Project Paper Doll: The Trials (29 page)

Some guests still lingered nearby. They were the ones with the uncertain expressions and missing shoes or random pieces of clothing. Others were obviously tourists, passing by and taking in the
drama, recording it with their phones.

“This is fine,” Ariane said in a clipped voice to the driver. She handed over the last of our cash. Then she got out of the cab without waiting for me, or even looking to see if I
followed.

I climbed out of the cab, shutting the door behind me. Ariane was still pissed, obviously. But I suspected at least some of it might have been because she was scared, not for herself but for me.
My mind-reading abilities were weak. But fear had a distinct flavor to it, for lack of a better term. It was metallic, cold, powerful. And that’s what’s radiating from her more than
anything, even anger.

And she kind of had a point. Knowing what I knew now, I had to admit that, given the chance to do it all over again, I would probably choose differently. Adam had been pretty close to perfect as
a candidate for Emerson’s experiment, and even being skilled and better than the average human hadn’t saved him.

Everyone had limits, blind spots, weaknesses, peculiarities. Maybe the key was just figuring out how to live with them. I loved Ariane for who she was, including the parts she didn’t like
and other people feared or hated.

Was it so impossible that she felt the same way about me? Maybe not.

I caught up with Ariane when she paused on the sidewalk, near a clump of people watching the spectacle.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

Her expression had clicked over to that distant, evaluating mask that I recognized. She’d retreated within herself, letting the training she’d had and the nonhuman instincts
she’d been born with rise to the surface.

“When the GTX guards brought me here, they used that garage.” She tipped her head to indicate the structure looming over us. “There was a walkway to the hotel.”

Which would mean fewer people watching, maybe even the possibility of no police at that particular entrance.

But a few steps toward the garage entrance revealed red and blue flashing lights and squad cars blocking the ramp to the upper levels of the garage. The officers inside the cars were on the
radio, and their stiff posture screamed, “We are not kidding around.”

“They are taking this really seriously,” I muttered.

She nodded, her head cocked at an angle and her forehead wrinkled with concentration as she focused in on their thoughts. “Hostages. That’s what they’re worried about.
They’re not talking about it with the media yet, but that’s what I’m hearing. They think someone’s still alive in there.” She frowned.

I felt a spark of hope. Someone still alive was good. Even better if it was Emerson St. John and not Dr. Jacobs or Laughlin. Though, the odds of just one of them surviving weren’t good.
The scar on my stomach began to itch and burn again.

“But they can’t get confirmation, so they don’t want to go in yet. They’re waiting for something…maybe.” She shook her head in frustration. “I
don’t know, the adrenaline is making their minds…buzzy. Hard to read.”

I nodded. My limited experiences with telepathy had given me more than a taste of that. It was amazing she could pick out anything from the noise, in my opinion.

“What about another entrance to the hotel?” I asked. “They have to have a door for deliveries or whatever, right?”

She nodded absently, her mind working to make all the pieces fit. “Yes, I’m sure they do. But it will likely be under guard equal to this. They’re trying to make sure no one
escapes.”

I edged toward the hotel for another look. “Ariane. What about a window on the side? They have all the doors blocked, but if we circled the block and came through from the other direction,
we might be able to get in—”

She followed me and then shook her head. “It will take too long. And that’s additional exposure for us, wandering farther away from the hotel. Eventually the shooter may figure out
that we came back here, if he or she hasn’t already.”

“What do you have in mind?” I asked. She had
that
look on her face now, that sharp, determined one that was also somehow empty of feeling. The one that said she’d ceased
to see the human factor and simply viewed everyone and everything as obstacles to her ultimate goal.

It sent an instinctive shiver of dread through me. I wasn’t afraid of Ariane. But occasionally, I was smart enough to be afraid of what she could do.

“I don’t suppose I can talk you into staying here or going to the police on your own,” she said, her eyes trained on the activity in the distance.

“No.”

“I don’t know what will happen,” she warned. “It may end badly.” She paused. “Very badly.”

