They rounded the corner to meet the staccato click of a half dozen handgun safeties being released. Tara skidded to a stop before a line of soldiers, her jaw tightening as a female figure shouldered its way through them. Though she’d never met her as an adult, Tara recognized the woman with eyes like agates. A bandage was stuck to her temple, and her stringy blonde hair was scraped back from her elegant brow. Her dark clothes were covered in dust; she smelled like earth.
Tara recognized her instinctively. “Adrienne.”
“Hand me the gun.” She extended a gloved hand. The other was in a makeshift sling “It’s over.”
She had no choice. She placed the gun in her palm, bracing herself for the soldiers to slam her to the ground. As they surged forward, she spied a familiar figure at the back, a figure just removed enough to keep from getting his hands dirty.
“Corvus.” She had wanted to be wrong about his involvement with Gabriel, but the cards had been too right.
“Meatball licker,” said Harry. “Corvus is a meatball-licking emu.”
TARA PACED THE PERIMETER OF THE TINY CELL, STARING UP at the ceiling. Harry guessed she was trying to figure out how to climb up, to see if there was a way through the drop ceiling back out to the hallway. It was too far up for her to reach, and trying would be dependent upon Harry sobering up enough to lift her.
That was not going so well.
Harry sat with his back to the wall, hands in his lap. She gave up and sat down beside him. “How are you doing?”
“Still fuzzy.” He shook his head. “I can think pretty clearly, but my coordination’s shot.” He tried to run his hand through his hair and stabbed himself in the ear with his finger.
“Just rest,” she said.
“You shouldn’t have come back for me.” His tone bristled with anger, and Tara shrank away. “Now, they have the laptop, and they have you.”
Tara’s mouth hardened. “I wasn’t going to leave you.”
Harry snorted. “Now, they’re going to have the technology to harness dark energy. . . Not a good trade. And they’ll kill us anyway.” Why couldn’t she have left well enough alone? Why couldn’t she have stayed away? Now, they were well and truly fucked.
Tara wrapped her arms around her knees. She didn’t say anything, just rested her chin on her knees. “I wasn’t going to leave you,” she said finally, stubbornly. “You may not want me here, or want me in any fashion, but leaving you behind was not the right thing to do.”
He blew out his breath, reached to touch her shoulder, but she shrugged his hand off. “It’s only a matter of time until they hack that thing.”
“We’ll see. I’m not as convinced about their competence as you are.”
“You haven’t spent the night getting the crap beaten out of you in a drug-induced stupor. They seem pretty competent at that, to me.”
They hadn’t made a move to interrogate her, yet. By throwing her in the same cell as Harry, he knew they were listening, hoping that one or the other of them would slip up and let out some information about Cassie’s whereabouts or the computer password in casual conversation. Harry knew Tara knew it, too. He deliberately hadn’t asked about Cassie at all.
“Your arm’s bleeding again,” he remarked. It bothered him to see her hurt, and he knew it would hurt him even more when they killed her.
She shrugged. “It’s all right. It’s not like I got the crap beaten out of me while in a drug-induced stupor.”
Awkward silence settled over them.
“Trust me, it could be much worse.” Her mouth thinned. “Gabriel is an amateur.”
“That so?” A note of challenge rose in Harry’s voice. “He doesn’t hold a candle to the Gardener, does he?”
Her knuckles whitened on her elbows. “No, he doesn’t.”
Harry was angry at her for coming here, was lashing out. She’d take it, let him open that wound, and he felt instantly guilty for it.
“I’ll tell you my bedtime story about the Gardener.” Her tone was bitter, and she tried to control it, succeeded in flattening her voice to a dull recounting. Harry imagined this was the disinterested, emotionless voice she used in court testimony, or when patients with psychological issues reclined on her couch and confessed terrible sins. But she couldn’t look at Harry while she told the story. Instead, she looked up at the light from the fluorescent tubes.
“Once upon a time, there was a guy in the kingdom of Missouri, a botanist. You would think that would be a pretty sedate profession, but not for Amos Dalton. He had a fanatical devotion to his plants, to his research. He even developed three new species of irises.
