Terminated

Chapter 6

Bryn put out the raw meat, which was turning bad fast, and let Joe and Riley—fresh from the shower now, hair spiked and fierce, and hoarseness all but gone from her voice—know that she’d be making a grocery run. Joe ordered beer, which she ignored, and after retrieving cash from the safe—really, Pansy and Manny were taking paranoid preparedness to Zombie Apocalypse levels—she went down to find the motorcycle.

It was a simple black Honda, nothing fancy, with a simple black helmet; somehow, Bryn had been prepared for something space-age and expensive, but Pansy had clearly chosen function over form. Bryn checked the fuel gauge, and as Pansy had promised, it was still full. The battery had been taken out and connected to a charger, and it was the work of a few minutes to reinstall it, and then Bryn put the empty backpack on her shoulders, the helmet on her head, and kicked the cycle to life.

It felt pleasantly relaxing to ride again—she’d been checked out on motorcycles when she was a teen, and again in the army, but she hadn’t been on one in a while. Kansas City wasn’t nearly as much of a danger zone as most places she’d been, and she enjoyed zipping through side streets, looking for the nearest hole-in-the-wall butcher shop she could find. The town was big on meat, so it wasn’t too difficult to find one, and she bought as much as she could carry—hamburger, steaks, and salami. The salami, fully cooked, could be carried with them easily enough even when they didn’t have a home to return to.

All in all, it filled the backpack to its max, and cost her a significant chunk of cash.

Just in case—and because she’d gotten lessons in paranoia from Manny—she took loops and circles, heading back at oblique angles to the safe house . . . and that was how she noticed the helicopter overhead.

In a city this size, seeing whirlybirds wasn’t unusual; they were part of the urban landscape, usually doing traffic reports or providing air support for police and fire. There would be a few private sightseeing operations around, too, though the area wasn’t the most scenic.

What alerted her, though, was that this one seemed to stay if not on top of her, at least in line of sight. It seemed unlikely that the butcher shop would have had plugged-in surveillance and facial recognition; it seemed equally unlikely that their enemies could have been watching every meat vendor in the entire city, on the off chance of spotting one of them.

Bryn sped away on an entirely random track, heading for the countryside. The vibration of the motorcycle jolted through her, brutal and yet somehow soothing, and she watched the helicopter in the mirror. It tacked after her, swinging on a course that would pace her as she headed away from the safe house.

Dammit.

She was going to have to ditch the surveillance, if that was possible—and that meant ditching the ride.

If you want to hide a tree, you go to the forest . . . and hiding a motorcycle was relatively easy if you picked a big, well-populated biker bar.

Luckily, Kansas City wasn’t short on them, especially on the outskirts of town. A little investigative riding, and she caught sight of an old-school biker dude in a battered leather vest and bucket helmet, riding his Harley. She gunned up next to him, pacing him, and shouted a cordial howdy; he nodded, and when she asked about a bar, he pointed and told her to follow.

He led her to the mother of all bars. The thing was like a shopping mall, with more neon than Vegas, and the ranks of bikes parked there warmed her heart.

Perfect.

She ranked her ride in next to his and gave him a smile, and he offered to buy her a beer, which she accepted, because . . . why not? She needed the helicopter to circle for a while, waiting in frustration.

She drank her beer sparingly, crushed the biker’s hopes as gently as she could, and fended off overtures from a dozen others. A trip to the bathroom took her toward the back, and from there, it was a quick, stealthy trip to the employees’ lounge. Nobody was inside, which was lucky, but then they were pretty busy. She rifled quickly through lockers, and found a set of car keys.

She left the rest of the cash she’d taken from Manny’s safe—about a thousand—stuffed in the locker, as a dollar sign apology, and went out the back door.

The key fit a battered Ford, which was probably worth about what she’d left in the locker. Bryn had taken the precaution of throwing on a stolen jacket over her clothes, putting the backpack in a big trash bag, and tying her hair back in a ponytail; she didn’t think anyone would be able to pick her out easily, and she made sure to keep her face turned away from the still-circling helicopter.

When she drove away, the helicopter didn’t follow.

Once she was safely away, Bryn drove fast. She ditched the hot car a mile from the safe house, wiped it down to remove any prints, and jogged the rest of the way back.

So far . . . so good. She hoped.

Once back inside, thanks to Pansy’s remote control of the gates and elevators, Bryn dumped the supplies in the refrigerator, then went to find Joe and Riley. Riley was sound asleep on the sofa, wrapped in a fluffy blanket; Joe was in the kitchen, making something out of canned foods. “You took your time,” he said, and stirred something that looked like baked beans. “Trouble?”

“A little,” she said. “I had eyes on me from the sky. Helicopter.”

He froze for a few seconds, then continued stirring. “So, that’s not so good.”

