djinn wars 03 - fallen (12 page)

“Someone could have heard that,” Evony said severely.

Ethan only shrugged. “Did you have a better idea?”

Of course she didn’t, so she settled for sending him a scathing look before pushing the door inward. With her free hand, she pulled out her own pistol. “Let’s go,” she said in a whispered hiss.

I thought the whisper was sort of unnecessary, considering that Ethan had already shot up the door. But we did need to get moving. I left my pistol in its holster, since I figured Evony and Ethan were doing a decent enough job of providing armed cover. Anyway, while there were guards stationed at this facility, there had never seemed to be more than a few at any given time, except when I’d been caught trying to break Jace out of here.

The place definitely seemed deserted enough tonight. You’d have thought that gunshot would have been enough to bring people running, but we didn’t see anyone else as we moved down the corridor, working in tandem to open the doors and make sure that Miles Odekirk wasn’t hiding in any of the chambers we passed. Just our good luck that this building didn’t have the keypad locks that had been installed in the one where Jace was held captive. That would have stopped us in our tracks. All these doors had regular locks, though, and all of them stood open — mostly because they didn’t seem to be hiding anything more sinister than abandoned offices and a couple of storage rooms filled with obsolete computers and banged-up furniture.

Nothing on the ground floor, though, after we’d finished our search, so we located the stairwell and headed upstairs. Our footsteps clanged on the metal stairs, and I winced. Maybe no one was around, but I still couldn’t help thinking that we were making ourselves awfully conspicuous. But what did I expect? We were a bunch of civilians…even our djinn. It wasn’t as if we were all trained Navy SEALs or something.

“Where do you think all the guards are?” I whispered to Jace.

He lifted his shoulders. I didn’t like the tight set of his mouth, which told me he was using sheer will to keep going, despite the draining effect of the devices protecting Los Alamos. Not for the first time, I wished I could have come up with some argument that would have convinced him to stay in Taos, but he wouldn’t have heard of it. After our nearly month-long separation, he wasn’t about to let me out of his sight.

However, his voice sounded smooth and controlled enough as he replied, “I don’t know where they might be. It’s possible that once they had no more djinn to guard, they saw no need for regular patrols here. After all, what would they be looking for? Our only desire was to escape, to get back safely to Taos.”

That made some sense — if you were dealing with a rational person. But Richard Margolis was far from rational when it came to djinn. He wouldn’t see our escape for what it was: a flight to freedom. No, he’d suspect us of leaving so we could regroup, and then come back and mount another assault.

Which, come to think of it, was pretty much exactly what we were doing.

I shook my head. “I think it’s probably more likely that he just doesn’t have enough people to get any kind of decent coverage when it comes to guard duty. Which is still a good thing, don’t get me wrong. It’s only — ”

My words broke off there, as Ethan opened the door that led into the main corridor of the second floor, and I saw exactly where those missing guards were.

Right in front of us.

I froze, and so did Evony. But Ethan had some kind of experience with this sort of thing — what, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know — and had his pistol out and was firing before the two guys with the bad luck to draw guard duty this evening had a chance to even pull out their own guns. They dropped, silent and unmoving, and I found myself raising my hand to my mouth to prevent myself from making anything except a muffled whimper.

“Holy shit,” Evony whispered.

“Them or us,” Ethan said briefly. His expression was serene, unruffled…about the opposite of how I felt right about then. “Which way?”

She hesitated, then replied, “To the left, I guess.”

As we passed the prone bodies of the fallen guards, I couldn’t help glancing down. A tiny sigh of relief escaped my lips. I didn’t recognize either one of them. For a brief, awful second, I’d worried that Dan Lowery might be one of the men Ethan had shot, but obviously he hadn’t been working the night shift this evening. Or at all, I reflected. I still had no idea whether he’d escaped Margolis’ wrath after Jace and Evony and I had fled the cells under the Los Alamos justice center.

All the doors we tried were unlocked, opening into offices and meeting rooms and, here and there, what used to be small labs, with banks of tables and computers and oscilloscopes and other equipment I couldn’t even identify. Every one of those rooms was empty, and I forced myself not to let out a sigh of frustration.

We doubled back, passing the fallen guards. I hated to look at them, hated that we’d had to resort to violence to keep ourselves safe. All right, grabbing Miles Odekirk and hauling him out of here would be its own form of violence, but our intention wasn’t to hurt him, only to get him to help us. Maybe we could have subdued those guards without shooting them. Unfortunately, Ethan hadn’t really given us that option, and I didn’t have the time or the energy to upbraid him for his impulsive, deadly actions now.

At the far end of the hall was a set of double doors. There had been a similar set on the other side of the building, hiding one of the labs we’d discovered. It was probably too much to ask that Odekirk might be working in the room beyond those doors, but I found myself whispering a little prayer anyway.

Please let this be the one….

Ethan nodded at Evony, and she pushed the door open as he whipped around, gun out. Dani followed, then Jace, with me bringing up the rear.

As in the first lab we’d found, this one was crowded with equipment: multiple computers, their flat screens showing what looked like 3D modeling programs and scrolling banks of code. Oscilloscopes and tables filled with bits and pieces of what looked like junk, but which I guessed must be the components for more devices. Unlike that first lab, however, this one was occupied. Miles Odekirk stood next to one of the worktables, a half-assembled box in one hand. It fell from his fingers as he caught sight of us, hitting the tabletop with a
thunk
.

“Hello, Dr. Odekirk,” I said. “You’re coming with us.”

Chapter Seven

To his credit, he was only thrown off for a fraction of a second. Then he lunged for the walkie-talkie that had been lying on the worktable amongst the welter of parts and wires and pliers.

