Cold crept through me at Naomi’s words. “Wait. You mean Brian took Dr. Nikas to a safe place?” Nothing else made sense.
“I wish.” She pulled out her phone and thumbed through a couple of screens. “It sucks. Tranqed him and threw him in the back of his car. Check it out.” She held the phone so we could see a segment of surveillance video.
I watched in numb shock as Brian spoke on the phone in the driver’s seat of his SUV outside the front door of the lab, then dropped the phone onto the seat and waited. A moment later, Dr. Nikas came out the door, leaned into the passenger window to talk to Brian. About ten seconds later, Dr. Nikas turned back toward the building, and if Naomi hadn’t replayed the section, I’d have missed it.
Brian shifted in the front seat, a small motion. Dr. Nikas jerked, then swayed as if about to faint. Brian leapt out of the passenger door, caught Dr. Nikas as he sagged, and hustled him into the back seat. The door closed, Brian got behind the wheel again, then peeled out of the lot.
Naomi tucked the phone away. “You can see the tranq gun better from the other camera view.”
Brian? Brian? He’d have been at the very bottom of my list of People Who Would Betray Pietro.
“No one watching the security cameras noticed this?” I asked, shaken.
“You saw how quickly Brian moved,” Naomi said. “They all thought he was leaving with Brian voluntarily.” She raked her fingers through her hair, aggravated and pissed. “It was Brian. Beyond suspicion. No one knew anything was wrong until Dr. Nikas’s driver showed up to take him to dinner with Mr. Ivanov. Then suddenly they couldn’t get hold of anyone to check in, and security started digging.”
“Do you have any idea where they are?”
She shook her head, grim. “Not at this time. If any ransom demands were made, we weren’t informed. Kyle and I are here to back up Raul and Dan. For extra security.”
I flicked a glance at Kyle as he turned a page in his book. How the hell could he possibly be so calm?
“Angel,” Philip said. “Brian was on the phone in the vid. The time stamp puts it before we left here earlier today.”
I turned to him, eyes wide. “That was the call Dr. Nikas got during our treatment.” I grimaced as another realization hit. “He didn’t leave us by choice, which meant the procedure wasn’t finished properly. No wonder you’re a mess, and we’re doing synchronized rotting.” I touched the spot on my arm, certain it was uglier and squishier than before. “We need to see Jacques.”
“He’s in the treatment room with Reg,” Naomi told me. “Last I saw him he was going through Dr. Nikas’s notes from this morning.”
Philip headed off that way, jaw set. I leaned closer to Naomi. “It must be Saberton Corporation behind this.”
Distress shimmered in her eyes even as Kyle’s gaze locked onto me over his book. Anything about Saberton hit close to home with Naomi. Everything had turned upside down for her a few months back when she stumbled onto Saberton’s cruel zombie experimentation, and she ended up killing one of the researchers to protect a vivisected zombie test subject. When she informed her brother, Andrew, that she was done with the bullshit, he threatened to tell their mother about the murder if Naomi didn’t get her act together for Saberton. Instead, Naomi broke his nose, hogtied him with a sheet and fled.
As I watched, Naomi pushed the distress aside and lifted her chin, face fierce like some sort of warrior princess. “I’m certain they’re behind it,” she said with conviction. “My mother is desperate enough these days to plan a stunt like this. I only wish she’d been careless enough to screw it up.” She smacked the counter with her hand. “I can’t believe I used to think of this as a big game.”
“The Tribe screwed up Saberton’s movie zombie experiment pretty badly,” I said. “You think your mom might have grabbed Pietro for revenge?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” she said, eyes narrowing. “With the company in trouble since granddad died, she’s lost moral perspective.” Her mouth twisted in a scowl. “With family and business. Don’t get me wrong, she was never very motherly. But she wasn’t so cutthroat or vindictive, and she wouldn’t . . .” She trailed off as she ran her fingers over her cheekbone, a deep sadness in her eyes and voice. “What other daughter has to go through this to keep their mother from hunting them down and killing them . . . or worse?”
A changed appearance and a faked death. Sure, it kept Julia/Naomi safe from Nicole Saber, but it also meant isolation from her family, however crappy that family was.