If Emerson St. John was already dead inside that building, “very badly” was pretty much my only option anyway, unless Justine had had someone else studying up on his research.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, though it may have taken a bit more effort than usual to push the words free.

“Sometimes simple and direct is the best.” But that was all she’d say.

She led the way down the sidewalk toward the hotel, moving confidently.

People moved out of her way, perhaps sensing something, a potential threat, that even their conscious minds didn’t register.

I tagged along in her wake as she crossed the side street and reached hotel property. Skirting the turnaround, she kept to the road, moving around the news vans and equipment on the perimeter of
the police line.

Three police officers moved around inside the cordoned-off area, talking to each other on their radios and generally just looking intimidating while blocking off the main entrance.

Ducking around the last news van, Ariane headed closer to the hotel, along the short side of the caution tape line.

No hesitation, no fear. That probably should have been a clue. But honestly, I thought she had something up her sleeve, some opening or opportunity that I’d just missed. By the time I
figured out what she had in mind, it was too late for second-guessing either her plan or my decision to go along with it.

I followed her lead and then watched in disbelief as she slipped smoothly underneath the caution tape.

Damn it.

I ducked beneath the caution tape after her, my heart hammering.

But the officers were preoccupied with the people outside the tape, watching to make sure the reporters weren’t edging too close, and keeping the crowd at a safe distance.

None of them bothered to turn and look behind them. At least, not at first.

“Hey! They’re going inside!” someone shouted.

“You, stop!” That was a new voice, one filled with authority and unused to being disobeyed. Definitely a cop.

But Ariane had already reached the revolving door, so I kept moving. She pushed through, and I scrambled in after her, sharing the same glass division to save time.

It spilled us out into the lobby, which was empty, surprisingly.

Just inside, Ariane pivoted, raised her hand, and stopped the revolving door in motion as the first officer attempted to follow us in.

“The bolts,” I said quickly. “At the bottom on a couple of the sections. They lock into the ground.” I pointed, and she nodded.

A second later, they snapped into place with a solid-sounding clunk that made the glass reverberate, like someone had tapped on it with a hammer.

“That’s, um, not going to work for very long,” I said, watching the trio of officers shouting into their radios and glaring at us.

I swallowed hard.

“It doesn’t need to,” Ariane said, unperturbed. “This way.”

She moved away from the entrance, heading deeper into the lobby, her steps virtually silent on the black-and-white tile floor. Every thud of my shoes sounded magnificently loud by
comparison.

Ariane stopped in the far corner of the lobby in front of the small alcove holding the elevator bank.

I raised my eyebrows. “The elevators? You’re kidding,” I said in a whisper.

“Why not?” she asked, but not like she was really interested, more just filling the silence.

But I persisted. “You’re supposed to take the stairs in emergency—” I began.

“Which means that’s where everyone else will be,” she said.

Uh. Okay. “Sometimes they shut down the elevators—”

The quiet chime of the arriving elevator cut off the rest of my words. “Never mind,” I muttered.

She slipped in as soon as the doors were open far enough, and I hurried in after her.

A burst of running footsteps hit the lobby floor, no doubt someone had taken the stairs. The doors shut, though, before anyone reached us.

Feeling vaguely dizzy from the buzz of adrenaline and fear, I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes, and tried to catch my breath. The soft music playing overhead was still on. It sounded like
an instrumental version of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” That was wrong in so many ways.

“Do you have a plan?” I asked Ariane. “I mean, the doors are going to open and we’re going to be right there in front of them.” Probably at least a dozen police
officers, maybe SWAT guys, firefighters and EMTs…

“No,” she said, after a moment. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure we’d get this far.”

I opened my eyes to check her expression. Nope, she wasn’t joking. “Maybe a little less honesty would be better,” I said.

“I need to see for myself,” she said quietly. “It would be too easy for someone to simply say that Jacobs and the others were dead, particularly if this is a cover-up.”
She shifted, tilting her head until she caught my gaze, her dark eyes so serious and sad. “I don’t want to live the rest of my life, however short it is, looking over my shoulder
and—”

“I know, I know,” I said, reaching out and taking her hand in mine. Her fingers were so damn cold, and I realized that no matter how little she showed on the outside, she had to be
scared.