“The thing is, they couldn’t have picked me up coming out of here unless they had a way to track us, Joe.”

“You think the van’s compromised?”

“I think we have a bug, but it’s not on us. We know the Fountain Group had found Ziegler, because we got that intel out of their files. But if they’d found him, why hadn’t they grabbed him?”

“Shit,” he said. “Because they bugged him, goddammit. I didn’t check him. I patted him for weapons, but—” He turned the burners off on the stove and followed her to the bedroom area; the closets still had a few clothes on hangers, plain things for both men and women. He grabbed the essentials, and he and Bryn headed for Thorpe’s cell.

Pansy opened it without comment. She’d heard everything, of course; this wouldn’t be enhancing their already rocky relationship with Manny, and Bryn felt the cameras on them like lasers. As the door swung open, Bryn stood guard while Joe went in with the clothes. “Strip,” he told Thorpe, who looked at him warily. “Down to your skin, including your glasses. Put this on.”

“I need my glasses.”

“You can have them back once we check them out.”

“You think I’m bugged?” Thorpe looked outraged, then color drained from his face, and he yanked his glasses off to stare at them. When Joe extended his hand, Thorpe surrendered them, then stood and began to unbutton his shirt.

Bryn turned slightly away, giving him privacy. It didn’t take long. Joe tapped her on the shoulder and handed her the discards as Thorpe fastened the new pants (a size too big, but acceptable). “Burn them,” he said. “I’d be real surprised if Manny didn’t have some kind of incinerator around here.”

“Back left—” Pansy said, but Bryn cut her off.

“No.”

Joe paused, watching her. “No?”

“If there’s a bug, they’ve already got us. What we need to do is throw them off track, and the only way to do that is to lead them somewhere else. Pansy, is there underground access out of here?” Silence. Bryn sharpened her tone. “Pansy, we don’t have time! Is there underground access? We need to get this thing out without being spotted!”

“I can’t—”

Suddenly, the link went dead.

Everything went dead. The lights went off—the air conditioner fluttered to a stop. After a second, a constellation of red strobe lights began silently flashing overhead.

“Shit,” Joe said. “I was really looking forward to those beans. C’mon, sunshine, let’s move.” He grabbed Thorpe by the collar and propelled him out the open door, where Bryn took the doctor by the arm. She dumped the clothes on the floor, and the glasses as well.

“Get Riley,” she said, but she didn’t need to; Riley was already there, looking pale and focused as she put on her shoulder holster and snugged a leather jacket over it. She’d put the spiked dog collar back on, too—it covered a barely visible pink line where Thorpe’s slice had healed. “Riley, grab the backpack in the fridge. That’s food.”

She nodded and headed that way. Bryn checked the elevator, but the power was dead, the cage locked down.

“Here’s hoping emergency exits still work,” she said, and followed the flashing red exit signs to a small hallway and a thick steel door. It had a keypad and an alarm sign next to it, but it also had a push bar, and when she hit it, it creaked open onto a dark, steep stairwell.

More bullet holes in the wall here, she noticed. And more blood on the stairs. None of it looked fresh, at least; that was some comfort—but it was yet more evidence, if she’d needed any, that Manny and Pansy had reasons for their security. “Down,” she snapped at Thorpe, when he hesitated. The emergency lighting had kicked in, and the red strobes gave the place a nightmarish horror-movie vibe, but she managed to pull him down the steps to the first landing, then the second. There was a door there with another push bar, and she almost hit it . . . and then glanced back to the concrete underpinning the stairs.

There was another door there. It was subtle and recessed, but there.

Bryn tried the handle. It had probably been electronically locked, but since the power had been cut, it also sighed open . . . on utter darkness. No emergency lighting here. It smelled damp and earthy, but there was a fresh quality to the air, and she felt a faint breeze. “This way,” she said. She hesitated until she saw Joe at the top of the steps, and pointed; he nodded and tossed her a flashlight.

“I’ll get the go-bags,” he said. “Got a weapon?”

She shook her head. He dropped down his Glock, and she shoved it in the back of her pants, grateful for the solid weight of it. Thirteen shots. Not enough, but a start.

The flashlight showed them a tunnel—concrete, round as an oversized piece of sewer pipe. A thin depression in the middle channeled a muddy stream of water, and stains waist-high on the walls showed that it had gotten flooded at least once . . . but thankfully, not today. Today, in the faint distance, the sun was shining beyond a rusty slanted grating.

Joe and Riley caught up to them halfway down the tunnel, and Riley took charge of Thorpe as Bryn put on a burst of speed and arrived at the grating first. She gestured for them to stay back in the shadows, and carefully assessed the view.

It was a view of a dingy culvert, weed-grown and with a lifeless stream that had turned a peculiar shade of poison green. No signs of life except insects, though from the beer bottles and condoms she was fairly sure people weren’t strangers here. What kind of people would find this romantic, she wasn’t sure she wanted to imagine, though.