“But sadly, he was a pain in the ass to work with. Total diva. He was let go from his position with a major bulb and seed producer because he got into a fight with his supervisor over patent rights to his darlings. . . That’s what he called them. His darlings. He stomped off in a hissy fit. Unfortunately, his reputation preceded him, and he couldn’t find another job in his field. He went to work at a florist shop to make ends meet.
“But he was determined to feed his darlings. In his mind, it took a great and terrible sacrifice to make these delicate specimens flower. He began looking at the women he delivered flowers to as nothing more than the sum of their biological parts, as plant food. He’d convinced himself that there was something special about the blood of women’s wombs that would give life to his plants, that they would give them something he couldn’t: a creative spark, a bit of primal fertility that would wrap his seeds and bulbs in life.”
Harry saw that her eyes drifted to the side in unfocused memory. Her pupils dilated, and Harry could glimpse the darkness growing there.
“A dozen roses from a paramour. . . a get-well bouquet of daisies. . . They led him to women who opened up their doors to him in delight, overjoyed to become part of his project.
“It was the bridal bouquet that made me most suspicious. I was working on his profile and drew the Eight and Nine of Pentacles from the Tarot, reversed. The Eight represented sour fruits of labor, the Nine suggested danger to a woman in a garden. A bride went missing on her wedding day, taken right from the church. Corvus and I arrived on the scene, and all that was left behind were white rose petals, a symbol of Death.”
She paused, and there was an audible click in her throat.
Harry touched her hand.
She shook her head. “I’m recently associating Corvus with that card, sorry.” She blew out a shaking breath, continued. “There was no bouquet, none anywhere. I was focused on the flower petals, where they’d come from. I took them to the lab, found that they were laced with ether. The bride’s credit card receipts showed the name of an internet company that rerouted orders to local florists, and I tracked down the address from there.”
“Did you go alone?”
She nodded. “I tried to call Corvus for backup, but he was not to be found. As usual. He said later that he hadn’t gotten the message. There was no time to wait if I hoped to find the bride alive.
“The florist’s shop was closed, but I could see a light on in the back. I circled around the back alley. The door was open. I went in.
“It was. . . a fairyland. All leaf-shadow and roots suspended in glass vials, white Christmas lights in the darkness. It smelled cloyingly sweet, the kind of artificial scent they added to hothouse roses to enhance their naked smell.
“I didn’t see him coming. He kept his ether in a plant mister. I got one shot off, I think. Last thing I remember was the furious look on his face when I fell and broke some of his rhizome vials, shattering those plants and water all over the floor. . . all that beautiful, fractured light.
“I woke up in the dark. Not the kind of dark you encounter in your house, on the street, or even in the forest. Total, utter darkness. Instead of the smell of artificial roses, I smelled irises. I was covered in them. I could feel their softly rippled petals, the fine hairlike texture of their stamens, sticking to me. I smelled earth, and the resin of pine. I was lying down, a
nd I could feel splintered wood above me. I could feel there were holes in the floor of the wooden box—in the coffin—he’d put me in to keep me still, keep me from tearing up the bulbs.
“And I smelled blood, that metallic smell mixing with the sweetness of the flowers. I felt numb, and I realized I was the one bleeding. He was bleeding me out, letting the soil drink me in. The perfect fertilizer for his delicate irises. I found out later that his favorite tool was something called a Hori-Hori knife. It’s a traditional Japanese weeding knife with a sharp, concave blade. It leaves very distinctive marks. It’s very useful for transplanting bonsai and other delicate plants. . . and for perforating a human’s internal organs. Dalton liked to use it to aerate bodies to allow for maximum blood flow into the soil.” Her fingers unconsciously slipped to her hip and her belly, to the scars crossing her skin. “I knew then, I think, what he’d taken from me. I could feel. . . I could feel the possibilities draining away. Not just my own life, but the life I could have contributed to, once upon a time. But in Dalton’s sick and twisted way, I was the mother to his irises, to his ‘children.’ ”
Harry’s grip tightened on her hand, and she did not pull away.
