“Ariane?” Zane asked, his voice shaking. His skin was clammy beneath my hand on his wrist. I still had ahold of him, and a glance back revealed blood running freely from his nose and past his mouth to drip off his chin. I realized, then, he was still holding on to the one officer out in the hall, the one he’d stopped for me.
“Do it,” I said to him. I let go of Zane’s arm and released the men in the hallway, shifting my attention to the doors. Not just the handle, but the entire surface. I didn’t want anyone getting the creative idea to remove the hinges or bash through the wood with a fire ax. Holding the doors shut and protected against any form of interference was easier than keeping all those people motionless. It was like dropping a boulder to pick up a single piece of paper; it felt like almost no effort at all.
Almost immediately, the blood flow from Ford’s arm slowed, and she seemed steadier on her feet.
Because…Ford had been holding the doors shut, keeping Laughlin from firing (and likely holding Jacobs still as well), and stanching her wound. Holy crap.
I checked on Zane, who had leaned against the wall, his face gray with bright fever patches of pink, his arm smeared with red where he’d wiped his face.
He nodded at me.
“Where’s the Committee?” I asked, mostly to Ford, but really to anyone who would answer. In the hallway, I could hear shouting and running steps. The door handle rattled, and then someone tugged, trying to open the door. But they would not get in. I could hold it all day and against all of them, if need be.
“They were gone before I arrived,” she said. She let out slow breath that sounded ragged and fluid filled. Where was she wounded? I couldn’t tell from behind. If she’d been shot, the most likely scenario, the bullet might have nicked a lung.
Ford and I didn’t always see eye to eye, but she was…We were all we had left. We were the only ones. I didn’t want her to die.
“They killed him, Ariane,” she said, her voice flat. “They killed Carter. They sent him out as a target. I figured it out, what they’d done, and I was trying to find him….” She shook her head. “I felt it when he died. He knew for a moment. He felt pain, sorrow, and aloneness because I wasn’t there.” Her voice rose with anguish and hatred and grief. “I. Wasn’t. There! They did this. They planned this.”
My eyes stung with tears, and I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood and regret. “I know, I’m sorry. I was trying to find you both, but I wasn’t fast enough….”
“That is true,” she said. “But it is not your fault. It is theirs.” That single word contained a universe of raw rage, untempered and destructive.
There wouldn’t be anything left of Laughlin by the time someone outside this room reached him. He would be unrecognizable, not just as himself but anything human. She would take him apart piece by piece.
And I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything but relief, and perhaps a little glee, at the prospect. Inhuman? Perhaps, but so was I.
“Ford, where is your target?” I asked. Before this went any further or devolved into chaos, I needed to know. I had no particular fondness for Rachel, but if she was dead…
“Ari,” Zane said.
I glanced at him, and he nodded to the back left corner of the room. A corner you should have checked, the imitation of father’s voice scolded in my head. You left yourself vulnerable to attack. What else was new?
Emerson St. John sat, wide-eyed, with his back against the wall. He was well out of the line of fire for the moment.
And behind him, almost hidden by his body…Rachel Jacobs, her fist pressed against her mouth as if she were afraid of what words might escape against her will, but seemingly unharmed.
At least there was that. One life saved. Or one more at stake in this room.
“I knew you were involved in this,” Rachel hissed as soon as our eyes met, her voice shaking with anger and fear. “I was minding my own business in the lip gloss section, and she comes out of nowhere.” She glanced at Ford and shuddered, making no move to leave the corner where she was huddled. Whether that was the effect of Ford’s presence or because Rachel had just watched people get shot right in front of her, I wasn’t sure.
“Are you all right?” It had to be asked.
Rachel shook her head, a jerky, uneven motion. “She dragged me through the city all the way to the park,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “And then…and then she pushed that guy off a building.” Rachel swallowed hard, pale beneath her tan.
It took me a second to put Rachel’s words in context. The suicidal jumper mentioned on the news.
“The man with the gun,” Ford said tightly. “The one who killed Adam before I could.”
The assassin the Committee had sent after us. Ford must have arrived in the park just a little before we did. In time to see Adam get shot but not soon enough to save Carter. Then she’d tracked the shooter with Rachel in tow, as leverage most likely, and took her revenge.
That made a strange kind of sense.