Saturday Evening

When Jarod rounded the corner and stepped into Miss Parker’s hospital room, the scene before him was almost exactly as he’d expected. Sam had not budged from his protective position between Miss Parker and the doorway and gave the Pretender a muted glare as he moved past him into the room. Sydney and Broots were bent over a magnetic chess set – more than likely something that had been dredged up from Broots’ shoulder bag – with both men intent enough on their game that they barely noticed his entry. Debbie was sitting in a metal folding chair and staring out the window at the darkening scenery beyond and four floors down.

“Thank you,” Miss Parker said into the cell phone she was holding to her ear. “I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, then.” She nodded at whatever the voice on the other end was telling her. “Goodbye.”

“You might not be out of her by Tuesday,” Jarod warned her, pleased to see that she was at least aware and moving.

“I have a stockholders’ meeting to chair on Tuesday,” she replied archly. “I just spoke to the president of the shareholders’ association – who was VERY surprised to hear my voice. It seems that Lyle had called earlier today to inform them of my untimely demise.”

Jarod’s voice grew cynical. “Are you all that surprised?”

“No,” she sighed and drooped against her pillow grimacing in pain, “I’m more enjoying the opportunity to prove him a good-for-nothing skunk without having to play politics to do it.”

“Jarod,” Sydney spoke softly, “you need to get Broots and Debbie out of here before anything untoward happens.”

“I know.” Jarod pulled out his key ring and quickly removed a brass key that he held out to Broots. “This opens both the front door lock and the deadbolt on my front door,” he explained as Broots put out a palm to receive it. “I’m not exactly sure I want to get too terribly far away again…”

“Just tell me where you need us to go,” Broots slipped the key into the breast pocket of his polo shirt, “and I’ll get us there in one piece.”

“You too, Sydney,” Jarod pointed out.

Sydney shook his head. “I think I’ll stay a while yet,” he announced firmly. “You never know – Sam might find he needs help…”

“I’m perfectly capable…” Sam straightened and objected in a raised voice.

“You’re just as tired as I am, Sydney” Jarod stated observantly. Sydney’s eyes had that slightly red tinge that the Pretender knew came from his mentor spending too many hours staying alert for one reason or another. Years ago, that look had come from the long hours and stress of finishing a complicated SIM within an arbitrary timeframe. This time it came from having spent the better part of the day worrying about Miss Parker’s health and survival. “You know as well as I do that tired people make mistakes.”

“I’m fine,” the psychiatrist countered emphatically. “I’m not leaving Miss Parker alone.”

“I need to get Debbie out of here,” Broots’ voice broke through the growing tension between protégé and mentor. “Jarod – can you draw me a map or something…” Broots once more reached into his shoulder bag and found a piece of paper and handed it to the elusive Pretender.

Jarod sighed and walked over to use her utility tray as a surface to write on. “It’s about a half-hour drive from here,” he pointed out, drawing lines and labeling them quickly. “You turn left on…”

“You need your sleep too, Syd,” Miss Parker told the older man. “Sam can keep an eye on things…”

“I’ll sleep when I know this is all over,” Sydney shook his head firmly. “And until then, I’m staying put…”

“Sydney…” she began in a cautioning tone.

“No,” he answered immediately with another shake of the head. “This time, I’m doing what I know is necessary – whether you like it or not. I keep thinking that if I’d managed to reach you by phone before… that this might not have happened…”

“That’s my fault, Syd,” Miss Parker soothed, “not yours. I was the one ducking your call.”

“I’m still staying.” Sydney announced in a tone of finality and relaxed back against the chair back.

