The In Death Collection, Books 21-25
Page 34
“Well, that didn’t work,” she muttered.
She couldn’t return fire, not when he had the infant. But she could draw it, she decided, and gauged the distance to the doors leading to the corridor.
She saw a movement outside the glass, wasn’t sure whether to curse or cheer when she saw Roarke position himself.
“You’re surrounded, Wilson. You’re done. I’ve already taken out two of you personally. You want to make it three, that’s up to you.”
He let out a scream, and as she gathered herself to charge the far doors, she saw the child he’d held fly up. She had an instant to jerk her body around, but Deena was already leaping into the open.
Wilson’s blast hit her in midair, just as her arms snatched the child.
“You’ll die! And suffer and sicken and stumble your way through what pathetic lives you have. I would have made men gods. Remember who ended it, remember who damned you to mortality. Initiate fail-safe!”
He rose, his face alive with a mad fervor. When he aimed at Eve, she fired even as Roarke slammed through the doors. Wilson went down between their blasts.
Fresh alarms shrilled, and a passionless computerized voice began to drone.
Warning, warning, fail-safe has been initiated. You have ten minutes to safely evacuate these facilities. Warning, warning, these facilities will self-terminate in ten minutes.
“Perfect. Can you stop it?” she demanded of Roarke.
He scooped up a small device beside Wilson’s body. “This is just a trigger. Single mode. I’d need to find the source before I could begin to override.”
“Can’t.”
Eve rushed to where Deena lay on the floor, still holding the screaming baby. “We’ll get you out.”
“Get her out. Get the children out. Can’t override. Multiple sources and levels. Not enough time. Please get them out. I’m already gone.”
“Police and medical assistance is on the way.” Eve glanced back toward Roarke. “I hear them coming. Kids in the adjoining rooms. Get them out.”
“Take her, please take her.” Deena struggled to pass the baby to Eve.
She fumbled to hitch the infant under one arm. And saw Deena was right. She was gone. Where her clothes had been singed by the blast, burned skin was exposed, some to the bone. Blood was already seeping out of her ears, her mouth. She’d never make it out the doors.
“Diana, and the little one?”
“Safe.” Eve looked at Roarke for confirmation. “They got out.”
“Give them to Avril.” Deena clamped a hand on Eve’s arm. “Please. Please, God, give them to Avril, let them go. Deathbed confession. I’m giving you a deathbed confession.”
“No time. Roarke.”
She pushed the baby at him. “Get those kids out. Now.”
Warning, warning, all personnel must evacuate. This facility will self-destruct in eight minutes.
“I killed them all. Avril knew nothing about it. I killed Wilfred Icove, Sr. Wilfred Icove, Jr. Evelyn Samuels. I intended . . . Oh God!”
“Save it. You’re right, you’re gone. I can’t help you.” She heard children crying, screaming, feet pounding, and kept her eyes on Deena’s face. “We’ll get everyone out.”
“Gestation.” Deena gritted her teeth, hissed against the pain. “If you take them out of the tanks, unhook the tanks, tamper . . . they’ll die. They can’t . . .” Blood slid out of her eyes like tears. “They can’t be saved. I was going to do what Wilson did, knowing that. But I couldn’t. You have to leave them, save the rest. Please let them go. Avril . . . She’ll take care of them. She—”
“Are there any others, in this facility?”
“No. I pray no. Just care-droids this time of night. Wilson . . . Wilson must’ve shut them down. Killed Icove replicas. Son of a bitch. I’m going to die where I was born. I guess that’s okay. Tell Diana. Well, she’ll know. The little one . . .”
“Darby. Her name’s Darby.”
“Darby.” She smiled even as her eyes began to film over.
Her hand slid off Eve’s arm.
Warning, warning, this facility will self-destruct in seven minutes. All personnel must evacuate immediately.
“Eve, the nurseries are cleared out. The response team’s taking the children up. We have to move. Now.”
Eve got to her feet, turned. She saw Roarke still had the infant. “The Gestation area. She said it couldn’t be tampered with or they’d die. Prove her wrong.”
“I can’t.” He gripped her arm, pulled her out. “The life support, the artificial wombs, are integral to the system. If it’s disengaged, the oxygen’s cut off.”
“How can you—”
“I looked. I’ve already checked. If there was time, there might be a way to bypass. There isn’t. We couldn’t get them out, Eve, we couldn’t get the chambers out and up in time, even if we could bypass. We can’t save them.”
She saw the horror of it in his eyes, the same cold horror that was balled in her gut. “We just leave them here?”
“We save her.” He shifted the baby awkwardly, and with his hand gripping Eve’s began to run. “We move now, or we’re all buried here.”
She ran, past the husks of what she’d killed, through the shattered bodies of boys who’d been created to kill. She smelled death, and her own blood, Roarke’s blood.
