Chameleon's Death Dance

by BR Kingsolver

  While that was going on, the voice on the intercom said, “Miss McCrory? Mr. Reagan is waiting.”

  McCrory leaned forward, keyed the intercom, and said, “Send him in.”

  I blurred my form and stepped back out again as I closed the door. Standing very still with my back to the wall, I waited. Reagan came in and closed the door behind him.

  “We have a problem,” Reagan said. He stopped and scrutinized McCrory. “What’s wrong?” Then he caught sight of the medicine bottle. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I just had a moment,” she said.

  He walked around the desk, leaned down, and hugged her. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to stress you, but we have Kieran again.”

  McCrory’s head jerked up. “Where is she? Does she…” She broke off her question as her eyes darted toward the closet. Reagan wasn’t looking directly at her and didn’t seem to notice.

  “Did she have the jewels?” Reagan finished for her. “No, she stashed them somewhere.”

  “The Chamber—” McCrory started, but he cut her off.

  “No, if they had them I’d know it. She stashed them before they picked her up. Don’t worry, though. Gavin is on his way here. She’ll tell him.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes, she’s downstairs, along with all my other secrets,” Reagan said with a chuckle.

  I hoped Wil was getting all of that.

  “I need to make a shipment,” Reagan said. “We’re going to take your lorry to the airport.”

  “Are you sure this is a good time? You know, with the Chamber watching so closely?” McCrory asked.

  “They don’t suspect you,” he said. “They didn’t pay any attention to the truck the other night. Don’t worry so much. I have everything under control. Now, are you feeling better?”

  He helped her out of her chair and they walked to the door. She kept shooting glances back at the closet. I waited until they left the office and followed them.

  McCrory was still shaky, and leaned against Reagan as they slowly walked toward the stairs.

  “Michael,” she said, “a woman came to see me. She knows, Michael. She said that we are running the same scheme here as you did in Vancouver. Selling originals and replacing them with forgeries.”

  He stopped. “What did she look like?”

  “Very tall, blonde, probably late twenties.”

  “Elizabeth Nelson,” he said. “Damn her! She was here?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “I’ll have Gavin deal with her,” he said, and I felt a chill. “As soon as we get through with Kieran, I’ll tell him. First we need to find that jewelry.”

  They took the stairs to the first floor, then through a door and down two more flights of stairs to a basement. The basement wasn’t part of the original building. When the oceans started to rise, a philanthropist had teamed with the Irish government to build a seawall around the museum. They also dug out a basement under the structure, driving support pillars down to bedrock to prevent it from sinking.

  The result was a large garage for parking cars and buses, as well as a temperature- and humidity-controlled vault for storage. Having never been there before, I discovered it was a maze. Numerous doors, seemingly randomly situated, indicated the presence of rooms.

  Reagan and McCrory turned down a narrow hallway that turned at the end and led to one of those doorways. He punched a code into the keypad, and they entered the room. I rushed down the hall and caught the door before it closed. On the other side, Reagan pushed to close it. I stuck my foot in to hold it open and unblurred.

  He pulled the door open again, an exasperated expression on his face. That expression turned to one of dismay as he saw me standing there with a gun pointed at him. He stumbled back a step, then backed away slowly. Beyond him, I saw Kieran, her hands cuffed together, hanging from a hook on the wall. Her feet didn’t reach the floor.

  Two men, both as tall as me and much bulkier, stood near her. A man in a Chamber uniform lay sprawled in a corner. From the looks of him, and the puddle of blood, I knew he wouldn’t be getting up.

  One of the thugs put his hand inside his jacket. I shot him and then shot the other man. Reagan took advantage of the distraction to rush to Kieran’s side, draw a pistol, and point it at her head.

  “Don’t move, Nelson, or I’ll kill her.”

  I met Kieran’s eyes and raised my eyebrows. “After all those steamy nights together?” I asked. “You certainly aren’t the kind of lover a girl dreams about.”

