“Take it easy? This place is crawling with men toting guns and you’re telling me to take it easy?”
Zack didn’t like seeing her so shaken. He sure didn’t like seeing her afraid. Not tough-talking Emily Monroe who’d been ready, willing and damn near able to take him down when he’d accosted her in the Bitterroot infirmary.
“Nobody knows we’re here yet,” he said. “We’ve got a few minutes. Let’s use those minutes wisely, see what we can find, then we’ll get the hell out of Dodge, okay?”
A breath shuddered out of her, then she nodded. “Okay.”
He motioned toward the stairs he assumed would take them to the basement. “I’m betting the file room is in the basement.”
“How do you know that?”
“People like window offices.”
They took the steps two at a time, their boots nearly silent on the concrete. The basement was quiet and cold and dark. A single red Exit light shone at the end of a long hall. “I’ll take the doors on the right,” Zack whispered. “You take the ones on the left. If you find one unlocked, let me know and we’ll go in together.”
Emily nodded and they went to work. Zack was almost all the way down the hall and thinking the entire operation was going to be a bust when the knob he tried twisted and the door swung open. “I’m in,” he said, then walked inside.
The room was large, with low ceilings and crowded with file cabinets of all shapes and sizes. Tiny ground-level windows offered stingy light from outside. It would have to do. The first file cabinet Zack tried was locked. Frustration burned through him. He tried another, found it locked, as well. Cursing beneath his breath, he looked around for something to break the locking mechanism with.
“I think I found something.”
He glanced over to see Emily leaning over a battered desk piled high with brown expandable folders. A plastic sign on the in-box read: To Be Filed. Zack felt a grin emerge. Even companies with something to hide had file clerks that didn’t get all their work finished by the end of the day.
He crossed to the desk. Emily had emptied a folder onto its scarred wooden surface and was looking through papers. “This one was labeled Lockdown, Inc.,” she said.
Excitement coursed through Zack as he pulled the flashlight from his coat and shone it on the file. After reaching dead end after dead end, he had thought the excursion hopeless. Hopefully this would prove him wrong.
“Looks like someone’s notes. Some scientist or researcher.” Emily lowered herself into the desk chair. “They’re in order by the date in the upper right-hand corner of the page. See?”
“Keep going.” Zack’s heart had begun to pound.
“They mention ‘mortality rate’ here.” She set her finger against the handwritten notes. “‘Subcutaneous hemorrhage. Severe irritation of mucous membranes.’”
“Hell.”
“What’s RZ-902?”
At the mention of RZ-902, Zack could feel sweat breaking out beneath his arms. “I believe you just found what we were looking for.”
Nudging her aside, he looked down at the notes and began to read. Dread built inside him at the words scrawled on the page.
The testing phase of RZ-902 is more successful than planned. Mortality rate stands at 98.1 percent. Fatal outcome from the moment of introduction is 4.2 minutes. It is the opinion of the study that RZ-902 is ready for mass production, the first phase of which will take less than two weeks, depending on delivery of supplies. The final product will be ready for market by the end of the month.
Zack almost couldn’t comprehend what he was reading. He’d seen a lot of horrific things in the years he’d worked for MIDNIGHT. He’d met more than his share of ruthless human beings, men and women who would stoop to any level for money or power or some combination of the two. But in all his years of working undercover he’d never encountered true evil.
Until now.
“Zack, what is it?”
He didn’t even realize he was leaning heavily against the desk. That he was breathing heavily. And shaken to his core. He raised his gaze to Emily’s. He wondered how such a good woman could be tangled up in such a god-awful mess. Then he remembered he was the one who’d dragged her into this. That now it was up to him to keep her safe.
The same way you kept Alisa safe?
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
“What are you talking about? We’ve just found what we’ve been looking—”
“Don’t ask any more questions. Let’s go.”
“Zack, you’re scaring me.”
Without looking at her or speaking he began gathering the papers as quickly as he could, grabbing the ones he thought would be most useful, leaving the rest.
“My God, you’re shaking.” She touched his arm, drawing his gaze. “Talk to me? What is this?”
“RZ-902,” he said, grinding out the words. “They’ve finished the testing. Weeks ahead of schedule.”