The grating looked rusted in place, but that was camouflage; it was hinged, and after she popped the catch on the inside, it swung smoothly open without so much as a squeak.

Bryn stepped out and waited. No sounds except traffic somewhere close by. No helicopter hovering. She gestured for the others, and they moved out in a tight, fast group down the culvert, which turned into a ditch. . . . Choked with trash and rusting metal, it became impassible after about half a mile, and Bryn scrambled up the side, using tough, spiny weeds as handholds, to peer up at ground level.

They were in the clear. Twenty feet away lay the rusty chain link back fence of a busy shipping operation, with teams loading boxes onto semitrucks. When Bryn looked back the way they’d come, though, she saw flashing lights. Police, or at least, something official. Manny’s Kansas City hiding place was definitely blown wide-open now.

Her cell phone rang as she offered a hand to Thorpe, who was boosted up by Riley, and she answered it as she gave Riley an assist after him. Joe waved her off. “Hello?”

“You made it?” Pansy asked.

“Looks good so far,” she said. “We found the tunnel. We’re about to find ourselves some transportation, but you’ve done enough. Don’t get involved any more than you have to.”

“I can’t help any more,” Pansy admitted. “Manny’s blowing fuses right and left, and I have to shut down. One last thing, though—I’ve got the name of someone high up in the Fountain Group. If you want to take the fight to them, it’s probably a good place to start, especially if Thorpe can really do what you think he can.”

“Yeah, jury’s still out on that, but we’ll see. Give me the address.”

“I don’t have it. The best I can do is tell you it’s in Northern California.”

“Shit.”

“I know. I wish I could give you more. The name is Martin Damien Reynolds. Ignore all the false trails, there are a ton of them. Look for him in California. . . . Bryn, take care. I’m so sorry.” Pansy clicked off, and Bryn had the feeling that if she tried redialing, she’d get voice mail, at best. Probably a message that the number was out of service. When Manny cut ties, he burned them, too.

“Let me guess,” Joe said. “We’ve been dropped.”

“Like the proverbial hot potato,” Bryn said. “Maybe we can stow away on one of these trucks.”

“Maybe,” he said doubtfully. “They’re pretty busy, and with four of us it’s tougher. Probably a better bet to boost a car from the employee lot.”

“I’d just like to get our faces out of sight on the way out of town,” Riley said. “They’ve been all over us, and we need to break the trail clean.”

Bryn considered that for a few long seconds, watching the trucks, then nodded. “Follow me,” she said. “I think I’ve got this one.”

Joe wasn’t a fan of her plan, but he went along with it anyway. They cut across industrial lots and empty, weed-choked areas, down a couple of ditches, and came up near the access road leading from the busy shipping company. Bryn timed the trucks. They were leaving at the rate of one every ten minutes or so.

She positioned herself behind a scrub tree, and waited until she heard the grumble of an approaching engine. The truck was coming over a slight hill, coasting down to the stop sign, where it would turn right onto a road that led it to the nearest freeway.

She counted down, and at the last possible second, stepped out in front of him.

The visceral need to run was almost impossible to overcome, but somehow, she managed to root her feet to the pavement, and turn to face the onrushing grill of the truck. She had a two-second glimpse of the face of the driver, going from bored to shocked to horrified, and heard the chatter of the air brakes . . .

. . . And then the truck hit her hard enough to throw her twenty feet down the road. She landed with enough force to snap several bones, and smash the back of her skull against the tarred surface. Red-hot agony blitzed through her, knocking out sensation and sense alike, until she rolled to a stop in a limp, broken heap. A rush of heat flared, then, and she distantly recognized it. Her trusty little zombie invaders, rushing to her rescue . . . assessing the damage, knitting together smashed cells. It would all take time, but she’d live. Of course.

She might hate it, but the little bastards came in handy sometimes. Like now, as the truck slid to a stop, and the driver hastily dismounted and rushed to her, pulling out his cell along the way.

Joe stepped out from cover, calmly plucked the phone away, and said, “Please get back in the truck, sir. We’re going to be joining you.”

“But—she’s hurt! She needs—”

“She’ll be fine, believe me.” Joe pulled his sidearm and held it steadily on the driver. “In the truck. Please. Now.”

The driver did it without any further protests, though he did look scared to death—and even more frightened as Riley picked up Bryn (a process that was beyond painful, from Bryn’s broken perspective) and carried her to the cab of the truck, where Joe pulled her in and laid her down on the narrow bunk in the back. Riley sat in the back with her, along with Thorpe, and Joe took the literal shotgun seat, with his weapon held with casual competence on the driver. “What’s your name, sir?” Joe asked.

