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.
Caitlin’s eyes were orbs of molten copper, glimmering in the twilight. She wrinkled her nose, sensing something Jennifer and I couldn’t, and pointed up ahead.
We used the sounds of the machinery for cover, staying low, watching our shadows stretch along the tunnel walls. I glanced left and poked my head into a storage closet. The walls were stocked high with cleaning products, a mop and bucket lying abandoned in the corner, but no sign of life.
A flicker of motion caught my eye up ahead. A short, crooked shadow loped along the corridor. Elmer.
Jennifer passed me the pistol she’d taken off the state cop upstairs. I braced it with both hands as I took point, easing along the wall. The tunnel opened onto a second boiler room. The long, iron-bellied machines took up most of the floor space, with gaps and narrow aisles between them.
Muzzle flash erupted from a blind corner and I threw my back against the wall as a slug tore into one of the boilers. A white-hot plume of steam screamed loose, close enough that it felt like the desert sun on my cheek.
“Dan,” Elmer called out, like he was greeting a friend. “I have to say, I’m almost pleased to see you.”
Caitlin slunk low and broke off. Jennifer did the same, turning and flapping her fingers at me in a mouth-wagging gesture. I got it. Keep him talking.
“Yeah?” I called back. “Why’s that?”
Another muzzle flash blinded me for a split second. His second shot tore out a chunk of wall and showered me with concrete dust. I answered with gunfire, snapping off three quick rounds and darting between the iron-cast aisles. I huddled low and waited until the reverberations died away.
“Still alive, Dan?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Still alive. Oh, tell your friends to stop flanking me, please. I can see perfectly well in the dark.”
“Well,” I said, “we are here to kill you.”
“Quite.”
Movement on my left. He’d gotten around me. I hurled myself to the concrete as his sidearm blazed, punching more holes in the boiler and sprouting deadly lances of steam. I lay on my belly and spent the rest of my magazine, shooting at a phantom while burning air sizzled inches above my head. Jennifer got into the act, her hand cannon booming somewhere off to the left.
I scrambled on my forearms like a soldier in a trench, crawling out from under the ruptured metal, and tossed the empty gun. “Caitlin? Jen?”
“Fine, sugar.” Quick footsteps followed her voice, heavier than Elmer’s; she was moving to fresh cover. Caitlin didn’t reply, but I didn’t expect her to. She could take a bullet and keep fighting, and seeing as we still didn’t know what other tricks Elmer had up his sleeve, I figured she was angling to get the perfect drop on him.
On him. That was his game. He would have known trouble was coming the second he heard the fire alarm going off. How much time would he need to release the roaches from their living prison? Minutes? An hour? The longer he kept us pinned down and focused on him, the more time he had to get the job done.
Instead of moving closer, I scrambled back—back to the supply closet we’d passed on our way in. Rummaging through the shelves, I shot a quick text to Caitlin: Need to get past him. Can you hold him off?
Just say when, she replied.
I found what I was looking for, buried between jugs of bleach and tall cans of floor polish, and jogged back into the fray.
“Dan,” Elmer was calling. His voice bounced, echoed, coming from everywhere at once. “Out of curiosity, does this mean Harry Grimes is dead?”
“Afraid so. Friend of yours?”
I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. Moving like a spider in the dark, locking in on the sound of my voice. I put my back to the wall and slid toward the corner of the room. From here, bracketed by the hull of a boiler, there were only two directions he could come at me from.
“Not really,” Elmer said. “He was their crowd, not mine.”
“The Enemy?”
“Mm-hmm.” Something rustled to my left. My shoulder muscles went tight. “He was on loan. You know, that gentleman, the Enemy…he really hates you.”
“I have that effect on people.”
My phone buzzed. I chanced a two-second glance at the screen. A message from Jennifer: Keep him focused on you. Moving in from behind.
“Tell me,” I said, “that whole thing about killing me in a replica prison cell…was that even supposed to work?”
