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But it was far too late for regrets. All she could do now was try and figure out what the hell was going on. She studied her apartment building again. All that remained was the solitary blue light hovering near the front steps. It designated a crime scene and warned anyone entering the building not to go near said crime scene. Upstairs, near her apartment, there would be another one, along with a monitor that would activate the moment anyone tried to enter her rooms. If the SIU were involved in the investigation, she had no doubt there would be a nonhuman guard somewhere in the vicinity.
Getting around them all would be a problem. She could probably get past the first monitor using the State’s override code, but the monitors guarding the immediate crime scene usually had specific codes. The general override code wouldn’t work. While Jack might have managed to get past, she’d never had his aptitude for hot-wiring. But someone else did. Either that or someone from State had given the invaders her security codes. How else could they have gotten past the heat sensors near the windows? It was only thanks to the alarm she’d installed the day after Jack disappeared that she was alive right now.
A chill ran down her spine—a chill that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with fear. The stranger had said Jack was still alive. And Jack had all her old codes.
It didn’t make sense. Nothing that had happened in the last twenty-four hours made sense.
Including her surviving a two-story swan dive out the window and onto the pavement.
She was bruised and sore all over, and her feet burned something fierce from the laser wounds. But she had no serious injuries from the fall, and that was definitely a miracle.
However, it would take another damn miracle to get in and out of her apartment without being caught by the State and SIU watchdogs. And with her feet burned so badly, she couldn’t exactly run.
Sighing again, she wriggled her toes as the not-so-gentle rain briefly alleviated the pain of the burns. But sitting in the shadows of the building across from her own, getting wetter and colder by the minute, was achieving nothing.
She had to get into that apartment and retrieve her backup com-unit—if it had survived the blast. It should have, hidden and protected as it was by the mountains of junk in her bedroom.
But Jack knew about her backup system. If her partner was alive, and if he was behind the bomb, then that, too, would be gone. Though she had shifted its location since his disappearance, and the new alarm hadn’t allowed the invaders time to look around before they’d attacked.
At least she still had the comlink bracelet she’d stolen. And they’d been developed to survive just about anything—even a bomb blast. The files would be safe, as long as Marsdan and his juniors hadn’t found her bag—or, at least, bothered to look inside it. But to find out, she’d have to move. She grabbed the railing lining the steps for support and pulled herself upright. Fire leapt up her legs the minute she put any weight on her feet, and for a moment, she thought she was going to puke. Swallowing heavily, she tried to ignore the throbbing rush of pain and hobbled forward as quickly as she could.
Never before had the street seemed so wide. But after what felt like an eternity, she reached her building’s front steps and grasped the railing as fiercely as a drowning swimmer did a life buoy. Her breathing was little more than hungry pants of air, and her stomach heaved, leaving a bitter taste in the back of her mouth. Maybe her first port of call should have been a hospital, but the staff were required to report laser burns, and she’d have ended up in the hands of the State Police again.
Until she figured out just who was trying to kill her, she intended to trust no one but herself.
The churning in her stomach began to ease. After taking several more deep breaths, she resolutely hobbled up the front steps. The blue light hovering near the door became agitated, and a stern voice asked for her name and apartment number, adding the warning that she was about to enter a crime scene. As if she didn’t already know. She flipped open the monitor’s control box and punched in the State override code. The sharp voice stopped, and the globe ceased its whirling. Of course, when the State boys did a link with the unit to check who was coming in and out of the building, they’d know she—or at least someone with access to the codes—had entered. But hopefully, by then, she’d be long gone.
She edged inside the door and quickly scanned
the lobby. There was no one around. She limped across to the stairs and looked up. Everest had surely never seemed so high. She grabbed the handrail and began to haul herself up.
By the time she got to the first landing, the pain in her feet was so bad her legs were shaking and her head was spinning. She collapsed in a heap and stared at the remaining steps in despair. She was never going to make it the rest of the way. Not like this. Sweat dripped down her forehead, stinging her eyes. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, then groaned as her stomach rolled and rose. On hands and knees, she lurched toward the nearest planter. Luckily for the plant, she’d consumed little more than coffee over the last twenty-four hours.
Once she’d finished heaving, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, closed her eyes and leaned back against the balustrade. God, she felt awful. And there was still another set of stairs to climb.
She was contemplating how she was going to manage it when the softest of sounds flowed across the silence—a resonance as soothing as the whisper of silk shimmying across a bed.
She opened her eyes and looked up. A man stood at the top of the stairs, staring down at her. The warm corridor light flared strangely across his back and shoulders, almost giving him the appearance of wings as it cast his features into shadows. A dark angel, she thought, and wondered briefly if death had come to collect her.
Nah. Hell was more likely to be her last resting place.
He moved, and the angel image fled. What remained was a tall man, with dark brown hair, dressed in a dark gray suit. The color of choice for those in the SIU.
She groaned again. She really wasn’t up to another tête-à-tête with the boys from the spook squad—if indeed he was one of them.
He walked down the steps, loose-limbed yet somehow graceful, then stopped near her feet and knelt down. He reached out but didn’t quite touch her right foot. She sucked in a gasp of air anyway. “Don’t—”
“I wasn’t,” he said, voice soft as he glanced up at her.
She knew those eyes. Would have recognized the odd, green-flecked hazel depths anywhere. This was the man who’d rescued her last night.
“What are you doing here?” she muttered, unable to keep the hint of annoyance from her voice. “And how did you find me?”
A dark eyebrow rose. “Haven’t you heard? The SIU knows all.”
So she’d guessed right; he was with the spook squad. “Let me see some ID.”
He reached inside his suit jacket and drew out a small ID card. She studied the photo and eye scan, and then glanced down at his name. Gabriel Stern. Assistant director, no less. Which was better than being confronted by Hanrahan, the formidable man in charge of the spook squad, she supposed, but it still begged the question—what was it about either her or her case that required involvement by the squad’s upper echelon?
