“We’re problem solving.”
“What does that mean?” I spotted a floating camera bot bobbing near the ceiling, but it didn’t rotate as we walked past, meaning it wasn’t recording us. Had Spurling turned off the security cameras? As director of biohaz she had the power to do anything she wanted. When she didn’t answer my question, I slowed and put on my ice face. “I’d rather problem solve with my father’s lawyer here.”
Spurling turned so fast that I had to sidestep to keep from plowing into her. She thrust her computer tablet under my nose. “Don’t get smart with me, Delaney. I have a whole file on you. I know about the orienteering and the self-defense classes. You think I can’t guess why you take them?”
“Because my dad makes me.” Other kids were forced to take piano lessons, but I had to suffer through night hikes in the park and memorize an attacker’s five most vulnerable areas — eyes, ears, throat, shin, groin. Considering that our live-in housekeeper was an ex-Marine and our apartment building was tricked out like Fort Knox — as most were, in case of another plague — I didn’t really need to know how to chop someone in the windpipe. Not that I was going to say this to Director Spurling, who looked like she’d chopped many a windpipe.
“Of course he makes you,” she snapped. “You’re his apprentice.”
My surprise came out as a laugh, which I turned into a cough.
“He takes you out and times you running,” she went on. “Why would he do that unless he’s training you to be a fetch?”
I eased back a step. She was a little too invested in her theory. “Actually, I asked him to. I’ve been trying to break my —”
“Shut up.”
I obeyed instantly since Spurling seemed on the verge of beating me to death with her computer tablet.
“I have been working on this investigation for five years, Delaney. Five years of trying to coerce rich scumbags into giving up their art supplier. They’re like drug addicts, thinking only about their next fix. They’ll clam up and lawyer up long before they’ll tell you who their dealer is. But last year, I got a solid lead on your father. And finally, finally, I have the evidence against him and where is he? Poof, gone.” She glared as if I had personally hidden him away. “I don’t accept that. Not after all the effort I’ve put into getting Ian McEvoy right where I want him. Now walk.”
Spurling pointed down the corridor, which ended at a massive steel door, made all the creepier by the bar across it, guaranteeing that it stayed shut. I focused on the bar in order to control the pricking sensation behind my eyes. If I dashed back the way we’d come, I could outrun this sadist in heels. But that wouldn’t help my dad.
“If you’re trying to make yourself cry, don’t bother. I had my heart surgically removed when I took this job.” She headed for the door. “Come on. Your father is going to need every minute.”
I glanced up. What did that mean?
“I first got whiff of him,” Spurling said, now sounding positively conversational, “at a dinner party.” She didn’t slow her pace, so I was forced to catch up. “There I noticed a landscape by Ferdinand Hodler on the wall.” She heaved aside the bolt. “It was an incredible moment. Not for the host, of course. He’d thought it was a safe-enough painting to hang in his dining room. Hodler is a fairly obscure Swiss artist. But I’m from Chicago.” She glanced at me as if to check that I was paying attention. “And I’d seen that particular blue mountainscape many times … in the Art Institute.”
“How is that an incredible moment?”
“Because it meant that some fetch had traveled all the way to Chicago and back — deep into the quarantine zone. No other fetch I’ve heard of will go that far, no matter how much a client offers.”
Spurling pressed a key fob to a pad, which unlocked the door. As it slid open, a sigh of cold air prickled my skin. Lights flickered on to reveal metal stairs descending into darkness.
Seeing my hesitation, she said, “We’re going under the wall,” and started down the stairs. “So, I did a little digging,” she said, continuing with her story without so much as a backward glance, “and found more valuable paintings here, in the West — paintings by Matisse, van Gogh, and Renoir — all from the Art Institute of Chicago and all on record as having been left behind.”
As we rounded each bend in the stairwell, a new set of lights flickered on. The air smelled musty, and I felt like I was breathing in decades of old pain and fear. “What makes you think my father fetched them?”
“I don’t think, I know he did.”
I swallowed. Again the fate of the last fetch played like a viral clip in my mind. Another heavy steel door awaited us at the bottom of the stairs. Spurling swiped her fob across the pad. This door slid open with a hiss to reveal a darkness so cold and profound that dread swelled like a wave and crashed over me.
Spurling swept her hand toward the doorway. “After you.”
I paused, unable to see anything in the darkness before me. I hoped that this wasn’t a trick — that if I stepped into the room, Spurling wouldn’t slam the door behind me, lock it, and leave me alone in the dark. Inhaling deeply, I stepped through the doorway and felt rewarded when the overhead lights snapped on to reveal an enormous white-tiled chamber. The air was stale, and dust coated the sparse furnishings: desks, chairs, and posts connected by chains to form a labyrinth of aisles.
“What is this place?” I eyed the two steel doors ten feet apart on the far wall. The doors were identical to the one we’d just come through. More camera bots floated like buoys inches from the high ceiling.
“It was a checkpoint chamber. One of ten entry points into the West.” Director Spurling waved a hand at the door on the left. “The tunnel is just six hundred feet long, the width of the bottom of the wall, but with the security checks, it took days to reach this room. The people who didn’t pass the medical tests were forced to return to the East through that door.” Spurling pointed to the one on the right.
Shivering, I looked away, only to notice a beat-up leather satchel on the chair beside me.
“Recognize it?” Spurling asked in a silky tone.
I inhaled sharply and then wished I’d hidden my reaction — but she already knew the messenger bag was my dad’s. This was her show, and I was just playing the part I’d been assigned.
Hefting the bag onto a desk, she dumped out the contents. Curiosity drew me closer. Some of the items could have belonged to anyone: a flashlight, rolled bandages, a bottle of iodine, matches, a map. But the bone-handled machete was unquestionably my dad’s. And then there was the long rolled canvas stuffed into the side pocket. I didn’t know what it was specifically, but I’d seen my father with others like it.
Spurling pulled the canvas free and unrolled it. “Personally, I’ve always thought Lautrec was gaudy and overrated.” She turned the canvas toward me.
It showed a nightclub scene. The top hats and gowns, the garish face in the foreground, were all rendered with distinctive “heavy contouring” as my dad would say — unmistakably Toulouse-Lautrec. “It could be a copy.” I knew how ridiculous that sounded the second the words were out of my mouth.
“I doubt Mack would risk his life for anything less than the original.” Spurling rerolled the canvas.
I flinched. She’d used my dad’s nickname like she was his friend. “If that’s all you’ve got against him — his bag — then —”
In answer, Spurling activated her tablet and tapped the screen. The fluorescent lights dimmed overhead and the chamber filled with spectral light as the camera bots projected a holographic recording of the very room we were standing in. Tracing her finger across her tablet, Spurling made the camera bots circle the ceiling until the projected twin doors were aligned with the actual doors. I braced myself for what was to come, curling my hands into fists.