Memory Zero (28 page)

The vibrations through the floor stopped. Doors slammed shut, and then the door near her feet opened. Hands grabbed her roughly. Her immediate instinct was to fight, but until she knew exactly what was going on, it made more sense to play possum. She went limp, feigning unconsciousness.

Hands slipped under her shoulders, and suddenly she was free from the metal flooring. Gravel crunched and more doors opened.

“Any problems?”

Jack’s voice, coming from a doorway to her left. So, she’d been right. He wasn’t dead, and he
was
mixed up in whatever was going on. For a moment, it felt as if someone had stabbed her.

“No trouble whatsoever.” The slight hint of Irish brogue in the speaker’s tone was definitely familiar. She’d heard it before—on the phone, asking to speak to Jack.

“Take her down to the holding cells. We’ll let her sleep it off for a few hours.”

The man near her head grunted, and the two men moved off again. They carried her down a flight of stairs and into a room that smelled musty and old. But
it was occupied. She could hear soft conversation to her right—female voices.

Another door creaked open, and she was thrown none too gently onto a mattress. The cloth over her head was pulled away, taking with it more than a few strands of hair. She bit back her yelp of pain and kept her eyes closed. The two men moved away, and the door slammed shut.

She waited several minutes before opening her eyes. Her prison was a redbrick room, maybe ten feet long by six feet wide. The door was metal, with a small barred opening in its middle. She looked behind her. There was another window on the back wall, probably a couple of feet in diameter. Big enough to crawl through, if it weren’t for the thick metal crossbars.

Sunlight streamed in, warming the chill from the air. She’d obviously been out for some time, because the sun seemed to be riding high in the sky. She swung her feet off the bed and stood. The red walls swam momentarily, and a bitter taste rose to the back of her throat. She swallowed and tried to ignore the churning in her stomach. Whatever drug they’d used to knock her out, it obviously didn’t agree with her system.

The rope around her ankles was thick and tight. If it weren’t for her boots, it would probably be cutting off her circulation. She blinked.
Her boots?
She was dressed—still wearing the same clothes that she’d worn last night. Had they re-dressed her, or had she never undressed? All she could remember was getting to the bedroom after Karl had bandaged her wounds. She had a vague memory of the softness of the mattress, but she couldn’t remember stripping or climbing into bed.

Had Karl drugged her drink? Had Jack been at the house all the time, simply waiting for Karl to do his dirty work? If that were true, then maybe the SIU bombing had saved Gabriel from being captured—or even killed. Or maybe he was the reason it had been bombed—to get him away from Karl. And her.

She shuffled to the window. There wasn’t much to see outside, just several feet of concrete and another wall, this one bluestone. A breeze whispered in, carrying with it the stench of rotting rubbish. Maybe her cell was near a dump of some kind.

She shuffled back to the door and peeked out. The main room was full of shadows. The two women were still talking in one of the cells to her right. To her left, a set of stairs curved around a wall and disappeared. No one stood watch.

She looked at the door lock. Key-coded. The decoder was still in her boot—she could feel the end of it digging into her ankle beneath the ropes. If she could somehow get it, she might be able to get out of the cell. Then all she had to do was find out what Jack was up to.

She shuffled back to the bed and sat down. Twisting her legs up beside her, she leaned sideways and reached with her fingertips for her boots. Her shoulders cracked, and pain slithered down her spine. She bit her lip and reached a little more, trying to get closer. No matter what she did, she couldn’t touch more than a fingertip to the top of her boot. There wasn’t a hope in hell of pulling anything out.

She cursed and slammed her feet back to the concrete. Then she stared at her boots for a moment. Why didn’t she just take them off?

If there was enough leeway in the rope to do a shuffle
walk, surely there was enough leeway to kick off a boot. Raising her legs off the floor, she forced her left leg a little in front of the right. The rope rolled off the top of her boot and bit into her leg, sawing at her flesh. She ignored it and tried to catch her left heel with her other boot. After a few minutes, she managed to hook the heel and force the boot off her foot, though the effort left her whole body trembling.

She dropped her legs back to the floor, took a deep breath and blew it back out, lifting the sweaty strands of hair off her forehead. Then she took a look at the damage. The rope had dug deep into her leg, and red trails of blood were beginning to wind their way through the flower patterns in her socks. And rope burns
hurt
. It felt as if someone were holding a flame to her ankles, burning her flesh. But she had no time to sit and feel sorry for herself. First, she wanted to find out who else Jack was keeping locked up, and then she had to get the hell out of here.

She rose and shuffled over to her boot. The rope around her ankles was looser, though not enough to actually get it off. She crouched down, and felt around the inside edges of her boot until she found the decoder. She carefully pulled it out and shuffled back to the door.

The key-coder beeped after several seconds, and the door clicked open. She peered out. No one lurked in the shadows. She pushed the door open with her shoulder, and then she headed toward the cells at the far end of the room.

