Devil's Due (24 page)

“Says she is.”

“I got extra.”

“Of everything?”

“Pretty much.”

They hit sunlight, and she steered the minivan toward the freeway.

“I forgot to ask,” he said. “Where is Eidolon’s great big headquarters of evil, anyway?”

“Las Vegas,” she said.

He smiled.

“Yes,” she agreed. “After we save the world, we can take in a show.”

“We take Simms, we could gamble.” Ben glanced out the window, checking for tails. “What about a Vegas wedding?”

“That can’t be a proposal.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s see—I hardly know you, we’re on our way to a suicidally crazy mission, and I’m pregnant from immaculate conception. You’d be insane to propose to me now.”

“Haven’t you noticed that I’m not necessarily sane?”

She stopped for a light, the last one, and looked over at him for a long few seconds.

“I have,” she admitted. “It’s one of your better qualities.”

“Vegas wedding,” he said, and leaned his head back against the plush upholstery as she accelerated the van through the green light and made the on ramp. “I’m going to sleep now.”

It was going to be a twenty-hour drive, at least. Lucia settled in, and wondered how Jazz was expecting to meet her.

She just knew, though, that somehow, Jazz would.

Jazz showed up at a diner outside of Fremont Junction in Utah, and immediately took a turn behind the wheel. “Simms,” she said, which eliminated the need for any
other explanations. Lucia, who’d already switched off with McCarthy once, gladly gave up driving and stretched out on the bench seat behind. McCarthy stayed in the passenger seat, talking in low tones with Jazz, and Lucia slipped off into a deep, exhausted sleep for a few hours, until the van stopped for gas again in Cedar City. She was driving once more when they crossed a narrow strip of Arizona desert, black and hypnotic at night, and then into Nevada.

The sun rose as they approached Las Vegas, and all three of them were wide awake for it.

“Straight there,” Jazz said, as she stripped off her flannel shirt and pulled a bulletproof vest over her long-sleeved T-shirt. She snugged it tight, then donned the flannel shirt again. “No stops, right? Simms said it himself. The more we keep in motion, the harder it is for them to predict where we’re going to be.”

“I hope he’s right,” Lucia said grimly. “This isn’t home turf for either of us.”

“We’ll be okay.” Jazz grinned at her, the devil in her eyes. “We’re the scary ones, remember?”

“Boy,” McCarthy said without looking up as he cinched his own vest tight, “you’re really not wrong on that one.”

They cruised down the strip, because it was there and besides, it was on the way, and Jazz made verbal note of all the things she wanted to do later, when things were over. It was nervous talk. No matter how it came out, Lucia doubted they’d be hanging around to catch Cirque du Soleil.

Jazz got on the phone. “Manny? Your guy ready to rock?”

“Two guys,” he said on speakerphone. “On your word. Jazz? Got a call from Agent Rawlins. They’re letting Susannah Davis go today.”

“What? They were supposed to keep her in protective custody!”

“She stopped cooperating. He said either we pick her up, or they show her the door and she can call a cab. What do you want me to do?”

Jazz chewed her lip and raised her eyebrows. Lucia said, “Can Pansy pick her up? Bring her to the bunker until we get back?”

Manny didn’t like it; that much was obvious from his tone. “Yeah. Okay. Not for more than a day, though. She
doesn’t
stay here.”

“Fine. Thank you, Manny. Go with Pansy, okay?”

“Of course. Hey, I got the Hummer back. Cops are looking for you, but I guess you already knew that. Thanks for the damage.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“I just ordered a red one. And it cost me ten grand to get the upgrades transferred over. You’re paying for it.”

He hung up.

Jazz sighed. “Unbelievable. You’ve seen the office, right? Ten grand to him is what he finds vacuuming the carpet.”

“He’s getting a red one? I didn’t think it could possibly stick out any more.”

“Well, let’s face it, we don’t love the damn thing for its ability to blend in….”

They both fell silent as Lucia made the last turn, and Jazz silently checked addresses. She pointed to a ten-story building at the end of the street. It wasn’t pretty, wasn’t ugly, wasn’t much of anything. A nondescript structure, a victim of industrial-park architectural school. Glass and granite, concrete and steel. It looked strong, but not imposing.

“Parking,” Lucia said. “On the street?”

“We all going to have our vests covered?” asked Jazz.