  It seemed as though I could feel the kind of buzzy feeling as I had when Kieran used her empathy, but maybe that was wishful thinking. I knew the men I shot seemed distracted, and their reactions were a bit slow. Reagan’s eyes began to lose focus, so I kept talking.

  “It’s all over, Reagan. You’ve run out of options.”

  Kieran wriggled, spinning a bit, and he reached out to steady her. Reagan’s gun wavered a bit, and I shot him in the forehead. He fell to my left, and the sound of his pistol exploded like a cannon in the small space. Kieran spun on her chain to my right.

  I rushed to her, lifting her by the waist with one arm while I unhooked her shackles with my other hand. Laying her down on the floor, I inspected the wound on the side of her head and was relieved when I saw it was only a graze, maybe two inches long.

  The sound of a woman running in heels drew my attention, and I saw McCrory’s back as she disappeared through the door. I leaped up and chased after her. She reached the end of the hallway and burst out into the parking garage before I could catch her.

  A couple of dozen people, some close to us and some at a distance, were looking our way. The sound of Reagan’s gun had been quite loud, since it didn’t have the built-in silencer mine did.

  McCrory was already winding down, stumbling and gasping for breath. And then beyond her, I saw O’Bannon walking toward us. He raised his hand, and I heard the soft spit of a silenced pistol. McCrory sprawled on the floor and lay still.

  He turned his eyes upward to me, eyes that showed no emotion whatsoever. I blurred my form and dove forward as I fired. He dove to my left as he fired, hit the ground and rolled. Taking his cue, I rolled the same direction. When he stopped rolling, he fired three shots in the direction where he’d last seen me. I fired back, then rolled again, coming to a stop against a wall.

  O’Bannon leaped to his feet and sprinted away. I fired at his back, but didn’t see any indication that I hit him. He cut around one of the large pillars, and I caught a fleeting glance of him still running past it and then around the end of the wall I lay against.

  I waited a moment. He had four options. If he snuck back and waited for me to move, he might see me. If I followed him, he might be waiting for me. He could continue to run, and either keep going or set up an ambush for me elsewhere.

  Crawling my way along the wall, I passed the pillar and came to the corner where he had disappeared. In spite of being blurred and basically invisible, I inched forward, peeking around the corner and trying to expose as little of me as I could. He was heading for the stairs, but then he took a sharp turn toward the entrance ramp for cars.

  I took off in that direction, too, hoping to gain ground on him and maybe cut him off.

  He was almost to the opening when a Chamber car sped through, followed by several more cars. I had to dodge, diving to the side and rolling, as the lead car almost hit me. When I looked up, security forces spilled out of the cars. Some of the cars stopped outside, and more security personnel spread out. O’Bannon was nowhere to be seen.

  Jumping to my feet, I raced for the entrance. Once I was outside, I saw O’Bannon running away to my left and immediately followed him. He was headed toward the gardens that spread out from the original front of the building. Four squares were filled with geometric patterns outlined by sidewalks, low and high hedges, and lines of trees planted close together. Beyond that was the old gatehouse.

  Finding someone in the gardens wouldn’t be easy. On the other h
and, getting out of there wouldn’t be easy for him, either. If not for a twenty-five-foot-high seawall, the entire garden would have been submerged.

  I slowed to a trot and fished out my phone. “Wil, can you get a helicopter or a drone up over the gardens in front of the museum?” I waited, but Wil didn’t reply. Frustrated, I looked at the phone and realized I’d turned the sound off. That was easy to fix. “Wil, can you hear me?”

  “Hell, yes, I can hear you. I’ve been listening the whole time. Where are you?”

  “Out front. Can you get a helicopter up? O’Bannon is going into the garden in the front of the building.”

  “Working on it.”

  I put the phone away and took off running again.

  By the time I reached the beginning of the hedgerows, O’Bannon had dropped from sight. I realized that he could be within a stone’s throw of me, but if he was lying behind one of the hedges, I wouldn’t see him unless I circled around. The seawall showed the definite boundaries of the museum grounds, broken only by the road across the bridge that ended in the parking garage.