“It sucks big time,” I agreed. “All we can do now is focus on getting our people back. Who’s on it? Rachel? I bet she’ll tap you to get the inside scoop on what you think Saberton’s next move is.”
“She hasn’t yet. I should probably call her.” Naomi gave me a determined, closed-lip smile. “Rachel doesn’t much like me, but I know a lot of shit about Saberton.”
“Yeah, you do,” I said. “And welcome to the Rachel Hates Me club.” I gave her a quick hug. “I’m going to see if Jacques has a fix for Philip and me. I’m not too happy with the permanent rot thing.”
Naomi made a face. “I’m with you on that one.”
I left her and made my way to the treatment room where I found Jacques drawing a blood sample from Philip, while the other tech, Reg, worked at a computer on a counter nearby.
“Dr. Nikas didn’t document what he was doing,” Jacques said, face pale and voice unsteady. “He was adjusting as he went. He often works that way.” He pulled the needle from Philip’s arm. “Some notes. Nothing clear.”
This was an absolute fountain of words from the man. “It’s cool. We trust you,” I said, but I heard the high, thin worry in my tone. “It’s cool,” I repeated. Reg glanced over from the computer station and gave me a somewhat steadier smile, though his eyes held plenty of concern as well.
Jacques took the blood samples over to another table and began doing stuff with vials and machines. “He never leaves before a procedure is finished,” he muttered, distressed. “I never would have let you leave. I assumed it was complete. I should have known, should have realized something was wrong.”
“Hindsight is some awesomely useless shit,” I stated firmly.
“None of us could have known,” Philip said at the same time.
Jacques gave a slight nod, though the level of anxiety in his eyes remained the same. “I’ll run these and we’ll go from there. It’ll take about twenty minutes.” He gathered up the vials and moved to the adjoining room.
Philip took the small cup of pureed brains Reg offered him and downed it. The tiny mark from the injection faded, but the rotted areas stubbornly remained. He murmured a thanks to Reg and handed the cup back, then gave my shoulder a bump with his. Though, with the height difference, it was more like my shoulder met his bicep. “C’mon, ZeeEm, we can wait in the main room,” he said. “The lab boys don’t need us hovering over them.”
I turned with him toward the door. “ZeeEm? Seriously? Zombie Mama?”
A smile twitched. “You don’t like it?”
Tilting my head, I pretended to consider. “Y’know, it’s not bad. And I kinda like the idea of calling you ZeeBee.”
“Zombie Baby,” he groaned, then chuckled. “Okay, I deserved that.”
Grateful for the humor, I bumped my shoulder against him. But even with the brief distraction, the severity of the situation didn’t stay away for long. “Surely there’s someplace we can start looking,” I said as we made our way down the corridor. “There’s a crime scene somewhere, right? Wherever Pietro and the others were kidnapped?”
“We can check with Kyle and Naomi, but I’m sure security’s been on that all day.”
“And how much training do they have on crime scene investigation?” I asked with a frown.
A faint grimace touched his mouth. “Basic, but they won’t be calling in any experts.”
“Why not? If they report it to the police, do they have to mention that Pietro and the others are zombies?” My frown deepened. “The cops have a lot more equipment and training and connections. They’d stand a better chance of finding out what really happened.” But even as I said it I knew it couldn’t possibly work out that way. “Shit, no. If the cops investigated they’d find out about the rest. It’s why I didn’t report it when Saberton’s goons took my dad.”
Philip nodded. “The risks are too great. As bad as the abductions are, exposure is worse.”
We entered the central lab. Kyle was still reading his book, and Naomi studied maps on one of the work station computers.
“So in the meantime we wait.” I sucked at waiting, being patient, and most other things that were supposed to come with that whole maturity thing.
“I doubt the Tribe is sitting on their hands,” Philip said. “What we do is another matter.” Worry tightened his expression, and I saw his gaze flick to the darkened patch on his arm.
“We need to see what Jacques comes up with first,” I said. How much help could either of us be if we couldn’t control the rot? And I didn’t want to think about Philip’s weird fit and his greyout in the parking lot.
I flopped into one of the chairs and amused myself by slowly spinning around. Kyle glanced at me once, snorted very softly, and then returned his attention to his book. Fine, I’d be picking him last for my hallway office chair bobsled team.
