Her steps slowed and squeaked as she turned into a room. Another squeak, this time a chair. The whoosh of files dropping onto a desk. A third squeak, the chair being pulled in.
Hope eased from the corner, moving silently. She could still only see the woman's back now through an office door as she shuffled folders into piles.
Hope could hear her music, the distorted boom-screech-wail of heavy metal cranked full-blast. They could have a firefight in the hall and Hope doubted she'd notice. While it was tempting to leave it at that, it wasn't safe. Not for them, and not for the woman.
She positioned herself with the tranquilizer gun aimed at the woman's shoulder. Then she stopped. What made her so sure this was loaded with tranquilizers?
Rhys had asked where her paranoia came from. Maybe some of it was demon, some Karl, but most came from that loftiest of teachers: experience.
The deceptions and lies of society life were superficial, like saying "Oh, don't you look gorgeous. You're just the belle of the ball and I'm so happy for you," when what you really mean is "That dress makes you look like a cheap whore and if you ever show me up at my own party again, I will carve out your liver with a spoon and serve it as pâté." Of course, in the society world, no one's liver was in any actual danger. In the supernatural world? Don't bet against it.
Hope had been lied to and deceived and betrayed, then lied to and deceived and betrayed again. And no matter how strongly she believed in the innate goodness of mankind, eventually she'd noticed the "kick me" sticker on her butt, ripped it off and vowed never to let anyone replace it.
She might have tipped into paranoia, having leapt to wrong conclusions about Detective Findlay and Rhys. And she could be wrong questioning what was in this gun. But she wasn't shooting a bystander until she was sure. Rhys knew how sensitive the council was about killing. Why not hand her poison darts and say it was only a tranquilizer? She'd shoot, she'd move on and she'd never be the wiser.
Choices. Everyone had to make them. Some were uglier than others.
When she heard footsteps in the hall – heavy-booted ones – she saw her solution. She retreated into the waiting room, measured the distance between her and those footfalls. When they drew close, she counted to three, swung out and fired.
Hope got off two shots – the first a guess, the second aimed. Both hit the guy in the legs. He looked at her, blinking stupidly, then crashed to the floor.
The chair in the office squeaked. Hope flung herself against the wall and listened. Another squeak. Just her luck to drop the guy at a break between songs.
"Hello?"
No heel clicking accompanied the cautious greeting, and Hope pictured the woman standing beside her desk. She eased along the wall and dropped beside the Cabal guy. One hand checked his pulse while the other trained her gun on the office doorway.
A tentative click. Then another.
The man's pulse beat, thready, as if that second tranquilizer dart had been overkill. He'd be down for a while, but he'd recover.
"Hello?"
Three clicks. A shadow darkened the office doorway. The woman's hand appeared on the door. The shadow of her head moved forward, to peek.
"Hey!" Hope called.
Startled, the woman jumped back, her hands flying up, arms appearing. Hope's dart hit the back of her wrist. Hope dove through the nearest door before the woman saw her. A few seconds passed, then the boom of her body hitting the floor.
Hope was stepping out when the tramp of boots sent her scurrying back. Muted voices came from the stairwell.
Then, "He'll take her to the roof."
Karl's voice, slurred like he was drunk… not that she'd ever seen Karl drunk. The relief of hearing his voice lasted two seconds before she saw the advance guard sprawled across the hall, and heard those steps tramping closer to the landing.
She ran to the woman. A quick pulse check, then she pushed her back into the office and closed the door. She grabbed one of the guard's legs and heaved. His gun skidded across the floor. She froze. The footsteps continued, that same unhurried tramp.
She barely managed to drag the guard six inches before those footfalls thankfully passed the landing and continued up. She snatched his gun, put it in the office, then hauled the guard inside.
She was back in the hall – her own gun in hand – when footsteps pattered down the stairs.
"Take him up. I'll grab Rogers."
Irving Nast. Her breath stopped in her throat.
"Sir?" one of the team said.
Call him back. Tell him you'll get Rogers. Please, please -
"He was scouting the third floor," the man continued.
Irving thanked him and his footsteps continued. Hope shot into the office with the unconscious team member. The stairwell door creaked open before she had time to close hers. Her heel thumped the guard's arm. She carefully stepped over it and retreated into the shadows.
It was useless, of course. Nast was hunting for this missing guard. He'd see the body through the open doorway. He'd turn on the light and then…
Then what?
Did she have a choice?
Her heart battered her ribs, keeping double time with Irving's brisk, purposeful strides.
She gripped the tranq gun. A hair tickled her cheek, caught in an air current. It tickled back and forth, back and forth, making every inch of skin creep, every muscle tense, like a guitar tuner, cranking her nerves tighter and tighter.
Irving Nast's shadow passed the open door first. He strode past, eyes straight ahead, confident that his employee would come to him.
Hope watched him, her gaze fixed on his shoulder blade, gun trained on his upper arm. A perfect shot. Just pull the trigger.
She wasn't ready. Let him get past, while she took a moment to catch her breath, make a decision, yank that damn tickling hair out -
She fired.
Unprepared for the recoil, Hope was knocked back and, for a second, she thought she'd been shot. It was only as Nast faltered that she realized she'd pulled the trigger.
As he fell, she shuddered so hard she nearly dropped the gun. It wasn't chaos bliss but relief, so sweet it felt as good as chaos.
In pulling the trigger, she'd set her course. She'd shot him so now she had to follow through, had to kill him, as if in "accidentally" pulling that trigger, she'd absolved herself of responsibility for the rest. She had to go with the choice that she'd wanted to pick: their safety over the council.
To protect herself and Karl, Irving Nast had to die. That wasn't the demon talking. It was her, because all this talk of her and the demon was an artificial distinction that she knew in her heart was bullshit. There was no Hope and the demon. There was just Hope, and she wanted the threat of Irving Nast eliminated.
Then, as she pulled out the garrote wire, the zip of it slicing through the silence, she realized what she was about to do.
Rhys blamed the council for her reluctance to kill Irving, which proved that he understood Expisco demons as superficially as he did werewolves. It had nothing to do with laws. It was more than conscience, too.
Hope knew that taking a life was wrong. She felt that more deeply than Karl ever could. If she'd asked him why, when they needed to kill, he did it for them, he'd use that as an excuse: because he didn't mind and she did. The truth, as they both knew, was that the taking of a life was the one experience she'd denied the demon. Death was the demon's purest joy. A high like no other. If she took that life, would she find a new high? If so, could she live with that?
Enjoying death didn't have Hope wandering palliative care wards or racing to accident scenes. Her addiction was fed by serendipity – she took sustenance where she found it and never sought it out.