Encrypted (43 page)

Yeah, like he hadn’t thought of that. How he hated it when she had to show off in front of strangers. “Wow. What a shockingly brilliant idea.”

“Just patch him in.”

Quirk hit the keyboard, dialing Warp
’s
number. As he watched the two blips that represented Zach and Ronnie move out of the room
,
a very nervous voice answered the phone. “Hello?”

Well, at least the civil servant was polite. “Yeah, Warp, get your groove on. There’s a van parked a block away from the building. We need to lay down some serious interference.”

“Wait. Now that I have a communications channel, let me contact the fire department
—
”

“Done.”

“And the closest field office in Albuquerque
—
”

“Done.”

“Then the local
—
”

Quirk cut the nerd off. “Look, we
’
re going to have every city department plus a gaggle of news choppers descending on us in five minutes. We need to make sure
that
everyone survives for the next five minutes.”

Something shifted in Warp’s tone. His voice sounded stronger. Less wigged
-
out. “On it.”

Well. Okay
,
then. Maybe Quirk
was
going to like having an assistant of his very own.

* * *

Zach studied the palmtop in Ronnie’s hand. Although
,
he could probably guess what was happening from the gunfire and screams. The assailants had the agents
pinned
near the holding cell. Given the blitz attack, Zach was surprised
that
three agents still stood. But soon
,
the assailants would pull out the grenades
,
and none would be left.

The Hidden Hand must have wanted Francois alive
,
or this whole thing would have been over minutes ago. To get to the action
,
he and Ronnie only needed to pass through the kitchen to get to the
bull pen
, but there was a gap between the desks. A good ten-foot gap
—
without cover. And the gunmen had taken up
protected
positions
by
the doorway.

“I’m going to need some kind of distraction to get into the room,” he told Ronnie.

She bit the edge of her lip. “The boys are still trying to make sure
that
they can’t see you get into the room.”

“
Y
ou got
anything
in that bag of tricks in your pack?” he asked.

“Well…” Ronnie said, a bit of red coming to her cheeks. “We’ve got a fibrillator.”

“You mean,
defibrillator
?”

She shook her head. “No, I mean
fibrillator
.” Ronnie pulled a shoe
box
-
sized device from her pack. “Basically
,
it creates a sound that is known to put the heart into fibrillation.”

“You mean
—
it kills people with noise?”

“
Temporarily
kills people with a finely tuned pitch that overexcites the electrical node of the heart.”

Zach stared at the woman he thought he had come to know over the last nine months. But he didn’t have time to explore the choices
that
Ronnie made with her spare time. There were more pressing matters. “Exactly how
temporarily
are we talking?”

“Um…remember how ‘beta’ the ray gun was?”
From
his nod, she continued. “Yeah, that EM
pulser
was miles down the production road.”

Since Zach wasn’t going to stop his agents’ hearts on the hope
that
they started again, he nodded to
ward
her pack. “Anything else?”

“It’s another of our ‘super-beta’
items.
W
e like to call them ‘blue light’ specials,” she said
,
hurrying on. “It’s a disc that hyper
—
”

Light
strobed
as a blast of noise hit.

Well, Zach had asked for a distraction
,
and someone setting off a flashbang grenade in the
bull pen
provided it. Actually
,
over
-provided it. Luckily
,
Zach had been so focused on Ronnie’s bizarre assortment of devices that he was turned away from the b
r
unt of the flash. And his ears had been ringing since the crash, so no real loss there.

What the flashbang did mean was
that
the enemy was on the move. So Zach was on the move.

“Stay here,” he ordered as he slid out the doorway and into the
bull pen
.

“No! Wait!” Ronnie yelled
,
but it was too late. He was committed.

CHAPTER 19

El Paso Field Office

8:49
p
.
m
.,
MST

Ronnie fumbled with the disc
’
s controls. Dear
G
od, when they developed the damned thing, why didn’t they make the “
O
n” button easier to find? That was it. From now on
,
every item they developed
would have
a 9
-
1
-
1 emergency easy “
O
n” button that freaking glowed in the dark.

“It’s the second
-
to
-
right control,” Quirk yelled into her ear.

Yes, because
a
second
-
to
-
right
control
on a
round
object was so easy to find.

“Your
other
right!”