The glass doors slid open as Raul leaned in from the outer hallway. He swept his gaze around before it came to rest on Kyle. “Hey, Griffin, could I see you for a minute in the security office?”
Kyle carefully marked his page with a scrap of paper, set his book on the counter, and moved lithely to the door. Raul gave the rest of us a nod, then the doors slid closed behind the two.
I spun my chair again. “How long has it been?” I whined.
Philip leaned against a counter and folded his arms over his chest. “I think we’re up to a whole five minutes.” He straightened and patted his pocket. “Crap. Left my phone in the treatment room. Be right back.” With that he headed back the way we’d come.
Pushing off against the desk, I sent my chair careening across the floor. “I just want to dooooo something.” My eyes fell on Kyle’s book, and I scooped it up to peer at the cover, which had a cool painting of a sword with dragons carved into the hilt. I began to flip through to see if I could find out more about the dragons, then jerked my head toward the main corridor at the unmistakable sound of a gunshot.
Naomi bolted upright. “Kyle!”
Shoving up from the chair, I sent it skittering back across the room as I ran to the door. It obligingly slid open before I realized that if people were shooting, opening the door might not be the safest thing to do though by then it was too late to change my mind.
Across the hall and a little to the left the door to the security room stood open, giving me a perfect view of Raul crumpled against the wall, gurgling and clutching at his throat while blood poured between his fingers. Dan stood beside him with a tranq gun in one hand and a real one in the other, both leveled at Kyle who already had one dart sticking from his lower stomach. As I took all this in, Dan fired the tranq twice more. Kyle staggered as the darts struck but still managed to lift the gun in his hand and squeeze the trigger. Dan jerked and bared his teeth as the round took him in the shoulder, even as Kyle slumped back against the desk and slid to the floor.
All of this happened in the couple of seconds that it took me to cross the hall. “What the fuck?” I stopped in the doorway and stared at the completely unexpected scene.
“Angel, stay back,” Dan ordered, keeping both guns on Kyle.
“Kyle!” Naomi pushed past me and hurried to him.
“What happened?” I demanded. “Why’d you shoot him?”
“We need to take him into custody,” Dan replied, jaw tight and tense.
Teeth bared, Kyle fought to lift his gun. “Take . . . him . . . out.”
Take Dan out? “Goddammit,” I snarled, “who’s the fucking bad guy here?”
Naomi jerked around to shoot me an Are you fucking kidding me? look an instant before she spun and drew her own weapon on Dan.
Dan didn’t waver, but I saw the hesitation in his eyes. Shooting Naomi with a tranq would kill her—the powerful drugs designed to stop a zombie in seconds were lethal to humans in the same amount of time—but Dan obviously didn’t want to shoot her with a regular gun either. “It’s orders,” he said through clenched teeth. “He’s been implicated in today’s actions and we’re detaining him. That’s all.”
“Shit,” I breathed. Naomi trusted Kyle, but the fact that they were lovers probably had her a teensy bit biased. I clenched my hands in frustration, and realized I still held Kyle’s book.
Raul let out a gurgling cough, his color already grey as the parasite used resources to keep him alive, and Dan flicked a quick glance at him. I turned as if to move back, then slung the book as hard as I could at Dan.
Holy hell, but I hope I’m not making a huge fucking mistake, I thought as it arced through the air, closely followed by the hope that Naomi could take some sort of advantage of the distraction.
Fortunately, the last thing Dan expected was a thick book with a big sword on the cover to bean him in the head. He let out a startled yelp and staggered, but that was all Naomi needed. She launched up and drove a shoulder into his gut, seized the tranq gun, twisted, and shot him twice.
Dan tried to bring his other gun up, but between my literary attack and the tranqs, Naomi had no problem relieving him of that weapon as well.
“What the hell’s going on, Naomi?” I all but shouted as Dan crumpled. “Tell me why I threw a book at Dan’s head.”
“Angel!”
I looked back down the hallway to see Philip running my way with Jacques some distance behind him. “Angel, I heard shots!” He slid to a stop and took in the scene in the room. It was a sign of his experience and training that he didn’t say anything stupid like “What the hell’s going on?” or “Who’s the fucking bad guy?”