“Um—Lonnie. Lonnie Brinks.” He looked scared out of his mind. “Please don’t kill me, man, I got kids.”

“Me too. And I love them, just like you do,” Joe said. “Relax. We just need a ride. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Where you heading?”

“Long haul to San Francisco,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”

“San Francisco,” Joe said.

“Uh—that lady—she’s gonna die, man.”

“No,” Bryn said blearily. “I might look like it, but I won’t. Promise.”

Lonnie looked frankly shocked that she could talk at all, and when he looked back, she gave him a shaky thumbs-up. He stared at her blankly, then at the rest of them. “Who the hell are you people?”

“People who need your help, if we’re ever going to see our families again, Lonnie,” Joe said, and the sincerity and warmth that radiated out of him washed away whatever fear Lonnie still held. “I swear on my kids that you’re gonna walk away from this alive, and maybe with some cash, too. You don’t have to do anything except drive.”

He was bluffing about the cash, Bryn thought; she’d left the rest of it in that locker, in compensation for the stolen car. Pansy was right—life on the run was expensive. Joe sold it, though—sold it so well that the driver Lonnie sighed, nodded, and put the engine in gear. “Okay,” he said. “But don’t get me fired. I need this job.”

“Worst case, you’re under duress,” Joe said. “I figure either way you come out of this a winner—especially if you deliver your load on time, right?”

Lonnie looked considerably more cheerful after that. Joe had a way of making just about anybody relax and feel normal in the most abnormal of situations. It was one of the key reasons Bryn liked him so much.

He was just a genuinely nice guy.

Bryn’s healing continued, snaps and pops of pain as bones pulled into alignment and muscles knitted themselves together. She’d gotten used to the sensations, but that didn’t make them any less awful. I’m going to get PTSD, she thought. Maybe that was part of what made Jane who she was—the trauma. The unending prospect of pain. Eventually, though, the worst of it passed, and she was just raw and aching, and that didn’t matter as much. Riley helped her clean up from the bloody impact. Nothing to be done about the stains and rips on her clothes, but Riley assured her they made her look tough and travel-worn. Bryn had to laugh at that. Even wearing army fatigues, she’d never looked tough, exactly.

But at least she’d been tough. And still was.

The beef in the bag was thawed, but it’d be edible for a while yet—and Bryn had to admit, she wasn’t sure that her nanites wouldn’t find rotting meat just as attractive. The thought took away her appetite for it, and she choked down two protein bars to help satisfy the nanites’ cravings. Thorpe ate in silence; he was watching them all with wary attention. He found a dog-eared paperback that Lonnie must have been reading, and contented himself with that.

As Joe and Lonnie—increasingly the best of friends—chatted away the miles, Bryn and Riley rested silently. Slept. Ate.

Thorpe kept to his corner, reading and rereading the battered novel with single-minded intensity. He clearly didn’t want to get to know any of them, and Bryn decided she was perfectly fine with that.

It was a surprisingly restorative journey. For the first time in days, Bryn felt free of the oppressive burden of being hunted, tracked, watched.

And by the time the sun had fallen below the horizon, and the road was a space-black ribbon lit by the headlights of fellow travelers, Bryn’s phone rang.

It wasn’t Pansy’s number.

Bryn felt a surge of paranoid fear that shattered the fragile bubble of well-being, and exchanged a look with Riley, then Joe, before she answered. “Hello?”

“I’ll keep it short,” said Brick, on the other end. “Hope you’re doing all right. Just wanted to report that your friend’s head wound wasn’t serious, so he checked himself out against my people’s medical advice. I guess he’s out there looking for you.”

Patrick. Bryn felt a surge of mixed relief and guilt. She hadn’t tried to find out how he was doing, for his own protection, but she ought to have been worrying more, she realized now. “You let him leave.”

“Hit the brakes, he didn’t exactly ask me nicely. He pulled a gun from one of my guys and told the med team he was going, and they decided they didn’t want to see how far he’d take it. They get paid to take damage from the enemies of the clients, not the clients. That’s just screwed up.” Brick sounded calm and amused. “He’s all right, and since he stole one of our best trucks, he’s mobile and well equipped, if you know what I mean. So I’d be on the lookout.”

“We will,” Bryn said. “Thanks. I mean it. Especially for taking care of him; I know that was above and beyond.”

“I get the feeling you folks are going to be repeat customers,” he said. “And you know what they say—the customer’s always right.”

“I thought you said never to call you again.”

“Well, your friend Pansy airlifted me a pallet full of money, so I’m rethinking it. Also, took a look at your folks. They seem okay. We’ll keep watch. Take care.”

“You too.” She hung up and tried to dial Patrick’s phone, but got nothing but voice mail. Her own device was dangerously low on charge, and she didn’t have anything to power it with—but Joe did, stuffed in one of his many pockets.

