Then and now, I was assuming. Remaining silent as he worked, I explored the rest of the room. I was loath to call it an infirmary. People were meant to be healed in those types of rooms. I didn’t see healing going on in this place. Along the far wall I found a massive refrigerator, easily the size of a restaurant walk-in model. But while the size might be similar, there was one immediately noticeable difference: the lock. This unit was sealed with a computerized pad that awaited a code key. Hissing in annoyance, I turned back to Saul. “Well?”
With some annoyance of his own, he slapped his hand on the side of the terminal. “It’s locked up tighter than grandma’s panties. I need either a password or a good week to work on it. Since we don’t have either, I suggest we get moving.”
It shouldn’t have mattered, the impenetrable computer and tightly sealed refrigerator. It wasn’t why we were here. I was here to retrieve Lukas, first, last and everything in between. Finding out who had taken him and why would be useful, damn useful, but we didn’t have the time to spend on anything more than a quick and dirty search. We’d already done that now and it was time to move on. That didn’t stop me from looking over my shoulder at the firefly glow of the computer monitors and thinking I was making a mistake walking away so quickly. That DNA molecule, boldly displayed, gnawed at me. What the hell were they doing here?
Saul’s hand on my shoulder pushed me on through the next door. This one was locked as well, but from the inside . . . our side. I was able to handle that without resorting to Skoczinsky’s felonious talents. From there we went upstairs to the first level. The level of illumination remained the same: shadowed gloom interspersed with dim security lights near floor level. We had come out into a long hall. There were doors scattered evenly on either side and the floor was the same bland tile. Past midnight, the place appeared deserted, but I decided it still was time to bring my favorite boy out to play. Some equated guns to women. That bald bastard Sevastian called his Glock Lolita. Not only was he a bastard but a pervert as well. I never saw weapons that way. The ability to do violence isn’t exclusively linked to the male gender, but I couldn’t deny I thought we had a leg up on it. I had never named my 9mm, but I did think of it as male—ruthlessly, amorally, unapologetically male.
Jerking a thumb toward one end of the hall, Saul drifted that way on silent feet with his own gun at the ready. I took the other end and the strength it took to hold the Steyr in my hand was only a fraction of what it took to trigger that first door latch. Aside from the basement, the building, although sprawling, was only one level. The children had to be here, if not in this hall then in the next—or the next. What had been a dream for a good portion of my life had become a reality just beyond my fingertips. Whatever I found here, for good or for bad, was going to irrevocably change who I’d been. It made opening that first door a little like dying.
The metal might have been cool to the touch, but I felt nothing through my glove. Even without the shielding material I don’t think I would’ve felt anything but an icy ghost of a sensation. My nerves, mental and physical, had gone into hibernation for this excursion. It was the only way to function, the only way to survive. And when I opened that first door to see two sleeping boys with coal black hair, I did survive. I survived, breathed in and out like the living do, and then closed the door quietly to move on to the next one.