Devil's Due (17 page)

“You’ve been fine here for days. You’ll be fine another few hours.”

Lucia got up and washed her hands in the kitchen sink, wincing at the state of the hygiene. McCarthy was going for drug-dealer authenticity. She hoped he’d changed the sheets, at least.

“Hey.” He was behind her, close and warm, his voice low in her ear. She turned to face him. Behind him, the TV flipped on. Susannah was surfing listlessly through the channels, her face lit by the flickering glow.

“I know I don’t have to say it, but for God’s sake, would you be careful?” he asked. “You and Jazz, you’re killing me. I was better off in prison. At least I didn’t have friends to worry about.”

She met his eyes. “Friends,” she repeated softly. The sound from the TV was covering their conversation. “Is that what you want?”

“Of course not. Fresh out of prison, remember? But wanting more isn’t all that smart between us right now. You’re not—” He sucked in a breath and inclined his head, hiding his expression. His voice went very low in his throat. “You’re not some cheap lay, okay? And I’m not going to use you that way. Or let you use me.”

Oh, God. That was—powerful. She pressed back against the counter to keep from wrapping herself around him.

He raised his head and met her eyes.

“Do we understand each other?” he asked. “No matter what, I’m not going to use you.”

She nodded. She wasn’t sure she could actually speak at the moment.

“Okay. Then don’t get yourself killed, or I’ll be very dis
appointed,” he said, and moved out of the way. She didn’t go. She reached out, took hold of the scooped neck of his wifebeater, and pulled him toward her.

It was a long, slow kiss this time. He moaned, low in his throat, and put his hands on her, sliding them warmly up her shoulders, her neck, burying his fingers in her hair. She was glad she’d let it out of the ponytail.

Two honks sounded in the parking lot. His lips looked damp and hungry, and she brushed hers against them one more time. “I have to go,” she whispered. He nodded. “I’ll be back soon.”

He stepped away and let her leave the kitchen, then stopped her with an outstretched hand at the apartment door and checked through the peephole before flipping the locks and swinging it open. When she looked back, the door was closed and locked, the peephole dark.

He was watching her go.

She followed Jazz’s excellent example, taking the steps fast, and saw the electrician’s van idling in the parking lot twenty feet from the sidewalk. She crossed to it without incident, she checked for Cole’s familiar face before opening the passenger door.

Cole was a medium guy—medium height, medium weight, medium complexion. He’d disappear into a crowd of two. He’d chosen the vehicle well; the paint on the exterior was sun-faded and the contractor’s logo and information were chipped. Cole himself was wearing a denim shirt, blue jeans and a tool belt that had just the right wear on the leather.

She wouldn’t have given him a second glance, and Lucia knew herself to be more paranoid than most.

He put the van in gear without any words being spoken, and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road.

“Sorry,” she said, and indicated what she was wearing, which wasn’t exactly appropriate to the occasion. “I haven’t been home.”

“Yeah, I heard you were in the hospital.” He gave her a long look. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. Any word on the origin of the anthrax strain?”

“Came out of a lab in California, and believe me, somebody’s ass is cooking on a grill right now. Rawlins is pissed. He really doesn’t like terrorists.”

She grinned. “And you do?”

“I spend a lot more time rubbing shoulders with them. Hard to get a real hate going when you’ve met their wives and kids. You know you have to do it, but sometimes it gets hard.”

“Probably the same for them.”

“Yeah. It is.” He glanced out the back windows of the van. “You armed?”

“Always.”

“Good. Not that I figure we’ll need it, but I don’t want to get caught with my tool belt down, if you know what I mean. Your source was right, by the way. These guys are ordering in big amounts of sodium cyanide, and their next-door neighbors are shipping in hydrochloric acid. I can see why you’re not fond of the combination. It’d make a hell of a nice hydrogen cyanide cloud. In an enclosed space, it could kill hundreds, maybe thousands. Arrowhead Stadium’s right down the street. The volume of gas we’re talking about, you set it off in a place like that, you could count on major results.”

“God,” she whispered reverently. “How easy would it be—?”

