She looked to the steps, where Colin Chisholm and Ben Herrick rose to their feet. Then she peered up at Mercy again. The two women traded a look of grim understanding.
“Hannah, take my hand. We have to run.”
“Why? What’s happening? I still can’t—”
“Run!”
She pulled Hannah away. The two angry Gothams watched them stumble helplessly across the lobby. They raised their palms for a second attack.
Gemma turned from the monitors and shined Olga an ugly grin.
“Now it’s slaughter.”
—
Rebel followed the blood drops through the elegant reception area, a razzle-dazzle array of neon sculptures and lustrous white furniture. The ground-floor office belonged to Nicomedia Magazines, publisher of such upscale monthlies as Push, Preen, American Woman, and Taste. On the dimmer end of the spectrum, they put out Wonders, a biweekly pupu platter of weird news items that always managed to include one crackpot Gotham sighting. Seventeen days after the incident, the tabloid continued to swoon over the great tempic arm that dangled a man from a hotel balcony in Evansville, Indiana. Rebel wanted to kill the Silvers just for that headache.
Beyond the white glass wall lay a sprawling grid of office cubes. The blood trail ended at the edge of the first cluster. The targets had wisely plugged the leak before moving on.
Rebel checked his watch. Six minutes until Deps stormed the building. There was no time to search every cubicle. No reason. He pitched his gravelly voice across the room.
“Zack Trillinger. I know you’re in here. You know my voice. You know I’m not leaving till you and the girl are dead.”
Forty feet away, Zack and Mia crouched beneath a copywriter’s desk, both sheet-white and drenched in sweat. As they’d escaped the lobby, ninety seconds ago, Rebel’s bullet struck the wall and cut Zack’s neck with a flying shard of marble. Mia pressed a folded T-shirt to his laceration. The fragment had missed his jugular by an inch.
Now that she knew who was in the room with them, Mia fought her panic. If Rebel’s new gun was anything like his old one, he could probably kill them through six of these flimsy partitions. Worse, Zack had seen him shoot two ceiling cameras and a friend without even looking. He didn’t need a line of sight on his targets.
The hulking Gotham prowled the edge of the office, brushing his revolver against the cubicle barriers. With each tap of the barrel, he scanned the speculative future to see the end result of a gunshot. This little bullet kills a desk lamp. This little bullet cracks glass. This little bullet goes “wee wee wee,” all the way into no one.
“You won’t believe me, Trillinger, but I got good reasons for doing this. You people were never meant to come here. If you knew the damage you were causing just by living and breathing, you’d kill yourselves. I’m prepared to do it nicely. I got a bag of sedatives here with me. Just say the word and I’ll send you both home with a smile instead of a bullet hole.”
Zack fought a pitch-black laugh as his stomach seared with stress. Rebel looked down at his prosthetic hand, a clunky thing of chrome, rubber, and circuitry. He saw the folly of his offer.
“Guess you don’t believe that either,” he said. “I don’t blame you. Last time we tangled, you got me good. Stuck me with this million-dollar meat hook. Can’t say I’m happy about it, but I’m not angry anymore. If anything, you’re the one who owes me pain.”
He raised his revolver in readiness. “I killed your brother.”
All the blood rushed to Zack’s face as Rebel turned a corner. The gun barrel continued to make loud friction sounds against the cloth-board walls.
“Josh Trillinger. Tall guy. Curly hair. Little scar on his not-so-little nose. He was one of Azral’s New York group, tucked away in some fancy building in White Plains. We hit them last month in the middle of the night. Two of the Golds got away from us. Six didn’t. Your brother was one of the ones who didn’t.”
Mia squeezed Zack’s trembling hand. Hot tears spilled down both their faces.
“I took no pleasure in it,” Rebel insisted. “He seemed like a good guy. When his friends started dying, he came right at me. Faced me like a man. Now here you are, hiding under a desk with the other little girl. I fig your brother would be ashamed to see you right now. He’s probably been ashamed of you your whole life.”
Rebel could hear the faint sounds of shuffling as Mia struggled to keep Zack still. Though his skin burned red with rage, he only reached for the notepad above him. He plucked a pen from the floor and scribbled hastily.
He’s coming this way. I’ll hold him off. The second I move, you RUN and don’t look back.
Mia shook her head. The girl was only half Zack’s age, but she was no stranger to losing brothers. Now she was convinced that she had four more loved ones to mourn. In her dismal thoughts, David and Amanda and Theo and Hannah were all dying or dead. All she had left was the man in front of her. Her entire world was small enough to fit under a desk.