Stefan shot him in the right shoulder. It was his right hand that held his gun. Raynor dropped it as he clutched his shattered and bleeding shoulder. Saul whistled. “You’re fast. How’d you get so damn fast? I was in the rangers and I’m not that fast.”
“I think Misha juiced me up some. Either that or you were a piss-poor ranger.” Stefan walked over and swept Raynor’s legs out from under him. “All your men up in the hills are dead now, Raynor. A couple months’ paychecks and all you have are a pile of dead mercenaries to show for it, thanks to one little girl. And I’ll bet my last dollar they’re mercenaries because you wouldn’t share the Institute with anyone else in the government. Too messy and much less money for you.” He kicked him in the stomach next. “I hear you shot my brother in the head with a rubber bullet. Not nice, asshole. Not nice at all.” He kicked him again and air whistled out of Raynor’s trach tube as he doubled over. “Nice. Maybe I can get you to whistle ‘ “Yankee-fucking-Doodle Dandy’ ” on that thing.” He kicked him once more, in the ribs, and harder this time. I had the feeling, if I let him, he would go on kicking Raynor until he was dead. I didn’t mind that too much, but we needed him for something first—that second good thing he could do.
“Stefan, we need him,” I said, catching his arm before he launched another kick. “We could call it in ourselves, but no one knows how intelligent a chimera can be, especially one like Ariel. We need him to find the bomb.”
“Bomb? What are you prattling about?” Raynor spat blood onto the road. “Don’t try to distract me from the merchandise, and that’s what you all are and were always meant to be, Michael One. Merchandise. Don’t ascribe to delusions of grandeur and think you’re a person. A regular human being. You’re not. In fact, the Institute would’ve tattooed a price on you lot if your value didn’t keep going up.”
“All these chimeras loose on the world for weeks now, Raynor.” I bent my knees so I could stare him in the eyes. “Do you think killing an old man and gangbangers was all they were up to? They built a virus bomb and planted it somewhere in the Portland airport. It’s airborne and set to go off at eleven a.m. tomorrow. No one will even notice what’s happening. The incubation time is seven days. It will kill thirty percent of the people it infects and Portland airport is an international airport. You know what that means, how far it will go. You’re the one with the capacity to think like a chimera if you have to. Find it and stop it or you may be one of the ones it kills.” That was the one argument that would have him cooperating.
“It’s a silver metal cylinder this long and this big around.” I demonstrated with my hands before resting my hand on his unwounded shoulder. “Since you’re Homeland Security, I hope to God you can do something about it. But before you go, tell me how you knew where to look for us. How’d you know Stefan was my brother?” I wanted to make sure he was, as Stefan guessed, the only person in the government who was after us.
“Your brother?” I tightened my hand on his shoulder and I gave him pain, considerably more pain than was in the shoulder pierced by a bullet. He shuddered beneath my touch and went from white to gray. He cleared his throat, the trach and its talking valve bobbing as he swallowed convulsively. “Yes, I . . . for whatever reason, Jericho didn’t bother to document that Korsak was your brother. He was an arrogant bastard about sharing information. We had to wait until he died to even see his files on the kids. That’s how he wanted it. Only when the top man is dead are the files automatically sent to a chosen successor.”
He took a few more breaths to recover. “Perhaps Jericho didn’t think it was important. When you were taken from the Institute, Jericho went after you, and I was in charge of finding out how anyone knew the Institute existed at all.” His breath wheezed in and out of the valve. “I thought it had to be someone military or with law enforcement. The raid was too well planned. I visited the offices of the local cops and FBI, and that was when I saw it. A top Russian mob boss had been offed and Korsak was the main suspect. They had their whole murder board covered with pictures of the families. Even down to a picture of a boy kidnapped ten years before. I could see how certain incorr—” I let him feel the pain again, the exquisite pain of careful wording. What Stefan and I knew, voiced or not, was ours only. No one else needed to know. And that included Saul. Raynor winced and went on. “I could see how certain conclusions could be drawn. I drew mine and have been chasing Korsaks since then. Any one I could lay my hands on.”
“Like my father,” Stefan said without question.
On that, Raynor remained silent. It was for the best.
“Then I was an idiot and got my fingerprints on file and you found us.”
Raynor looked up at me uneasily and nodded at Stefan’s comment. “No one else knows about us?” I asked.