"No," she said calmly, and walked forward. "If you call an ambulance, you can probably save this one. I think I missed his heart."
Cole—normally so cool and insouciant—looked shocked. She raised her eyes to his, and saw him flinch a little. Seasoned FBI, and he flinched. But then, he didn't know her, did he?
Nobody did.
"Better call it in," she said. "I'll check the rest of the building. These can't be the only bad guys in the place."
"I'm going to hell for this."
"Yeah," she said grimly. "I'll save you a seat."
Chapter Thirteen
There were, in fact, seventeen other people in the building. She didn't have to shoot any of the others; intimidation worked well enough. She herded them into an unused freezer room and locked them up tight.
She was sitting against the door, listening to them batter at it, when Cole came to find her. He'd wiped some of the blood off his face, but that was a broken nose, no question, and it was beginning to swell. He'd have black eyes, too. That had been a hell of a first punch.
"What are you going to say when they get here?" she asked, when he was seated on the concrete with her, back against the door.
"Planning on throwing myself on the mercy of my superiors," he said. "Fuck, Lucia. I ought to know by now that if you're involved, it ain't exactly a fact-finding mission. I mean, I've heard enough stories."
"Stories," she repeated. She felt tired, liquid, as if her body might just drip away.
"You know."
"I don't."
"Is it true what they say about what happened in Prague?
"What do they say happened?" The door behind them rattled with a particularly violent kick. It felt good, rather like a massage.
"Two dozen terrorists, a cache of nerve gas, and you were the only survivor."
"It's not true." It wasn't. There was Gregory Ivanovich, after all. Turncoat and torturer and savior and traitor. God alone knew what he was now, but she had no doubt he knew where she'd gone during the past week, and what had happened to her.
Cole made a doubtful sound. "You should have declared first, by the way."
"Declared what? I'm not FBI. The government doesn't pay me. And in the kind of work I used to do, declaring yourself was stupid." Which was as close as she intended to get to reliving the past, even with Cole. "If I'd taken the time to chat, they'd have killed me. You also."
He sighed and dabbed at his bleeding nose. "Man. I'll be lucky if I get a posting in Antarctica after this."
"Cheer up," she said. "I think you just averted a major terrorist act. Also, there seems to be a clean room behind that door. Biohazard suits hanging from hooks in the airlock. You might have even found the source of the anthrax."
As the sirens came closer, they sat in silence, surveying the big white room with its drums of chemicals and—most ominously—pressurized tanks marked with Poison labels.
"So," Cole said. "If I get my ass fired over this—"
"Always a place for you at Callender & Garza, my friend. Provided we're still open, since we've shot more people in the past couple of days than the KCPD has shot in a couple of years. It might pose a problem."
He shook his head. "You'll be okay. You're a survivor."
They both froze at a sound outside, from the direction of the door, and without any discussion got to their feet and moved to stand on either side of the single doorway to the room.
A hand holding a gun crossed the threshold.
"Freeze!" Lucia yelled, and spun away from the wall. Cole did the same, bracketing the newcomer from an obtuse angle, taking a low line.
"Police!" the other man screamed at the same instant, and Lucia held off on the trigger just by a split second as she recognized the ragged, unshaved, red-eyed face of… Detective Ken Stewart. "Drop the guns, dammit. Drop them!" he ordered.
"FBI," Cole said calmly, and showed his badge and credentials without wavering his aim. "Detective Stewart, right? KCPD?"
"Yes." Stewart stopped trying to cover both of them, and focused solely on Lucia. "Drop it!"
"Jesus! Drop yours!" she retorted hotly. "You know who I am!"
He cocked the hammer on his gun, an unnecessary and theatrical gesture. "First shot cripples you for life. Drop it now!"
"That isn't necessary," Cole said.
"If she's not FBI, she drops the goddamn gun!"
There wasn't much choice. Getting into a pissing contest with Stewart wouldn't do her any good, even if she won. Lucia made the gun safe and put it down on the ground. She took a step back from it, hands still raised, as Stewart gestured.
"You got here fast," Cole said. "Ambulance on the way?"
"I had a tip. Yeah, paramedics and squad cars should be a couple of minutes." Stewart looked around the place, and focused on the banging of the steel door. "Suspects in custody?"
"Custody would be a stretch, but they're contained," Cole said. "One wounded in the back room, one not wounded and hog-tied like a son of a bitch because I don't like him very much. Other than that, we've swept the place and the rest are in there."
"Okay, good." Stewart, after a long moment, holstered his gun.
"Can I pick up my weapon now?" Lucia asked.
"No," Stewart said. "Over there. Sit down and wait." He picked up her gun and shoved it in his coat pocket. "Move it, Garza." Behind him, Cole made an apologetic shrug.
She kept her hands up, walked to the corner and slid down to a sitting position, resting her hands in her lap. Stewart stared at her for a second or two, as if considering handcuffs. She could hear the eerie wail of sirens outside, and wondered wearily how long it would take to untangle this particular mess.
If she looked tired, Stewart looked…sick. Pale, red-eyed, twitching like an addict. Was that possible? Was he, in fact, an addict? No, surely drug tests would show it. She was being uncharitable, purely because of his prejudices against Jazz. He was probably just sick.
Should have shot him, she thought. It came from a part of her that she often denied existed—cold, calculating, the voice of a survivor.
"You received a tip?" she asked Stewart neutrally. "You've never been here before?"
He gave her a glare. "No. Why?"
Anthrax sent to her office.
Ken Stewart, following her from McCarthy's hearing.
"No reason," she said, still neutral, and watched him sweat.
There were, by the last count she heard, enough chemicals in the warehouse to kill tens of thousands, and maybe more if delivered accurately. And she'd been right about the clean room. There was a neat little bottle of white powder. Anthrax. Enough for a dozen lethal mailings, at least. From the envelopes they'd found in the process of being addressed, they'd been intended for the local FBI offices, as well as other government buildings.
If Ken Stewart had contemplated killing her and Cole— and she had no doubt that he had—he lost his chance as the worker bees from KCPD took over. She and Cole were quickly whisked off to a local FBI establishment. It was an improvement over the police headquarters isolation room. The FBI facility came with fresh coffee and more comfortable chairs. She caught a glimpse of Susannah Davis being brought in, at one point, escorted by Ben McCarthy.
Lucia heard Jazz's voice even through the soundproofing.
"— son of a bitch!" Jazz finished bellowing, just as the door opened again, and Agent Rawlins came in. His ears had turned red, though he was keeping a carefully blank expression. Jazz was right on his heels, as dynamic as he was controlled. She'd been messing with her hair, and it stuck out in unruly spikes. Her face was flushed and vividly animated. When she saw Lucia, she charged forward and dropped into the empty chair next to her.