He also didn’t think Patrick not answering was a problem. “If he got separated from his power supply, then he’s out of juice,” Joe pointed out. “Pat’s been in lots worse situations—trust me. He’ll get us a message, and he’ll rendezvous down the road with us. Good to know his head’s in one piece, though.”

Lonnie was, by this time, studying Bryn in the rearview mirror. “Why is hers?” he asked. “I saw how hard I hit her, man. She ought to be dead.”

“Stuntwoman,” Joe said. “Trained professional at bouncing off of moving vehicles.”

Lonnie considered that, and seemed to accept it—mainly, Bryn thought, because it was too weird to accept the alternative. “How does that pay, anyway? You work on movies and shit?”

“Yeah, we do,” she lied smoothly. “And yeah, it does. See, you’re doing us a huge favor. You’re helping us get to a gig—we’re working on a film with Spielberg.”

“Really?” His eyes rounded, and his face lit up. “I love the movies, man. Hey, why didn’t you just fly?”

Joe stuck a thumb at Riley. “She’s on a no-fly list.” She did, Bryn had to admit, look it, with her shag-cut punk-spiked hair and dog collar. Riley shot him the finger, just to sell it.

“Could have rented a car, right?”

“Yeah, if we’d had a credit card,” Joe said. He’d long ago put the gun away. “We got robbed, man. Suitcases, clothes, wallets, everything. We’ve got some cash, but that’s it. So it was stop you, or steal somebody’s car.”

Again, Bryn thought but didn’t say.

Lonnie accepted that and went back to the shiny object. “What movie are you making?”

Bryn made up something out of whole cloth, an alien invasion of San Francisco, and Lonnie was rapt. She cast the thing with big-name stars, just for the hell of it, and promised Lonnie a photo op with Johnny Depp.

As long as it kept him driving.

Joe was—probably not surprisingly—a qualified and licensed semitruck driver, so Lonnie let him take shifts while Lonnie crashed in the bunk. Dr. Thorpe, who’d so far been dangerously quiet, took the opportunity while Lonnie snored to say, “If you let me go at the next rest stop, I promise, I won’t say a word. I’ll just disappear.”

“Why would we want that, Doc?” Joe asked him. “We’re just getting to know you. And also, you claim to be able to stop Jane and the upgrades, and believe me, we need that right now. What is it, some kind of device? A shot?”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Thorpe said, and clenched his jaw in a way that he probably thought made him look determined. It actually made him look constipated. “You’ve got no reason to keep me alive if I show you what I know.”

“Actually,” Riley said in a low, silky voice, hanging right over his shoulder, “you’ve got that backward. We’ve got no reason to keep you alive if you don’t. Because if you’re not an ally, you’re a liability or an enemy. Which would you rather be?”

He flinched. “You wouldn’t hurt me. You’ve got no reason to—”

“I’ve got the same upgrades as Jane,” Riley said. “Try again.”

That shut him up, and made his face grow a shade or two more pale. He believed her. He would, Bryn thought, believe absolutely anything of someone like them—of the Revived. In any society, there are people accepting of difference—like Joe and Patrick—and people terrified of it, like Thorpe. That didn’t make her any more fond of him.

At least, until he said, with great reluctance, “I suppose I have to be an ally, then. You don’t give me much choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” Riley said. “Just not a very good one. What do you need to make it happen?”

He really didn’t want to tell them, that much was obvious, but after a long, long silence, he finally said, “I just need a phone.”

They all looked at him. Thorpe’s face reddened.

“I have it stored in a safe place,” he said. “And I can get it for you if you let me make a phone call.”

“How about we make it for you?” Riley asked, and readied her dialing finger. He shook his head.

“I’m not giving that up,” he said. “You buy me an untraceable phone at the next place we stop, I will make a call, arrange for delivery, and destroy the SIM card so you can’t trace where it’s being held. Understand?”

Joe shrugged. “I’m okay. Bryn?”

“Not until I know what it is that’s being delivered to him,” she said, and Riley nodded. “You understand, Riley and I have something of an investment in this mutual trust thing.”

Thorpe sighed, clearly frustrated, and considered for another torturously long moment before he said, “It’s a vaccine. It contains another strain of engineered nanites whose sole purpose is to attack and destroy their opposite numbers.”

“I thought that was impossible,” Riley said. “Since they’d have to be programmed with the exact sequence codes for the existing nanites, and those get rewritten based on genetic structure.”

“Yes, yes, that’s true, but the genius of it—if I may say so—is that it uses the exact same replication technology in writing its own code. It fills in the gaps, so to speak. But of course, the shot can only be used once, for one person. The cure for one can’t be passed along the way that the upgraded nanites can be. One shot, one cure.”

“And how many shots do you have?” Bryn asked.

“One,” he said. “Just one. I had three, but I used two in the testing process. I was saving this one for replication in a neutral growth medium.”