  Slowing my pace, I cautiously moved along the south edge of the garden. The lawn was recently mowed, and the hedges were trimmed as square as boxes. I thanked all the gods I’d ever heard about that O’Bannon only had a pistol. With his marksmanship and a rifle, he could find a spot and hole up for days. The old gatehouse could provide such a spot. The only way to get him out of there would be with a missile.

  My phone rang, and I dropped down behind a hedge before answering it.

  “The copter’s up,” Wil said. “It should be here in a few minutes. What else can I do?”

  “Surround the garden. If we can work our way from the outside in, he won’t have any place to run. If he thinks he’s cornered, he might give himself up. But if he thinks there’s a chance to escape, God help anyone who gets in his way.”

  “Yeah. I know someone like that.” His tone was dry and sardonic.

  I sucked air. It hurt to hear him say that, but I knew he was right.

  “Yeah, I don’t give a damn about anyone but myself,” I said.

  “Libby, I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I’m sorry.”

  “No. You’re right. O’Bannon and I understand each other.”

  I thought I heard the sound of a helicopter in the distance. Chamber troops in SWAT gear ran crouched along the hedges to get into position. I unblurred my form. No sense in getting shot by friendly fire.

  “Tell your men not to shoot any blondes,” I said. “O’Bannon is bald as an egg.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Right in front of the main entrance.”

  Someone shouted, and I stuck my head up. O’Bannon saw what we were doing. He leaped up from behind a hedge and sprinted down the sidewalk toward the old gatehouse. It was a long way to go, and I hoped the copter would get there in time to cut him off. I jumped up and followed him.

  The copter swooped in, and a voice boomed out of a loudspeaker. “Stop! Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air.” The copter’s rear doors were open on both sides with mounted machine guns poking out.

  O’Bannon stopped, turned, and looked up at the helicopter. He raised his hands in the air, but I noticed he didn’t raise his left arm any higher than his shoulder. Then he brought his hands together, holding his pistol in a two-handed grip, and fired. The man behind the machine gun disappeared from sight.

  As soon as O’Bannon fired, he wheeled and resumed running toward the gatehouse. I followed him.

  The copter turned around, and the machine gun on the other side opened up. The hedges on both sides were only about four feet high, and O’Bannon threw himself off the path and over a hedge. Leaves from the hedge flew into the air as the bullets struck it, then the firing stopped. I assumed the gunner couldn’t see his target anymore.

  I didn’t hear the shot, but I did hear the pop of the bullet passing by my head. Taking a page from O’Bannon’s playbook, I vaulted over a hedge on the other side from where he had gone and hugged the ground, waiting for more bullets. None came, but I wasn’t sure if I was better off risking an inadvertent bullet while camouflaged, or a deliberate bullet by O’Bannon.

  The machine gun hammered again, and I risked looking over the hedge to see where it was shooting. The copter was a lot closer to the gatehouse than it had been earlier.

  Taking a chance, I blurred my form, jumped up, and raced in that direction. I didn’t get back on the sidewalk, but ran on the grass, keeping close to the low hedge. I reached the end of the first large square and hurdled the hedge, but I didn’t land clean. I stumbled and plowed face first into the hedge on the other side. Sharp pain erupted in my face and shoulder as the sharp ends of freshly trimmed branches jabbed me.

  I drew back and saw a stick as big around as my pinkie dripping blood. A place just below my ear hurt like fire, and my hand came back with blood on it when I touched there. It was a wonder I hadn’t put one or both of my eyes out.

  Fighting my way to my feet, I tried to locate O’Bannon. The copter hovered in front of the gatehouse and sprayed fire at the entrance, then abruptly rose higher into the sky. O’Bannon had evidently found cover inside.

  I unblurred my form and moved to my right toward the SWAT personnel converging from that direction. Behind them, I saw Wil moving toward me.

  He trotted up and asked, “What happened to you? Are you all right? You’re bleeding.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Besides the sharp pain at my jaw, my whole face stung. He handed me a handkerchief, and I wiped my face, then pressed it to my jaw below my ear. When I held it up to look, it was half red.

