“Most of the women I date, iiv>
She shrugged, and holy God, it hurt. “You should have put me on the bus to Anywhere, USA, while you had the chance.”
He tilted up her chin. “Too late. You’re under my skin.”
“Hello?” McCloud’s voice punched in from above, sharp with disapproval. “Get a fucking room, would you? Move it, people!”
Bruno dragged her up the hill. She didn’t really understand the words he said. It was the tone, a comforting, low-pitched hum that tingled in her ears, pulling her as firmly and gently as his hands did.
Put this hand here. This foot there. Stretch to the right, just a little farther, there you go. Good job . . .
It wasn’t that far in terms of distance, but it took a shaking eternity to creep sideways along the gorge wall.
Finally, they got to ground even enough for him to scoop her up like a sack of potatoes. She wrapped her arms around his neck. So glad he was still alive. All of them were. How incredibly improbable to have survived that.
He set her down on a stump near the bridge. McCloud held a big, scary-looking rifle in his arms. He looked her over, appraisingly.
“Not shot?” he asked. “Nothing broken?”
She shook her head. Torn, swollen, sprained, maybe, and bruised to a flipping pulp, but not shot or broken. “You guys?”
“Fine,” Bruno said. “Both lucky.”
She rubbed at the dirt and grit in her eyes. “Thanks for the sharpshooting,” she offered. “Saved my butt.”
Bruno jerked his thumb toward Sean. “That was all him,” he said brusquely. “I don’t have that kind of aim.”
“Oh. Um.” She blinked at McCloud. “Well. Thanks.”
He nodded gravely. “At your service.”
“And, ah . . .” She gestured toward the SUV. “Them?”
“Three are dead,” Bruno said. “Two of them had cell phones that blew up. I assume your guy is still alive down there, or we would have heard a kaboom from the creek. Assuming they all carry those fucking things. The driver didn’t.”
“Not a guy,” Lily said. “It was the nurse.”
Bruno looked baffled. “What nurse?”
“Miriam. My father’s nurse,” she explained. “At the mental hospital. She must have been the one who murdered him.”
McCloud grunted. “This is so fucked up. Let’s get out of here.”
“They’re probably watching us from a satellite,” Lily said. “We can’t run from them.”
Bruno lifted his hand and gave the sky the finger. “Up your ass,” he said, mouthing the words with exaggerated care. “Let ’em watch.”
“We can’t leave unless we move their rig,” McCloud observed. “I can’t off-road here.”
“So we roll it off the road,” Bruno said.
Sean looked dubious. “They could blow us up.”
Bruno stared up at the sky. He held up a blackened, bloodied hand, felt the snowflakes swirling down. He looked at Lily.
“It’s nine miles to the nearest big highway,” he said. “They’d have all the time in the world to come and finish us off if we were on foot.”
McCloud nodded. He glanced at the SUV. “Flip a coin for it?”
“No,” Bruno said. “I’ll do it. You take Lily. Move back.”
Lily shot up off the stump, panicked. “No! Bruno, don’t, please—”
“Let’s get this done.” Bruno headed toward the SUV.
She burst into tears as McCloud led her away.
Bruno leaned over the dead driver, put the vehicle into reverse, and took off the emergency brake. He came around to the hood and pushed, shoving it off the edge and over. It slid, rolled, bounced, crashing through trees until it finally came to rest. Far, far down.
Sean and Lily walked to the edge of the road and looked down.
“Wow.” Sean sounded impressed. “That was stern.”
“I want the cops to be able to look at it,” Bruno said. “I don’t want those bastards to be able to retrieve it. And I don’t want that nurse bitch to have an easy ride. Let her hike in the snow if she’s still alive. Let’s go, before they come down on us.”
“Who the fuck is ‘they’?” Sean’s voice was harsh with frustration.
“If I knew, I’d cut the head off the snake and burn it,” Bruno said.