Finally
,
Ronnie hit the correct control
,
and the metal discs within metal discs began to spin, clunking and chugging
—
just like a mini-MRI machine. Only this device wasn’t meant for imaging
.
I
t was meant for protection. Or at least she hoped it was.

Zach had leapt from hiding, firing toward the two assailants. Unfortunately
,
what he didn’t know
w
as that
a
flashbang grenade
was
used to signal the guy at the door to join the party. Now the love of her life was smack
-
dab in the middle of the kill zone.

Over Zach’s shoulder
,
she watched the third gunman raise his automatic weapon. There was no way
that
the disc would work from here. If anything
,
it would accelerate the bullets
through
Zach. Not exactly what she needed.

No, the only way to save Zach was to join Zach…unarmed in the middle of a firefight.

But what was a girl to do?

As the gunman braced the weapon against his hip, Ronnie burst from the kitchen, holding the metal disc in front of her.

“Hold on!”

* * *

Ronnie
’s
instruction made no sense
.
A
nd what in the hell was she doing out here
,
anyway? Hadn’t he told her to stay in the kitchen
?
Then
,
Zach heard the rattle of gunfire
at
his left. He turn
ed
to return fire, but even as he squeezed the trigger
,
he knew
that
there was no way he could avoid that hail of bullets.

Zach prepared for the pain
.
B
ut instead
,
the bullets slowed
in
midair. He could actually
see
the bullets coming right for him. Zach couldn’t help but stare as the bullets slowed to a stop. They hung there in the air for a surreal moment,
and
then gained speed. But not toward him
—
to
ward
Ronnie. Or
,
more accurately
,
to the metal disc
that
Ronnie
held
.

Seeming to sense the shift in the fight, the other gunmen fired upon him as well, with equally bizarre results.

“Hold on!” she yelled again.

Ronnie still made no sense
—
until his gun wobbled in his hand. Then
,
it outright fought his grip. Zach clung as tightly as he could
,
but the damn thing flew from his hand and sailed across the room, hitting the disc hard enough to knock Ronnie back a foot.

Then
,
the other guns followed suit. At least the disc disarmed them all. The only problem was
that
Zach’s belt buckle started tugging toward her. He grabbed hold of the nearest desk until he realized
that
it
,
too
,
was making its way to Ronnie.

Now paper
clips, pens, staplers, and even thumbtacks hurled her way.

“Turn it off!”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Ronnie shouted as she took another step toward the kitchen.

* * *

“The third button to the left
!
” Quirk yelled in Ronnie’s ear.

Again, not freaking helpful
,
as all the desks in the
bull pen
clattered their way to her. Luckily
,
the kitchen doorway was too narrow for them to fit through. They piled up at the door like a strange, tangled football huddle.
And she was lucky she wasn’t smack
-
dab in the middle of it. The magnet lashed to her arm wanted very much to go to the metal objects as they came to her. Ronnie had to dig her heels in, fighting the mutual attraction.

As she searched for the elusive “
O
ff” switch
,
she heard a rattling behind her. 
T
he refrigerator lurched forward, rocking from one side to the other.

“Drop it!” Quirk urged.

But how could she
,
if Zach might still be in trouble?

Then the breakroom table and chairs began their zombielike march forward. As the microwave zinged its way through the air, Ronnie dropped the disc and fled down the back hallway, vowing to make field tests a more essential step in their production process.

Hopefully, if anything, she narrowed the odds for Zach.

* * *

Zach ducked under a left hook and brought his own fist up into the guy’s solar plexus. The man doubled over. Zach grabbed the assailant’s lapel and jerked him forward as his knee came up to nail the guy in the stomach.

But this ninja priest was no pushover as he tackled Zach around the waist and shoved them both back. Zach’s head slammed against the wall
,
doubling the number of stars he was already seeing. The assailant punched Zach on the right side. It hurt ten thousand times worse than it should have, but after the beating
Jorge
gave him? Zach was lucky to still be standing.

Using what little strength he had, Zach pivoted, swinging his opponent around
and
slamming the guy against the ramshackle pile of desks. His opponent clutched at his midriff. Zach backed away, ready for some kind of fake
-
out maneuver followed by an attack, but the man gasped twice
and
then fell still.

Cautious, Zach glanced behind the man to find him impaled on the leg of a desk.