This part of the factory had housed the administrative offices. She passed rows of doorless entry ways. No skylight in here, but each office had a narrow window that let in ambient light from outside. Maybe Meg had found a way out through one of those windows. Maybe Banner hadn't found her.
But she knew this was an idle hope. The windows were too small to allow escape. Even if she had gotten out, Banner would follow.
He had to kill Meg. She could identify him as her kidnapper. He didn't know about the e-mail trace, didn't know he'd already been caught.
To save himself, he would kill Meg and make it look as if Gray had found her before tangling with Robin. Robin's testimony would contradict this version of events, but no one would listen to her. They would say that her memory had been altered by stress and trauma.
She could never prove otherwise. Memory, as she knew too well, was a tricky thing.
The trail curved into an intersecting corridor, ending at an office straight ahead. Robin ran to it, not caring that she was unarmed and unprotected.
In the office she found Meg huddled in a corner, staring. And Bannersprawled on the floor, half-conscious, awash in his own blood. Imbedded in his neck was something slender and shiny.
A syringe.
"Little whore," Banner wheezed.
Robin slipped past him and knelt by her daughter. "Better watch yourself, Lieutenant. I shot the last man who called her that."
She hugged Meg and stroked her hair, while Hammond called for another ambulance.
Chapter Sixty
"Granola bars. Yum."
Robin studied her daughter for signs of sarcasm but found none. Meg seemed honestly contented as she sat at the kitchen table before a plate occupied by two unwrapped honey-oat granola bars.
"I seem to recall your showing a certain aversion to all things granola," Robin observed suspiciously.
Meg shrugged. "I've grown to love them."
"Since when?"
"It's an acquired taste."
Robin sat down opposite her. "So you ready for your triumphal return?"
"Definitely."
"There will be questions. And stares."
"I know."
Robin nodded. Although Meg's name had been kept out of the media, her friends knew what had happened, and friends always talked. In the six weeks Meg had been out of schoolfirst recuperating in the hospital, then visiting her father in Santa Barbara, then traveling with Robin on an extended getaway to northern California the word would have spread throughout the small social circle of the Gainesburg School.
For much of that time the school, which was on a year-round schedule, had been out of sessionsummer recess, they called it, though it lasted only a month. Still, nearly all the kids lived on the Westside, and they would have stayed in touch.
Now, with classes resuming and Meg's return expected, the entire student population would be waiting for her. Robin pictured them as vultures in gray-and-white uniforms. The image, she admitted, was probably unfair.
Meg saw her mother watching her. She smiled. "Don't worry, Mom. I can handle it."
Of course she could. She'd proven she could handle anything.
"Sorry," Robin said. "You're right. You'll be fine."
"Better believe it. Everything's copawell, you know."
"Copacetic. You can say it."
"Even though it's his word?"
"He doesn't have a monopoly on it."
Meg finished the first granola bar and started on the second. "Any plans for today after you drop me off?"
"Nothing special." She hated lying to Meg, but she didn't want to talk about it.
"No patients?"
"In the afternoon. Morning's free."
Meg seemed to sense that this topic was going nowhere. "Happy with the new office?"
"It's a big improvement. Working there, I feel almost like an actual urban professional."
"You may need to start carrying a briefcase."
"Let's not get carried away."
The fire had rendered Robin's previous office unusable. She had no desire to remain there anyway. She had relocated to a building in the mid-Wilshire district, a safer neighborhood, but still within reach of downtown.
Downtown. The prison, she meant. The population of convicts who had served as her test subjects.
She wasn't treating any of them now. The loss of her MBI gear in the fire had given her an excuse to suspend her experimental program. But new equipment was being made to order and would arrive soon. Then she would have to decide what to do with it. It could be used for purposes more prosaic than rehabilitationfighting phobias, for instance. She wasn't sure if she would be satisfied with curing people's fear of spiders when millions of prisoners remained warehoused in jails.
Still, maybe the jails were where they belonged. All of them, forever. Lock them up, throw away the key.
She wasn't sure. Her old certainties had died on the night of Gray's rampage. She hadn't found any new truths to replace them. Not yet.
"Better get a move on," she told Meg. "Don't want to be late for your first day back. How would that reflect on me, your doting mother and unpaid chauffeur?"
"Badly."
"That's what I thought."
"Just let me brush my teeth. I intend to do a lot of smiling today."
Robin thought that was good. Her daughter was due a few smiles.
The Saab had been repaired and repainted. At first Robin hadn't liked driving a car that Gray had used. It seemed to be imprinted with his presence. Finally she'd taken it fifty miles up the coast with the windows open, the sea air whipping through. The trip had cleansed the car, expelling whatever psychic residue had lodged there.
She drove Meg the short distance to the Gainesburg School, where other parents were letting off uniformed kids with backpacks and bookbags. The scene appeared so normal, just a part of everyday life. And so it was, but Justin Gray was part of life, too. The miracle was not that the two parts ever intersected, but that they intersected so seldom.
"Mom? You okay?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"You've been kind of brooding and uncommunicative all morning."
"I'm preoccupied, that's all."
Meg made a move to get out of the car. She hesitated. "You're not worried about me, are you?"
"Going into the lions' den? Nope. I know you can handle it."
"That's not what I mean. You're not amp; well, you're not worried about me being on my own again?"
And screwing up like I did last time; Robin heard the unvoiced words. Screwing up with Gabe.
There had been many long talks between them on that subject, and Robin knew there would be many more.
"I'm not worried," she answered. "It's funnyI used to worry all the time. About you and me and amp; well, everything. Not anymore. Not since that night. What do you think that's about?"
Meg smiled. "Delayed reaction to stress? Post-traumatic dissociative depersonalization with delusions of happiness?"
"If it's a delusion, I'll take it. Get going now. Good luck."
"Won't need it," Meg said, leaving the car.
Robin watched her walk into a crowd of students who clustered around her. When Meg was lost to sight, Robin put the Saab in gear and drove away, checking the dashboard clock.
Her morning wasn't as open as she'd said. She had an appointment at ten a.m.
Downtown.
Gray was waiting for Robin in the interview room on the eighth floor.
It had taken him six weeks to recover from gunshot wounds to the groin and abdomen. Four bullets had hit him out of the sixteen she'd fired, emptying the Beretta's magazine. His condition had been critical for the first few days, but gradually he'd improved, and now he was healthy enough to be reinstalled in his old cell in Twin Towers.
The doctors had told Robin that Gray demonstrated a remarkable will to live. She hadn't been surprised. Whatever else he might be, Justin Gray was a survivor.