“One?” Joe shook his head and exchanged glances with Bryn and Riley. “Fucking useless. If you use it, how long to develop more?”

“Days,” Thorpe said in a precise, clipped voice. “At a minimum days, and that’s if you have all the right equipment in place. If I use the last dose as you suggest, on Jane, then I waste it by downing one insignificant part of the Fountain Group’s army. She might be a general, but generals can be replaced, if you take my meaning.”

“Then why did you use your other doses?”

“The first one, for proof of efficacy. The second because I had no choice,” he said, and—for the first time—bared his teeth in a humorless smile. It was surprisingly unsettling. “They’d turned my colleague, you see. And it was her job to destroy me and take the antidote to her superiors. They want a way to control their own creations; that was why they allowed me to develop it in the first place. I thought I was acting for myself, when in reality, I was just another of their pawns. Like all of you.”

“How exactly are we pawns, genius?” Riley asked, and shoved him back against the shivering steel wall of the truck. “We’re the ones who found you. We’re the ones the Fountain Group has been moving heaven and earth to stop.”

“You think so? Then you’re more stupid than I thought. If they really wanted you dead, you’d already be buried in a ditch. Well, not the two of you. You’d be cremated like the rest of their failed experiments. But they’ve let you run. And that means you serve their purposes, somehow. I hate to explain this to you, but you’re nothing but meat puppets, and just because you can’t feel the strings doesn’t mean someone isn’t pulling them.”

“He’s insane,” Riley said to Bryn, and Bryn was inclined to agree. There was a deeply weird glow in the man’s eyes, a paranoia dialed up to eleven. But still, the old saying was right: you’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you. “If he’s our best hope, then in my professional opinion . . .”

“We’re screwed,” Joe finished flatly. “Well, hell, been there so often I ought to have my mail forwarded. C’mon, Riley. Buck up.”

She shot him an entirely unhappy grin. “Look, if he’s right, we’re done. If he’s wrong, then we’re stuck with a paranoid—”

“Genius who may or may not help us? I’d say we’re familiar with that scenario, too,” Bryn said. She looked straight at Riley. “Stop at the next truck stop and buy the phone.”

“No,” Riley shot back. “I’m telling you, it’s too big a risk.”

Maybe it was, but after considering for a few silent moments, Joe nodded. “Maybe risky, but we’re not exactly in the business of safe choices right now,” he said. “Yo, Lonnie, up and at ’em. Need you to take the wheel. Pull in at the next convenience store you spot.”

It took a while longer, but they found a store and a disposable cell. Once it was acquired and activated, Lonnie got the truck moving again, and Bryn got in the back with Thorpe. “Dial,” she said, and handed over the phone. She pulled her sidearm and held it loosely at her side, and lowered her voice to a level Lonnie wouldn’t overhear. “Say one word I think is questionable, and I’ll kill you. No negotiation.”

He stared at her for a second, expressionless, and then nodded. He dialed, held the phone to his ear, and waited. Then he said two words.

“Drop three.”

“That’s it?” Bryn asked as he cut the call and handed back the device.

“That’s it.”

“You didn’t tell them where to bring it.”

“I told them which drop site to use,” he said. “We have to go get it.”

“How far is it?”

“From here?” He shrugged. “Couple of hundred miles across the border in California. I chose the one in the direction you’re heading.”

Bryn signaled to Joe, and he joined them in the back, switching seats with Riley. She repeated the information, and Joe sighed. “I hate this cloak-and-dagger bullshit,” he said. “Just give me the fucking address already.”

Thorpe did. It didn’t mean anything to Bryn, so she left Joe to work it out. Bryn broke down the cell phone, pulled out the chip, and smashed it, then threw all the pieces out the window; she was thorough about it, just for safety’s sake. With nothing left to do, she stretched out on the small, thin bed that Lonnie used for his home away from home. It smelled like a man, with a dark tint of sweat and body odor. He’d taped up a centerfold on the ceiling, staring down at him with inviting eyes and open legs. Great. Now she needed a shower. Again.

God, she missed Patrick. I left him. We all left him. He’s all alone out there. It made her short of breath, the idea that he was wandering out there, potentially at Jane’s mercy, and wounded. I should have stayed with him. Protected him.

“Still worried about Pat?”

She opened her eyes to see Joe watching her, with a gentle concern on his face, and she forced a smile. “Brick said he checked out against medical advice, so he’s not—not at a hundred percent. He’s out there, trying to catch up, but I have no idea how he’s going to do that. He’s on his own, Joe. Against Jane.”

He shifted a little, looked away, and said, “Yeah, about that. He can find us.”

That got absolutely everyone’s attention, including Riley’s, who went very still. “Excuse me?”