Instead he moved toward Raul while pulling a packet of brains out of his pocket. “Jacques!” he called over his shoulder. “We need more brains here.”
Philip crouched by Raul and began feeding him brains to stabilize him and keep him from going into too much rot, even going so far as to press some into the wound. Naomi stepped back from Dan and looked over at me.
“I don’t care what they say,” she said with a lift of her chin. “Kyle didn’t have anything to do with the abductions.” She pivoted back to Kyle and began to carefully extract the darts from him.
Philip glanced back at me. “Angel, Raul had this in his hand.” He tossed me a phone, which I managed to catch. “See what’s on it or if he had someone on the line. Something instigated this.”
A number of pictures had recently been texted. I scrolled through and fought to make sense of them. Four showed different angles of Chris Peterson, half in and half out of what could only be a shallow grave in a heavily wooded area. The lower half of his body was covered in dirt, but it looked like he’d partially sat up, then collapsed to the side. A cell phone lay on the ground by his hand. Bloody face, ligature marks around his throat, and an ugly hole at the base of his skull—a fatal wound for a zombie. A fifth picture was of nothing but the ground, and the last was of Rachel crouched beside the exhumed body, one hand on his chest, glaring into the camera with an I’ll destroy whoever did this look on her face and her eyes scarily demon-red in the flash.
“Oh my god,” I breathed. “It’s Chris. He’s dead.”
Naomi sucked in a breath. “And Rachel’s saying Kyle did it? It’s a lie!”
“Would you chill?” I snapped. “Let’s figure out why anyone would think that.”
Jacques stepped in to take over the care of Raul. Philip came over by me to look at the photos. Face grim, he examined each one carefully, then moved to a cabinet and removed zip ties and a set of handcuffs.
“For now we’ll lock all three down,” he said, then shot a stern look at Naomi as she began to protest. “You too if you don’t settle.”
“That seems more than fair,” I said. “At least until we know more.”
Philip handcuffed Kyle’s hands behind his back and ziptied his ankles, then moved to Dan and Raul and ziptied them both at wrists and ankles. As soon as he finished, Jacques administered tranq antidotes to both Dan and Kyle. Dan began to perk up almost immediately, but Kyle was slower to recover, probably because he’d been tranqed three times. Raul’s wound had closed, and he was breathing more easily but was still terribly pale with a grey cast to his skin.
Jacques murmured something about finishing the blood analysis then departed. Philip took the phone from me and once again looked through the pictures.
“Rachel will be on her way out here soon, or will send someone,” Philip said, half to himself. “Hopefully all this shit will get straightened out then.”
“You want me to throw a book at her head too?” I asked cheekily, but he wisely ignored me and instead crouched before Raul.
“Give me your report,” he asked Raul, calm and all business.
“The pics.” Raul licked dry lips. “About half an hour ago, Chris phoned Rachel but all she heard was scuffling noises and wheezing. It went quiet, but the line was still open. She traced the GPS, and when she went out she found what you see there.” He nodded toward the phone in Philip’s hand. “He’d been garroted in a double loop—” His eyes flicked to Kyle and then back to Philip. “—stabbed in the brainstem and then buried in a shallow grave. But apparently he survived long enough to claw his way out and try and call Rachel.” He took a deeper breath, color slowly improving. “Rachel sent me the pictures then called and told us to detain Kyle for investigation.”
“I don’t understand why that points to Kyle,” I said, confused.
“Kyle’s signature move is a garrote looped twice,” Philip said quietly.
Raul shifted his attention to me, nodding in agreement with Philip. “Yes, but it’s the fifth picture that’s the most damning.”
“The one that’s just dirt?” I asked, even more baffled.
“Zoom in,” Raul said. “To the right of the pine cone.”
I peered over Philip’s shoulder as he did so.
“It’s K-Y,” Raul said. “Chris scratched that in the dirt and started another letter before he died.”
Crap. Somehow I doubted Chris had been asking for lube. My mind raced as I tried to sort everything out—raced right to K-Y-L-E but didn’t stop there. Naomi still crouched by Kyle like a lioness guarding her cub, obviously not entertaining even a whisper of doubt. Philip slowly scrolled through the pictures again, meticulously examining each one.
“I don’t think Kyle’s stupid,” I blurted.