“I thought about giving up, but I heard a voice. I think it was in my head, some part of my psyche urging me to fight. I took off my belt, used it as a tourniquet. I dug the buckle into the ceiling of the box, over and over again, until I could feel it splinter. I jammed my hands into it, felt an avalanche of dirt that choked me and stung as it poured into my wounds.
“Fortunately, he’d buried me shallowly in a raised flower bed, so as not to waste any blood. I came up out of the box, breaking through a mass of bulbs and half-grown irises. I was in a greenhouse, and it was night. All around me, I could see other raised beds, dotted with irises. . . striped, speckled. . . I couldn’t see any color but gray. But that night in the greenhouse was so brilliantly bright. . . It was nothing like the darkness in the box.
“I broke out of that greenhouse, soaked in blood and flowers and glass. Thank God the bread truck driver on his early run saw me on the side of the road and stopped. Dalton killed himself once he realized who I was, and that my resting place was open.”
It was then that she looked at him, the pupils of her eyes so dark they eclipsed her irises. It was such a pale expression of transcendence that it made Harry’s chest ache. “So when I tell you that there’s not much Gabriel and Corvus can do to hurt me, I mean it.”
He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever else happens, I thought you deserved to know.” Her voice was small and sad, and Harry had the fear he’d lost her entirely. He felt such in awe of her, of her strength, her courage, and that enigmatic stillness that ran counterpoint to all his restlessness.
He reached for her, and the back of her neck felt cold. He kissed her, and her lips yielded to him.
He rested his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
The bolts of the door clanged back, and Corvus stepped into the cell, two soldiers at his back. Gabriel’s shape filled the door. He limped into the cell, his bandaged foot crammed in a swollen athletic sock. He looked like he’d jammed his foot into a giant marshmallow. His expression was one of controlled neutrality.
“Ms. Sheridan. I trust that you find the accommodations to be comfortable.”
“I’ve had worse. I’m sure you heard.”
“I did.” Gabriel’s smile split his face, and it even crinkled his eyes. “I have to say, Ms. Sheridan, I do admire you. You’re a worthy adversary, and I’ll be sorry to see this finished.”
“What do you want now?” Harry contemplated how far he’d have to reach to kick Gabriel in the wounded foot.
“That computer you were carrying. It’s toast.”
Harry glanced at Tara. Had she sabotaged the computer? Had she destroyed all that valuable research?
She raised her chin. “I’ve been having problems with it.”
Gabriel shook his head. “It’s not yours. It’s got Magnusson’s fingerprints all over it. What did you do to it? The hard drive is completely destroyed.”
“I didn’t do anything to it.”
“That’s a shame.” Gabriel leaned against the wall, favoring the sock monkey attached to his leg. “It seems that you would be of no further use to us. And I don’t like wasting my time.”
“I’ll make you a trade,” Tara said. “Let Harry go, and I’ll show you where Magnusson is.”
Gabriel’s eyebrow crawled up his shaven head. “All right. But then, I give you to Adrienne. She’s been chomping at the bit to get a piece of you.”
Harry pulled himself to his feet, but he stumbled and fell in a rubbery heap. “No. Nobody’s giving anything up. If anyone’s walking out of here, it’s her.”
Tara put her fingers to his lips, smiled that sad little smile. “’Bye, Harry.”
Chapter Eighteen
AT LEAST she’d been able to make a more proper good-bye to Harry this time.
Tara watched as cars gathered at the mouth of the mine in the pink brilliance of dawn. Harry was led to one of the sedans. Rentals, she judged by the plates. She’d refused to help without seeing him freed with her own eyes, had watched as they cut the zip-tie handcuffs around his wrists and handed him a set of keys. He looked at her for a long moment, and it seemed he beseeched her to change her mind. She smiled at him. She knew Harry would try to do the right thing, to go get help, but it would be far too late for her by then.
