B007GFGTIY EBOK (30 page)

“Erase it,” Lockhart told Hayden.

Hayden didn’t move.

“I said erase it.”

“Do it yourself.”

Lockhart thumbed the button on the transmitter again to remind Hayden of what was at stake. He made damned sure Hayden saw what he was doing. “Now, erase it along with everything else.”

Hayden erased document1 along with the backups of MDE’s drawings and everything else in his storage account. He watched years of work disappear in seconds. It should have mattered, but it didn’t. He had more important things to worry about.

“Thank you, Hayden. You fought a good game, but you lost to the better man. Shall we?” Lockhart indicated to the main lab with his arm.

Hayden headed out into the lab. Rebecca smiled weakly at him from her glass cage. He smiled back just as weakly.

“Open up, Lockhart,” Hayden said. “You got what you wanted.”

“I don’t think I can do that, Hayden.”

Hayden turned to face Lockhart. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t have any loose ends. You two are liabilities.”

Lockhart smiled and pointed the transmitter at the lab holding Rebecca.

“No,” Hayden screamed and lunged for Lockhart’s hand, but he jerked his arm out of harm’s way, then pressed the trigger.

R
ebecca whirled at the hissing sound behind her. The canister fizzed like the one in the BART station. And just like that one, whatever poured out of it had no color, no scent, and no taste. She didn’t see any point in holding her breath or hiding in a corner—she would breathe the bacteria in and absorb them. She knew this gas wasn’t an antidote to the bubonic plague. The gooseflesh on her arms told her quite the opposite.

Hayden pounded on the Plexiglas behind her and called out her name, but she ignored him. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the canister discharging its deadly load.

The temperature in the room hadn’t changed, but she felt physically cold and mentally numb. It was shock, she supposed. It was obvious what was happening. Lockhart had killed her—shot her with a slow-acting bullet. Still, she couldn’t quite believe it all. This was it. She was going to die. It couldn’t be happening.

The canister was spent after a minute. It signaled its end with a splutter and a cough. She wondered how long it would be before she felt the effects of the disease. The nursery rhyme invented for children to recognize the symptoms of the Black Death popped into her head and she recited it under her breath.

“Ring around the rosie. A pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes. We all fall down.”

She remembered the meaning behind the rhyme. The ring of roses were the lesions that would cover her skin. The posies were to hide the stench of her decay. The ashes referred to her ultimate end. Her body would have to be burned to prevent her from infecting anyone else. She wondered how long it would be before she fell down—dead.

“Rebecca, talk to me.” Hayden’s voice crackled over the intercom.

She turned to face the viewing window. Hayden’s face was a mask of despair and his hands were pressed against the glass. Lockhart sat on a stool looking pleased with himself. Eskdale stood at his office door, and it all seemed beyond him.

“I’m OK,” she said.

“I’m going to get you out.”

Lockhart laughed. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Hayden, there’s nothing you can do.” She smiled to diffuse his pain. “It’s the plague this time, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

She pressed a palm against Hayden’s hand with only the glass between them. But no glass was thick enough to prevent her from feeling his warmth.

“There has to be a way,” he said.

“There isn’t.”

She hated watching him struggle with this fact. She watched a thousand ideas race across his face. Finally, futility set in and hope died in his eyes.

“How can you be so calm?” he asked.

Her smile was bleak. “I’m not calm. I just can’t waste time on panic when I want to spend that time with you. I just hope it isn’t too painful.”

“You hope in vain, Ms. Fallon,” Lockhart said, his voice hollow over the intercom.

Hayden’s expression turned to rage and his finger slipped off the intercom. She could only watch the silent play unfold.

Hayden whirled on Lockhart. “You son of a bitch.”

“Sticks and stones, Mr. Duke,” he said. “Sticks and stones.”

“Why do it? I gave you what you wanted. You didn’t have to do this.”

“I can’t have witnesses. She’s a witness. So she has to die.”

Hayden couldn’t bear to look at Lockhart. He looked away and his gaze turned to Rebecca. She smiled at him again, but her smile faltered. It looked as if the realization that her life was over had started to sink in.

Hayden stormed over to Lockhart. His hands tightened into fists and he invaded Lockhart’s personal space. Lockhart didn’t even flinch.

“Get her out.”

“I can’t. She steps one foot from that lab and we’re all dead.”

“Bullshit. You cured those dogs. You can cure her. You wouldn’t have developed this shit without a get-out-of-jail-free card for yourself.”