Miss Parker glanced over at Jarod, as if pleading with him to help her convince Sydney to put himself out of harm’s way – but Jarod could only shrug at her. Once Sydney was convinced of a course of action, it would take a literal act of God to make him change his mind. And as impressive as Miss Parker on her high horse could be at times, Jarod had a hunch that the older man acquiesced to her wishes more out of fondness than out of intimidation. One day Miss Parker would wake up to that fact – and probably blow a fuse – in the meantime, however, he knew better than to try to force the issue.

~~~~~~~~*

Mr. Cox ducked into a long-abandoned janitorial closet and pulled the door closed behind himself as silently as he could. The last thing he’d expected, under the circumstances, was a small cadre of agents coming down the access ladder to this secret sublevel – agents who had then begun a systematic search of the entire sublevel. Already the cache of cells holding his research subjects had been discovered – the sound of confused voices echoing through the otherwise empty corridors had been unmistakable.

Well, all his research subjects save two – the one that Lyle had demanded days ago and the one that he himself had loosed only hours earlier with a single directive. If Lyle ever showed his face in Blue Cove again, the man’s orders were to shoot to kill.

It had been a miracle to discover the man he’d pulled from his pool of available subjects to take care of his problem with Lyle had had extensive experience in weapons training and marksmanship in the military. The man had taken the rifle he’d been handed into hands that looked very much used to handling such objects. He’d even checked if there was a cartridge in the chamber and then made sure the safety was on without needing to be told where such things were or how they worked.

“You seem familiar with this,” Cox had commented warily.

“M-16 semi-automatic,” the man stated in a bland and uninflected voice that carried only a hint of a Southern accent. “I’ve seen and used my share.”

“When?”

“I did some Special Forces work in Nicaragua and El Salvador back when,” the man replied without a single blink or flinch. “I was top sharpshooter in my unit.”

“Good – then you shouldn’t have any trouble with the test we’re going to have you take,” Cox had replied then, mentally rubbing his hands together in glee at his immense good fortune. The final conditioning that was the coup de grace to the Hydra process wouldn’t take more than twelve hours to cement into place in the compliant mind – and it would be the final nail in Lyle’s coffin. He’d worked long through the night after Lyle’s call to prepare his secret weapon, not sleeping until he was able to escort the man to the front lobby of the Centre and turn him loose. He’d even been snickering mentally as he walked a man with a rifle in a briefcase out from under the noses of the federal agents.

But now his task was a simple one of survival – Cox did NOT want to get caught down here with imprisoned men and boxes of research materials that would implicate him deeply in something that traditional law enforcement would view very dimly. For one thing, his status in the United States was still not something that would tolerate very close scrutiny – and the very last thing he wanted to happen was to be deported back to South Africa. He had no valid passport – neither the Centre nor the Triumvirate had ever bothered with such trivial nonsense – and his only identification was his South African driver’s license. That would be enough to lead the authorities to New London – and to incidents and victims he’d hoped would be long forgotten.

He’d have to bide his time – and stay hidden as best he could – until this invasion was over. Then, perhaps, he could slip back up the narrow ladder to the more populated sublevels and make his way to the surface and freedom.

Strange that this underground life he’d been leading and enjoying for the past few years could become a prison.

~~~~~~~~*

Hank walked down the corridor of the hospital heading for the surgical unit as if driven, ignoring the smiling faces and then surprised dismay of the many friends he was passing without stopping to chat. He HAD to find the woman – the one with the dark hair who was his target – and he had to eliminate her once and for all. If she had people around her, they would become his targets too.

The surgical unit was on the second floor toward the back of the huge building. Once more he was met by a smiling face when the nurse in charge of the floor recognized him from his days as a medical intern. “Doctor Kellogg!” she exclaimed in delight. “Long time no see! Decided to quit slumming as a shrink and come back to the real world of medicine?”

“I’m looking for a gunshot patient,” Hank declared in a voice almost devoid of expression or tone. “Dark hair, about thirty – would have been admitted sometime this morning, early.”

The nurse was already shaking her head. “I haven’t seen a gunshot patient of that description come through here – and certainly not in the last twelve to fifteen hours.” She studied his face carefully. “Are you SURE she was admitted here at Mercy?”

Hank nodded. “Certain.”

Dolores Rodriguez shrugged and threw her hands wide. “Sorry I can’t help you. There’s nobody served by this station like that.”

Hank closed his eyes. He didn’t need to keep hitting one dead end after another. “You’re certain?”

“I’m as certain as I am about my own name, Doctor Kellogg.” Dolores was beginning to become concerned. This man in front of her was acting in no way like the fun-loving Hank Kellogg she’d known for the past two years. “Is this woman someone you know?”

