Night Shadow (14 page)

position with the men. They were all locked and loaded. Staying out of the

fatal funnel, he nudged the bottom of the door with his toe.

It swung open soundlessly.

Warmer air spil ed like liquid out of the opening. The interior was

unnaturally dark. No lights. No il umination from the dusk-like exterior,

indicating that other than the door there were no other ways in or out.

Maybe.

While he didn’t pick up any wizard signature, Alex heard—no, felt—the

faint mechanical hum of large machinery. He didn’t even want to hazard a

guess what the hel could be inside.

He signaled to the other two wizards that he’d take point, with Kiersted

and Ginsberg behind him. The two non-wizards, Lexi and Daklin, would

bring up the rear. Alex made eye contact with Daklin. The other man

nodded, then fel into place behind Lexi.

At his gesture, everyone turned on their Maglites simultaneously and

stepped into the darkness.

Lexi wasn’t crazy about the dark. It wasn’t a phobia, it was just that she

didn’t much care for unpredictable. And dark was pretty damned

unpredictable. She’d actually gone to one of the T-FLAC psychologists to

try to work through it. Because there was
nothing
about being an

operative that could possibly be interpreted as
predictable.
She had to get

over her need for order, and aversion to chaos, and embrace the fact that

it was the nature of the beast if she’d wanted to be an operative.

The air . . . hummed. A low-pitched sound seemed to be conducting

through her body, turning her into a giant tuning fork. It didn’t hurt, but it

felt odd, and a little uncomfortable.

There was a strong smel of ammonia and another chemical smel she

couldn’t quite ID. Whatever it was, the combination was strong enough to

make her eyes sting and tear up.

She walked with the men, shining her flashlight, scanning the immediate

area. There was nothing to see. Gray cement walls, ceiling, floor. A big

warehouse. A big, dark, empty wareh—

“Get us some light.” Alex’s voice came softly in her ear out of the

darkness. Lexi hung onto the calm rationality of it. He wasn’t talking to

her. The only way she could make light was if there was a light switch

attached to something.

“Working on it,” Ruben Ginsberg said just as quietly. Suddenly the place

lit up like Dodger Stadium.

“My God—” Alex said softly, stopping dead.

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Night Shadow

Lexi blinked into the brightness, then her eyes widened as she stared,

slack jawed.

“Holy shit.” That was Daklin.

Kiersted muttered, “Fuck me swinging.”

“Wel I’l be damned!” was Ginsberg’s contribution.

The place was
fil ed
with neat rows of clear plastic incubators.

“There must be a thousand of them,” Daklin observed quietly.

Lexi thought considerably more.

The isolettes indicated newborns, but as far as she could tel there weren’t

any babies here. But it did explain the smel . And the low hum of

machinery was explained by the powerful clusters of electrical cords

running from each incubator up into the ceiling. The same electrical cords

she’d almost tripped over yesterday in the warehouse in Rio.

“Spread out and report anything unusual.”

“You don’t think a thousand-plus empty incubators is unusual?” Lexi asked

dryly.

Alex’s hot green eyes touched her. It was so fleeting she was sure none of

the others noticed. But she felt it like a caress. “Anyone have a frame of

reference for any of this shit?” he asked. He stil had his weapon drawn,

so did the others.

The men all gave him the negative.

“I do,” Lexi said quietly, walking up to the closest isolette. She rested her

hand gently on the clear plastic dome as Alex walked up beside her.

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

She shrugged. She had a lump in her throat. “What, because I know

things?” She felt his gaze on her, but kept her attention on the familiar

gauges and tubes inside and outside the isolette.

“How do you know about this in particular? Interesting article you read in

the
Journal of Modern Medicine
?”

“No. My mother had a baby boy . . .” Lexi absently stroked her thumb

back and forth across the cool plastic. “Hal was in the NICU—Neonatal

Intensive Care Unit—for three weeks.” She imagined his frail little body

inside the incubator, his transparent lids taped shut, tubes running in and

out of every orifice. He’d been so small. So helpless. “He died.”

“I’m sorry.” Alex stood very close. Not touching her, but close enough for

her to get comfort from his presence and his body heat. “How old were

you?”

Lexi wanted to turn into his chest. Like a physical ache, she
yearned
to

feel the strength of his arms wrapped around her.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

“Thirteen and three quarters.”

“Your mother must have been devastated too.”

“Yeah. She was, when I managed to get hold of her.” Her mother had

stunned Lexi by crying on the phone. She’d never ever heard her mother

cry.

“What do you mean, get hold of her? Where the hel was she?”

“Oh, she and my father had to vacate the hotel where we’d been staying,

so they were in Tijuana.”

57

Night Shadow

“And you and the baby were . . .”

“New Orleans. I joined them after . . . After.”

“You were
thirteen
and you stayed in New Orleans
alone
for three weeks?”

He sounded so savage that Lexi turned to look at him with surprise. “Who

took care of
you
? Where did you sleep? What did you fucking
eat
?”

Bemused, she stared at him a moment. “I didn’t need anyone to take care

of me, and I stayed at the hospital with Hal, of course.” It had taken a bit

of ingenuity to keep the staff from knowing she never left. But she’d been

an ingenious and determined girl.

“Of course.” He dragged in a breath. “Tel me what we’re looking at here.

Every setup is identical.”

