Trace of Magic (25 page)

We were in some kind of storage hallway. Shelves filled with plastic tubs and boxes lined the walls.

“This way,” he said and headed up the corridor.

The ceiling was low, and he had to stoop. The top of my head had maybe an inch clearance. Ducting and electrical conduits ran along the ceiling, increasing the danger of giving myself a serious headache. Like I didn’t already have one. Like my whole body didn’t feel like raw meat.

The walls narrowed until only one person could pass. I shuffled along, my feet sliding back and forth inside my boots as glass cut deeper into my flesh. The tears that ran like rivers down my cheeks and neck were as much from the pain as from the gas.

Touray took a sharp turn and another, and I found myself walking into what looked like a monk’s cell. It contained a twin bed, a dresser, a wood chair, and a small bathroom, with one door leading in and another leading into another room.

“Get in the shower,” he said. “Scrub off the chemicals as much as you can. I’ll get some clothes.”

“Better get some tweezers and Band-Aids, too,” I said, my voice thick with snot that didn’t seem to want to stop oozing out of my head. “Boxes of them.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. You don’t have long,” he said and vanished out the door.

I set the tire iron and the quarter on the dresser before sitting on the bed to pull off my boots. My feet were hamburger. I did my best to pull out the glass, flinging the shards onto the pillow, leaving crimson smudges and drips on the brilliant white. I only got a few pieces. The rest were too deep or slippery. After that, I stripped off my pants, bra, and underwear, and more glass fell to the floor. I went to shower, leaving a path of bloody footprints across the floor. I turned the shower spigot on, and the water came out instantly hot. Nice. I stepped into it and gasped as water hit my wounds. I clenched my fists, waiting for the pain to grow tolerable. It didn’t. Touray would be back any minute. I didn’t want him to help me shower. I grabbed a washcloth from the linens rolled up in a stainless steel basket attached to the wall above the toilet and beside the shower.

I had my choice of a bar of soap or a liquid dispenser. I used the liquid, lathering the washcloth and dabbing myself as vigorously as I could stand. My skin burned, but the steam felt good on my eyes, nose, and mouth. Even my tormented lungs seemed to welcome it. I took mouthfuls of water and swished them around my mouth and spit them out.

When I was done with my skin, I scrubbed my hair with the shampoo in the stall. It smelled like strawberries. I tried to imagine Touray or Price with strawberry-smelling hair. I giggled. Hysterics, I know. Nothing funny about my situation. All the same, I was still laughing and coughing in between laughs when I stepped out of the shower.

I wrapped a towel around myself and dropped two hand towels on the floor for my feet. I scuffed back into the little room. Touray was waiting for me. He’d already showered as well. He was wearing pretty much a clone of what he’d been wearing before. The only evidence that he’d been hurt were the slightly pink hash marks from the cuts and two rosy spots on his head where the lumps had been. His eye was no longer swollen or bloodshot. The bastard had used one of those heal-alls. Where was mine?

Apparently he didn’t think I was worth it. Waiting on the bed was a pair of jeans, one of his black shirts, some socks, an oversized red plastic first-aid box, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

I saw it and blew out a breath. That was going to be unpleasant. Maybe that was his point.

I didn’t bother with modesty or even talking to him. I dropped my towel and turned to let him clean up the cuts on my body. He picked out more shards of glass and bandaged what needed it. When he was finished with everything but my feet, I put on the shirt, sans bra. It was covered in tear-gas chemicals. I did put on my underwear, since it hadn’t been exposed to the gas, and then slid on the jeans. They were loose, but not so bad I was in danger of wearing them around my ankles the first time I took a step.

“We keep some extra clothes around in case,” he said in answer to the question that must have been loud on my face. The jeans were definitely not his. “Sit down. Let’s see your feet.”

I plopped into the chair and propped my heels up on the bed. He swore softly.