Hank was caught short by the question, and it took his mind a moment to fabricate a reasonable response. “Yes. I got a call that told me my friend had been brought here – and I rushed right over…”

“Well…” she nodded, finally feeling as if she could be helpful. If it was a friend he was looking for – especially a close personal friend – maybe that would explain his attitude of almost shock and disorientation. “…anyone admitted to Mercy for gunshot wounds would have to go through the Emergency Room. You know that as well as I do. Have you asked down there yet?”

The Emergency Room! Yes, of course! “Actually, I haven’t. I’ll do that right now.” Hank turned about and headed straight for the elevator.

Eyes narrowed, the nurse reached for the telephone and dialed another extension without even pausing to think about it. “Marcia?” she asked as soon as the call was picked up. “Yeah, it’s me, Dolores. You know that doctor that Cindy’s been drooling over – the shrink resident Kellogg? Well he was just in here – and there’s something fishy going on with him…”

~~~~~~~~*

Lyle was fuming.

He’d been kept in a small interrogation room for hours, waiting for a Centre lawyer who had been three hours late in showing up. Both the New York Police Department and the FBI had had an officer in the room asking him questions – questions he either couldn’t or didn’t dare answer honestly if at all. He was astounded to discover that his picture had been pulled out of a photo line-up by more than one witness to his trek through the homeless population – and even more astounded at the high level attention his case seemed to be drawing.

In the end, however, he’d been charged with kidnapping and transporting his victims across state lines, fingerprinted, and photographed like a common criminal. To make matters even worse, he’d then been thrown, pending transport to a federal holding facility, into a cell with a drunk, two male prostitutes and a very dangerous animal-like creature that wore long and shaggy black hair and feral eyes with his broken and sharp-looking teeth.

His plans – his backup strategy – had blown up in his face. During his investigation, a sketch of Willy Grant had been shown him – with the promise that an all-out effort was going into the apprehension of his “accomplice” during the top-to-bottom search of the Centre facility. Only the knowledge that Cox and his precious research and subject were safely hidden on a sublevel that only those with the highest level of security clearance knew about was keeping him from true desperation.

“OK, Parker, your ride’s here.” The police officer in charge of the cell block was rattling keys and opening the barred door. “On your feet.”

It happened all too quickly. The animal that had been lurking in the far corner of the cell took one look at the officer with the keys and exploded into a violent rage that had the barred door to the cell clanging back against the bars. The officer went down with a shout of alarm – but Lyle didn’t wait.

The keys had dropped from the officer’s startled hand in the sudden and unexpected attack, and Lyle snagged them from the linoleum as he skidded past where the animal with the long hair and sharp teeth was snarling and clawing and biting the officer on the ground. Lyle knew he had only a very short time before more officers would be coming on the run – and that one of the many keys on the ring he possessed was his miracle road to freedom.

His good luck held – and the first key he tried slipped into the lock and turned in the steel door. Lyle pulled the key from the door, dropped it on the floor and made sure the steel door was closed securely after himself before attempting to walk nonchalantly down the hall. He was still dressed in his dress trousers and fine white shirt – evidently his change into prisoner garb was to have waited until his arrival at the federal facility – so no one seemed to give him a second look as he forced himself to walk slowly and patiently.

Lyle’s heart was in his mouth – and his breath wanted to come in short and panicked pants – but he restrained himself and forced his face into a mask of blandness to blend in. He wanted no reason to call the attention of the plain-clothed officers surrounding him, and he forced himself to a bored and placid pace and expression until he’d worked his way down a set of stairs and finally out the front door of the police station.

A quick glance up and down the street, and he was off at a slow trot. His luck had held once more, Lyle congratulated himself. Now all he had to do was find a way to get back into a Triumvirate-controlled environment. He could blame all of this on his sister!

If she were dead, that is. Dead men – or women – had a harder time defending their reputation.

~~~~~~~~*

Booger narrowed his eyes and watched carefully as his target jogged away from the building into which he’d been taken. His mentor had made arrangements for him to be left here once he was outside the… outside where he’d been. Funny that he couldn’t think of the name of the place where he’d been for the last… how long?

He shook himself – all of those things didn’t matter at all. What mattered most was that here he could watch for all comings and goings, with explicit orders that when Lyle exited the building, he was to be terminated – with prejudice. Now here his target was, making as inconspicuous a spectacle of himself in the process of departing the area with all due haste.