Lockhart smiled and held up his hands in a what-are-you-going-to-do gesture. “There’s nothing I can do.” Lockhart pointed at Rebecca. “She knows she’s dead. We know she’s dead. It’s time for you to accept it.”

Hayden didn’t accept it. He couldn’t stand by and let this happen. He wasn’t about to let Lockhart get away with it, irrespective of the cost.

It was so damn unfair. Life had robbed Rebecca of her whole family. Now she was going to die and she wouldn’t have the luxury of a quick death like her parents and Shane had. The disease would ravage her body, slowly picking her apart until she couldn’t hold on any longer.

Hayden knew he couldn’t save her, but he couldn’t let her die alone. He snatched up a stool close to him. Without a second thought for the consequences, he swung it by the legs. Rebecca saw what he was going to do and jumped back from the glass. She screamed silently for him to stop. He didn’t and the stool connected with the glass.

“No,” Eskdale screamed.

The stool bounced off the glass like it was a rubber sheet. He tried again and again, but he didn’t even make a scratch.

“That glass is shatterproof, bulletproof, shockproof, Hayden-proof, and any other kind of proof you care to mention,” Lockhart said. “You can’t get in unless you have one of these.” He waved his card key in the air.

Hayden dropped the stool and approached Lockhart. “You’d better give it to me,” he growled.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ll have to take it then.”

Lockhart smirked and started putting the card key away. Hayden drove a fist into Lockhart’s face, snapping his head back. The impact knocked him off his stool and sent the card key flying out of his hand. Hayden grabbed it off the floor.

“Bastard,” Lockhart said, nursing his split lip.

Hayden returned to the contaminated lab.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Eskdale remained rooted to his spot. “You can’t free her. The contagion will escape.”

Hayden knew this but didn’t care. The most dangerous man in the world was the one who didn’t have anything to lose. Lockhart had underestimated him. He’d said he couldn’t have any witnesses. Hayden knew he wasn’t leaving here alive. Lockhart would make sure of that. He’d either end up with a bullet to the back of the head or die in agony as one of Eskdale’s lab rats. He didn’t welcome death, but if it was coming for him—and it surely was—he would go out on his terms with Rebecca at his side. So what if he took Lockhart and Eskdale down with him? At least there was some payback in that.

He swiped the card through the slot. Silently, Rebecca begged him not to open the door. He couldn’t look at her while he did it. He wasn’t sure his resolve would hold. He opened the outer door.

“Hayden.”

He turned to face Lockhart.

“You open that inner door, you’ll kill us all. There’s enough pathogen in that lab to infect everything in a five-mile radius.”

He liked seeing the panic in the man’s face. For once, the bastard got to experience futility. It was something so many people had experienced—from Chaudhary and Shane to the people who’d burned inside MDE. They’d all seen their futures sheared off, leaving a hard, blunt end. He smiled at Lockhart. “I don’t care,” he said. “I can’t watch her die unless I die with her.”

Eskdale backed away from Hayden, believing in his determination. His action was pointless, since being a few extra feet from the lab wouldn’t make any difference to his survival.

“Give me the card key back and I’ll make sure she receives the antidote before it’s too late.”

Hayden stared into Lockhart. Lies fought for space behind his eyes.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Oh my God,” Eskdale murmured.

Lockhart dropped his head. There was nothing to be said. Hayden swiped the card and opened the inner door.

Immediately, an alarm sounded. Red lights flashed on the walls throughout the lab. A man’s dispassionate voice interrupted the alarm as part of a recorded loop, saying, “Contamination breach. Lockdown procedure effective. Contamination breach. Lockdown procedure effective.”

Rebecca walked over to him. She slipped into his embrace. “Oh, Hayden, why?”

He didn’t reply at first. He just hugged her, enjoying her contact and the warmth of her body. “Because I love you,” he said. It was why he’d consigned everyone to a hideous death. He would rather die with her in his arms than live without her. He loved Rebecca Fallon, plain and simple.

“You do?”

“Yes, I do.”

She kissed him deeply before he took her hand and led her out of the lab. He couldn’t stop smiling.

Lockhart couldn’t believe what had happened and shook his head at Hayden. He pulled up another stool and plopped himself down on it. “Congratulations, you’ve killed us.”

“Hayden,” Rebecca screamed. She tightened her grip on his hand.

She pointed at Eskdale, who had burst from his office brandishing two needleless injectors identical to the one Tony Mason had tried to use on Hayden.

Hayden wasn’t about to go out screaming like a loon the way Shane and Fuller had. He charged Eskdale. The professor started to run, but panic took over and he froze like a deer caught in a car’s headlights.