  “You look like you took a shotgun to the face,” he said.

  “Lovely. I take it that he went to ground?”

  “Yeah, he went into the gatehouse.”

  “I suppose that firing a missile in there is out of the question.”

  He gave me a dry chuckle in response. “I don’t think the locals would be very happy if we blew up a five-hundred-year-old landmark.”

  I studied the gatehouse, or what I could see of it from a hundred yards away. It had four round two-story stone towers with a brick house between them on the second level. It looked like the kind of place built to withstand a siege. “I guess I need to go in there and find him.”

  “Why you? We can gas him, or just starve him out.”

  “That’s an idea.”

  Even as we spoke, a couple of men moved close to the house and fired gas canisters inside. They reloaded, and fired again and again, a total of ten rounds. The rest of the troops closed in and set up to wait. The gas filled the house and the towers. A standard filter mask, such as the ones we all wore, and that O’Bannon wore, would be overwhelmed by such an assault. Still, he didn’t come out.

  We waited for half an hour, after all the gas had dissipated.

  “Got a gas mask?” I asked.

  “You’re going in there, aren’t you? Do your invisibility thing?”

  “O’Bannon doesn’t know Reagan’s dead.”

  Wil’s brow scrunched up. He turned and looked back at the museum, then back to me. “What happened in there? We found a slaughterhouse.”

  “Reagan and his thugs are mine,” I said. “Reagan shot Kieran, and O’Bannon shot McCrory, although I can’t fathom why. She was a main part of their scheme.” I shrugged. “Maybe Reagan thought she was a weak link.”

  “What about the Chamber man?” Wil asked.

  “I don’t know. He was dead when I got there. O’Bannon was late to the party. He shot McCrory, then he and I shot at each other, and we’ve been playing hide-and-seek ever since.”

  “So, explain to me again what you’re planning to do?”

  “Go in there as Reagan and talk O’Bannon into giving himself up.”

  He closed his eyes, and his lips moved, but I didn’t hear anything. I couldn’t decide if he was praying or counting to ten. Suddenly he reached out, pulled me to his chest, and hugge
d me so tight my ribs creaked.

  “Be careful, Libby.”

  One of the Chamber men gave me a gas mask and a flak jacket. I circled around the gatehouse to come at it from the blind side. Carefully inching my way around one of the round towers, I fell to my knees and crawled through the gate. As soon as I was out of sight of those outside, I morphed into an illusion of Michael Reagan.

  “Gavin!” I called. “Don’t shoot. It’s me.”

  I slowly walked through the door into one of the towers and began climbing the steps. “Gavin, can you hear me? Are you all right?”

  When I reached the second level, I pushed the door into the main house and stepped through. “Gavin, it’s me. Don’t shoot.” Someone coughed off to my left.

  O’Bannon cautiously peeked out of the next room. He had found water someplace, soaked his jacket in it, and wrapped it around his head. Even so, his eyes were bloodshot, and he couldn’t stop coughing.

  “Gavin,” I said, “give yourself up. They don’t have any witnesses, and my lawyers will take care of things. We’ll blame Kieran and Madison on the Nelson bitch.”

  O’Bannon stepped out into the open. “You’re not Michael,” he said, swinging his pistol toward me.

  I fired three times as fast as my finger could pull the trigger, and all three shots hit him in the chest. Stepping closer but stopping just beyond arm’s reach, I took careful aim and shot him in the head. Then I shot him again. Any surgeon who could scrape his brains up and put them back together would be a magician.

  With a sigh of relief, I let the illusion go and took the stairs down to ground level.

  “Hey, it’s me, the blonde chick,” I called. “Don’t anyone shoot me, okay?”

  “Stand down!” I heard Wil yell.

  I peered around the corner, and didn’t see anyone pointing an assault rifle my direction, so I stepped out into the open, both hands raised above my head and clearly visible.

  “He’s dead,” I called. Several men immediately rushed past me and into the towers on both sides.

  Wil walked over and looked me up and down. “No luck getting him to surrender?”