But this was a task that Booger had done all too many times in the past – searching out designated military targets and neutralizing them before they could become a danger to his unit. What’s more, it was his place to decide who lives and who dies – and frankly, he had no reason to want the dark-haired target to live for any longer than it was going to take to run him to ground.

Booger straightened and began walking in the same direction that Lyle had trotted, his eyes keeping careful track of the slightly bobbing head that was his target. It wouldn’t do to lose him now. It had been a long day and an even longer night – and he wanted to rest.

First things first, however…

~~~~~~~~*

Gabe Watson patted his fellow agent on the arm in a silent order to “continue on” and then walked a short distance away to answer his cell phone. “Watson here,” he stated and then listened with an increasingly incredulous and frustrated face. “You mean to tell me that…” he began and then sputtered. “What kind of search have they…”

He listened again and found reason to nod from time to time at the report from the equally frustrated FBI agent in New York City. “Keep me posted,” Watson told him finally, when the details of a complete fiasco of a prisoner transfer had been related. “I want that man in custody as soon as possible. You have no idea what we’ve found…”

He disconnected and shoved the cell phone into his pocket as he watched the fourth man who had been found locked in a five foot by ten foot cement block cell be led to the vertical ladder that was the access to the hidden sublevel. There were eight of these men, all of them docile and slightly dazed – none of them seeming too entirely anxious to be released from their subterranean prison cells back into the larger world. Not one of these men had a spot of identification on them – all were clean, shaven, well-groomed and quite photogenic. Watson guessed that in the state they were in at the moment, it would be very difficult for shelter managers to help them pinpoint a formerly unwashed vagrant tenant with anything approaching a positive identification.

“What is it?” Okui asked, seeing the slightly tighter expression on his superior’s face.

“Parker got away,” Watson related brusquely.

The ebony eyes widened. “Got away!” Okui breathed. “How?”

“The NYPD threw him into the holding tank for when our officers came for him,” Watson explained with growing disgust. “I guess there was a fellow in the holding cell with him that became violent when Parker’s name was called. The officer there at the time will recover from the bites on his face and hands – but Parker darted out of the cell, grabbed the keys and managed to just…” His face twisted in a grimace. “…walk out.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

Watson ran his hand over his balding head and sighed. From every indication, the Parker fellow could be indicted on a number of counts substantiated by the documentation that had been found locked in a burned-out laboratory. The agent who had done a preliminary review of the documents on the top of the stack said that he’d seen memos signed by a Lyle Parker – although the significance of a request to move one of the subjects to “final test phase” was yet to be determined.

The cell phone in his pocket chirped again.

“We found the other suspect,” came a triumphant voice on the other end. “Caught him trying to hide in a group of cleared employees leaving the place.”

“On my way – I want to talk to him first,” Watson barked and then snapped the phone shut. “Keep digging,” he ordered Okui. “Don’t leave any stone unturned on this floor.”

“I won’t,” Okui promised easily. The things he’d seen on this ungodly floor far below the surface of the earth would haunt him for days, he was certain. There was no way that he’d leave this place until he knew he’d unearthed ALL the horrors it had to offer.

~~~~~~~~*

Hank looked around the Emergency Room until his eyes landed on the tall, thin man with the stethoscope wrapped around his neck and wearing surgical blues. “Excuse me,” he said, stepping far enough into the medical ward to catch the man’s attention and draw him like a worried bee, “but I’m looking for a woman admitted with a gunshot wound…”

“There’s nobody with that kind of injury in here, sir,” the doctor – whose nametag read Dr. Stephan Lindel – replied immediately. “I’m going to have to ask you…”

“Please…” Hank thanked his lucky stars that this man hadn’t been on surgical rotation yet so that their paths would have crossed. “I know that a woman who is a very good friend of mine was admitted here earlier this morning with a gunshot wound. I just want to know if she’s ok…” He made a show of thinking. “Don’t I know you? I’m on the current rotation of psychiatric residents – haven’t I seen you…”

That threw the ER doctor’s protective attitude for a loop. “Of course… Doctor…” he drew out, obviously searching his memory for a name to go with a face he’d never seen before.

“Kellogg – Hank Kellogg,” Hank supplied quickly.