For answer, McCarthy put his shirt on over his and buttoned it. It looked tight, but would pass a quick visual inspection. Lucia had a problem for a second, because she didn’t want the sweat-and-blister-inducing Kevlar against her bare skin, but by the time she’d pulled into a space, Jazz had found an extra T-shirt in her duffel bag. Lucia donned it, then the heavy armor. McCarthy tightened the straps for her, although she didn’t need the help, and Jazz handed her a blue-and-white-checked outer shirt. She buttoned it as far as her collarbone and picked up the backpack.

“Ready,” she said.

Jazz slid back the door under the blazing morning sun. “I hope to hell it’s Casual Friday in there.” She opened the phone and speed-dialed Manny. “We’re going.”

Ben, as they’d worked out on the drive, took up a post sitting in the lobby. He didn’t look out of place, especially when he sat down with a copy of
Business Week
and relaxed with a foam cup next to him.

It was surprisingly easy infiltrating the headquarters of Eidolon. Part of that was due to corporate mentality—there was security, and it involved key cards, but loitering at the elevators, talking idly until a group of workers showed up, netted a ride upstairs. Jazz and Lucia just drafted on the first one’s key card through the big glass doors into the work area.

Jazz knew the floor plans backward and forward, evidently. She unhesitatingly turned left, then right at a junction, then left.

They ended up at the bathrooms. Lucia blinked, startled, but Jazz just lifted a shoulder. “Look, I’ve been on the road for what feels like a week, and if we’re going to do this, the last thing I need is a full bladder, if you know what I mean.”

Lucia choked down a laugh and followed her.

Business done, they took a quick stroll around the slowly filling work cubicles. It was a busy place—apparently, evil’s stock was up this week—and every person they saw might know them, or at least their photographs. But this floor seemed to hold worker bees, not executives, and be devoted to systems and finance.

There was an empty cubicle against the far wall. The server room—which they couldn’t possibly get into—was on the other side. Lucia set the heavy backpack down with a breathless sigh of relief. “You’re sure there isn’t shielding on the room?” she asked.

“Not in the plans,” Jazz said.

“We can’t get this wrong.”

“The server room’s locked off, with special access. Our chances of getting in there—”

“Go pull the fire alarm.”

“What?”

“Go pull the fire alarm. All electronic doors have to unlock in the event of a fire alarm. It’s code.”

Jazz stared at her for a few seconds, then took out her cell phone and speed-dialed Manny once more. “Get ready. Two minutes.” She hung up without waiting for his reply. “Right. Give me your stuff.”

Lucia handed over her purse and phone.

“I’ll evacuate with the herd. You find me,” Jazz said.

“Okay.”

Jazz grabbed her by the hand. “L. Don’t disappoint me and get killed, okay?”

Lucia, for answer, pulled her into a quick hug, kissed her on the cheek and said, “Go.”

Then she grabbed the backpack, shouldered it and
watched Jazz head for the fire alarm. She pulled it casually and kept walking.

Alarms and overhead strobes erupted. A computerized voice came on the intercoms, over groans and shouts, and instructed everyone to head for their designated evacuation routes. Lucia stayed where she was, fiddling with her backpack, as people passed her cube. When she didn’t hear any more footsteps, she ducked out and down the hall.

The server room doors, labeled with warnings for halon gas systems, plus Restricted Access, Security Area signs, were unlocked. Heart pounding, she stepped inside, blinked at the huge array of servers. Ranks of boxes; blinking red and green lights. The air was cool and dry, the floor a raised, nonstatic surface, springy under her feet.

She spotted a surveillance camera in the corner. They’d have seen her by now. She had very little time.

She slipped the backpack off her shoulder.

During the endless drive, when McCarthy had been at the wheel, she’d unpacked the EMP generator. It came in two pieces—the guts of the unit and a huge, heavy battery. She knelt and took the two parts, mated them together with a snap and flipped the toggle switch.

Lights came on.

“Gregory, if you’ve screwed me, I swear to God…”

She reached for the activate button, and froze when something cold touched the back of her head.

“This,” a male voice said, “is the barrel of a Beretta, and you’re going to want to take your hand off the bomb.”

Fear and fury raced through her, powerful enough to make her sway, but she slowly raised both hands in the air.

“On both knees,” he said, and kicked at her right foot, which was still on the ground. She shifted and obeyed. “Hands behind your head.”

