AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I caught sight of the remote Halliwell had used for the gas lying on the arm of the chair. It was similar to the one that was used for the prisoner’s collar. I grabbed it and staggered down the corridor to the bathroom. Once inside, I dropped the remote into the bag fastened around my hips under my skirt, and scrabbled frantically until I found the pen-shaped autoinjector.
I stuck it into my arm, felt the sting. Shoved the thing into the garbage. Then I splashed my face with cold water, dabbed it with paper towels, which came away smeared with makeup, and focused on breathing as I waited, ear to the door. The allergic reaction subsided, and my throat opened up. Thank God.
Then I heard it. Thesqueak-creakof the gurney wheels going by. The door of the Level Eight elevator bank opening.
I scrabbled under my skirt again for the syringes and fished out one of the ones that were banded with black plastic. When I came out the door, the elevator was gone. She’d gone up to Level Six, where the incinerator was located.
I ran as fast as I could in kitten heels toward the stairwell. Pounded up to Level Six. The door was locked, but Halliwell’s passcard got me in.
The place was dark. I hoped that would help, if anyone was watching. I wanted them to see the footage of this attack on Jana, but well after the fact. Not in real time.
The elevator dinged, opened. Jana shoved the gurney out with a grunt of effort, turning the lumbering thing away from me and down the hall, toward the open door at the end of the corridor. Light shone out of the door. The only light in the place.
I sneaked up behind her, and stabbed the needle into her neck.
Jana yelped, and crumpled to her knees. “You stupid… bitch,” she croaked.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” I babbled. It would be better for the story if I sounded meaner, more pitiless, but fuck it. That was beyond me.
I got behind the gurney with its motionless cargo, and shoved it back toward the elevator, picking up dangerous speed in my panic. When I stopped, our momentum practically made Shane’s body bag slide off the gurney. I grabbed his still, limp form just in time and steadied him.
I grabbed the phone and activated Invisibility Cloak. There would be an ugly, anomalous bobble in the footage, but I was hoping that everyone would be distracted enough today with the execution and the big party not to notice. I shoved the gurney into the elevator and pushed the button for Level Three, where the garage for the service crew and outsiders was located. Not Halliwell’s private garage with his own fleet of vehicles on Level Two.
Jana’s voice echoed in my head.The shock collar. You have to do something about it, or Halliwell will just cut Masters’ throat remotely. Or fry him with electricity.
I had to disable the fucking thing right now. I’d already memorized the master codes and specs that I’d dug up from Vincent’s files, so I unzipped the bag, entered the codes to deactivate the thing, the codes to unlock the hinge. It was lucky I memorized things involuntarily, even when stressed. A weird, freaky quirk of mine. Sometimes it was useful, sometimes it was a torment. It could be really fucking hard to forget things that I wanted to forget. But this time around, I was desperately grateful for it.
I felt the lock snap open. All that was left now was to physically open the hinge.
Later for that. After he’d agreed to help Reggie. Then I’d be his benevolent savior. It was evil and manipulative, but a girl had to do what a girl had to do.
I left Shane on the gurney in the elevator bank, and peeked out the door into the garage. Here it was, the blank spot in my improvised escape plan. Could I break into a car and hot-wire it with only my pocket-knife? Could I find someone to carjack, in my ball gown and spike heels? Stellar planning, Cass. Just lovely.
As I looked around, I saw a van driving in. Maybe caterers. I checked myself in the metal door knob. I looked bad, with reddened, goopy eyes and smeared makeup, but at least I looked human. The van was pulling into a parking space. It was show time.
I clutched the two syringes, and caught up with the driver as he got out of the van. A tall black guy with a short beard, in a blue windbreaker. I moved toward him rapidly. “Um, excuse me?” My voice sounded high pitched, breathless, quavering, and I didn’t even have to fake it. “I was wondering if you could help me out.”
The guy looked me over as I approached, his eyes widening with alarm. Maybe I looked weirder than I thought. “Are you okay, miss?” he asked.
“Not really,” I admitted, lunging down to stab the needle into his thigh.
He let out sharp grunt, staring at me as he tried to speak… and failed.
He sagged to his knees. I guided him down as best I could, trying to keep his head from bumping on anything, until he was lying safely on his side.
I straightened up and called out to the guy who had just gotten out of the passenger’s side. “Hey! Excuse me? I think your friend is sick! He’s down here on the ground, passed out! I don’t know what’s wrong with him! Could you come over here?”
The other guy, younger, also wearing a blue windbreaker with the same lettering, hustled around the back of the van, alarmed. “What the hell? Galen? What’s the matter?” He crouched down over his colleague, shaking him, patting his face.
I stabbed the third needle into the younger guy’s shoulder, and let him fall, right on top of Galen. “Gentlemen, I am so sorry,” I murmured to them. “I really hope someday I can find you and make it up to you.” I crouched down and tugged the windbreaker, with no small difficulty, off the younger guy who lay face down over his friend. It would be huge on me, but a lot less noticeable than a strapless ball-gown.
I tugged the two unconscious men out of the way of the van’s tires. Then I opened up the back, and was confronted with a huge ice sculpture, breathing out a fog of awful cold. Oh, God. I was going to have to put that poor guy into a literal ice-box.
I ran for the gurney, shoved it through the garage to the van at a dangerously high speed, rattling and bumping. I got the gurney up right at the edge of the van and climbed inside, kitten heels and all. I grabbed the top of the body bag, and slid Shane inside. I almost didn’t manage it. He was so freaking heavy. Six foot two or three, at least, and all solid muscle and sinew. It felt like he was made out of cast iron.
I unzipped the body bag over his face and neck, to make sure he had air. His face looked terrifyingly still and gray. And now I had to worry about hypothermia, too.
Shane’s life depended on me getting somewhere fast enough to revive him, before he slipped away, from drugs, from depressed respiration, from the cold. The growing weight of responsibility was driving me wild.