Not in a snide way, Philip asked, “What’s your point, Angel?” without looking up.
“Well,” I began, “if he’s not stupid—which I’m pretty sure he’s not since he’s this hot shit operative with all sorts of experience and skills—why would he make it so goddamn obvious it’s his work and then come bebopping back here?” I shrugged. “I mean if I was going to fuck over the Tribe and then return here, I’d at least make sure that there was no possible way it could ever be traced back to me. And I’d sure as hell make sure the zombie I killed stayed dead.”
“Those are all good points,” Philip said. “But standard procedure is to detain and then investigate.” He jerked his head toward Kyle. “He knows that.”
I clung stubbornly to the fact that he didn’t specifically say he was going to actually follow the standard procedure. “Uh huh, but detention locks down one of our top guys. If it’s a setup it’s a good one, because it really fucks us up and slows us down.” I gestured around the room and at the three restrained men as evidence of that.
“We’ll see what Kyle has to say when he can speak,” Philip said. The front door dinged, and Philip glanced back with a slight frown. “Rachel’s here already?”
I stepped over to the monitor that showed the drab waiting room, then sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s not Rachel!” Four men in black tactical gear poured through the outer door and on into the short hallway to the next secured door. With pistols at their belts and automatic weapons in their hands, they didn’t have “Saberton” stenciled on the back of their shirts, but they might as well have. I recognized the overall look all too well.
Shock coursed through me as one of the men lifted a scrap of paper and began inputting a code on the number pad. “Philip! They’re getting in!”
Already up and moving, he dove to slam a hand on the remote door lock, but the second door clicked open the instant before he could hit it. Easily visible now through the broad window, the four moved on to the next door. I backed away from it even though I knew it was several inches thick. One of the men crouched by the door and dug in a small backpack while another held a cell phone to his ear and kept his eyes on the window. Even though I knew he couldn’t see me, it was still unnerving as all hell. The other two men stood by, their weapons ready. They definitely weren’t stopping by for a beer.
Philip swept a quick look around the room. “Naomi, grab weapons,” he snapped, jerking his head toward the weapons locker. “We’ll set up in the hall so that these guys aren’t sitting ducks.” He flicked a hand at the three secured zombies.
Naomi leaped into action, surprising me a bit that she didn’t argue that Kyle should be released to help fight. Maybe she realized there wasn’t time for that shit.
“They don’t have a code for this door,” I announced. Backpack Guy had pried the front panel off and hooked an electronic thingy to it.
Philip spared a quick look. “They’ll have it open in less than a minute,” he said grimly, quickly donning the ballistic vest Naomi tossed his way and seizing up weapons. I looked back at Naomi, taken slightly aback at the sight of her in ballistic armor and helmet, looking badass as fuck. No doubt at all, she was ready for action.
“Jacques and Reg!” I spun back to Philip. “Saberton must be trying to get them as well, since they already have Dr. Nikas.” Another hideous thought hit me. “And the heads. Shit.”
“Kang,” Naomi breathed. They’d been close friends before he was murdered.
“Run,” Philip ordered. He took my arm and propelled me to the hallway. “Get them and you barricaded up and safe. We’ll handle these guys.”
Naomi slammed and locked the door to the security room behind her. “We got this, chick,” she said when I hesitated. The main door beeped, and she gave me a shove. “Go!”
She and Philip turned to the door, flattened against the wall with Naomi crouched low, and lifted weapons.
They knew what the hell they were doing, so I did what the hell I knew how to do.
I turned and ran.
Shouts and the sound of gunfire followed me as I raced through the central lab rotunda and down the hallway to find Jacques, but all the noise was drowned out by the thoughts screaming through my head. They had the codes. They used the codes to get through the first two doors.
Those codes were barely two hours old, which meant that Brian wasn’t the only insider. Naomi had set the codes. Who else had them besides Philip and me? Probably Raul, Dan, Kyle, maybe Rachel. Kyle. Shit. There were plenty of other possibilities, but I didn’t like his name on the list.
I slammed doors in my wake and locked or jammed each one as best I could in the hopes of buying myself more time. To my relief Jacques was in the first place I looked for him, in the treatment room. “Jacques!” I tried to catch my breath without success. “Bad guys . . . here to get you . . . and Reg . . . and heads . . . I think.”