“I love you,” I said, moved by a sudden wave of affection and needing to say the words out loud.

Her mouth curved up in a small smile. “‘I know.’”

“Right. Because you’re Han Solo in this scenario,” I said, trying to tease to lighten the mood and because the thought that she was being predictive—Han Solo ends up
pretty much dead moments after he says that in
Empire
—killed me.

But she didn’t have time to respond, because, unlike the endless moments it had taken for the elevator doors to close, it took mere seconds for us to reach the third floor.

Before the doors opened, I could hear the squawk of radios and low, urgent voices. This must be the place.

She let go of my hand and moved to face the doors. “Stand behind me,” she said, eyeing me carefully, as if expecting me to fight her on this.

And you know what? I wasn’t going to argue. We all had strengths—mine, at the moment, did not happen to be stopping a hail of bullets. I wasn’t stupid enough to let my ego get
in the way. It wasn’t bulletproof, either.

I nodded and stepped back as the doors opened.

A uniformed officer, his broad face red and sweating, greeted us with a glare as we crossed the threshold out into the small alcove housing the elevator doors.

“Brody, what the hell is this?” he said into the radio on his shoulder. “I got kids coming up in the elevator.”

Brody’s response came in a rush of static that was mostly indecipherable. “…came in the front…locked the damn doors somehow” was all that came through.

The big cop in front of us—his tag said Donnelly—narrowed his eyes at us.

“I don’t mean anyone any harm,” Ariane said, her voice mild.

And some part of me felt the insane urge to laugh.
Take me to your leader
was probably next.

“But I need to see inside the conference room,” she continued. “The one called Meadowlands.” As if there might be a different conference room holding their attention.

Donnelly’s expression shifted from dark fury to disbelief and then confusion as he looked back and forth between me and Ariane, pausing to take in her appearance from head to toe.
Uh-oh.

“Chandler, give me a status on the room,” he demanded into the radio on his shoulder, his gaze glued to Ariane as if I’d ceased to exist. If he’d recognized me from the
news, he might very well think she was involved in the “abduction.”

“Unchanged.” This voice came out much clearer and with a faint echo from down the hall, closer to the conference room.

Ariane tilted her head, listening to someone’s thoughts. I wasn’t sure if it was Donnelly or the more distant Chandler. Either way, she got something. “Oh,” she said,
after a moment, sounding surprised. “Okay.”

“Okay what?” I asked warily.

“Stay close,” she said. “Move quickly. And I’m sorry.”

“For what, exactly?” I asked, feeling my stomach clench with dread.

But she didn’t answer. “Let’s go,” she said, sidestepping away from Donnelly and waving for me to follow.

“No, no, you’re not going anywhere,” Donnelly said in a booming voice meant to intimidate. And it was working.

He reached for his service weapon, but Ariane was ready.

She lifted her hand to direct her power, pinning Donnelly to the closed elevator doors on the opposite wall, his body frozen in position, like a cartoon character who’d been slammed back
and just hadn’t fallen over yet, usually with a matching chunk of wall.

“Please don’t struggle,” she said to him. “I don’t want to push too hard. You could get hurt.”

His eyes bulged as if she’d waved a knife in his face, threatening him.

And to be fair, to him, that probably sounded way more like an intent to harm than the fair warning it was.

But she didn’t have time to reassure him further, because the sound of running footsteps was coming toward us from the other end of the hall—Donnelly’s fellow officers
responding to his raised voice. He hadn’t had time to radio for help. He might not have thought it was necessary. It was very easy, and stupid, to underestimate Ariane.

They stopped abruptly as we entered the hallway from the elevator alcove. There were four of them, all CPD officers, and they immediately dropped into formation, two of them on their knees, the
other two standing, and four guns pointing straight at us as they shouted: