Noah, lying in his own blood while the Twins raged and Burnofsky gloated.
Had she loved him? Then how could it be that she’d not told him? Too late now. Now she could only offer him more blood. More murder.
I’ll kill her. For you, Noah.
“It’s cold,” Plath said. “Let’s get this done.”
“We’ll drive you around to the far side, to the top of the ramp, and then stay out of sight.”
Staying out of sight was an illusion. Sensors had tracked the approach of the sleighs. And now Stillers reported to Lear that the sleighs were behaving strangely. They had stopped for a while at the northern end of the valley before continuing on around to the southern entrance.
“Now they’re just sitting there.”
Interesting, Lear thought. Frightened employees? Was some of the biot conditioning that all her core people had been subjected to beginning to weaken?
Her eyes flicked to the TV. YouTube was still up, thankfully. Bug Man was watching a shaky video of a Tesco being looted.
“Do we have cameras on the ramp?” Lear asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Stillers said.
“Get them on-screen here.” Soon a dimly lit image of the ramp opened. At first: nothing, just gravel and ice. Then, someone walking down the ramp. The person wore a heavy parka with a fur-lined hood, with dark goggles covering the upper part of the face.
“Can’t see the face,” Stillers said. “I’ll send some guys up there.”
“No.” Lear smiled. “I think … I think maybe I can guess who this is. Yeah. Have men ready, get a sniper into position to cover my door, make sure all security personnel are armed at all times, and I’ll want a handgun for myself. Do nothing unless I give the order.”
Stillers nodded and went about his work.
“I believe we have company, yeah,” Lear said to Bug Man. “I do not know how she did it, clever girl, but if I’m right, we’ll have an old friend of yours over for a drink.”
Opportunity for Suarez came with Kung Pao chicken—extra spicy, the way she liked it—brown rice, and a glass of Austrian white wine.
After so long planning what to do with a bucket as the only weapon, she was handed a golden opportunity: Chesterfield came armed.
She immediately recognized it as a Glock nine-mil with a eventeen-round clip. She had fired hundreds of rounds from a weapon essentially identical to this. All that was good, but the beautiful part from her perspective was that the standard cop holster was also very familiar, and she would be able to draw it smoothly, especially if she could get behind him.
Much better than trying to beat him down with a pee bucket.
The final piece of the puzzle was the Kung Pao. And more specifically, the peanuts.
She accepted her tray, invited him to stay so she could be sure it wasn’t too spicy. She took a bite and cried, “Oh, no. No! Peanuts!”
“What’s the matter?”
She put a hand to her throat and began wheezing dramatically. “Allergic … to … peanuts. I can’t breathe! Help …” And then choking noises and a strained, whooping breathing and Chesterfield made the fatal move: he behaved like a human being, stepped in, knelt down, and in a blur of movement felt the muzzle pressed against the side of his head.
“I would honestly hate to do it,” Suarez said. “You’ve been decent to me. But Chesterfield, I will blow your brains out if I have to. The alternative …”
Which was how Chesterfield ended up wearing her chains, with handcuffs added to keep him in a hog-tie position, and his own socks stuffed in his mouth with his belt wrapped tight to hold them in place.
“Can you breathe okay?” she asked him.
He nodded, and Suarez, armed with the gun, an extra clip, his radio, and his keys, opened the door to her cell very slightly and looked cautiously left and right. If there were cameras, they were not in evidence. Which did not mean they weren’t there.
Nothing you can do about that but move fast, Suarez told herself. Down the hallway, which carried the ridiculous medieval dungeon theme forward. A door. She cracked it slightly. There was a sort of control room—monitors and swivel chairs and two women chatting as they watched the screens. Panic buttons were large and prominent. She winced. There was no room for error or pity.
“Hey,” she said, stepping into view, and with two head shots dropped the women. One was clearly dead. The other rattled her shallow breaths in and out until Suarez covered her mouth and nose and waited for the final spasm. No point wasting ammo, and no point risking a third shot attracting attention.
Her immediate goal was simple: to find and take the sleigh she’d ridden in and get the hell out of there. But that would require some intel. She dropped into one of the dead women’s seats and began cycling through the camera angles, one of which did in fact show the hallway outside her dungeon. She had been lucky they hadn’t spotted her.
This monitoring station appeared to have only limited access to cameras, concentrating on the dungeon and what appeared to be extensive storerooms. Really quite impressive storerooms, too large to be in any of the aboveground buildings. She saw other people, some armed, some not. Some doing mundane tasks with iPad inventory systems, others driving forklifts, still others …
A man walked toward the monitoring station, holding three disposable cups and a paper sack in a recyclable cardboard holder. He might easily have been coming from a Starbucks.
“Hey, coffee!” he said as he stepped into the room. Suarez grabbed his hand, yanked him forward, slammed the door shut, and blew out his brains.