Maybe I would’ve still turned the child over once I reached the triaged chaos of the parking lot. Halfway across the asphalt, though, I was struck by a shock wave equal parts hot and cold that swallowed me up and coughed me out. I felt airborne but when I looked down, my feet had never actually left the concrete, which had cracked underfoot like thin glass. Everyone around me was rushing, the wail of sirens sounding intermittently in my head as if someone was turning them off and then on again.
There was no one to hand the baby I’d rescued to, so I held fast to him, charging through the parking lot I now saw was strewn with cars missing all their window and windshield glass. My own car was parked in a lot reserved for lower-level employees and my breath had long deserted me by the time I reached it, gasping for air with the burned-wire stench stuck in my nostrils that felt as if they’d been zapped by some medical freezing agent.
I got my door open and climbed inside my car with you nestled in my lap. You’d stopped crying, seemed to be smiling, your eyes meeting mine.
I fell in love in that moment and knew I could never part with you. You were mine and your father’s; fate had willed it so. Where the herbs had failed us, destiny had intervened and gave us what we wanted more than anything.
Gave us you, Alex.
50
THE DANCER
ALEX REALIZED HIS EYES hurt; his head too. He’d been staring so intensely at the screen that his neck had knotted. It cracked audibly when he stretched, unable to resist returning his eyes to the screen. His mother’s story had brought her back to him during the course of those moments. Alex felt he was with her in Laboratory Z, witnessing her brave actions as they unfolded. Rescuing the baby fate had not allowed her to have with his father.
Both gone now.
And Alex was starting to realize why, the pieces falling together. His eyes had misted up. His lips were trembling and he suddenly felt very cold. He sat in silence, the world narrowed to the scope of the computer and no more.
But that was enough.
Who am I? What am I?
Thus far, the flash drive had offered more questions than answers. Something either terrible or wonderful, maybe both, had been going on inside Laboratory Z. On the day of his rescue, the day of the explosion and fire, his mother had been unable to provide much detail as to the cause.
And there were so many secrets contained in his mother’s words. Except his family was gone. Every other relative he had lived in China, and besides an occasional e-mail and rare Skype call, the Chins had maintained no contact with any of them. They were, after all, Americanized and likely thought less of by the folks back home.
So who was the person who’d thrust him at An Chin through the thick mist that had enveloped the lab?
It might have been an obvious question, but no obvious answer was in the offing. Someone trying to protect baby Alex seemed the soundest explanation, but that didn’t explain how baby Alex had gotten there or if he was somehow connected to Laboratory Z’s ultimate destruction.
Alex felt the rigors of all this thinking making his head throb again, the shards of pain that seemed to radiate out from inside his skull.
I’ve got a football game to play Friday night.…
He tried to distract himself with that thought, but it only made the pain worse. The throbs lasted longer this time, resonating like a dull echo banging up against the sides of his skull. He couldn’t bear to listen and look anymore at his mother for now and decided to try one of the other files, focusing on one labeled PICTURES.
Alex opened the file and clicked on the first photo, watched it sharpen on the screen before him.
“Sam,” he called, toward the front of the FedEx office, “you need to see this.”
51
PING
RATHMAN HAD THE BIG SUV’s driver cross up and down the street a few times, looking for any changes in the parking lot that fronted the FedEx Office. In his experience, variance was the indicator that set alarm bells ringing in his head more than any other. Two or three cars appearing where there had been none just moments before. So the first order of business, bred by that experience as well as instinct, was to make sure the scene was stable, with no unexpected threat that might catch his team unprepared and waylay their plan.
Plan …
Right now he didn’t have one. He needed to get a lock on the position of the targets first. Confined spaces like this could be tricky. Too easy for bystanders to get in the way and too easy for witnesses to get a good look at the proceedings. So Rathman’s team would go in shooting. Nothing sent potential witnesses dropping for cover and eliminated their seeing what they should not more than gunfire, no matter where it was aimed. His men would shoot upward initially, take out some lights, turn chunks of the cheap drop ceiling to particleboard rain to further discourage those hugging the floor with heads covered up.