“Who cares?” Elmer replied. He could play all the echo tricks he wanted, there was no mistaking his voice was clearer, closer now. “You weren’t wrong, before. We don’t actually want him to get his power back. If we can derail his plans and make it look like an unfortunate accident, so much the better.”
“So what do you want?”
“Right now?” Elmer hmmed. “Well, mostly I just want to kill you, to be perfectly honest.”
“Jen,” I shouted. “Flush him out, now!”
Jennifer leaped out from cover and opened fire, unloading her revolver and splitting the air with flash after flash of white light. Elmer yelped, off-balance, and I saw his shadow lurch from his hiding space. Then a second shadow swooped down like a hawk: Caitlin, who had been creeping her way along the tops of the boilers, biding her time. Her heel lashed out in a snap kick that caught Elmer in the belly, doubling him over and knocking him to the floor.
I didn’t have time to join in. I sprinted past them, up the corridor he’d been keeping us away from. The tunnel twisted hard left, and thick, boxy AC vents sprouted along the ceiling. I skidded to a stop.
Elmer’s experiment squatted in the middle of the floor, in the heart of a nest of wiring and vents. His body had swollen, his bent legs disappearing under the spill of his fat, and he only wore an open raincoat over his naked bulk.
The man turned to me, his eyes so sunken in his face that they looked like tiny black marbles. His stomach rippled and swelled with the outlines of fat roaches crawling in a frenzy under his skin. He opened his mouth, his puffy lips wriggling. No sound came out. It didn’t need to; I knew what he was asking me to do.
I raised the can of roach spray I’d taken from the janitor’s closet, with a second swinging from my belt, and aimed. Then I flicked my lighter six inches in front of the nozzle and pulled the trigger.
The stream burst into flame and washed over him. His cheap coat ignited first, then his skin. I moved in, firing short bursts with my improvised flamethrower, and hit him again and again. He toppled over, twitching. I heard the roaches scream. Rents in his skin began to tear open, the passengers struggling to escape the burning ship. A few roaches skittered free and I caught them with gouts of fire. They raced down the concrete tunnel, burning like fireflies.
More followed, a river of them now, the blazing roaches fleeing in a glistening tide. The dead man’s body deflated like a limp balloon, even his skull flattening out, as if his bones had been replaced by gelatin. The empty can clattered at my feet. I grabbed the backup from my belt and kept firing.
The last hissing scream faded, and nothing remained but the low crackle of flames. Dead roaches littered the tunnel floor like tea lights, filling the air with the stench of charred flesh and sewage.
I figured Elmer would be torn to shreds by the time I ran back to the boiler room, but he was holding his own. I saw Caitlin lash out with a bone-breaking punch and he flipped back on his heels, a court-jester cartwheel that pulled him just out of reach. He spun, dropping low and swinging around on the palm of one hand, and Caitlin leaped over his kick.
The crooked little man was faster, more agile than I imagined. Caitlin couldn’t land a hit on him. He couldn’t land one on her, either. He was still prolonging the game, trying to keep all eyes on him while his “bio-factory” prepared to burst in the next room.
“Hey, Elmer!” I shouted.
He looked my way. I used the last burst from the can of roach spray to send a burst of fire into the air, painting him a picture. Then I threw the can and my spent lighter to the ground.
“Phase two is canceled,” I said.
His face contorted in sudden, feral rage. I braced myself, expecting him to come at me. Instead, he took a deep breath.
A cloud of bilious yellow gas burst from between his lips, streaking through the air on a howl of anger. I leaped to the left, diving clear, as it blew past me. Iron turned to pitted, rusted ruin as the cloud washed over it, and the concrete sprouted a carpet of fuzzy black mold in its wake.
“He’s movin’!” Jennifer shouted. I saw him scramble up a boiler, flipping like an acrobat, and leap clear to the other side.
By the time we rounded the corner, he was gone.
Caitlin had a flush in her cheeks and a faint smile on her lips. Not many people could give her a workout. She leaned against me and I slid my arm around her waist.