“This is going to sting,” he warned in a supreme understatement. “I have to be fast, so I won’t be gentle. I’d use a heal-all, but someone could track us with that. The nulls upstairs should slow them down, but not if we give them a beacon.”

“You used one on yourself,” I pointed out.

He nodded. “I travelled out of here to do it. Traveling’s too fast to track.”

He’d travelled out, and he’d come back. For me. Because Price had asked him to keep me safe? Or because I was too valuable an asset to let die?

I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

“Do what you have to do,” I said. I sounded like I’d swallowed razor blades. I felt like it too.

He took the pair of tweezers and began on my feet, probing with his fingers to help find the shards. My stomach lurched, and heat streaked through me. I curled my fingers around the edges of the chair and held on, forcing myself not to kick and scream.

Almost ten minutes later, he straightened. “That’s all I can do for now. This next bit will hurt a bit.”

Like digging around in my flesh for glass hadn’t hurt? I just nodded. I couldn’t unlock my teeth to speak.

He’d dabbed the cuts on the rest of my body with cotton balls and alcohol. Now he took the lid off the bottle and poured the liquid over my feet. I moaned. I’d rather have walked over hot coals.

“Can you hold these in place?” he asked me as he pressed gauze pads against one foot. I bent and held them as he wrapped blue flextape around them. He did the same to the next foot. Next he deftly eased the socks over his handiwork. He picked up one of the towels I’d been walking on and cleaned the blood out of the inside of my boots, handing me one at a time.

I put them on, lacing them loosely as I bit dents into my lower lip.

Touray put his hand under my elbow to help me up and steady me. I wanted to shake him off, but I’d likely have fallen on my butt. I collected my tire iron and the quarter from the top of the dresser and went with him to the door.

“What now?” I asked.

He gave me an admiring look, like I surprised him. Yeah, I was tougher than I looked.

“A loose end. Then we get out before we get killed.”

He led the way out the door, and I followed.

“What sort of loose end?”

“How is it I’ve never heard of you?” he asked, ignoring my question entirely. “You broke the nulls on my cage. I should have heard of someone who could do something that powerful.”

Two could play that game. “What makes that stuff so important? Why would the FBI even care?”

It’s really tough holding a conversation when you’re walking on ground meat and the rest of you feels like it was just doused in acid, inside and out. My nose and eyes were still running, though not nearly as bad now. My lungs were starting to ease, but I couldn’t have taken a deep breath to save my life.

He glanced back at me, a searching look. I shivered. He didn’t say anything more.

That one look made me keenly aware of my predicament. I was lost. If the building was on fire and I had to get out on my own, I’d be toast.

Touray led me to another ladder space. This time it was hidden behind a set of shelves. They swung open and the steel ladder was bolted to the wall inside the shallow niche. Clearly he’d anticipated the need for escape routes. In his line of work, I’d have had dozens.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Hurry. We haven’t much time.”

“How do you know?” I asked, shoving the tire iron into my waistband again. I stepped onto the rungs. My feet were on fire.

“If my people don’t hit the fail-safe soon, the building will self-destruct.”

“Self-destruct? How long do we have?”

“It depends on how deeply they’ve encroached. Once I hit the alarm, the system activated. There are several points of no return.” I could hear a grim sort of satisfaction in his voice. “Once an enemy crosses into one of those areas, then the destruct is immediately triggered and the building is vaporized.”

If I could have been more afraid, I would have been. As it was, I had hit my limit. “How very James Bond of you,” I muttered. One bright note was that if I was going to die, hopefully Amy and Special Bitch Sandra Arnow were going to go with me. We could play poker in hell together. I must have said it aloud.

His dry laugh caught me by surprise. “I’m beginning to see what Clay sees in you.”

Somehow that didn’t warm the cockles of my heart. I clambered downward. He mounted the ladder above me and pulled the door shut. Dim lights popped on as it did. I heard a click as he locked it. I looked down between my feet. I couldn’t see how far down it was. The lights only lit a few feet below me. I stepped down and another bulb woke below.