They took off the chain, hiked up the steep road to the cabin. Bruno bundled her into the back of Sean’s Jeep, then pushed her to the middle seat and got in himself, fastening the seat belt over her.
Sean’s bright gaze did not miss the proprietary way that Bruno pulled her close to lay on his shoulder. “Rest,” he said.
McCloud’s grin flashed. “If you can. I’m going to go way too fast for the driving conditions.”
“Punch it,” Bruno said fervently.
Lily’s head rocked back as the vehicle leaped forward.
Bruno leaned forward as they rattled and bounced. “Hey.”
“Yeah?” McCloud shouted back. “Speak up.”
“Thanks, for helping,” Bruno blurted. “Sorry. About before.”
McCloud slewed the vehicle around the hairpin curve and gunned the engine as soon as they were on the straight stretch. “Wait until we’re safe to thank me. I’ll enjoy it better when I can gloat.”
“Don’t wait,” Lily said. “Get it while you can.”
The men glanced at her. She looked back. Like it had to be said.
There wasn’t any safe, anymore. Ever again.
“Try her again,” King rapped out.
“I just did,” Hobart told him. “She’s not responding. And I can’t—”
“If I hear you say the words ‘I can’t’ one more time, I will pull up your Level Ten mortal command sequences right now. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.” Hobart’s frantic typing filtered through the microphone.
King stared at the large screen. There were insets on the side, one of which displayed Hobart’s pinched face. The agent who had been, along with Melanie, inexplicably left behind. The other insets were charts showing the vital signs of the four operatives who had gone on this ill-fated mission. Three were flatlined. The other was close.
His anger was crippling. It was difficult even to breathe, let alone think. He could not believe that mistakes this hug could be made by his own operatives. How in the
hell . . . ?
It made his brain hurt.
The rest of the screen was filled with a satellite image that showed a dense, waving mass of conifers. The microchip in Zoe’s clavicle blipped in a mass of rocks near a creek. She was not visible. Her chart showed an erratic heartbeat, a falling temperature. Manfred, Jeremy, and Hal were cooling fast. Three hundred million dollars, turned into buzzard bait. “Show me the view from Zoe’s com,” he barked.
“Yes, sir.” Desperate tapping, and the picture transformed into an indistinct blur. Rocks covered with waving fronds of fuzz.
Oh, for God’s sake. It was underwater. Of course Zoe was not answering her com. It had been dropped in the creek.
“Sir?” a timid voice offered. “Here is the coffee that you—”
“Get away from me while I’m busy,” he snarled at Julian, who was presenting the coffee and the plate of cookies dipped in dark chocolate.
Julian scuttled away. It occurred to King that he had, in fact, ordered the snack. But a special series trainee so close to the end of his training should have the sensitivity to intuit a good moment to serve it.
“Explain to me again why you and Melanie are in Tacoma, thumbs fully inserted up your asses, a six-hour drive away from this disaster.”
Hobart passed the buck. “Ah . . . ah . . . well, Zoe was team leader, and I . . . ah . . . she’d decided that speed was crucial, so she, ah . . . well, our intelligence indicated that McCloud was going to be—”
“Do not speak of intelligence,” King cut in. “That quality has not been demonstrated to me, certainly not by you. No one else available? What about Nadia? She’s had three times as much combat experience as you, Hal, or Jeremy. Why was she not on the team?”
“Uh . . . uh . . . well, Zoe assigned her to Aaro, and he—”
“Who the hell is Aaro?” he bellowed.
“An associate of the McClouds. He transported Ranieri and Parr to the cabin after the fight at the diner. Zoe wanted Nadia to plant tracking and spy software on Aaro’s phone, and the only way—”
“Planting
tracking software
took precedence over this mission? How far is she from the cabin? Patch her in to me immediately.”
“Um . . . there’s a problem. With Nadia.”
“What?” he roared.
“Well, uh . . . she’s dead.” Hobart’s voice was a miserable croak.