“No, you don’t understand,” Eskdale jabbered.

Hayden smashed into the professor’s gut with his shoulder. Both men crashed to the floor with Hayden on top. One of the injectors flew from Eskdale’s grasp.

“Rebecca, break it before he can use it,” Hayden shouted. “It’s the drug that killed Shane.”

Rebecca raced to the syringe. Lockhart chased after the same prize, hoping to beat her to it.

Hayden punched Eskdale in the face, disarming the frail man with a single blow. He took Eskdale’s arm with the remaining injector in it and bashed his wrist on the floor until it bounced from his weak grasp.

Lockhart got to the syringe first and bent to retrieve it. But before he could pick it up, Rebecca kicked it from his outstretched fingers. They chased after the spinning injector, fighting each other off with flailing arms. Rebecca beat Lockhart to the injector, the same device that had driven her brother to suicide. With all her might, hate, and disgust for its existence, she brought her weight down on it. It split like rotten fruit under her heel.

“What have you done?” Lockhart said.

Hayden jumped to his feet. Eskdale didn’t try to stop him. He only groaned and positioned himself better to see Hayden destroy the syringe. Hayden smiled at him as he did it. Eskdale shook his head.

“You’ve made a big mistake,” the professor said.

“No, you made the mistake,” Hayden said. “I’ll be damned if I’ll die like Shane and Chaudhary.”

“You will be damned. It wasn’t the drug, you idiot.” Eskdale showed his frustrated anger by shaking with rage. “It was the antidote.”

“What?” Sweat broke out across Hayden’s brow. The look in Eskdale’s eyes told him he wasn’t lying.

“What have we done?” Rebecca said.

“Killed us twice,” Eskdale said. “We keep an antidote in case of an accident or a breach.”

“Don’t you have any more?” Lockhart asked.

“Everybody who works here is issued with one shot each.” Shakily, Eskdale got to his feet. “It never leaves their side. I personally kept two shots for myself.”

“Can you make any more?” Rebecca asked.

“Not in time. After six hours, the effects of the mutated bacteria can’t be counteracted.”

Eskdale brushed past Hayden and went inside his office. Collapsing into his chair, he held his head in his hands and sobbed.

“We’re fucked, thanks to you,” Lockhart spat.

“Don’t get high and mighty with me,” Hayden retaliated. “You made this shit to kill people. What’s it like to get a taste of your own medicine?”

Lockhart snorted and turned his back on Hayden. He swung an arm and swiped several textbooks and a glass beaker off a lab bench. The beaker smashed on the floor.

“Can’t you call someone?” Rebecca asked, trying to inject sanity into the situation. “Don’t you have a cell phone?”

“There is a decontamination crew on alert, but I left my phone in the car,” Lockhart said.

“Aren’t there any phones in here?”

“For security reasons, no.”

Hayden went over to Rebecca and hugged her. “It doesn’t matter. They wouldn’t have let us go. This way we take them with us.”

“I suppose. It just feels like we’ve lost.” She kissed him briefly, then buried her face in his chest.

R
ebecca sneezed. It split the room with the intensity of an assassin’s bullet. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at her. Lockhart stopped pacing and Eskdale emerged from his office. No one spoke. The significance of a simple sneeze was startling and frightening to everyone, including Rebecca.

She had been lying across Hayden’s lap but sat up, since she was the center of attention. “It’s nothing. Allergies. That’s all.”

“This is a hermetically sealed room. The air is filtered. There are no allergens in this facility.”

Rebecca had her hand on Hayden’s thigh. Her fingers bit into his flesh. “Then it’s something else, but it’s not what you think. It’s just a sneeze.”

Lockhart shook his head and looked away. Eskdale shut himself back into his office.

“It’s a sneeze, OK,” Rebecca continued, “just a damn sneeze.” But no one was listening and she broke into a sob.

Hayden pulled her tight to him and rocked her. He stared hard at Lockhart. He didn’t have to be such a prick under the circumstances. “It’s OK,” he murmured. “You’re right. It’s just a sneeze.”

Thankfully, Lockhart kept any further remarks to himself and resumed pacing.

Hayden rocked Rebecca until her sobs ceased. He welcomed her sneeze. It broke the tension that had formed over the last hour since Lockhart had released the pathogen. Everybody had been waiting for the shoe to drop and in some ways now that it had happened, they could relax. Rebecca could be right. Her sneeze could be just a sneeze, but it didn’t matter if it was or wasn’t. They had a glimpse of the future and instead of fighting the inevitable, they could just move on. The end could begin.

