Saffron waited for a riposte from her companions, but nobody responded. She looked down into the footwell of the camper, where an unlicensed sawn-off Beretta shotgun and a handful of cartridges lay at her feet. As if suddenly paranoid, she checked the rear-view mirror. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the cracked mirror. At twenty-nine, she was older than her companions by some years and regarded by them as something of a veteran. Her long blonde hair was tied up in a tight knot behind her head, as it had been for some months now. On the rare occasions when she let it fall it reached almost to her thighs. Her high cheekbones and clear green eyes made her look like a catwalk model who’d survived a particularly heavy night out. To Saffron all she saw were the subtle features that betrayed her grandfather’s influence: the firm line of her lips and the sinister glitter of radicalism that flickered like a distant star in her eyes.
‘The shift’s about to change,’ Manx said, his voice an octave higher than before. He gripped the steering wheel more tightly and looked over his shoulder. ‘Everybody ready?’
Ruby Lily and Bobby nodded dutifully, each picking up a baseball bat lying beside them. Saffron ignored Colin. He’d only joined them because they’d needed someone to fix the vehicle, and now he was acting as though he’d conceived of the entire plan. Saffron disliked him. Her dislike had become even more intense after she’d gotten so drunk with her friends at the commune that she’d been too tired to fend off his romantic advances when he’d stopped by her tent in the early hours. She’d barely made any attempt to stop him, and had actually fallen asleep before he’d finished. She’d briefly woken to realize that her comatose disinterest had provoked in him a sudden and embarrassingly flaccid manhood that had caused him to flee her tent in a hail of frustrated expletives.
Now, Manx was on a mission to regain his bruised ego.
‘You’ll go when I tell you,’ Saffron murmured to him.
‘I only take orders from one person, honey.’ Manx grinned, jabbing a finger at his own chest. ‘Me.’
‘Fine,’ Saffron said, pulling the shotgun from the foot-well and offering it to him. ‘You’d better lead from the front then.’
Manx’s bravado wilted as quickly as his stubby white dick had the previous night. He blanched, his eyes fixed on the gun.
‘You brought the damned thing,’ he blustered. ‘I’m not carrying it for you.’
Saffron lowered the weapon back out of sight.
‘Best you do as I say then, understood, Colon?’
Manx avoided her gaze and ignored the giggles from the rear of the van, shrugging and stroking his threadbare goatee beard as he turned back to watch the front of the laboratories on the opposite side of the road.
‘Why the hell are we hitting this little place anyway?’ he muttered, trying to draw attention away from her insult. ‘It’s hardly worth the effort.’
‘Any place like this is worth the effort,’ Saffron retorted. ‘As long as there’s a single vivisection operation in the United States, in the world, it’s worth it. Would you want to be in there, being tested?’
She turned as a small knot of people exited the main building, and felt a jolt of apprehension twist her stomach.
‘This is it,’ she said, sliding the shotgun into a slim carry-all and opening her door. ‘Ready?’
More furtive glances from Ruby Lily in the rear seat, and Manx swallowed thickly as he gazed at her, but all three of them moved to exit the camper.
‘Go, now!’ Saffron snapped.
She climbed out of the camper, shouldering the carryall and striding purposefully to the main road, crossing it before descending the asphalt opposite. The white building in front loomed above her, the expensively manicured gardens and beautifully crafted logo mounted on the walls hiding the horrors she knew lay within, of animals poisoned, murdered and dissected so that the mascara of Hollywood starlets wouldn’t smudge so easily. The thought fired her anger as she approached the scientists now ten feet away, their eyes taking in her appearance and that of her companions and the first flicker of panic distorting their features.
One of them, a young man with a thin beard, turned back for the door.
Saffron took the carry-all from her shoulder, letting it fall away to reveal the sawn-off as her features contorted into a mask of rage.
‘Move another step and I’ll send you home with buckshot in your ass!’
Five pairs of hands shot into the air. A sixth scientist, a woman with her hair coiled in a bun behind her head, covered her mouth to prevent a scream and promptly collapsed. As her colleagues moved to her aid, Saffron lunged forward, ramming the barrel of the shotgun in their faces.
‘Don’t move!’ she screamed, prodding them backward and looking at a meek man with a narrow nose and quivering jowls. ‘You — open the fucking door, now!’
The man stared at her, his face trembling, beads of sweat spilling into his eyes, but he stood his ground and shook his head. Saffron changed her stance, took one pace toward him and flipped the barrel of the shotgun toward her as she spun the stock. The heavy butt of the weapon smashed up into the scientist’s jaw with a dull crack and sent him spinning away onto the lawns amid blood-spattered cries.
Saffron didn’t give the man’s colleagues the chance to respond, shoving the shotgun toward them again.
‘The door! Now!’
‘Okay!’ one of them shouted, turning and walking back to the entrance door and sliding his card through a reader mounted on a panel. He keyed in his access code and the door slid open.
‘Back inside, all of you!’ Saffron shouted, turning and gesturing for Manx to grab the incapacitated scientists and drag them into the building.
She watched as the pathetic huddle shuffled past her into the building before hurrying after them and closing the door from the inside. She turned to her captives.
‘The labs. Take me there, now.’
The scientist who had opened the door smiled grimly, and shook his head.
‘You’re screwed,’ he said with cold delight. ‘The cameras will have seen you, and I set my code to lock us in reception here. The police will already be on their way and there’s nothing you can do about it.’
Saffron glanced at the door as Manx pushed the button desperately before looking at her and shaking his head.
‘We’re stuck,’ Ruby Lily uttered in despair.
Saffron glared at the scientists and cocked the shotgun.
‘Then we’ve got nothing to lose.’
Colin Manx’s jaw dropped and he raised a hand to stop her.
‘Saff, no!’
Saffron ignored him and pulled the trigger.
10
‘What others?’
Tyler Willis sighed as he realized he had been cornered. He reached up and rubbed his wounded shoulder, shaking his head as he spoke, ‘Hiram Conley was one of seven men I’ve been studying over the past eight weeks.’
Ethan looked at Lopez, who had now begun recording the conversation using a portable device in her pocket. She nodded once at him, and Ethan turned his attention to Willis.
‘Tell us everything, from the beginning,’ he said. ‘If there’s some kind of danger in this for you, then the more we know, the better we can protect you.’
Willis stared at Ethan.
‘I want your word. You’re government, right? I want your word, both of you, that you can protect me if this gets out.’
Ethan was about to speak, but Lopez beat him to it.
‘We’ll cover your back, Tyler,’ she assured him. ‘That’s why we’re here.’
Ethan swallowed, uncertain of how they could possibly guarantee his safety when they had no clear idea of who was threatening him and why.