“Burst transmitter,” Joe said. “One use only, untraceable. I send, he receives. It gives him the GPS locator. We’ve done this before, Bryn; it ain’t our first rodeo. He’s okay. He’ll keep his head down, and make his way to us on his own.”

She blinked at him, unable to process it for a few seconds, and then relief spread sweet and warm through her veins. He’s okay. He’ll be okay. She couldn’t bear the thought of Jane on his trail, but this—this was much better. If Joe had faith, then she could, too.

She spent the next two hours catnapping, and she suspected that Joe did as well, while Riley stayed awake and alert to any moves that Thorpe might have dared to try. He played nice, though, and Lonnie seemed cheerful. She was even getting used to his choice of music—he veered between funky jazz and a strange kind of wired-up country. It seemed oddly soothing, after a while, and the road vibration was a constant, gentle massage up and down her spine. Massage. That was a fantasy life, right there, ever being able to look forward to something so simple and sensual as having an hour when people weren’t trying to destroy her. An hour to let her guard down, utterly, and put herself in the healing hands of someone else.

Yeah, that was fantasy. This—half sleeping, always tense somewhere underneath, ready for anything—this was real life now.

But the fantasy of that massage was so real, it almost made her weep with longing.

“Wakey wakey,” Joe said, and touched her shoulder, bringing her out of what she supposed must have been a wary doze, instantly and painfully alert. “We’re here. Gear up—we’ll need the guns.”

She shot an alarmed look at Lonnie, but Lonnie gave her a broad smile. “Yeah, I kind of figured out you weren’t just regular folks about two hundred miles ago,” he said. “Spies, right? Some kind of black ops thing? That’s cool. I won’t blow your cover. Most excitement I’ve had in years.”

That was . . . worrying. But Bryn didn’t see any way around it; Lonnie was bound to make assumptions, and there was no way they wouldn’t end up confirming them, or besting them. So she threw a shrug to Joe, who said, “Yeah, man, busted. What we’re doing is eyes only clearance, so I can’t tell you much, but I promise you, what you’re doing is vital to our national security.”

“Cool,” Lonnie said. “Are you going to give me a gun, then?”

“No,” Riley said. She was already checking her ammunition, looking competent and deadly as ever, and Bryn quickly followed suit. “You do exactly what we say, when we say it, and keep your head down, Lonnie. Let the professionals work.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He sketched a sloppy salute that didn’t go with the eager smile.

God, Bryn hoped they didn’t get him killed.

“Getting close,” Joe said. Lonnie slowed the truck down, and Joe turned toward Thorpe. “What exactly are we looking for?”

“There’s a billboard to the right. What we’re looking for will be duct-taped to one of the posts.”

“Anybody waiting?”

“No. It’s a dead drop.”

Bryn knew it was a technical term, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t ominous. Out of the truck they were exposed and vulnerable.

“Thorpe,” she said. He looked at her with a frown grooved into his brow, and there was fright in his eyes, as well as distaste. “You’ll go out with me to retrieve it. Riley and Joe stay here to cover us and make sure Lonnie is safe.” What she really meant was make sure Lonnie doesn’t run out on us, but the other way sounded better.

Thorpe looked momentarily very unhappy with this proposal, but she thought it was mainly because he was being paired up with her. He preferred to hang out with Joe Fideli. She understood that. Hell, she preferred to hang out with Joe, too. But he was going to have to suck up his prejudices and deal with it for five minutes. God only knew, she’d had to put her own preferences on hold for . . . what seemed like forever.

“Don’t I get a weapon?” he asked plaintively, as she checked her sidearm. She gave him a lifted eyebrow for answer, and threw open the door to jump down to the ground. Solid, unmoving ground. That was a cell-deep relief, just to be still for a moment, after that eternity of driving, but she couldn’t stand in place, either. She grabbed Thorpe and pulled him next to her, then thrust him toward the billboard that gently swayed and creaked in the breeze. The air felt clean and fresh to her, with the scent of sage mixed in with the hot metal and grease of the truck. As they stepped away from the cab, the industrial stench faded, and left the much nicer smell of blooming herbs and brush.

Thorpe must have decided he didn’t like being exposed, because he rushed forward toward the billboard’s base. There were four heavy posts driven into the ground, and between them were drifts of trash and tangled spiderwebs.

But the one on the end was cleaned of all that. There was a dried-up stack of weeds packed in there, but it looked constructed, not natural.

Thorpe shoved at the weeds, and revealed a shiny gray oblong of duct tape, lumpy in the middle. He stepped forward and reached out for it . . . and Bryn heard a very clear, crisp click. A sound she knew all too well. It sent a bolt of cold through her, and as Thorpe looked down, probably wondering if he’d stepped on a twig, she grabbed him and said, “Hold still.”