They’d shed it, and still it hadn’t been enough.
Nothing stops the vicious and the ugly, she remembered. She’d said it herself.
Warning, warning, red line for safe evacuation has been reached. All remaining personnel must evacuate immediately. This facility will terminate in four minutes.
“I wish she’d shut the fuck up.”
She kept up the limping run. Her hip was now an insane symphony of pain. A glance at Roarke showed her his face was bone-white and clammy under the smears of blood.
She saw the elevator ahead, its doors shut.
“Can’t leave them unsecured.” Roarke’s voice was labored, and Eve was nearly as horrified when he shoved the baby at her as she was with the countdown. “Wasn’t time to augment the security and keep them open.” Instead he swiped a card, once, twice.
“Buggering hell. Gotten sweaty, bloody, too. Won’t read.” He dug out a handkerchief and began to polish it off while under his breath he cursed in Gaelic.
Hooked in her arm, the baby screamed as if she were pounding it with a hammer.
Red line plus sixty seconds. This facility will terminate in three minutes.
He swiped the card a third time, and they leaped inside. “Street level,” he shouted, then cursed again when Eve pushed the baby at him. “What? You’ve got her.”
“No, you’ve got her. I’m in charge of this op.”
“Screw that. I’m a bloody civilian.”
Eve tapped a hand on her weapon. “You even try to give it back to me, I’m stunning you. Self-defense.”
Red line plus ninety seconds. All personnel should be at maximum safe distance.
“Cutting it close,” Eve mumbled as sweat rolled down her back.
“Is there any other way?”
“This thing could go faster. This son-of-a-bitching thing could really go faster.” She gritted her teeth when the warning announced red line plus two minutes. “We’re still in this when it blows, it’ll take us out, too, right?”
“Likely.”
She stared at the controls as if her wrath could speed things up. “We couldn’t have gotten them out. No matter what we’d done.”
“We couldn’t, no.” He rested his free hand on her shoulder.
“You brought that one so I’d have to leave the rest. So I’d have to go, get her out. So I’d have something tangible to make me move my ass.”
“I also figured you’d be the one holding her on the way out, while she’s screaming my eardrums ragged.”
Terminate in thirty seconds.
“If we don’t make it, I love you and blah, blah, blah.”
He laughed, and s
hifted so his arm wrapped around her shoulders. “I’ll say the same. It’s been a hell of a ride so far.”
When the final countdown commenced, she reached up, gripped his hand.
Terminate in ten seconds, nine, eight, seven . . .
The doors opened. They flew through them together. She heard the count go down to three as the doors secured behind them.
She snatched her coat from where she’d tossed it, and bolted through the room with him.
There was a rumble under her feet, a wave of vibration. She thought of what was below her, in tanks, in hives. Then pushed it away, shoved it back. Her nightmares would begin soon enough to go back there now.
She shrugged back into her coat. If her hands shook, he was the only one who knew it. “This is going to take me a while.”
He glanced toward the line of cops.
“Take your time. I’ll be outside.”
“You can pass that one onto one of the uniforms. We’ll have CP here shortly to deal with the minors.”
“I’ll be outside,” he repeated.
“Go get treated,” she called after him.
“In this place? I don’t think so.”
“Got a point,” she replied, then moved forward to do the job.
Outside, Roarke went directly to his car. Only more relief washed over him when he saw Diana lying on the backseat with the younger girl curled against her.
He opened the door, crouched down when Diana’s eyes opened. “You kept your word,” he said.
“Deena’s dead. I know.”
“I’m very sorry. She died saving . . . saving your sister.” He held out the baby when Diana opened her arms. “She helped save the children.”
“Is Wilson dead?”
“Yes.”
“All of him.”
“All we found, yes. The facilities are gone. Destroyed. The equipment in them, the records, the technology.”
Her eyes were clear, level. “What are you going to do with us now?”
“I’ll take you to Avril.”
“No, you can’t. Then you’ll know where we are. She won’t stay if you know, and we need time before we go again.”
She was a child, he thought, with two other children. Yet in some ways, she was older than he. All of them, older than he. “Can you get to her, with them, on your own?”
“Yes. Will you let us go?”
“It was all your mother asked, the last thing she asked. She thought of you, of what would be best for you.” As his own mother had, he thought. His mother had died doing what she’d thought best for him. How could he not honor that?
She got out, her hand gripping the younger child’s, the baby in the crook of her arm. “We won’t forget you.”
“Nor I you. Be safe.”
He watched them until they were out of sight. “Well, Godspeed,” he whispered, then took out his ’link and contacted Louise.
It was nearly two hours before Eve joined him. She took one look at the mobile clinic beside his car and hissed. “Look, I’m tired. I want to go home.”
