No one stopped them. Two minutes after they’d stepped on hallowed pharmaceutical ground, Maggie and Constantine beeped themselves into the employee entrance using the ID keycard Maggie had stolen from Ethan’s study.
The door whispered closed behind them. Constantine stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked around. “Nice. Like a mausoleum, except not as cheerful.”
Refrigerated under the blast of air conditioning and devoid of the heat of humanity, the walls of Rx HQ had grown icy. There was no sound other than the low but insistent hum of crucial equipment kept alive by electronic life support.
Maggie’s nose wrinkled. The smell of antiseptic, so familiar, so clean, now seemed deceitful, designed to conceal the smell of putrefaction. She breathed through her mouth.
They walked noiselessly down the hall, new rubber-soled shoes—50 percent off at the sporting goods store—gliding over polished institutional flooring. They reached the hall’s terminus and took the stairs to the second floor.
The laboratories branched off the main corridor, capillaries fed by the arterial flow of workers streaming in to deliver rich, oxygenated ideas. Maggie bypassed the lab where she had worked and led Constantine to a set of three doors at the end of the hall. She gave Constantine a look that said cross your fingers and swiped Ethan’s ID card adjacent to the door of the lab where his team conducted their research.
The lights on the electric lock danced a conga line of green, then blinked twice. There was a metallic click and Maggie pushed the door open. She wriggled her eyebrows at Constantine. “And that’s how it’s done,” she whispered.
They stepped inside. The room was empty. Walls and floors free of adornment. Counters naked save for a single computer and a knot of cables where a squadron of electronics used to stand.
“I’m no expert, but shouldn’t there be more, you know, stuff here?” Constantine asked.
She opened cupboards at random. “I don’t get it,” she said. “This is the lab where Ethan’s team has worked for years. Now it looks like it’s never even been used.”
“The great clean-out?”
Maggie nodded. “I guess. Maybe they got paranoid and moved everything. Seems like overkill, doesn’t it?”
“Things got too hot, so they decided to move the kitchen. Or at least hide it.”
Maggie put her hands on her hips and surveyed the vacant room. “You can’t make a whole lab just disappear,” she said.
“Like you can’t make homeless people disappear?”
Their eyes met. Maggie nodded. “In both cases, gone isn’t really gone. It’s…moved. Hidden. Buried.” Maggie looked at Ethan’s ID badge, turning it over in her hand as she thought. His adorably crooked teeth suddenly seemed less adorable. “Let’s keep looking.”
Maggie swished out through the lab door and down the hall. Constantine trailed behind her, his eyes taking in the photos, the art, the aura of money and power. She opened the door of her own lab. Satisfied it was intact, she moved on to the next one and the next. All seemed untouched, normal. Not an item out of place.
She paused in the hallway, then gestured for Constantine to follow. She pointed to a windowless door. A white sign with crisp black lettering announced “Employee Locker Room.”
“They sent the lab equipment out for calisthenics?” Constantine whispered.
“Maybe they stashed the evidence in their lockers.”
“What, like a centrifuge and a couple hundred beakers?”
“Okay, so I don’t know where all the lab equipment went. But I think we should at least look for something incriminating. I don’t know, maybe an internal report or a memo or a thumb drive or—”
“—a signed confession?” Constantine finished.
“Stop being so negative. We’re already here. We might as well look around.”
Maggie pushed the door open and the motion-activated lights flickered to life. The room smelled musty and damp, still-moist showers facing off against a sizeable knoll of sweaty clothes in the Lost & Forsaken pile.
Maggie trailed a finger along the bank of high schoolesque lockers, some postered with women straddling items that looked vaguely automotive, others defaced by inspirational posters that urged passersby to PERSERVERE or act with CONVICTION.
Her hand paused at the locker labeled CLARK. Ethan’s locker.