“The stadium? Not very. I mean, we’re talking about a lot of chemicals here, very high profile, and chemicals are bulky to move around. But you look at some of the high-
rise buildings in the city? Pump some of this into the air handlers, and you’re talking big numbers of bodies.” Cole considered it, his light brown eyes distant as he rubbed his chin. “Unless they’re making a hell of a lot of gold chains and pimping up the hubcaps of half of the country, I can’t see how they could be using everything they’ve ordered.”

“So we take a look.”

“Wrong,” he said. “I take a look. You watch my ride. Looking like you do, I don’t think anybody’s going to believe you’re apprenticing as a cable puller, so you’d better keep out of sight.”

He wasn’t being judgmental, just practical. She nodded and settled herself in the grimy seat. It occurred to her that she should call Jazz, but truthfully, she didn’t want to. She knew she was pushing her luck. Fresh from the hospital and already taking risks? Jazz wouldn’t approve. Loudly. At length.

As if she’d conjured up a connection telepathically, her cell phone rang. She exchanged a quick glance with Cole as he turned the van down Eldon Road, heading toward the railroad tracks. The entrance to SubTropolis was just ahead.

Lucia pulled her phone out and flipped it open, and winced as static blasted her eardrum.

Wind noise.

No,
jet
noise. Someone was calling her from a plane.

“Hello?” She couldn’t hear a damn thing. The connection was terrible, and the van she was in was rattling as well. She blocked her other ear and concentrated. “Hello? Anyone there?”

The answer, if there was one, was lost in the dull thump of the van’s tires going over railroad tracks. There was a line of vehicles passing through the SubTropolis gates, most of them 18-wheelers. Cole slowed the van to a crawl.
She listened for another few seconds, but the connection cut out.

“Anything important?” he asked.

“Couldn’t tell,” she said. She checked the caller ID, but as she’d expected, it was an air phone. “I hope not.”

They edged forward slowly. When they got to the guard station, Cole presented ID that Lucia didn’t doubt was absolutely authentic. The guard waved him on, and they passed into a tunnel.

She’d expected it to be dark, but SubTropolis was surprisingly bright. The tunnel was huge and well-lit, the limestone it was carved from reflecting the brilliance.

“These guys have got some balls, setting up something down here. This place has everything. Post offices, restaurants, hell, they keep film reels somewhere. A few billion in inventory stored down here, at least. Not exactly low-profile.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” she said. “Hiding in plain sight.” She leaned over to look past the front seat at the empty, seemingly endless stretch of tunnel. “How far do we have to go?” It was too late to realize that she didn’t like this kind of place, with the weight of so much rock over her head as they descended. Her palms were getting damp. The ceiling, high as it was, seemed oppressively heavy.

“Long ways,” Cole said, which was not reassuring. “We make a right up ahead at Huspuckney Road, then a left on 8800.”

She was starting to seriously regret suggesting this, not so much for the potential danger ahead but for the uncomfortable feeling of claustrophobia that she was battling. Stupid. She was in a van, which should have been much more claustrophobic than the spacious tunnel they were traversing.

But she could get out of the van. There were only two ways out of the tunnel: forward and back.

“You okay?” Cole was watching her. She nodded and forced a smile. “You’ll let me know if you plan to freak out, okay?”

“Remember who you’re talking to,” she said. “I don’t have a reputation for freaking out.”

“Yeah. Those are the ones you have to worry about.”

Mercifully, he left her alone. She found that closing her eyes didn’t help, so she finally resorted to clinging tightlipped to the seat, fingernails digging in to the bending point.

They slowed. “All right. It’s up ahead. Here’s the drill. I’m going to get out and scout around, you stay in the van and monitor. I’ll keep my walkie channel open. I get into trouble, you wait until I give the code phrase, which is ‘electrical short.’ Okay?”

“Yes,” she muttered. “Fine. Absolutely.”

He gave her one last assessing look as he pulled into a parking spot off the road, next to a rough-textured limestone pillar, and jammed the van into Park. “We good?”

“Fine,” she repeated. “I’ll be okay. You go.”