“Since it’s you…” Lindel stepped closer. “There WAS a woman admitted earlier today – had already had some pretty damned impressive on-site emergency surgery to repair damage to the artery. She came in with another doctor from Mercy – Jarod Russell?”

“That’s the one!” Hank exclaimed excitedly. “That’s my friend! Is she still here?”

“Unless she or one of the other men with her signed her out AMA,” Lindel nodded and moved to the nursing station for the ER. “Lemme see – I think I have her paperwork right here…”

~~~~~~~~*

There was a knock on the door, and then Maricela Sanchez stuck her head around the corner. “Jarod?” she asked and beckoned to the tall man with a darting hand. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Jarod didn’t bother glancing at Sam as he stepped around the big man in the process of getting to his friend. “What’s the matter?”

“Outside?” she asked with a tip of the head.

He glanced about the room and then nodded. Sam was as vigilant now as he ever could be – despite his growing fatigue. Sydney had settled back into the relatively comfortable chair next to Miss Parker, leaned his head against the wall, folded his arms over his chest and been snoring very softly for the better part of an hour now. Miss Parker was fast asleep – her color having improved greatly over the course of the evening and night. He glanced up and down the corridor – noting the lack of general public with some relief. “I’ll be right back,” he told Sam in a soft whisper and saw the sweeper nod slowly in response. Then he closed the door behind him. “What’s up?”

“Do you remember your patient Clarisa MacGregor – sixteen year old admitted for attempted suicide?” Maricela asked in an urgent tone.

“I remember her,” Jarod replied, leaning against the wall immediately next to the door. “I’m assuming this late-night summons isn’t good news?”

Sanchez was shaking her head. “Don’t ask me where she got a hold of it, but he found a scalpel – and she’s got herself holed up in the restroom refusing to come out until she talks to you.”

“You don’t need me,” Jarod shook his head. “There are several psych residents…”

“No, you didn’t hear me,” Sanchez insisted. “She says she’s going to finish the job properly this time if she doesn’t talk to YOU – and right now!”

“Maricela…” Jarod pleaded.

“Look – your friend has two people in there who can defend her if anybody should come in the few moments you’re going to be gone, doesn’t she?”

Jarod eventually nodded in frustration. “Fine. Where is she – I’ll talk to her.”

“Right where you left her…” Maricela was already heading down the corridor.

“Let me tell my friends where I’m going,” Jarod prevaricated and pushed open the door again. “One of my patients is having a crisis,” he explained lamely to Sam, who merely sighed and nodded again. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Jarod’s long legs didn’t take long to catch up with his petite colleague. “So fill me in on what’s happened with her since I left…”

~~~~~~~~*

Lyle breathed a sigh of relief as the green of the park closed around him – putting a barrier of sorts between himself and the pair of officers that had been standing on the corner a block away, nibbling on donuts and just talking as they walked their beat. There was no guarantee that they wouldn’t stop to question a man in his shirtsleeves heading into the park that late a night – and he needed to find a private place to make a phone call.

He sprinted to the first payphone he could find and thrust his fingers into the coin return, smiling widely when he was able to pull out a quarter on his very first try. He picked up the receiver and began to dial. He’d call the Triumvirate – they’d be able to put him under wraps until the heat had blown over and he could resurface in the Centre again to take his rightful place as Chairman.

And on the other end of the line, a phone began to ring.

~~~~~~~~*

Booger assembled the rifle quickly and efficiently from his vantage behind a huge old elm tree, chambered a round and then sighted through the scope. His target’s white shirt was as good as a bulls eye – and he already knew how the weapon acted in comparison to what was seen in the scope. He adjusted his aim accordingly.

He decided who lives and dies.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

~~~~~~~~*

Hank’s hand slid toward his jacket pocket, where the handgun was a heavy weight that thumped against his upper thigh when he walked. The medical floor was two floors up – and he finally had a room number. His job was almost over for now – just a little more and he could finally take out his target and those in the room with her, just as his mentor had ordered him to.

Then he’d have to go back for the mentor – the man who’s voice echoed so hypnotically in his mind and repeated the key phrase over and over so that he wouldn’t forget. He’d have to see just where it was that they had taken him – it had been the police there in that little town, hadn’t it? He would see to the mentor’s well-being – and then he’d be able to rest.