He turned, and now I saw that he was on the phone. “It’s Angel,” he said, apparently answering a question of who was speaking to him. “She thinks they’re here for the heads or for Reg and me.”
I moved toward him. “Who are you talking to, Jacques?”
He lowered the mouthpiece a couple of inches. “It’s Rachel. She’s on her way here.”
I yanked the phone from his grasp and hung it up. “Someone gave these guys the codes to get in,” I explained as he gaped at me in shock. “That means Brian wasn’t the only insider, and we don’t know who to trust.”
Eyes wide, he visibly swallowed. “Oh, dear.”
“We need to get you and Reg and the heads to a safe place,” I said. “Is there a room y’all could barricade in? Y’know, like a safe or a bomb shelter?” I threw the last two in in an attempt at humor, then blinked in surprise when he actually nodded.
“We have an emergency bunker,” he said hesitantly.
“Really? That’s awesome!” I didn’t hear gunshots anymore, but I had no way of knowing if it was a pause in fighting or if one side had been defeated. “C’mon, let’s get y’all tucked away.”
Looking more than a little dazed, Jacques hit the intercom button on the phone. “Reg, meet me in the regrowth lab. Now. With gurneys.”
The intercom crackled. “Roger that.” Good ol’ Reg, as go-with-the-flow as anyone I’d ever met.
I strained to hear if anyone was trying to get through my lame-ass attempts at barricades. I thought I heard some thuds and thumps, but that could’ve been my paranoia working overtime. “Is there anything you need from here?”
The phone rang. Jacques began to reach for it then stopped and looked at me uncertainly. “It’s from outside the lab.”
“It’s probably Rachel calling back,” I said. “Let’s pack up fast and move.”
“The bunker is stocked,” he said, looking and sounding shaken. He glanced once again to the ringing phone then headed to the hallway. “I’ll get what I need for the heads from their lab.”
I picked up the phone and hung it up again, then followed him at a jog. Reg was in the room with the heads when we arrived. I gave him a terse rundown of the situation as I helped disconnect vats and transfer them to the gurneys.
The muffled sound of more gunshots spurred us all to move faster. In less than five minutes we had all the vats loaded up, along with a cart filled with supplies and equipment, and were pushing it all down a narrow corridor that I’d passed a billion times but never been down. At the end of the hall stood an extremely solid-looking door with a heavy handle.
“Holy shit,” I said as Jacques heaved it open. The damn door was nearly a foot thick. “Y’all could survive a nuclear war in here.”
Lights flickered on within, and Jacques stepped in and tugged a gurney after him. “Barring a direct strike, yes,” he said matter-of-factly.
I wanted to gawk and poke around and see what a bunker really looked like, but I knew I was running out of time. I helped get the gurneys and cart into the bunker, then gave Jacques a troubled look.
“I don’t know who we can trust,” I told him. “Promise me you won’t open the door until you hear from me, or Pietro, or Dr. Nikas, or . . .” I struggled to come up with anyone else who I knew could be trusted without a shadow of a doubt. Guilt flickered that I couldn’t put Philip or Naomi in that category, but I swallowed it down to let it sit like a rock in my gut.
“We’ll lock it down,” Jacques said as he worked quickly to get the vats reconnected to power. “No one can open it from the outside if we seal it from within. Ari . . .” His voice faltered. The pain and distress on his face nearly brought me to tears, and I realized I’d never heard him call Dr. Nikas by his first name before. “You have to get him back,” he went on when he could speak again. “He can’t tolerate being out.”
A thick lump of emotion lodged itself in my throat. I didn’t know his history, but I’d picked up that Jacques had worked with Dr. Nikas for decades. He needed Dr. Nikas as much as a zombie needed brains.
“I will,” I said around the lump. “I promise. I won’t come back without him.” I stepped outside and looked back at the two men. “Good luck.”
Jacques took hold of the handle and gave me a sad, tragic smile. “Thanks, Angel,” he said then tugged the door to close heavily.
I stood there for a moment and listened to the grinding chunks and whirrs of the door as it sealed, then pulled out my phone to text Philip.
Who won?
The reply came within seconds. Zombies rule.