I looked over to the empty cell. The dangling, open manacles.
“Clearly,” Elmer said, the camera’s eye running like fingers over his prisoner’s body as he savored the moment, “we have a long way to go before we create genuine urban-infiltration breeders that can act autonomously, but this…this is a milestone. The breakthrough I’ve been working toward.”
The prisoner moaned again. Something squirmed deep inside his throat.
“Time for phase two,” Elmer said. The video died in a burst of static, and then the screen went dark.
“He’s on the move and he’s got that thing with him,” I said. “Pixie—”
She was already hustling. “His computer. On it.”
“Everybody else, fan out and tear this place apart. Books, notes, photographs, anything you can find. We need to know where he’s taking it and what he’s going to do next.”
Bentley pored over his scattered loose-leaf notes, turning a piece of graph paper like he wasn’t sure which way was up. “I doubt we’ll get much out of this. Deciphering a foreign language—even one from our world—is a skill outside any of our wheelhouses.”
I stood beside him and chipped in. I tried to sort the material into piles: one for charts, one for journal entries. It was busywork, organizing data we couldn’t even read, but I didn’t know what else to do. All this time, while Harry Grimes was changing personas on a whim, leading me out of the city and back again on a pointless chase, Elmer had been right here and hard at work. No telling when he had left or how much of a lead he had on us.
“I have something,” Caitlin said. She held up a color printout. “It looks like a Google Maps search. What’s in Boulder City?”
Jennifer and I locked eyes from across the room.
Phase two is about targeting more valuable hosts, Elmer had told me. Setting our sights a bit higher than the rabble we have pushing our narcotics.
“The United Conference of Mayors,” I said. “Damn it, Seabrook—”
“I’m callin’ her,” Jen said, tugging out her phone.
“They’re holding emergency talks about the ink epidemic,” I said. “They want to coordinate a nationwide police and PR response, make a united front against the Network. There’s going to be reps from at least twenty cities there.”
“If that thing were to…erupt in the hotel,” Caitlin said, pointing to the empty cell.
“All at once, the Network would turn some of the most influential mayors in the country into their mind-controlled puppets. And this is just the beginning. We have to get out there. Now.”
Jennifer held up her phone. “I’m gettin’ voicemail.”
“Try Commissioner Harding, he’s with her.” Then I realized with a jolt: so is Teddy.
My brother didn’t know the Network was real—hell, he didn’t even know magic was real—and he was standing at ground zero.
*
We tore down the 515, southeast to Boulder City. Caitlin was behind the wheel. I sat beside her and drummed my fingertips on the armrest. Jennifer sat in the back, sliding fresh rounds into her chromed .357 one by one.
Earlier Caitlin had tugged me by the arm, halfway out the door, and held me tight until I’d gotten some sense back. Then she washed my face in Elmer’s sink, sluicing away the blood, while Bentley found some gauze for the jagged cut along my scalp. Now I was fresh as the rising, boiling sun. I had the window down, and the arid morning wind ruffled my dress shirt. With no jacket, hair rumpled, bristle on my cheeks and a bandage on my forehead, I looked like I’d just pulled an all-nighter and maybe gotten into a bar fight along the way.
I didn’t need sleep. I needed to save my brother and put a bullet between Elmer Donaghy’s eyes. Adrenaline would see me through. I knew I’d crash at the end of the line, but that was fine. I could crash when the job was done.
We rolled up to the Boulder City Hyatt at 9:14. The parking lot was standing room only, and Cait had to swerve to the back end to find a spot. Lots of limos were taking up four spaces at a time, along with more unmarked police cars than I could count. The three of us jogged to the revolving doors out front and ducked into the air-conditioned embrace of the lobby.
The whiteboard in the lobby read Welcome United Conference of Mayors, but I felt like we’d walked into a cop convention instead. Half the attendees had brought an escort, and they were all right here, drinking coffee and giving a visual pat down to anyone not wearing a badge. Their suspicion washed over me like a heat wave as I made my way to the front desk.
“The mayors’ conference,” I said. “Is it in session?”
The woman behind the counter checked a clipboard. “Um, yes, looks like they got started at nine. They’re in conference room A, looks like.”
I held up my phone. I’d pulled up the official website for Donaghy Waste Management on the way in; Elmer’s photo was on the board of directors page.
“Have you seen this man?”
She leaned closer, squinting. “You know, I think I did. Maybe half an hour ago? He was headed that way.”
She pointed down a side hallway on the opposite side of the lobby. I tried to move one step ahead of the chess master. Elmer was here to attack the conference and snare as many people with his walking roach farm as he could. How would he do it? He couldn’t just walk into the conference room with that thing; he’d start a panic. No, he’d have to be more subtle, slower. The conference was supposed to run for two days, meaning he’d have all day and all night to get the job done.
I thought about Santiago. And Jennifer’s response, after she’d blown his passenger to pieces. I didn’t want that sucker getting loose and escaping into the vents, she’d said. I’d have to start sleepin’ with a helmet on.
“Is there any access to the HVAC system down there?”
“Well, yes, a utility stairwell,” the woman replied, looking half-confused and half-worried now. “But that’s for employees only.”
Jennifer and Caitlin followed behind me as I cut a path through the milling cops. We ducked down the side corridor.
“He’s going to release the roaches into the vents,” I said. “Then tonight, when everybody’s snug in bed…mass infestation. By tomorrow morning, half of the people in this hotel are going to be Network slaves, and they won’t even know it.”
“We need a plan,” Caitlin said. “If he’s cornered, he won’t wait.”
Right. If we couldn’t guarantee neutralizing the roaches, we’d have to deny him his targets. A couple of cops in state trooper garb were jawing around the corner, drinking coffee. I stepped between them.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” I said and pulled the fire alarm.
A klaxon broke, shrill and strong, echoing through the hotel floors. One of the troopers grabbed for me. I pivoted on my heel, threw a right cross, and dropped him to the carpet. His buddy’s hand shot for his belt, but Jennifer was faster on the draw. She pressed the barrel of her revolver to his forehead and plucked the gun from his holster.
“Don’t you hear that alarm goin’ off, sugar?” she asked. “You’d better evacuate.”
He half stumbled, half ran up the hall. The entire hotel was stirring like a kicked-over anthill. Doors opening, heads poking out, feet rumbling down the stairwells. We waded upstream through the crowd and found the utility access door. A steep flight of concrete steps shot down into a dim, cool tunnel. The door glided shut behind us, muffling the sounds from above.
Elmer was down in this maze, somewhere, with his living weapon in tow. It was time for the endgame.
39.
We made our way into the belly of the beast. Great metal boilers thrummed and hissed beneath the hotel floor, as hot steam and water coursed through metal pipes. The tunnels twisted like a maze for rats, junctions marked by stenciled numbers in lemon-yellow paint.