The voice sounded familiar, but congested, as if the speaker had a bad cold. She wanted to turn around, but the gun pressed to her head convinced her that curiosity was a bad idea.

“You expecting McCarthy to charge up here to the rescue? That son of a bitch is in custody downstairs. So’s your friend Jazz. So you just be a good girl and take these—” a gleaming pair of steel handcuffs jangled in front of her face “—and put them on your right wrist first.”

She knew the voice now; she’d finally placed it. Detective Stewart. He really didn’t sound well. “You don’t have jurisdiction here.”

“
This
has jurisdiction pretty much anywhere, bitch.” He pressed with the gun barrel, hard enough to bruise. She winced and involuntarily moved her head forward; the gun followed. She took the handcuffs and snapped one on her right wrist, then—unasked—put her wrists behind her. He snapped them shut.

“Ready?” a voice called from the doorway.

“Yeah, she’s restrained. Come on in.”

The gun finally withdrew, letting her breathe a little, and she couldn’t resist twisting to look over her shoulder as the door opened.

Ken Stewart looked terrible—really terrible. His pallor had taken on a corpselike appearance, and his breathing seemed labored. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. He stepped back, giving the newcomers a respectful distance. There were three of them, all with executive polish. The one in front was middle-aged, with dark hair and dark eyes and a foxlike face that looked clever and cold. A slight asymmetry to his face made the right eye look smaller.

He was rich, well-groomed, with an aura of absolute power.

“You’re Lucia Garza,” he said, and stepped forward. “Stand up. Turn around.”

“Careful,” Stewart said. “I said she was restrained, not safe.”

The man nodded. Lucia got up and turned to face them. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” she said.

“Not formally, no, but I’ve been screwing with your life for quite some time now,” the man said coolly. “My name is Gil Kavanaugh. I run Eidolon Corporation.”

The man—no, the
psychic
—Simms had handpicked as his successor. The man who was the brains behind this side of the chess game, as Simms was behind the Cross Society. He seemed young for it, but she supposed that monomania was possible at any age.

He looked her in the eyes and said, “I’m not responsible for what was done to you. That was the Cross Society, playing God. If I’d had my way, Ben McCarthy would never have lived to get out of prison, and you wouldn’t have ended up on a table with your legs apart, getting raped by doctors. Have they told you why it was so important?”

She felt a cold wave wash over her, and then hot prickles, as if her whole body had experienced numbness and rebirth. Her mind felt extraordinarily clear. “You saw the pictures.”

He smiled. “I see everything.” He tapped his forehead. “I’m tuned to your channel, you see. Yours, your friends’—at the moment, you really do matter quite a lot. Pity about McCarthy, though. You never should have fallen in love with him. I warned you it would be a mistake—all right, I was somewhat oblique about it, but you’re a bright woman. I admit, I didn’t expect McCarthy to hold out like he did—
I mean, what straight man just out of prison would? Look at you. Simms must have been
pissed
, after all the trouble he went to.” Kavanaugh tilted his head slightly. “Are you sure you don’t want to know about the child?”

The fire alarms cut out suddenly, leaving a taut silence and a continuing ringing in her ears.

“Last chance,” he said. “It’s a limited time offer.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to know what you see.”

Kavanaugh sighed and shook his head. “Right,” he said. “Let’s get her upstairs—”

It was all falling apart. He wouldn’t balk at putting bullets in their heads and burying them out in the desert. And she loathed that salacious gleam in his eyes when he’d talked about the pictures. About being in her head.

She avoided Stewart’s grabbing hand, let her knees collapse, and fell sideways. Her elbow smacked down hard on the EMP device, on the green button.

“No!” Kavanaugh screamed, but it was too late. There wasn’t a buildup and there wasn’t a warning. It fired.

There was a smell of frying circuitry, cracks and pops, and every electronic circuit within a thousand feet went dead.

Including the lights.

Lucia rolled, banged into Stewart and sent him stumbling; he fired blind. By the muzzle flash, she got a snapshot of where everyone was standing, and she kicked both feet up, catching Stewart hard in the groin and lifting him literally off the ground. He hit the wall and screamed in high-pitched agony. She slithered backward in that direction and felt his gun on the floor, grabbed it in her cuffed hands and twisted on her knees.