Maggie felt a pang. She wondered if it would ever go away, if the pain of betrayal, of embarrassment, would fade into the background, there but dulled like the grief for her mother. The truth was, it didn’t matter. She’d probably die before her broken heart began knitting itself whole again.
She glanced at Constantine. He gave an almost imperceptible nod, his face expressionless. There was no lock. Maggie lifted the locker’s mechanism and pulled the door open.
The locker contained everything Maggie feared and dreaded. Which was to say, absolutely nothing useful.
The locker’s contents consisted of two lab coats (size L), moldering gym clothes, an elaborate grooming kit that contained jojoba-infused cleansers and ampules of wrinkle-reducing moisturizer and several thick pharmaceutical journals. It was a Sunday-best locker, dressed to impress. Did that mean it was hiding something?
Maggie patted down the locker’s interior, flipped through the journals and rifled through the lab coats’ pockets. Still nothing. She closed the locker quietly, wordlessly, feeling at once disappointed and strangely elated. Maybe Ethan wasn’t bad after all. Maybe the computer virus and the protocol files were some mistake.
Maggie shook her head, trying to dislodge the seductive voice of denial that whispered somewhere deep inside her brain. Don’t be stupid, she told herself. It’s not a mistake. Ethan is one of the “They,” a soldier for Rx. Maybe even its general.
Maggie sighed and motioned Constantine onward. They continued down the line of lockers. MCGEE. PATTERSON. MORGAN. DUPUIS.
Finally, they came to MONTGOMERY.
It was bolted with a keyed padlock. Great. Maggie groaned and slumped against the locker.
Constantine produced a paperclip from his pocket. He broke it in two, folded each half into an L and held it aloft for Maggie’s inspection.
She shrugged. “What?”
“Prepare to be amazed.” Maggie gave him a look. “A trick I learned during summer camp while bunking with Joey Tuscano. See, one half becomes the pick, the other, a torsion wrench. Pretty easy on a cheapo lock like this.”
Maggie put her hand on a hip and cocked her head. “And you just happened to have a paperclip in your pocket?”
He turned one half of the paperclip clockwise as he jiggled the other half rapidly. The lock sprang open, and he pulled it off and opened the locker door. “Never leave home without one.”
Maggie was duly impressed—and surprised. She gave him a silent round of applause.
Inside the locker, she found a cheap blue tie, a tailored lab coat bearing the name M. Montgomery in fussy script, a black overcoat, a Mary Poppins umbrella and a bottle of men’s cologne—the cologne that seemed to hang in her nostrils when she was alone at night. As with Ethan’s locker, there was nothing notable or damning.
She moved the items aside. Crouched in the back of the locker was a red nylon duffle bag.
Maggie hauled the bag out of the locker, placed it on the wooden bench before them and unzipped it with an eagerness usually reserved for trousers on prom night.
The bag disgorged its contents with alarming speed, as if it couldn’t wait to vomit up what had been stuffed inside. Green latex gloves, handcuffs, rope and a black leather whip shimmered slickly beneath the room’s harsh bulbs. A clatter of keys sprawled drunkenly at the bottom of the bag. Bile climbed up Maggie’s throat. She wondered if the paraphernalia was meant for her.
“This must be how he spends his coffee breaks,” Constantine said.
“I wonder how many of his pl
aymates are willing participants. And I don’t even want to think about what the gloves are for.” She thrust her hand into the red gym bag and swatted about blindly, her hand batting aside the handcuffs and whip in search of her prey. Her fingers closed around the keys. She grasped them and wrested them free. She thought it was probably the only item in the bag that wouldn’t fluoresce under Luminol.
She dangled the key ring. “I think I know what these go to. Come on.”
They took the stairs to the basement in hungry strides, leaping onto landings, sweaty hands squeaking on railings. Maggie moved quickly, surely, operating under an emotional autopilot that let her cruise at an altitude of semi-sanity. She’d deal with everything—the murders, the accusations, the betrayals—later. Now all she wanted was enough ammo to bring Rx down.