“Soon as I do a little triage, you’re off.” Louise pointed toward the mobile. “Unfortunately I don’t have fumigation facilities on board. The pair of you reek.”
It was coming onto dawn. Rather than waste more time, she sat in the mobile. “No tranqs, no blockers. It’s bad enough without me getting goofy.” She gave Roarke a hard look, but he merely smiled.
“I don’t mind the tranq myself. Smooths out nasty edges.”
“He zoned?” she asked Louise, and hissed as the wand rolled over her arm wound.
“A little bit. Mostly just exhausted. Lost considerable blood, too. Bad gash in his arm, and with that and the head wound, I don’t know how he managed to stay upright this long. Same for you. I’d rather take you both into the clinic.”
“I’d rather be in Paris drinking champagne.”
“We’ll go tomorrow.” Roarke stirred himself enough to sit beside her.
“You’ve got a houseful of Irish relatives.”
“Right you are. We’ll stay home and get drunk instead. My Irish relatives should appreciate a good drunk. If not, well, they’re no true relations of mine, are they?”
“Wonder what they’re going to think when we get home, stinking, bloody, and beat to shit. God damn it, Louise!”
“Easier on you with a tranq. You called it.”
Eve blew air out her nose, then sucked it in to brace for the next medical onslaught. “I’ll tell you what they’ll think. That we lead full and interesting lives.”
“I love you, darling Eve.” Roarke nuzzled a kiss at her throat. “And blah, blah, blah.”
“More than a little zoned,” was Eve’s opinion.
“Go home and get some sleep.” Louise sat back. “Charles and I will come early. I’ll give you another treatment.”
“The fun never ends.” She hopped out, didn’t quite disguise the wince at the jar on her injured hip.
“Thank you, Louise.” Roarke took her hand, kissed it.
“All in a day’s work. I live a full and interesting life, too.”
Eve waited until the mobile pulled out. “Where’s Diana, and the other two?”
He looked toward the sky, noted the stars were going out. “I couldn’t say.”
“You let them go.”
His eyes were tired, but perfectly clear when they met hers. “Did you intend to do differently?”
She didn’t speak for a moment. “I contacted Feeney to request he shut down the tracker. No need. When the place blew, the homers disengaged. Officially, Diana Rodriguez is dead. Lost in the explosion that took place in the Quiet Birth facilities. There’s no record of the other two minors. There won’t be.”
“And no one exists, officially, without records.”
“There’s technology for you. Avril Icove is missing. I have a deathbed confession that clears her of all involvement with the homicides under my jurisdiction. Even without it, the PA doesn’t intend to charge. It would be an inefficient use of departmental time and funds to attempt to locate her, at this time. Federal authorities may think different.”
“But they won’t find her.”
“Unlikely.”
“How much heat will you take over this?”
“Minimal. Nadine’s going to blast this out of the water in a couple hours. What was in there, belowground?” She turned to study the center. “It’s gone. Governmental authorities may be able to identify and track some of the clones, but most of them will blend into the mainstream. They’re smart, after all. Far as I can see, it ends here.”
“Then let’s go home.” He cupped her face, kissed her brow, her nose, her lips. “You and I, we’ve a lot to be thankful for.”
“Yeah. Yeah, we do.” She gripped his hand once, hard, as she had when death had been seconds behind them.
Then she let it go to walk around the car, slide in beside him.
The world wasn’t a perfect place, and never would be. But just now, watching dawn come over her godforsaken city, it seemed like a damn good deal.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Memory in Death
A G. P. Putnam’s Sons Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2006 by Nora Roberts
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Electronic edition: January, 2006
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children she didn’t know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread;
She whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.
—NURSERY RHYME
Memory, the warder of the brain.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Contents
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2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
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18
19
20
21
1
DEATH WAS NOT TAKING A HOLIDAY. NEW YORK may have been decked out in its glitter and glamour, madly festooned in December of 2059, but Santa Claus was dead. And a couple of his elves weren’t looking so good.
Lieutenant Eve Dallas stood on the sidewalk with the insanity of Times Square screaming around her and studied what was left of St. Nick. A couple of kids, still young enough to believe that a fat guy in a red suit would wiggle down the chimney to bring them presents instead of murdering them in their sleep, were shrieking at a decibel designed to puncture eardrums. She wondered why whoever was in charge of them didn’t haul them away.
Not her job, she thought. Thank God. She preferred the bloody mess at her feet.
She looked up, way up. Dropped down from the thirty-sixth floor of the Broadway View Hotel. So the first officer on-scene had reported. Shouting, “Ho, ho, ho”—according to witnesses—until he’d gone splat, and had taken out some hapless son of a bitch who’d been strolling through the endless party.