“He’s killed all of the cameras,” Rachel said. “What is-”
“Wait. There!”
I pointed to one camera angle surrounded by several black squares. Rachel manipulated the touch pad and brought the image up to full screen.
The camera view captured a passageway between two rows of server towers in the farm. Lying facedown on the floor were two bodies, their wrists cuffed behind their backs and their ankles bound with cable ties.
Rachel grabbed the stem microphone attached to the desk, depressed the button and almost shrieked into it.
“George! Sarah! Can you hear me?”
At the sound of Rachel’s voice the figures on the screen stirred and the male raised his head. It looked like there was blood on his white shirt.
“Rachel?” he said, his voice sounding weak over an overhead speaker. “I can hear you.”
“Where is he? Where’s Carver, George?”
“I don’t know. He was just here. He just brought us in here.”
“What happened?”
“After you left he went into his office. He was in there for a little bit and when he came out, he got the drop on us. He grabbed my gun out of my briefcase. He herded us in here and put us on the floor. I tried to talk to him but he wouldn’t talk.”
“Sarah, where’s your weapon?”
“He got that, too,” Mowry called out. “I’m sorry, Rachel. We didn’t see it coming.”
“Not your fault. It’s mine. We’re going to get you out of there.”
Rachel released the microphone and quickly came around the workstation, bringing her weapon with her. She went to the biometric reader and put her hand on the scanner.
“He could be in there, waiting,” I warned.
“I know, but what am I going to do, leave them lying in there?”
The device completed the scan and she grabbed the handle to slide the door open. It didn’t move. Her hand scan had been rejected.
Rachel looked back at the scanner.
“That makes no sense. My profile was put in yesterday.”
She put her hand on the scanner and began the procedure again.
“Who put it in?” I asked.
She looked back at me and didn’t need to answer for me to know it had been Carver.
“Who else can open that door?” I asked.
“Nobody who’s on this side. It was me, Mowry and Torres.”
“What about employees here?”
She stepped away from the scanner and tried the door again. It didn’t budge.
“They’re on a skeleton staff upstairs and there’s nobody with authorization for the farm. We’re screwed! We can’t get-”
“Rachel!”
I pointed at the screen. Carver had suddenly stepped into the view of the one working camera in the server room. He stood in front of the two agents on the floor, hands in the pockets of his lab coat, and looking directly up at the camera.
Rachel quickly came around to see the screen.
“What’s he doing?” she asked.
I didn’t need to answer because it became clear that Carver was pulling a box of cigarettes and a throwaway lighter from his pockets. In one of those moments when the mind delivers useless information I realized they were probably the cigarettes missing from Freddy Stone’s/Marc Courier’s box of belongings. As we watched, Carver calmly drew a cigarette from the box and put it in his mouth.
Rachel quickly pulled over the microphone.
“Wesley? What’s going on?”
Carver was raising the lighter to the end of the cigarette but stopped when he heard the question. He looked back up at the camera.
“You can dispense with the niceties, Agent Walling. We’re at the end of the dance now.”
“What are you doing?” she said more forcefully.
“You know what I’m doing,” Carver said. “I’m ending it. I’d rather not spend the rest of my days chased like an animal and then put in a cage. Being put on display, trotted out for interviews with bureau shrinks and profilers hoping to learn all the dark secrets in the universe. I think I would find that to be a fate worse than death, Agent Walling.”
He raised the lighter again.
“Don’t, Wesley! At least let Agents Mowry and Torres go. They did nothing to hurt you.”
“That’s not the point, is it? The world hurt me, Rachel, and that’s enough. I’m sure you’ve studied the psychology before.”
Rachel took her hand off the transmit button and quickly turned to me.
“Get on the computer. Shut down the VESDA system.”
“No, you do it! I don’t know the first thing about-”
“Is Jack there with you?” Carver asked.
I hand-signaled Rachel to trade places with me. I moved to the microphone while she dropped into a seat and went to work on the computer. I depressed the button and spoke to the man who murdered Angela Cook.
“I’m here, Carver. This is not how this should end.”
“No, Jack, it’s the only end. You have slain another giant. You’re the hero of the hour.”
“No, not yet. I want to tell your story… Wesley. Let me explain it to the world.”
On the screen, Carver shook his head.
“Some things can’t be explained. Some stories are too dark to be told.”
He flicked the lighter and the flame came up. He started to light the cigarette.
“Carver, no! Those are innocent people in there!”
Carver inhaled deeply, held it, and then tilted his head back and exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. I was sure he had positioned himself under one of the infrared smoke detectors.
“No one is innocent, Jack,” he said. “You should know that.”
He drew in more smoke and spoke almost casually, gesturing with the hand holding the cigarette, a small trail of blue smoke following it in the air.
“I know Agent Walling and you are trying to shut down the system but that isn’t going to work. I took the liberty of resetting it. Only I have access now. And the exhaust component that takes the carbon dioxide out of the room one minute after dispersal has been checked off for maintenance. I wanted to make sure there would be no mistakes. And no survivors.”
Carver exhaled, sending another jet of smoke toward the ceiling. I looked over at Rachel. Her fingers were racing across the keyboard but she was shaking her head.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “He changed all the authorization codes. I can’t get into-”
The blast of an alarm horn filled the control room. The system had been tripped. A red band two inches thick crossed every screen in the control room. An electronic voice, female and calm, read the words crossing on the band aloud.
“Attention, the VESDA fire suppression system has been activated. All personnel must exit the server room. The VESDA fire suppression system will engage in one minute.”
Rachel ran both hands through her hair and stared helplessly at the screen in front of her. Carver was blowing another round of smoke toward the ceiling. There was a look of calm resignation on his face.
“Rachel!” Mowry called from behind him. “Get us out of here!”
Carver looked back at his captives and shook his head.
“It’s over,” he said. “This is the end.”
Just then I was jolted by a second blast of the warning horn.
“Attention, the VESDA fire suppression system has been activated. All personnel must exit the server room. The VESDA fire suppression system will engage in forty-five seconds.”
Rachel stood up and grabbed her gun off the desk.
“Get down, Jack!”
“Rachel, no, it’s bulletproof!”
“According to him.”
She took aim with a two-handed grip and fired three quick rounds at the window directly in front of her. The explosions were deafening. But the bullets barely impacted the glass and ricocheted wildly in the control room.
“Rachel, no!”
“Stay down!”
She fired two more bullets into the glass door and got the same negative result. One of the ricocheting slugs took out one of the screens in front of me, the image of Carver disappearing as it went black.