“Doctor Kellogg! What a pleasant surprise!”

Hank looked over, startled, at the gushing physician and searched his memory for the face. “Simon,” he responded slowly. “Fancy meeting you here,” he added when the fellow physician’s face lit up at being recognized.

“I thought you were out doing your on-site research with the homeless.” Simon Carlisle was a big man who regularly slapped his colleagues on the back hard enough to stagger them – something he did now. “Research finished already?”

Hank wished the confined space of the elevator car would allow him to sidle just a little further away from Carlisle’s exuberance. How the man managed to charm the snot out of the little brats that were to be HIS specialty – pediatrics – he’d never managed to figure out. “Not exactly,” he hedged. “I needed to take care of a couple of things here that are – were – time-sensitive.”

“Time-sensitive, eh?” Carlisle seemed to find the entire idea humorous. “Don’t tell me, you have to deactivate a bomb in the nurse’s restroom before you lose your research grant…”

“Something like that.” Hank was grateful that the elevator had arrived at the floor he wanted. He moved to the front of the car and forced himself to not quite bolt the moment the silver metal had swished to the side on it’s track. “See you later, Simon,” he managed and then smiled contentedly as the elevator door slid to cover the man’s face again.

“Hank!”

Another glad voice – another colleague who couldn’t be ignored without setting off the kinds of alarms that he couldn’t afford right now.

“Sheila!” He responded with a pasted-on smile.

“Am I glad you showed up! I was thinking I was going to have to badger the Old Man for a phone number to get a hold of you. Do you remember your patient, Sam Frank? Look, I inherited the case management for him when you took your sabbatical…” The blonde beckoned him. “I’ve read your notes, but his is a complex case – can I ask you a couple of questions?”

Hank stared down the corridor at the closed door almost at the other end. She was in there – he could feel it from here – and from all reports she wouldn’t be leaving that room anytime soon. He could feel the draw of the necessary kill in every pore of his body, tempting him to just put a bullet in the brain of this air headed colleague who couldn’t shrink her way out of a paper bag if she had a year to do it. But he also knew that if he didn’t deal with Sheila’s questions, she’d hound his steps and maybe try to stop him – and that if he shot her, security would be descending on him at a run.

The order had been to take out the target and all in the room with her. But he didn’t have to add to the number of other victims unnecessarily. He decides who lives and dies, he repeated to himself mentally.

“Sure,” he sighed and let Sheila lead him in the direction of a lounge.

Hopefully this wouldn’t take TOO much time…

~~~~~~~~*

Officer Ken Donaldson stared down at the man on the pavement, a payphone receiver dangling from the apparatus not far from his outstretched hand, and then bent as he saw the eyelids flicker. “Get an ambulance!” he yelled at his partner futilely – knowing full well that from the amount of blood coming from the back of the man’s head, the bullet that had pierced the skull between the eyes had already done their job. The man was dead – but the body was taking a moment to figure it out.

“Over here!” His partner, Roy Landsmithe, yelled in return, his gun drawn and trained nervously on the man who stood behind a large oak tree with a rifle dangling impotently from one hand. “Drop it, mister!” he barked sharply.

Booger blinked as if waking up from a deep sleep. “Huh?” he grunted and then looked down at the heavy object he was holding in his hand. The sight of the gun – and all it implied – only confused him more, and he forced his fingers to open so that the weapon could fall into the cushion of grass.

Landsmithe kicked the weapon away from his suspect – as far as he could move it from easy retrieval reach. “On the ground, now!” he barked now, his gun still steady on the face of the now-pale face.

“Easy,” Booger tried to soothe as he dropped to his knees in the grass and then lay out on his stomach with arms above his head. “Easy.”

“Easy nothing, buddy,” Landsmithe snapped as he pulled first one hand and then the other into a controlling grip that was replaced by a thin plastic strap. “You’re under arrest for the murder of…” He looked up and over at the sprawled body under the street lamp near the payphone. “…Whoever that poor bastard is over there. You have the right to remain silent…”

He bent with a latex glove in hand to reach for the rifle and almost dropped it. “Gun’s still hot,” he told his prisoner. “You musta just aced him.”

“I decide who lives and dies,” Booger recited to himself as he was hauled over to where an unknown man lay sprawled awkwardly in death, not exactly sure why that was important. “I decide who lives or dies.”

“Suuuuuuuure you do, buddy,” Landsmithe replied caustically, his gaze meeting that of his partner as Donaldson reached for the radio on his shoulder to request back up and a squad car be dispatched to their location. “Suuuuuuure you do…”

~~~~~~~~*

“Hey boss, look what we found in a closet in one of them locked labs!”