“You both okay?” I said.
Jennifer dangled her empty pistol from her fingertip. “Little embarrassed I didn’t even wing him, but there’s always next time.”
“The breeder?” Caitlin asked.
“Dead. A couple of roaches might have gotten loose, but there’s nothing we can do about that now. We have definitely overstayed our welcome.”
* * *
Evacuating an entire hotel takes a while, and while it felt like we’d been battling in the basement for an hour—that’s what my aching muscles told me, anyway—we’d barely been down there for fifteen minutes. There were still lines of stragglers making their way to the parking lot, hotel employees scurrying in all directions, enough confusion to cover our escape. A couple of fire trucks had parked right out front, responding to the alarm. At least a hundred civilians were standing outside the hotel, milling around aimlessly or breaking into knots of conversation, and we used the edge of the crowd as a shield.
“Low profile,” Jennifer muttered in my ear, slinking alongside me. “That cop you punched is out here somewhere.”
“Probably right next to the cop whose gun you stole.”
“I’d like to not have to bail either of you out,” Caitlin said, “so step lively and keep your heads down.”
I caught sight of Teddy, moving fast between a couple of parked limos with his phone to his ear.
“Grab the car,” I said, “I’ll be right back.”
I circled around, waving to catch my brother’s attention. He blinked. “Gotta go,” he said and hung up his phone.
“Get Seabrook and Harding out of here, right now,” I told him. “You too. Do not go back inside that hotel.”
“Dan? What—what are you even doing here? And what happened to your forehead? Did you get hurt?”
“Listen to me very carefully. You know what I told you, when you asked why I was having a meeting with the mayor?”
He nodded, wary. “Using a bad guy to catch another bad guy. That fire alarm—”
“This particular bad guy might still be around. Grab the mayor and the commissioner and leave. Go back to Vegas. Tell Seabrook I said so. She’ll take my word for it.”
“Okay.” He took that in, and I watched his uncertainty slowly turn to steel. “I’m on it. I’ll call ahead and make sure the Metro escort meets us on the highway, and I’ll ride with the VIPs myself. Don’t worry, they’ll get home safe.”
“Good thinking. Hey.” I squeezed his shoulder. “You got this.”
“You know, someday you’re going to have to tell me the whole story here.”
“Someday,” I said.
* * *
We were crossing the Vegas city limits, home again, and I couldn’t unclench. Jennifer leaned forward in the back seat and her hands worked at my shoulders.
“They’re fine, sugar. We won. I mean, stalemate, Elmer’s still out there, but we gave him one hell of a black eye. It’s over.”
I wanted to believe that, but I couldn’t make it stick in my head. Maybe it was because my brother was involved. Maybe it was because Elmer Donaghy had been a step ahead of us since this sick little game began. We’d taken out two of his fronts, killed his science project, stopped him from infesting the mayors’ conference…so why didn’t I feel like it was time for a victory lap?
“You’ll feel better with a stiff drink in you,” Jennifer said. “Cait? Come with us? Drinks on the town?”
“With relish,” she said. “I think we’ve earned a bit of pleasure.”
Elmer’s plans had all fit the same format so far. The feint, the real plot, and then one last layer. A fail-safe. He always had a fail-safe.
My phone buzzed. It was Seabrook.
“Mayor?”
“We’ve got trouble,” she said. “We’re halfway between Boulder City and Vegas. The Metro escort just left.”
“Wait.” I hunched forward in my seat. “Left?”
“Earl is calling HQ and shouting up a storm, but nobody claims to know anything about it. The entire escort just peeled off onto an exit ramp. We’re all alone out here.”
“Turn around,” I told Caitlin. She gritted her teeth and swung hard into the left lane, angling for an open divider on the highway.
“Okay,” I said. “Tell your driver to keep moving. We’re coming to meet you, but do not, for any reason, pull off that road. Keep moving.”
The only answer was a crumpled bang, then dead silence.