Lexi glanced at the row behind her. She frowned. “Yeah. They are. Weird,

because this many infants would have
different
needs. Okay. Here’s what

we have.” She indicated each as she explained to Alex what was what.

“Cardiac-Respiratory monitor. See the green, black, and white wires right

there? Those are chest leads. Those are taped to the baby—To the baby’s

chest to monitor heart rate, rhythm, and respiration.”

Lexi explained how the CPAP delivered oxygen, paired with nasal prongs

for the “better breathers,” and the endotracheal tube, which would be

inserted in the baby’s windpipe and attached to a ventilator to keep the

little airway open and deliver oxygen for the babies less capable of

breathing on their own.

She was familiar with every tube and wire involved, because she’d sat

beside Hal for twenty-one days watching him fight valiantly for life.

There was the radiant warmer to regulate the baby’s body temperature,

and suction devices to vacuum secretions from his nose and mouth. The

arterial umbilical catheter, which al owed someone to draw blood and give

fluids without sticking Hal every time. He’d been too weak to cry. He’d

broken Lexi’s heart.

Alex rested his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Okay. I get the gist.”

His hand remained there, close to her face. Warm, solid, and comforting.

“So we’re talking premature infants and/or babies who are sick?”

Lexi nodded, seeing movement out of her peripheral vision as the others

came back.

“As instructed, the techno geeks, lab rats, and assorted other CS teams

are on their way,” Ginsberg told them, wiping his nose with a square of

blue-and-white-striped fabric. Lexi had never seen anyone actually use a

hankie. He blew his nose, then shoved the handkerchief in his pocket.

Ew.
Lexi shuddered thinking of the rapid bacteria multiplication.

“We checked every container,” Daklin told Alex. “No kids in residence.”

Alex removed his hand from Lexi’s shoulder. The spot cooled rapidly and

she put her hand where his had been to hold in the warmth for one more

second.

“Educated guess says when you guys first arrived, these cribs were ful .

The force field was in full effect keeping you out while they teleported

them . . .” Alex shrugged. “Somewhere else. Then they left the door open

so we could see how fucking goddamned clever they are, and possibly to

scare the shit out of us.”

58

Night Shadow

He turned and faced his team. “Now the questions are: Where did they

get a thousand premature or sick babies? Why were
they
chosen as

opposed to viable
healthy
babies? And where are the babies
now
?”

“I have another one,” Lexi said. “These babies weren’t here alone. They

had to have specialists taking care of them. Where are the neonatologists?

The nurses? The respiratory specialists? The lab techs? Neurologists? A

cardiologist
?”

“Know what we have?” Alex said grimly. “A riddle inside an enigma inside

of a giant fucking question mark.”

“An isolette was found in the warehouse in Rio,” Lexi said, shoving both

hands into the front pockets of her jacket and hunching her shoulders

against the cold. She didn’t understand how Alex could stand there in

nothing but a short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans without turning blue. She

wanted to touch his bare arm so badly her stomach clenched as she

resisted the powerful urge to close the gap between them.

His jaw was shadowed with a sexy as sin five o’clock shadow. Lexi wanted

to rub herself against his rock-hard body like a cat. She wanted his big,

tanned hands on her naked skin. Preferably in a sun-warmed room. She

wanted to see those sharp green eyes haze as he looked at her.

She wanted to keep her job as an operative.

She flipped up her col ar to keep the cold from going down her neck.

Concentrate,
Stone.
Not on Alex. On the job at hand.

“Were there originally as many infants in Rio as there were here?” she

asked the others. “Having read Fox’s report, and seeing a similar setup at

that
location, I suspect there were.”

“Yeah. So do I,” Alex said flatly. “Same electrical power source, et cetera.”

“What are we saying?” Kiersted asked. “That original y there were a

thousand babies in Rio and they—what? Moved the kids from Brazil to

New Mexico? Why?”

Frowning in concentration Daklin looked around the vast open space. “Or

they moved
those
babies and
these
babies to a third location.”

“Where the hel did they acquire two thousand infants? And for what

purpose?” Alex glanced over at a large group of men and women in T-

FLAC gear who’d materialized several hundred feet away. He raised his

hand to acknowledge they were there, and indicated he’d be right with

them before turning back to his team.

“Ginsberg, find a secure location we can use as a command center, then

check in and see how Lu is doing. Daklin, get an update on the latest

bombings and have them shoot us al the film footage from every incident.

Let’s find the pattern. Stone, check with research. See what it can tell us

about the tangos, the tats, and any other detail we might have missed on

the security tapes. Kiersted, if we don’t have at least fifty percent of the

same personnel here that were in Rio, fix that. I want the same people

working both ops.” Alex scanned the room as if looking for something

they’d missed. “Let’s get a step ahead of these bastards instead of half a

step behind.”

Night Shadow

52° 27’ N 13° 18’ E

Alex felt as though someone had a hand clamped firmly around his dick,

and was leading him—
somewhere.
Somewhere he fucking wel didn’t want

to go. The only fingers he wanted on that particular body part anytime

soon were Lexi’s. There was something—hel , he couldn’t define
what,

about this op that had his wel -trained instincts on high alert. It felt

personal. Which was ridiculous.
Nothing
about this op was personal.

Babies?

He knew nothing about kids.

He’d never had a child, didn’t know much about them. Frankly, he didn’t

much care. He supposed that would change if and when the situation

changed, but until then there was nothing
personal
about babies in

general. There was nothing personal about several thousand small beings