But Ethan was too fast for him. In that same instant, he charged forward and knocked the walkie-talkie to the linoleum floor with the hand that wasn’t holding the gun. Since the radio was one of those heavy-duty ones with a rubberized casing, it bounced instead of shattering. Still, Miles Odekirk wouldn’t be using it anytime soon.

“Hands up,” Ethan said, pistol trained on the scientist.

Odekirk seemed to realize there wasn’t much use in protesting, so he raised both his hands in the air. “I’m not sure what you think you’re going to accomplish with all this,” he said, gaze flicking to Jace and Dani, then to Evony and me. He frowned, although I wasn’t sure if the scowl resulted from surprise at seeing two djinn functioning more or less normally even in an area protected by the device, or because Evony’s and my presence there especially annoyed him for some reason.

In the end, it really didn’t matter. “We can discuss that later,” I said. “For now, we have to get going. Do you have a coat?”

Apparently surprised by the
non sequitur,
he blinked, then replied, “In the supply closet over there.”

“Get it.”

He sidled over to the closet in question and Ethan followed, his gun pointed dead in the center of the scientist’s back. It was fairly obvious that Ethan didn’t trust Miles Odekirk any farther than he could throw him. I didn’t trust him, either, but he didn’t seem to me like the type to keep a hold-out pistol anywhere around. No, he’d been relying on the two guards patrolling the building to protect him.

Guards who were now dead, thanks to us.

I swallowed uneasily, then watched as Miles pulled out a down coat out of the closet and began shrugging into it.

His tone almost conversational, he said, “Do you really think you’re going to get me away from here without being detected?”

Jace smiled grimly. “We got in, didn’t we?”

That reply was obviously not what Odekirk wanted to hear; his scowl deepened, but he finished zipping up his coat.

“Okay,” Evony said. “That thing you were working on? We want it, and any components you need to finish putting it together.”

“I don’t see — ”

“He’s just stalling in the hope that someone will come to rescue him,” Dani cut in. He stepped away from Jace and me, located a box, and began piling everything on the worktable into it.

“I had all that organized,” Miles protested.

“And you’ll organize it all over again once we get where we’re going,” Evony said. She went to the desk at the far end of the room, where a laptop sat open, then shut it and began gathering up its power cables.

Odekirk’s eyes took on a certain glint, as if he’d just deduced what we were up to. “If you think I’m going to provide you with any sort of assistance, you’re sadly mistaken.”

“We’ll see about that,” Jace said. His expression was so blank, it might have been carved from stone…that is, unless you happened to take a good look at his eyes. They were colder than a winter night, colder than the dark between the stars.

The scientist swallowed.

“I think we’ve got it all,” Evony announced, glancing over at Dani. He nodded, hefting the box of supplies he’d gathered. I wondered if the djinn would actually have the strength to carry it any distance, but decided I’d wait until he showed obvious signs of fatigue before offering to take it from him.

At that point, I did finally draw my own pistol and point it at Odekirk. “All right,” I told him. “Time to go.”

He didn’t offer any protest, but headed out the door meekly enough. I supposed he probably didn’t have much experience with having several guns pointed at him.

“The stairwell,” Jace said briefly.

We all headed in that direction, Ethan in the lead, scanning the whole time for signs of any more guards. No one stopped us from getting to the stairs, however, and we hurried down, this time not worrying about stealth. Right then, speed was our objective.

The Jeep still waited for us in the lee of the building, and we herded Odekirk that way. I could hear Dani’s labored breathing, so I said, “I can take that box from you.”

He shook his head. “No. We’re almost there.”

I supposed he had a point. It might have taken longer to stop and retrieve his burden from him than it did to stagger the last yard or two to our getaway vehicle. I clicked the remote to unlock it, and Ethan bundled Miles Odekirk into the back seat, with Evony squeezing in next to him. Dani went around to the back and set the box in the cargo area, then got in as well.

Despite everything, I couldn’t help but repress a smile at Miles Odekirk’s expression, revealed as it was in the moonlight. He didn’t look frightened, or even angry. No, he just appeared supremely annoyed, as if being wedged in the back seat of a Jeep Wrangler with a couple of armed human miscreants and a djinn was a huge inconvenience. Well, I supposed in a way it was.

Jace climbed into the passenger seat, and I got in behind the wheel. My foot hit the gas almost the same instant I turned the key in the ignition, and the Jeep leaped forward, tires squealing. Good thing there wasn’t any snow or ice in this particular section of the parking lot.

We racketed down the hill. The whole time, I kept stealing glances in the rearview mirror, certain I would see an army of Margolis’ goons chasing down Pajarito Road after us, but the asphalt gleamed blank in the moonlight, unoccupied.

“So…what gives?” I asked over my shoulder. “Were those two guards really the only ones in the building? Didn’t you have any other kind of surveillance?”

Odekirk’s mouth tightened. “Two there, and four more covering the rest of the grounds. Just your good luck that the others were elsewhere. But, as you may have noticed, it is rather a large campus.”

His tone was cool, almost disinterested. For all I knew, he’d resigned himself to his fate, whatever that might turn out to be. Or maybe inwardly he hoped our luck was about to run out, and we’d come across those other guards at any moment.

I couldn’t help worrying about that, but at the same time, I kept my foot pressed firmly on the accelerator. The farther we got from the labs, the closer we drew to the rest of the group where they waited for us in that stand of juniper. The guards might have been tasked with keeping Miles Odekirk and the facility he now commanded safe, but I wondered if their loyalty to their commander was strong enough that it would lead them to venture beyond the bounds of the safe zone, especially if they were confronted by a group of angry djinn the second they passed over the border.