said acidly. “And you don’t have clearance for office keys. If you want this job, you’ll be here by two.”
She cut me off. I generously refrained from damning her to hell, but for a minute there, she hung on the precipice.
One more stressor added to my day. You can do it, Clancy.
A couple of security goons in uniform were coming at us, looking mean. Since they hadn’t hurt anybody, I couldn’t wish them to Hades or anywhere else any more than I could Jill. Apparently, my attempts at anger management were working. A pity, that.
I kept talking loudly into my phone as if it hadn’t gone dead. “Yes, Senator. Of course, Senator. Is the ambulance outside yet? Your cousin is in good hands, I assure you. We’ll let you know as soon as we arrive.”
I stalked past the guards as if they weren’t there. Schwartz stoically propelled the gurney. If anyone could read my pulse, they’d know I was running on terrified and pushing a heart attack, but I’d had a lifetime’s practice faking it.
“Wait a minute!” one of the guards shouted as we passed.
I held my purple badge over my shoulder, waggled it, and kept on walking, talking to my imaginary friend.
Behind us, I heard them consulting some authority on their phones. Schwartz muttered incomprehensible curses and pushed faster. Getting arrested wouldn’t do either of us any favors.
We burst into the reception area at a full run. The receptionist glanced up in surprise. I shouted, “Emergency!” and hurried ahead to open the doors.
The clowns in uniforms spilled into the lobby just as we hightailed it out. Without a word, Schwartz hoisted our patient over his shoulder, abandoned the gurney, and raced for his car.
Whatever worked.
The worst of the pink and green cloud had dissipated, leaving a thin film of pink confetti particles everywhere it had touched. Schwartz’s cop car had been parked elsewhere before the explosion, so it was relatively unscathed in comparison to the parking lot and streets. I opened the back door, Leo practically flung Sarah across the backseat, and we both dived for the front just as the guards tottered after us. They were on the brink of corpulent, not joggers by any stretch of the imagination, and they were struggling with gas masks as they ran.
No way was I letting them have Sarah. Thank Saturn, our Zone cop apparently felt the same.
Schwartz gunned his engine, backed up, swung the car around, and hit sixty before he reached the gate. The guard didn’t dare close it, especially after Leo turned on the siren. I do love a siren.
The police barricade allowed one of their own to pass but blocked the path of the Keystone Cops rattling after us in their security truck.
“Win one for the Duke!” I crowed, pumping my fist in the air. We rocked!
Leo sent me a strange look. Obviously, he didn’t watch old westerns. Taking my triumph where I could find it, I checked on our patient. Despite all the commotion, Sarah lay still as death. That worried me, but I was no doctor. I’d done all I could do. Except rescue Bill. That burned. Triumph was fleeting.
I glanced out the back window, but the gates had closed. There wouldn’t be any going back in. Telling myself I wasn’t responsible for anyone but myself, and that I had to focus on keeping my job, I clenched my teeth and plotted how to reach the judge’s office by two.
Leo took a right off Edgewater away from the harbor, as if we really were heading for a hospital. Once out of the Zone, he switched off the siren, swung down a garbage-strewn alley only a policeman would dare drive, and maneuvered us back to the hill and Andre’s warehouse.
I glanced at my watch. One thirty. The judge’s office was almost half an hour away, depending on traffic. Sarah needed help I couldn’t give her. I had to let others save the day.
“I love and adore you, Leo,” I said appreciatively, “but I have to run or get canned. If I bake you a cake, can you take it from here?”
“I can take it from here without the cake,” he said grumpily, parking behind the warehouse. “And if anyone took my license number and I get called to the carpet, you better bring out the big guns.”
Meaning Dane/Max. I didn’t want to ask favors of a man I could barely talk to, but I nodded. “You got it, big boy.” I leaned over, smooched his bristly cheek, and scooted out before he could react. He hadn’t had time to shave or shower this morning, and he smelled like hot male—not a bad scent, all things considered. I tried not to think what I smelled like after a night of partying and a morning of running on terrified. I needed superhero deodorant.
Dashing for my Harley across the street, I ran through a mental checklist: Milo safe upstairs, messenger bag over my shoulder, blazer and khakis okay for a weekend, ditch lab coat . . . keep computer tablet!
I’d apparently shoved the pretty toy in my pocket while running. Ooooh, cool. Who needed the devil to reward me? I’d rewarded myself for keeping my head on straight.
I flung the lab coat into the shed my Harley leaned against, stuffed the tablet in my messenger bag, and roared off to the office.
Riding from the blacktopped industrial wasteland of the Zone, north on the interstate, and into the leafy suburbs of Towson was like leaving the Sahara for an oasis. They had trees here. Even in September there were buckets of flowers around lampposts and on doorsteps. Businesses thrived. Traffic clogged every major artery. I took a few stone-fence-lined back roads, then zipped my bike down the yellow stripes of t
he main thoroughfare until I reached the county court building.
I dashed up the stairs and, out of courtesy to my associates, stopped in a washroom. My reflection over the sinks glittered with pink. Damn.
It was already two. I didn’t have time to do much. I doused my armpits, buttoned up, and hit the office at two after two.
Judge Snootypants and his secretary, Miss Goody Two-shoes, glanced up at my entrance. Both donned identical frowns.
“Industrial accident,” I said casually. “You’ll hear about it on the news. What’s the case and where would you like me to start?”
“Reginald is already in the library. Bring us some coffee and file the briefs in my office, will you?”
Okay, here’s where anger management is a good thing. I didn’t visualize the old fart leaping off tall buildings—that’s pretty good, right?
I’d been filing briefs and carrying coffee for weeks. The only time I’d been allowed in the library was to return books. I was damned good, and they were underutilizing my services, not to mention pissing me off big-time by getting me down here under false pretenses.
I practically saluted and marched off to the break room. I’d spent twenty-six years working toward this goal, and I refused to blow it. I was going to be the best damned lawyer in Maryland, at the very least. I just had to prove myself.
Proving that I could pour coffee was not a good starting place. I noted the books on the library table when I delivered the cups, glanced at the names on the file folders, and suggested another case file they might want to check out. Reginald all but snarled at me. Reginald was a Yalie who’d worked for the judge for the past year. He wore a tie even on Saturday and had his hair styled once a week. Jill adored him. I had despised him on sight.
His Honor nodded at my suggestion and told me to pull the book.
I opened it to the case mentioned, set it in front of Snodgrass, and sauntered out in my secondhand blazer, shedding pink glitter across the carpet. I would prove myself one casebook at a time if I had to.
