The Savior

But the boy’s head was in her lap, and someone had given her a really good Reuben sandwich and a Coke before they’d left, and there was a nice warm heater breezing up her ankles.

There would be time to go to the Feds. Or whoever. Just not tonight.

As they continued along what had to be a well-paved road, different things drifted through her mind, none of them landing on her proverbial tarmac for very long: the fact that she was still in the hazmat suit, the weird headache, the way the commando continued to stare at her.

Okay, that one did stick.

By all accounts, she should have been terrified to put her life in the hands of these strangers with their guns and their secrets: There was nobody at home to miss her. No family who was expecting her to call. No friends to check in. And didn’t all that make her feel like a ghost in her own life, P.S.

Work, however, would miss her—although considering what she had done? Breaking and entering, evac’ing the boy, taking Kraiten’s own SUV, for godsakes … there was going to be chaos at the company tomorrow and her absence would be noted.

So maybe this little side step wasn’t a bad thing. It might give her some time to think of a plan to confront the mess she’d left behind. The real question, she supposed, was how Kraiten was going to spin things. After all, it was hard to go to the authorities and demand the laws be used to defend your own illegal practices.

Kind of like a drug dealer calling 911 when his stash gets stolen.

But Kraiten had tremendous resources—and not all of them were of the “proper authorities” variety, she was willing to guess. Hell, she’d heard his private security were ex–Israeli Defense Forces soldiers.

Abruptly, she thought of Gerry. Of Thomas McCaid, his dead boss. Of Kraiten’s own partner, who had met a grisly end two decades ago.

Anxiety, of the mortal kind, curled around her heart—

“What’s wrong?”

As the commando spoke, she snapped her head up. The sudden movement caused the boy to stir, but she stroked his thin arm and he resettled. His name was Nate, she’d learned. Or at least that was his first name. Last hadn’t come up. Yet.

Surely he had family somewhere.

“Tell me,” her commando said in a soft voice.

Sarah glanced over at the doctor. The woman was deep into her phone, sending some kind of text message. “Oh, it’s nothing.”

“Tell me anyway.”

The van slowed. Stopped.

“Are we here?” she asked.

“It’s the gates. We still have a while to go. Answer my question.”

I’m so over my head, she thought. With all of this. The kid, that patient with the wound, what we did at BioMed … what I know about that company.

“I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Had she spoken all of that aloud again? She wasn’t sure.

Shaking her head and looking down at the boy, she fell silent and concentrated on the stopping and going of the van. After a while, there was a descent, as if they were coming off a hill or going underground. And then the van finally halted, the engine was turned off, and the rear doors opened—

Sarah did a double take as she saw four or five men, in tactical gear, standing around the back of the vehicle.

What the hell, she thought. Did they have a hydroponic farm somewhere and grow these big boys from test tubes?

The soldiers—and that was absolutely what they were—were all like her commando, huge, calm, and surprisingly welcoming as they peered in at her and the child. That being said, she did not want to get on their bad sides.

Look at those weapons.

“Hi,” the blond one said. “You need a hand there?”

As he smiled, she blinked like she’d been hit by a beam of sunshine. Between his brilliant blue eyes, his gleaming teeth, and that too-handsome face, he should have been in Hollywood.

The guy made Chris Hemsworth look like a candidate for reconstructive surgery.

“I’ve got him,” she murmured as she gathered the boy in her arms.

Crab-walking out the back, Nate stirred when they got hit by the bright lights of …

It was a parking area. They were in a professional grade, municipal parking garage, on what appeared to be its lowest level.

“This way,” another soldier said as he went across to a reinforced steel door with no markings on it.

Okay, that man had long, multi-colored hair and incredible eyes that were lion-yellow and impossibly kind, especially as they rested on the boy.

Sarah stayed put, however, even as the doctor hurried off through the entry like she had another patient to see. Instinctively, Sarah waited for her commando to get out and come alongside of her, and then the pair of them walked into the facility together with Nate still in her arms. The boy woke up properly halfway down a long hall that had concrete walls, a tiled floor, and fluorescent ceiling lights that were as bright white as the moon on a clear winter night.

Big money, she thought as she passed by numerous closed doors. These facilities were on a par with BioMed’s.

So who was the Kraiten behind all this?

Up ahead, a dark-haired man in a white physician’s coat stepped out of a doorway. With his scrubs and that stethoscope around his neck, he seemed right out of central casting.

“And here’s our patient,” he said as they stopped in front of him. “Hey, buddy, what’s up? I’m Dr. Manello, but you can call me Manny.”

As he extended his hand to the boy, Sarah turned so Nate could put his tiny palm in the man’s.

“My name is Nate,” the child said. “It is short for Natelem. I am the proud son of Ingridge.”

Such a strange formality, Sarah thought.

“Well, Nate, welcome to my humble abode. I understand you’re going to be staying with us for a little while.” He looked at Sarah and smiled. “And you’re Dr. Watkins. Welcome.”

“Thank you.”

“You want to bring him in here? I have a sumptuous suite prepared for his use.”

The doctor swept the door open and revealed a hospital room that had every piece of monitoring equipment you could want for a trauma patient—and even though that confused the hell out of Sarah, she felt instantly better for the boy.

She glanced at her commando. He was staring at her with hooded eyes, as if he were waiting to see what she was going to do.

“Let’s get you settled,” she said to Nate as she went in. “And maybe fed. How’s that sound?”

 

The Brotherhood had certainly taken things up a notch or twelve down here, Murhder thought as he followed Sarah and Nate into the hospital room.

Darius’s old digs in the Richie Rich part of town were nothing compared to this underground stuff. The Brotherhood had what looked like an entire hospital down here, and God only knew what else.

Not that he was paying a huge amount of attention to the facility.

Nope, his gray matter was trained on the human woman. Every move she made. The nuances of her expression. The sound of her voice—

Okay, fine, maybe he was also ever-so-slightly, kinda-sorta, possibly-a-little interested in where the Brothers were and what they were doing. Like, oh, say, how close they were getting to Sarah. Whether she seemed to notice them or they her. If any of them were taking down her phone number.

Which, P.S., he didn’t have.