Watson spun as Okui and Vermel dragged a rather wide-eyed Mr. Cox up to him.

“What’s your name?” Watson demanded brusquely.

Cox kept his mouth shut. He’d already shed his wallet with what little identification he did possess into a five-gallon bucket of floor polish that had been opened previously in the janitorial closet he’d been hiding in. The unmitigated bad luck of having been one of the last doors on the sublevel to be searched had meant that he had very little place to go – and high on a rickety shelf hadn’t turned out to be a wise decision.

Watson gazed at the man with narrowed eyes. It was late – the top to bottom search of the facility known as the Centre had taken thirty-five agents from three states the better part of twelve long hours to seize almost a U-Haul truck’s worth of documents and equipment. At this point in the very long day, he really wasn’t in a mood to put up with recalcitrant suspects. “Take him in,” he instructed his men with a casual wave. “We’ll send his fingerprints and mug shot around and see what kind of info comes back at us.”

Vermel took charge of the white-coated man and dragged him toward the vertical ladder that had been found to be the only working access to the sublevel so far. “Climb,” he ordered, knowing that there was an agent at the top of those metal rungs more than capable of handling yet another whose part in this whole sordid affair would have to be sorted out later. “Found this one hiding,” he yelled up at his counterpart as the white-garbed man finally cleared the access.

“Gotcha,” the nameless voice above replied – and from the sounds of it, hauled at the unknown man from the closet with very little gentility. “Move it.”

“Is that it?” Okui asked Watson.

Watson sighed heavily. “God, I hope so,” he shook his head. “I told you we needed that backup.”

“We got our other suspect – and God knows what else we stopped here,” Okui reassured his superior. “Let’s leave it to the forensic men now to sift through the junk we seized.”

“You’re right. Watson reached for a rung of the metal ladder and hauled himself back up into the brighter light of the sublevel above.

“Did you hear about the guy who stood off the officers outside one of the offices on the top floor – telling them that his boss had ordered that NOBODY go into the office beyond, including herself, and that any who tried were to be shot on sight?”

Watson sighed again. Just what exactly WAS the Centre. “So what did our people do?”

~~~~~~~~*

Hank’s footsteps halted in front of the closed door that Lindel had told him had been assigned to the woman he sought. This was it – the moment of truth.

He drew the handgun from his pocket and chambered a round. He decides who lives and dies, he repeated to himself resolutely. He decides who lives and dies.

Jarod saw his friend as he stepped from the elevator and started down the corridor toward Miss Parker’s room. Then it registered that Hank had a gun in his hand.

“HANK! STOP!”

Hank blinked as Jarod’s voice called to him, disrupting the voice of his mentor in his mind. “No,” he told himself firmly aloud. “I decide who lives and dies. I decide!” And he slammed the door open even as he heard the pounding of heavy footsteps drawing closer behind him.

Sam didn’t quite get a chance to rise before the gun in the intruder’s hand had gone off, piercing the big man’s chest and dropping him back into the chair like a sack of potatoes. Sydney came up out of the chair and flung himself between the gunman and Miss Parker, unprepared for the calm look in the man’s eye as he simply squeezed off another shot. Sydney too, then, dropped from a chest wound.

“Hank!” Jarod yelled, stepping into the room behind him, a gun he’d hoped he’d never have to use pointed at his best friend. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Don’t make me use this…”

“I decide who lives or dies,” Hank pronounced carefully as he raised the gun and pointed it at a face that looked eerily like the one he’d shot so many times before for his mentor. It didn’t matter that he could hear the pounding of footsteps outside in the corridor as the security men homed in on the sounds of yelling. This was it – his job was nearly done.

And the sound of gunshots rang out down the corridor.

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