“Leroux,” he snapped out.
“Hey, Jacques, it’s Angel.”
“Oh. Angel,” he said with unmistakable disappointment. Who was he expecting at this time of night? A hot exotic dancer? “What do you need?”
“Philip had a freaky episode, and we both have matching pre-rot patches on our arms,” I explained. “He left a message for Dr. Nikas, but that was before he pulled a caveman stunt and tried to drag me out of Marcus’s truck.” Philip came out of the bathroom with a hopeful look. I shook my head and mouthed Jacques, and he grimaced in disappointment. “It’s not his normal Plague stuff,” I continued to Jacques. “I think it’s a reaction to the procedure this morning. Is Dr. Nikas around?”
Jacques remained silent for a moment. “He’s not available,” he finally said then cleared his throat as though choking down the urge to say more.
I frowned. Not even a Maybe I can help you, or Come on in? “Jacques, we need help, sooner rather than later.” Whether Dr. Nikas was available or not, I’d feel better at the lab in case anything else happened with Philip. “We’ll head over now.”
“Now? Wait. Hold on.” A second later an onslaught of tinny elevator music screeched through the phone.
I glanced at Philip. “I’m on hold, and Jacques’s acting weird.”
The music stopped and a female voice said, “Angel?”
“Naomi?” I replied. “What the hell is going on? Why is Jacques all stressed out, and why are you at the lab this late?”
“Kyle and I are assigned here tonight,” she said, an intense edge in her voice. “Jacques said you and Philip need to come in for an assessment?”
“Yeah. What’s the deal?”
“Not on the phone,” she said. “You can come on in, but we changed the codes for the doors. Ready to hear them?”
“Did something happen to Dr. Nikas?”
“We’ll talk when you get here,” she insisted, her tone no-nonsense. “These are based on the weapons locker code. The first one, add a twenty-three to the end. The second one, add a seventy-six to the beginning. Got it?”
“Weapons locker. Twenty-three at the end for the first, seventy-six at the beginning for the second,” I repeated, and a nod from Philip told me he knew the sequence. “We’ll be there in about a half an hour, and no more dodging the questions.”
“You got it,” she said. “See you in a bit.”
I jammed the phone into my purse and headed for the door. “Something serious is up. Let’s go.”
Kyle and Naomi’s silver SUV was in front of the building when Philip pulled into the lot. He parked beside it, and as soon as the car stopped I threw open the door and clambered out. “What’s the weapons locker code?”
“Three-seven-seven-six-zero-eight-four-one,” he rattled off as he noted mileage in his log book.
I hurried to the door, punched in up to the sixty-eight and called back, “What were the last two?”
“Four-one,” he said though the open door.
I entered that then added the twenty-three, and enjoyed an irrational sense of satisfaction as the lock buzzed. It wasn’t as if I’d cracked the damn code myself or anything. I pulled the door open and glanced back. “Philip, come on.”
He still sat behind the wheel, his head lowered, writing. I frowned. No, not writing. His head lolled to the side. Alarm shot through me. “Philip!?”
He jerked and sat upright as though waking from sleep, a bewildered look on his face. I released the door handle and rushed back to the car. “Dude, what happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said as he scrubbed a hand over his face. “I greyed out, but I feel fine now.”
“The fucking Plague strikes again,” I said with a worried scowl. “Let’s get your ass inside.”
Philip climbed out of the car, swayed a bit, then steadied. “I’m okay. That sucked.”
The door clicked open, and Naomi stuck her head out. “You two okay? The code dinged, then you didn’t come in.”
“Sorry,” I said, heading her way. “Philip had another episode.”
She opened the door wide. “Get inside. I’m not wishing bad stuff on you, but it’ll be good for Jacques to have something to do.”
We passed through the drab reception area that I was certain was meant to convince anyone who managed to get through the outer door that they were most certainly not at a super secret high tech zombie lab.
“Enough of the riddle shit,” I said as Naomi punched the code into the next security door. “Why does Jacques need distraction? What is going on?”
The door clicked open, and we passed through. “Trouble,” Naomi said as she waved at the mirrored glass in the next small room, the last security checkpoint before entering the lab complex. “Hang on, I’ll explain everything as soon as we’re through.”
The heavy door on the far wall buzzed, and we passed through into a wide corridor. Ahead of us were the thick sliding glass doors to the central lab, with the medical wing and security office off to the right. Naomi continued forward as the glass doors slid open, and we followed her into the lab. Kyle lounged at a station, calmly reading a fat paperback, though he paused long enough to give us a nod.
Naomi finally turned to us. “You know when Kyle got that call at Top Cow? It was the alert that Mr. Ivanov, Dr. Nikas, and others were gone. Abducted.”
I stopped dead, feeling as though my whole world tilted. “What? How?”
Philip cursed softly behind me.
She took a steadying breath. “Mr. Ivanov and his driver, Simon Sirtis. Kristi Charish, along with Chris Peterson, and their driver, Ken Godwin. Plus Lawrence Hawkins, the security guard at the Retreat Lodge. All missing.”
I processed that as she spoke. I knew every one of those people except Lawrence. “Does Brian know who did this?”
Naomi’s face hardened. “Brian took Dr. Nikas in broad daylight, out front.”
Chapter 8
Cold crept through me at Naomi’s words. “Wait. You mean Brian took Dr. Nikas to a safe place?” Nothing else made sense.
“I wish.” She pulled out her phone and thumbed through a couple of screens. “It sucks. Tranqed him and threw him in the back of his car. Check it out.” She held the phone so we could see a segment of surveillance video.
I watched in numb shock as Brian spoke on the phone in the driver’s seat of his SUV outside the front door of the lab, then dropped the phone onto the seat and waited. A moment later, Dr. Nikas came out the door, leaned into the passenger window to talk to Brian. About ten seconds later, Dr. Nikas turned back toward the building, and if Naomi hadn’t replayed the section, I’d have missed it.
Brian shifted in the front seat, a small motion. Dr. Nikas jerked, then swayed as if about to faint. Brian leapt out of the passenger door, caught Dr. Nikas as he sagged, and hustled him into the back seat. The door closed, Brian got behind the wheel again, then peeled out of the lot.
Naomi tucked the phone away. “You can see the tranq gun better from the other camera view.”
Brian? Brian? He’d have been at the very bottom of my list of People Who Would Betray Pietro.
“No one watching the security cameras noticed this?” I asked, shaken.
“You saw how quickly Brian moved,” Naomi said. “They all thought he was leaving with Brian voluntarily.” She raked her fingers through her hair, aggravated and pissed. “It was Brian. Beyond suspicion. No one knew anything was wrong until Dr. Nikas’s driver showed up to take him to dinner with Mr. Ivanov. Then suddenly they couldn’t get hold of anyone to check in, and security started digging.”