Toys

Chapter 89

McGill was waiting for me at the end of the hallway. His round pie face held a satisfied smile. “He’ll close on her-Moore’s the master at it. He’ll be lighting up one of his victory cigars any minute. That human bitch doesn’t stand a chance.”

“No, I’m sure she doesn’t,” I said. I was almost shaking with tension. More and more I was feeling that I couldn’t leave Lucy in there with Jax. He had all the tools of torture ever devised, and-

My head whipped as a shrill screeching noise came from the interrogation room. It didn’t sound human.

Or Elite.

“What the hell was that?” McGill turned to me.

“I have no idea.”

Then I saw a flash of light-Moore’s victory cigar?

And then we both heard a terrible explosion.

By the time McGill and I got back to the room, the walls and door-all made of superstrong alloy-were shimmering with heat and spewing smoke. A thermal bomb had exploded inside-had to be. But how had it gotten in there? Certainly Lucy had been searched. Had Moore’s cigar set it off?

Security guards were racing down the hall, a half dozen of them, blasters at the ready. Within seconds, they had blown open the door. Smoke and steam escaped in a searing hot fog that drove all of us back down the hallway.

“Jax Moore is dead,” McGill proclaimed. “They both are. Blown to cinders.”

When the smoke cleared, I stared at the disaster inside. My heart sank. The heat had been so intense that the floor, walls, and ceiling had melted half away. Everything inside had been incinerated to blackish dust and spatters of liquefied metal. Everything.

Including Jax Moore.

Worst of all was the empty space where Lucy had been hanging. Not a trace of her was left. She must have had the bomb inside her body-sacrificed herself. That had been her plan from the start, hadn’t it?

To kill Jax Moore right here at Agency Headquarters; to send a warning to all Elites.

And I had been Lucy’s unwitting accomplice. I’d done this, hadn’t I?

I had captured and brought her here to die.