Hayden still hadn’t felt any of the plague symptoms, but he wasn’t in any doubt of his contamination. He had only to look at Lockhart and Eskdale for confirmation. Eskdale had gone off the rails the moment he knew he was infected. He’d torn up half the facility trying to fast-track an antidote but soon came to the realization he didn’t have the materials or the time to come up with it. He’d laid waste to the rest of the lab, then locked himself into his office. Occasionally, weeping broke the silence coming from the office. Lockhart had kept it together somewhat better than Eskdale. With no phone connection, he’d tried to get word out via the lab’s Internet connection, but Eskdale had severed the line during his rampage. Screwed again. After that, Lockhart resorted to pace the lab like a caged animal, trying to conjure up an escape plan. Hayden stopped listening after the first five minutes as everything Lockhart came up with was an impossibility.

Rebecca tightened her hold on Hayden and sighed. He liked the feel of her body heat against him, but found himself wondering if it was a sign of elevated temperature. He ignored the thought, leaned in close, and whispered, “It’s going to be OK.”

She looked at him, stared into him. He believed what he was saying. Death was death. It came to them all. He was OK with it now. When the end came, he knew he’d be scared out of his wits, but he was still OK with it.

Rebecca’s face lost all signs of anguish, and she smiled and kissed him. He remembered their first kiss back at Shane’s house. He’d known it wouldn’t be their last.

Hayden made eye contact with one of the caged beagles, trapped on the right side of the disease. Should anyone find this place and break in, the only survivors they’d find would be the beagles.

“I would have liked to take you somewhere,” Rebecca said.

“Where?” Hayden asked, smiling.

“The Caribbean. Shane had bought those tickets for me for Christmas. It would have been nice to have taken you with me.”

He kissed her forehead. “I would have loved to go.”

Lockhart snorted at Hayden’s pointless plans.

“For Christ’s sake, sit down,” Hayden commanded, tired of Lockhart’s pacing.

“I can’t,” Lockhart replied. “I’ve got to keep moving.”

He was just like a shark, Hayden thought. The moment a shark stopped moving it drowned.

“It’s over,” Rebecca said.

Lockhart whirled on Rebecca, pointing a wavering finger. “No, it’s not. I’ve still got options. Beckerman’s still out there. He knows I’m here.” He checked his watch. “He’s got to come soon.”

“Give it up,” Hayden said, “and answer me a question.”

Lockhart grabbed a microscope off a lab bench and hurled it away. The instrument struck the floor with a thud. The violent act took the fight out of him. He drew up a stool and sat. “What do you want to know?”

“Shane. I saw him kill himself, but you killed him. How?”

Lockhart nodded in the direction of Eskdale’s office. “He could tell you better than I can.”

“I don’t care about him,” Rebecca said. “He was the weapon. You were the trigger.”

Lockhart didn’t fight Rebecca’s claim. “The drug is a hallucinogen that leaves the user very open to suggestion. After Beckerman injected Shane, he told him a story. He told him he’d done something that was unforgivable, and the best way to atone for his crime was to end it all.”

Hayden remembered Shane standing on the bridge with the rope around his neck. He was so convinced of his guilt. The poor bastard died believing he’d committed crimes he never had. The thought left Hayden feeling sick.

“That was a cruel thing to do,” Rebecca said.

Lockhart had no answer for her.

“You want to know something else?” Hayden said. “We had no interest in your plans. All we cared about was Shane. We just wanted to know why he died.”

Lockhart was silent. Hayden wanted him to say something. He wanted to get into a fight, but there was no point. It wouldn’t change anything. They were still all going to die.

Lockhart’s silence spread through them. No one talked after that. Rebecca stretched out, putting her head in Hayden’s lap.

Hayden didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there when a pounding from outside jerked them into action.

“Hey, is anyone in there?” Santiago called through the intercom.

Hayden and Rebecca jumped up and beat Lockhart to the doors. Santiago’s face filled the small porthole in the main doors.

“You’re late for the party, detective,” Hayden called through the intercom to the right of the airlock.

Santiago frowned and nodded. “How do I get in?”

“You don’t. We’re contaminated with the bubonic plague.”

“Jesus,” Santiago managed. “I’ll get the CDC or someone.”

Lockhart brushed Hayden and Rebecca aside and thumped the intercom. “I’ll tell you exactly who to call. None of us has time for red tape.” He reeled off a short list of names and numbers and Santiago yanked out his phone and tapped in the first number.

Hayden embraced Rebecca with a hug that threatened to break her. It looked as if their savior had arrived.