He shook his head, clearly not believing her—smart man—and got out of the van. She climbed out of the passenger seat and into the murky dimness of the windowless back, where even someone staring in the window would have trouble spotting her. He nodded, locked up and sauntered toward a big industrial building that looked oddly lost in the cavernous open spaces. This was just so weird. She caught herself breathing too fast, and deliberately slowed down. Biofeedback. She’d survived traumas and tortures; she could survive a short visit underground.

Cole even walked like a working man—as if tired, in no particular hurry. He picked something overhead and traced it with a stare as he walked, clearly intent on his own business; he had some kind of handheld device in his grasp. She
could hear the crunch of his work boots on rock as he walked to the back dock of the warehouse. It was labeled J&J Electroplating—Warehouse and Distribution Center. No trucks were lined up just now. Cole climbed the steps and opened an unmarked door. It closed behind him.

“Hey!” Not Cole’s voice, someone else’s. It came from the walkie-talkie she was holding. He’d already been challenged. “What are you doing in here?”

“You guys having trouble with the plugs?” Cole asked. “We have a fault report.”

“No, we don’t have trouble. Try someplace else.”

“You sure you don’t want me to check it out? You got a faulty plug, you could get a fire.” Cole knew just how to work it, she thought; he sounded conscientious but not concerned. The subtext was his body language—he’d be ready to move to the door, convincing the subject that he wasn’t at all eager to be on their property. “Hey, your call. I can write up the report, but buddy, your insurance company could nail your ass to the wall, you don’t check out a fault report.”

“Where you need to go?”

“In there.” Cole might be choosing at random, or he might have seen something. “Line goes right in, see? Up there?” He’d be pointing at something nobody could possibly see or understand. She suppressed a grin.
Beautiful
.

“Wait here.”

Footsteps faded away. Cole didn’t say anything, but she heard him moving around. It seemed like a long time, but as she watched the sweep of the second hand on her watch, she realized that he’d been inside only two minutes, going on three. Probably not enough time to—

“Hey, I told you to wait!” The voice was startlingly loud.

“Sorry, man, I’m just trying to do my job, here. I got
to get through twelve buildings. You know how big this place is.”

“We checked it out. Everything’s fine.”

“Okay then. I’ll write it up. Anything goes wrong, though, you—”

“Yeah, insurance, whatever. We’re closing up.”

“Have a good one.”

Cole was on the move, heading for the door.

“Hang on a second,” said the other voice. “What’s your name?”

Lucia slid her gun from its holster and put her hand on the door handle.

“Frank. Frank Scarabelli. Here—here’s my ID, okay? I don’t want no trouble or nothing. I’m just—”

“Doing your job, yeah, we heard. Listen, hang out a second, okay? I’m gonna make a phone call.”

“Okay,” Cole said. He sounded thoroughly disgusted. “You guys get an electrical short, it’s no skin off my—”

She was out of the van, gun at her side, before he finished the sentence. Her knees felt weak, her whole body not quite in tune, but it served to get her across the exposed parking lot and behind one of the massive white limestone pillars. She sucked in two deep breaths, then finished the run to the warehouse dock. Up the six concrete steps to the flat staging area. The walk-in door was closed again. All but one of the garage doors were down. The one on the end was clanking shut.

I won’t make it
, some part of her thought, but she didn’t allow that to stop her. It wasn’t a matter for thinking. She kicked off her shoes and crossed the distance in long runner’s strides, moving as silently as she could.

The door was clattering down. There were two feet of clearance left.

Lucia hit the concrete and rolled, tucking elbows and knees, and she felt hard steel and rubber grab her for a heart-stopping second. But then momentum won and she was inside. The door rattled irritably shut with a boom just an inch behind her.

She was panting and shaking, but there was no time for fear now. She was exposed. There were three men at the end of the hall, one smaller, two larger. Cole was the smaller. This end of the dock was in relative shadow, which was in her favor.

Should have called for backup, she thought, but she doubted that wireless signals would make it through the solid limestone roof. She’d need a land line, and by that time…by that time, she’d have gotten another friend killed.

She rolled up to her knee, gun trained steadily on the group at the far end of the hall, and then to her bare feet. The concrete felt ice-cold. She gained the concealment of a big industrial trash bin and risked another look to assess the situation. She was close enough to see faces now, and catch fragments of words.