In two minutes, they were there: the door where Zartar had inadvertently led Maggie during a company party that seemed to have taken place a lifetime ago. The room Maggie suspected was the birthplace of conspiracies, the romper room where lies were coddled, then reared to grow big and strong.
Maggie inserted a key from Montgomery’s key ring into the lock. It jammed. So did the next one. And the next.
“Seriously?” Constantine said.
Maggie waved him to be quiet and went to try another key. Then she heard something on the other side of the door.
Maggie put her ear to the thin cold metal. She could hear the whir of the air conditioner. The rhythmic click of machinery. And something else.
Voices.
“Someone’s in there,” she mouthed.
“Who?” he mouthed back.
Maggie shrugged, then slowly backed the last key on the ring out of the lock, mentally cringing at how loud her previous attempts must have been and amazed they hadn’t roused attention. She knew they should leave. They weren’t just in a compromising situation. They were trespassing. But there was a chance they could learn something by listening. They’d only stay for a moment, utterly and perfectly quiet. Ready to leave the moment they heard chairs squeak against the floor and feet begin to stir.
Maggie leaned against the cold door again. Constantine did the same.
“This is totally out of control,” a gruff male voice said. A giant gray shark leapt into her mind.
James Montgomery? The voice sounded too young. Miles? Maybe. It had a sneering, predatory quality that brought to mind clammy fingers and the flat doll’s eyes of a shark.
“It’s not out of control,” the other voice replied. “I’m working on the problem. Be patient.” Pleading. Wheedling. Maggie recognized this voice, too, but couldn’t place it.
She closed her eyes, trying to draw out some memory, some connection. The canvas of her mind remained blank.
“Be patient?” the first voice boomed. “My patience ended when Maggie O’Malley started putting her nose where it didn’t belong. How do you explain her finding out about our little secret? Zartar only knew bits and pieces. You didn’t let something slip, did you?”
The voice replied. Unintelligible behind the door. Sounds of denial and hurt reproach bleeding through.
“Your excuses bore me. Find Maggie O’Malley. Then eliminate her.”
Chapter 42
Maggie backed away from the door. Her heart felt like it was going to explode from her chest. She staggered back down the hall and toward the stairs.
Her fingers raked against the rough surface of the naked concrete wall as she reached to steady herself on the railing. In some distant part of her mind, she noticed that her pinky nail had broken.
Constantine was beside her. Saying something. Soothing.
But she didn’t feel the desperation she’d felt earlier, fear slicing through her until rationality was shred into ribbons.
No, she felt pissed off.
Maybe it was temporary. Maybe the fear would come thundering back. But for now she brimmed with anger and resolve. They had taken her security. Her friend. Her reputation and future. She sure as hell wouldn’t let them take her life.
Maggie looked at the keys in her hand, her attention lighting on one capped with black rubber. A tiny key toupee.
Constantine looked at it, too. “Car key?”
She nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.” She remembered the woman from Carson’s funeral and her wild rant about white vans bearing the mark of transformation. “It has to belong to one of Rx’s company vehicles. Come on.”
They jogged up the stairs, condensation springing from the concrete pores of the walls beside them. They reached the ground floor landing, then sprinted down the hall, past the breakroom, past the cafeteria, past the supply closets, through a small room skirted by hibernating janitorial equipment. They reached a large, heavy door. Maggie waved Ethan’s ID badge at an illuminated security panel beside it.
Beep. Swish. Kerplunk. They were in the garage.
Maggie hit the light switch and the overhead lights blipped on, revealing a fleet of five white vans. They dashed to each vehicle, flinging open the doors to search for evidence they could tuck in their pockets and spirit away to the authorities. To safety. To freedom.
The first two vans were empty. The third was filled with fast food wrappers and invoices.
The fourth van was locked. Maggie looked at Constantine, who performed his signature eyebrow crook. She took the black-topped key and slid it into the door lock. Locks on all doors popped open. Constantine slid the large side door wide. The inside of the van was murky, lit only by a single dome light.