“Why? What in the world—”

“Just don’t move,” she said, and dropped to her knees next to him. The dry, sandy soil had blown away a little and revealed the curved dull gray side of the top plate of the bomb. She blew away more of the sand, careful not to touch anything. It wasn’t military-issue, more of an IED-type device, though she couldn’t be sure of anything without a better look at it.

A look she wasn’t likely to get, considering that Thorpe was resting his full weight on it. But she had dealt with enough of these types of bombs, and bomb makers, to know that the point wouldn’t be flash and show—not like a movie explosion, all flame and smoke. This would be a dirty, hard sort of bomb, one packed with shrapnel that would rip Thorpe and her apart, and probably severely injure everybody in the truck, too. Shrapnel was cheap and easy and utterly, horribly effective.

It was all going to depend on the structure, and there was simply no way, and no time, to do an effective analysis of it. Thorpe was screwed. He didn’t have the discipline to hold perfectly still for hours on end, and even if he did, they couldn’t possibly stay here. The very existence of the trap meant they were blown.

He knew all that, too. She saw it go over his face in waves of emotion that finally settled into a pale, still mask.

“Listen,” Thorpe said. He licked his lips, and his eyelids fluttered shut briefly, and then he looked straight into her eyes. “If you use this on Jane, you won’t have anything left to use on anyone else—nothing to backward engineer. A weapon doesn’t do you any good if you don’t have the ability to reproduce it.”

“We may not have a choice. If she comes at us before we can get the cure to our scientists . . . I promise, we won’t use it unless we have to.”

“Not good enough,” he said. “Redundancy is everything, Bryn. I lied to you. There’s one more dose, the prototype. I sent it as far away as I could with someone I trusted. You—you might need it. More than that, you need to keep it out of her hands.”

“Who has it? Thorpe, you’re out of time!”

“I know.” He smiled sadly, palely, and nodded just a little. “Her name is Kiera Johannsen, and she’s a climatologist living in a remote research station outside of Barrow, Alaska. She doesn’t know what she has. I told her it was just a failed formula I wanted to keep on hand for research purposes, and asked her to store it for me. She agreed. Try to protect her, if you can.”

“I will,” Bryn said. Suddenly, all his bullshit and prejudice and annoying little quirks didn’t seem to matter all that much. This was a man on the edge of eternity, and he knew it. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.” He took in another deep breath. “The person I called sold us out. It probably doesn’t matter now, but it’s my brother-in-law, Jason Grant. Jane probably got to him, and he’s probably dead. Everyone I knew is probably dead, but they might not know about Kiera. Not yet.” He gave her a sudden, cynical grin. “You ever been blown up?”

“No,” she said. “Shot, stabbed, fallen from a height, several inventive things that Jane cooked up, but not completely blown up. Are you asking if it will hurt?”

“I’m fairly sure I won’t feel much,” he said. “Please ask them to move the truck back.”

Bryn nodded, opened her phone, and called Joe. He answered before it even rang. “The fuck?”

“IED,” she said. “Get the truck back. Way back. It’s going to go off.”

“Then get your ass back here and we’ll go.”

She took a step back, and then hesitated. “No,” Bryn said, without taking her eyes from Thorpe’s. “No, I think there’s something I can do here that’s more useful.”

“Die?”

“We both know it won’t kill me.”

“How the hell do you know?”

“It’s worth the risk,” she said. “Just do it, Joe.”

He cursed some, but then he hung up, and in the next ten seconds Lonnie was backing the truck up the road, over the curve of the hill. Putting solid earth between them and the explosion.

When Bryn couldn’t see it anymore, she tossed the phone on the other side of the road, into the ditch, and then nodded to Dr. Thorpe.

“Here goes nothing,” he said. “You know what I want you to do?”

“Yes,” she said. “Good luck, Calvin.”

“My friends call me Cal,” he said. “See you.”

Then he took a deep breath, reached out, and ripped the duct-taped item from the rough board of the billboard’s supporting column.

Bryn saw it in high-definition slow motion—him turning, tossing the silvery mass of tape toward her, her hand grabbing it from the air. She was already turning away from him by that time, with the grace and efficiency of a dancer, not a motion or muscle wasted, and then she was running, great long leaps powered by adrenaline and the extra boost of the nanites, and she made it almost halfway across the road before the wave of the blast hit her.

It picked her up in a shimmer of superheated air and threw her, ripped her, punched through her in a nail of white-hot shrapnel, and she rolled, shredded, into the ditch with just enough instinct left to clutch the duct-tape ball to the core of her body. She screwed her eyes shut against a flare of intense bright light.

The sound hit her a second later, rippling in a physical wave that shattered eardrums, and as the brutal glow still shimmered in the air, Bryn Davis’s shredded body died.

Her last thought was incoherent and strange.

I miss you.

She saw Patrick’s face, just a flash, and then it was all gone.

Again.