“Quiet now,” he whispered as we dropped lower. “We don’t want to be heard.”

I began to hear noises now. More explosions and gunshots. The building shivered and groaned. Shouts. Pockets of silences. I couldn’t make out what anyone said. I wondered how close somebody was to triggering the self-destruct.

I placed my feet carefully. They felt huge, like they didn’t really belong to me. But of course they did, because they sent streaks of serrated pain up through my chest with every step. The bad news was I couldn’t feel anything but them. The good news was that I couldn’t feel anything but them. Their flames swallowed my entire body, eating the petty hurts from my other wounds.

Because I had no choice, I kept descending the ladder until the noises faded to distant thumps and crackles. I was pretty sure we were underground. My arms and legs shook, and my hands were slick on the metal rungs.

“Hold up now,” Touray said.

I stopped, locking my knees and sliding my arm around the rung and holding onto it with my wrist, supporting some of my body weight to give my feet a break. I leaned my forehead into the metal and concentrated on not letting go.

“Looks like it’s clear,” he said.

I lifted my head. He’d slid back a small panel in the wall and now snicked it closed.

“Behind you is a latch. Pull and twist and the door will open.”

I kept my arm crooked around the ladder and twisted my body. My feet slipped. I kicked wildly, snatching at the ladder with my free hand. One of my feet slid through, and I banged my shin. I made an animal sound, high and screechy. There’s a point where the agony becomes too much to keep inside and all you can do is let it out.

“Shhhh!”
came Touray’s entirely unsympathetic response.

“Bite me,” I muttered and finally got a foot back on a rung. I turned and fumbled for the latch. Grabbing it, I pulled and twisted. A panel popped away and I shoved it open.

The dim light from the shaft did little to illuminate the interior of the room. I didn’t know how I was going to get myself off the ladder and inside.

A black shadow dropped as Touray grabbed a bar above the door and swung himself through. He turned and reached for me.

“I’ve got you,” he said.

I sort of hop-leaned into him, clutching his shoulders as he put his arms around me and lifted me through. He set me on the ground by the wall, and I promptly slid down to my butt. He shut the door and flipped a switch on. Fluorescent lights flickered to life. We were in what appeared to be a maintenance closet. He stuck his hand down to help me up.

“Let’s go. No time to rest.”

I put my hand in his, and he heaved me up, catching me around the waist to steady me.

“Tell me about you and Clay,” he said as he pulled us out into yet another featureless corridor.

“The sex is phenomenal.”

He made a strangled sound.

“What? Not what you were looking to find out?”

He gave me a sour look. “No.”

“You already know he hired me to do a trace.” I wasn’t going to give him anything easy. He might be helping me at the moment, but he still scared the shit out of me. He was a wolf, and I was a rabbit dinner.

“My brother has never challenged me over a woman before,” he said.

“What does that have to do with me?”

“He ignored my orders in order to protect you. He has never done that before.”

“I didn’t see him ignoring you,” I retorted. “He was damned quick to run off when you told him to.”

“Only when I told him I would keep you safe.”

“
This
is safe?”

“We are under attack,” he said. Silence fell between us. A moment later he broke it, his voice grim. “I hold few things sacred. My brother means everything to me. He wants you safe, therefore I will keep you safe. Or at least you will be alive and reasonably whole.”

“Uh-huh. I saw that look you gave me in the cage. You plan to kill me.”

“I considered it. But then I promised my brother I’d keep you safe. Now I am honor bound to protect you.”

“Until it works in your favor not to.”

He flashed me a startling and totally unapologetic grin. It was like watching the beast turn into a gorgeous prince. I swallowed, not immune. I almost didn’t hear what he said.

“Not even then.”

I made myself focus. “Uh-huh. If I buy that, I suppose you want to sell me some oceanfront property in Wyoming, too? Maybe a bridge in New York?”