King went very cold. Several seconds ticked by. “Explain.”
“She, ah . . . her cell phone just exploded. Twenty minutes ago.”
King struggled for self-control. “It took you twenty minutes to come to the conclusion that this fact might be of interest to me?”
Hobart began a gabbling litany of excuses. King called up Nadia’s signal to see for himself. Sure enough. Flatlined. “Where is her body?”
Hobart hesitated. King exerted effort not to call Hobart’s Level Ten command sequences and make him stop using oxygen he did not deserve to breathe, since he had no brain cells to nourish.
“She was at the Justice Center, at Southwest Third Avenue,” Hobart said. “Her tag is moving now. I imagine she’s being transported to the county medical examiner.”
Another body in the ME’s office, keeping Reggie, Cal, Tomartin company. No way to clean up. No damage control. Again.
“Show me the satellite shot over Zoe again,” he said.
Waving conifers filled the screen. King stared at them in silence, as if he could find some pattern, some plan in the wintry forest.
Then he saw it. A torso, barely visible in camo fabric, emerging from under an overhanging cliff. Crawling out onto tumbled rocks.
Zoe struggled to her feet, stumbled toward the creek, and waded into the water. King winced as she lost her balance, splashing full length. She struggled upright, swaying. Lifting her face to the sky, her big, dark eyes imploring. She held the com. She lifted it to her ear.
“Patch her through to me,” he commanded.
The sound quality changed. He heard the static buzz, and beyond, birds, water, wind rushing in the device’s microphone.
“Zoe?” he asked, and then yelled. “Zoe! Do you hear me?”
“I’m ready.” Zoe’s voice was barely audible, a froglike croak.
“Ready for what?” he snapped, irritated.
She blinked up at the sky. “I failed you,” she said. “I’m ready.” She closed her eyes, waiting for her Level Ten death command.
The martyred look on Zoe’s ravaged face made King’s teeth grind. As if she could have it so easy. Watching Zoe die was a luxury he could not afford. For now. “No, Zoe,” he said sharply. “Get out of the water.”
She gaped at him, stupidly. It infuriated him. The one tool he had on the ground was blue-lipped, standing in icy water like a shit-brained lump. “Move, Zoe,” he commanded. “You must fix this.”
She stepped forward, fell to her knees. Icy water sloshed over her chest, her shoulder. She half crawled, half swam to the bank.
Hold the com to your ear, bitch. Do it.
She crawled onto the rocks, lifted the phone. Her ragged panting became audible.
“Zoe, listen to me.” He used the deep voice he’d assumed in DeepWeave audio, which Zoe had absorbed for hours every day as a child. “Take out the Melimitrex and inject it into your thigh.”
He was repeating instructions that had been drilled into her already, but he needed any excuse to keep her bound to the sound of his voice. Her hands shook violently, but she managed to pry the syringe out of the foam case. She flicked a drop from the needle. Tap, tap. She’d worked as a nurse, after all. She stabbed it into her thigh, through the waterlogged cloth, and flung her head back, baring her teeth.
He watched her vital signs. Melimitrex VIII was always a gamble, albeit a better one than it had been in the previous seven generations of the drug. It was the result of decades of trial and error. Calibrated to the individual’s height, weight, and body chemistry, each dose stimulated the glands with a brutal kick. Other components included a powerful painkiller and a mood enhancer similar to cocaine. He only administered that drug in the most dire of circumstances. Its success rate hovered around 60 percent. The fate of the unlucky 40 percent, well, suffice to say that it was painful to watch, and blessedly short.
Not that he had any choice. Zoe would be unconscious in minutes without an intervention. He saw the moment that the drug started to work. Her breathing deepened, her heart rate steadied.
She flung her head toward the sky again, nostrils flaring. Trust Zoe to make a fuss and carry on as if she were on stage.
He made his voice solicitous. “Do you feel better, my dear?”
“Oh, yes,” she told him. “I feel wonderful now.”