But at least he knew now. Telling him her story felt like a weight lifted from her chest. It had been years since she’d told another living person the full account of what had happened to her. Though she knew Gabriel and Corvus had heard it, too, their intangible presence didn’t matter to her. The darkness had fallen from her heart, and she was at peace with what would come next.
She climbed into a Jeep with Gabriel, Adrienne, and Corvus. Thankfully, the heat was cranked up as it bumped over the dirt road. Corvus and Adrienne sat in the backseat, silent. Corvus was pressed to the far side of the seat, away from the dirt covering Adrienne’s clothes. Tara could feel Adrienne watching her, but wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of showing it bothered her. She stared out the window at the molten gold coming over the horizon, not yet high enough to melt the frost. She wanted to believe Corvus was merely following orders, that he wasn’t taking any personal enjoyment from this. Adrienne. . . well, Adrienne would enjoy it.
“Stop here,” she said when she saw the abandoned pickup. She climbed out of the Jeep with Gabriel’s gun at her back, and a caravan of two other cars stopped behind her. While a squad of men opened the truck to search it, she led a phalanx of men down the slope to the fence.
“You want to go through, or over?” she asked.
Gabriel pulled a multi-tool out of his jacket pocket, limped to the fence, and cut out a seam. He pulled the mesh back, motioned for her to go through.
“Ladies first.”
She ducked through the fence, and the men followed her like insects, down the slope into the caldera. The dawn light illuminated the infinity loop of the particle accelerator in washes of pink and gold. Tara followed her footprints, still visible in the frost from the night before, to the broken tree and Magnusson’s remains.
“Here.” She turned away, and Gabriel’s men descended on the location like ants on candy. Corvus, disgusted, kept his distance. He pressed the back of his hand to his nose.
Adrienne, however, seemed fascinated. She squatted beside the remains. Something like jealousy seethed in those flinty eyes. Tara didn’t understand the covetousness she saw there. Surely she didn’t seek the power of dark energy, as Gabriel and Corvus did?
Adrienne reached out and touched Magnusson’s brow, an odd little gesture of reverence.
Gabriel nodded appreciatively at the find. He seemed satisfied to see Magnusson dead, and that rankled her. “Good work, Dr. Sheridan.”
“We had a d
eal,” she reminded him. Gabriel seemed to have his own twisted sense of honor; she hoped that by fulfilling her end of the bargain, that he wouldn’t send men to retrieve Harry.
“We did. And I’m keeping my end of it,” Gabriel said. He fished in his pocket for a cigar and lit it. “Agent Li is free. But our deal, regretfully, does not make any conditions for your freedom.”
Tara bowed her head.
“Corvus, take her back.”
Adrienne wrested her attention from Magnusson and stalked up to Gabriel, standing toe-to-toe with him. “She’s mine. That’s part of the deal.”
Gabriel was nonplussed. “You were supposed to get the girl for us. There’s no girl.”
Adrienne’s hands balled into fists. In a throw down between Gabriel and Adrienne, Tara wasn’t sure who would be the victor.
“You’ll get a crack at her. Don’t worry. But not until we get the information we need.”
With something like cold pity in his gray eyes, Corvus walked Tara back up the slope to the fence. They trailed three of Gabriel’s men, guns ready. Tara considered running, knowing she’d be shot, and that it would be over quickly.
“Do you love him?” Corvus asked quietly.
Tara stopped in her tracks. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Agent Li.” A wrinkle deepened above his eyes, and Tara could see she’d somehow wounded him.
Tara closed her eyes. He’d been listening to them in the cell. Who knew what kind of sick obsessions roiled behind that bald forehead.
“Yes,” she said.
Corvus looked as if she’d slapped him. Wordlessly, he stalked away. The search team met Corvus at the fence. They’d emptied the truck’s contents into black plastic garbage bags. One soldier was busily cutting into the seat cushions with a knife, searching the stuffing. Another grimaced as he pulled the petrified remains of a sandwich from under the seat.
“What did you find?” Corvus asked them. “Anything?”
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