Maggie hoisted herself onto the running board and waited for her eyes to adjust. Shapes in bas-relief sharpened, became visible. She gaped.
Within the sterile interior of the innocuous white van was a portable hospital cot, an assortment of vials and an empty IV bag that hung flaccidly from its metal tree.
Constantine saw the look on her face and climbed up beside her. His head swiveled as he took in the scene, eyes landing on the cot’s leather restraint straps. “Frankenstein’s lab on wheels?”
“I don’t think it’s that good,” Maggie said as she scrambled inside the van. “Looks like they were conducting trials in this little van of horrors.”
The van and all it represented disgusted her. She thought of all those who were duped into the trials or held against their will. Confused. Afraid. Some eventually dead.
The one bright spot? The van was a treasure trove of evidence.
Maggie picked up a small unlabeled glass bottle to examine it. Instantly, a siren began wailing.
For a brief, brain-addled moment Maggie thought the bottle she’d picked up was attached to an invisible alarm. Then reality dawned.
Ethan’s ID badge.
Maybe he’d realized it was missing. Maybe he had been alerted that it was used to access the building. Maybe he had followed them. Whatever the case, he’d raised the alarm, which was now howling incessantly in her ears.
Maggie scrambled to the van door and looked out the window at the alarm panel embedded on the opposite wall. UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS, it accused. Lights flashed overhead, seeming to pulse DANGER with every flash of the strobe.
“This might be a good time to leave,” Constantine yelled over the din.
Maggie looked around the mobile laboratory for evidence to take with them. Notebooks. File folders. Vials. Yes. Yes. And yes, please.
She grabbed a company-issue knapsack from the van floor and began stuffing whatever she could inside, wincing as the alarm clanged painfully in her ears. Despite the air-conditioned room, sweat trickled down the small of her back, tracing an icy arc that felt like the fingers of a dead man’s hand.
Constantine dangled the van’s keys in front of her eyes. “I know you’re trying to abscond with proof of a conspiracy and all, but what do you say we turn this van into a getaway car? That way we can take the evidence and live.”
Maggie nodd
ed and slammed the van door shut. “Let’s go.”
They both dove into the front seat, Constantine on the driver’s side. He inserted the key into the ignition and waited.
Maggie looked over at him. “Let’s go,” she urged.
“I have to wait for the glow plugs.”
“The what?”
Constantine held up a hand. A light on the dash blinked off and Constantine cranked the engine. He crushed the accelerator pedal and the van coughed from its parking space toward the garage’s large overhead door.
“Why aren’t we going faster? Do I need to wind this thing up?”
“Diesels don’t just get up and go when they’re cold, you know.” He pressed the button of the garage door opener, which was clipped to the visor. The garage door yawned open, moonlight spilling onto the floors.
Constantine nosed the van toward the gaping doorway. Ethan jumped in front of the vehicle, waving his arms like a traffic cop on meth. Maggie gasped.
Ethan shielded his eyes from the van’s probing light, blinking and searching to discern the vehicle’s occupants. “Maggie?” Ethan shouted. “Maggie, stop.”
Ethan lunged toward the car. Maggie shrieked, a strangled burp cut short by her own hand.
“Maggie!” Ethan shouted again. “Stop. Stop!” He grabbed for the handle on Maggie’s door. Missed. Swiped again.
“Go, Gus, go!”
Constantine jammed his foot onto the accelerator with even more force and the van lurched forward. Ethan’s hand landed on the handle. He stumbled beside the van, trying to yank the door open.
Maggie slammed the lock down. Ethan’s eyes, still half-blinded by the headlights, rolled in his eye sockets, which were rimmed an angry red. His mouth turned down in a grimace, which grew longer and deeper with every pull of the handle.
“Get us out of here,” Maggie said.
Protocol Page 27