The talking stopped as she neared. She hesitated, listening. Inside the end cell, someone breathed heavily, short, sharp gasps that spoke of fear.

“Hello?” she whispered. “Detective Samantha Ryan,
State Police.” She was suspended, but that wasn’t a point these women needed to know right now.

A white face appeared at the barred window to her right. “You’re here to rescue us?”

She snorted. Some rescue. She was tied up tighter than a turkey on Christmas day. “Not exactly. Step back, ma’am.”

She turned around and placed the decoder on the lock. The door clicked in response. She pushed the door open and shuffled in. The two women inside looked at her for a moment, then they shared a glance. It wasn’t hard to see the disappointment in their eyes. Neither was tied, which wasn’t a good sign. At the very least, it meant Jack was very, very sure of his security.

“Officer, you seem to be in worse trouble than we are,” the woman with the white face said.

“For the moment, I’d have to agree.” She held out her tied hands. “I don’t suppose one of you ladies could get these ropes off?”

The older of the two stepped forward. She had long brown hair swept into a ponytail and held by a red and purple scarf. Her loose-fitting pants were also purple, while her sweater was vibrant white. Karl’s wife. She had to be, because there was no other explanation for his betrayal of Gabriel. Even in the brief time she’d seen them together, it was obvious they shared a deep friendship. At least now she understood the anguish she’d seen in Karl’s eyes. To save his wife, he had to kill a friendship he held dear.

The other woman in the cell was someone she knew. “Lyssa,” she said, surprised. “How the hell did you get here? I thought Stephan was sending you to stay with his old man?”

Surprise flitted through Lyssa’s blue eyes, followed
quickly by pain. She took a deep breath, and then released it in a sigh that was somehow mournful. “I have not seen Stephan for at least six months. Nor have I met you, Officer.”

“But … I saw you, yesterday.” She hesitated. Gabriel had said some shifters were multi-shifters. The Lyssa she’d seen with Stephan was definitely a shifter. She was getting no such reading from this woman, whom Gabriel had said was a changer. This talent of hers seemed to be very selective about who it did, and didn’t, pick up.

“That wasn’t me, Officer.”

“Obviously not, if you’re here.”

The ropes finally came off. She rubbed her wrists, then shook her legs to get the circulation going properly again. Big mistake. The rope burns began to ache with renewed vigor.

“Those wounds need tending,” Karl’s wife commented. “They’ll get infected, otherwise.”

Right now, infection was the least of her worries. “Has Jack been down here? Has he said anything to you two?”

Both women shook their heads. “We’re fed through the slot in the door three times a day,” Lyssa said. “They escort us to the showers once a day, and they bring in a box-load of books and magazines every week. But it is always the same two men, and neither will answer any of our questions.”

So Jack had no obvious intention of harming them. He just wanted them out of the way. She glanced at Karl’s wife—Jan, if she remembered correctly. “How long have you been here?”

“Just a day.”

Snatching her had to have been a last-minute plan—
maybe a result of Sam unexpectedly finding the disks. And if Jack knew Gabriel was close to Karl, it would be an easy enough guess that, sooner or later, he would take her there.

She looked at Lyssa. “They haven’t said anything to you, in the six months you’ve been here?”

“No.” Lyssa hesitated, her hand drifting down to her stomach. It was only then that Sam noticed the telltale rounding. “I fear my child will be born with Stephan never knowing.”

She obviously didn’t know about the shapeshifter taking her place—and didn’t know that
that
shifter was also pregnant. Nor was it really the time to tell her. “Believe me, I fully intend to get us all out of this before that ever happens.”

But first, she had to find out what Jack was up to. She bent down and picked up the ropes. “I’m going to have to lock you back in for now. Jack obviously has no intention of harming either of you, and until I know what he’s up to, and where exactly we are, I don’t want to do anything that may jeopardize that situation.”

The two women nodded. She spun and walked out of their cell, carefully locking the door again. Then she made her way back to her own cell. Retrieving her boot, she slipped it on, then shoved the decoder back. The ropes she flung under the bed, just in case she needed them later. Then she sat on the bed and waited.

The sun was well on the way to setting by the time the two men came back. They glanced at her hands and feet, then at each other, surprise evident in their expressions. One stepped back and pulled out a gun, motioning her to follow the other man.

She climbed off the bed and followed the taller of the two men. He led her up the stairs, then down a long corridor remarkable only for its antiseptic whiteness. A door swooshed open at the far end, revealing yet another corridor. Their footsteps echoed hollowly, as if the surface were metal flooring hung in space rather than anchored to the ground. Another door opened and they finally entered a room.

It was sparsely furnished—containing only a white desk and two cheap-looking chairs. Her escorts stopped and motioned her to sit. She chose the chair in the farthest corner and watched the first man walk round the desk to the com-screen.

“She’s here.”

“Send her in. I want you and Roston to remain outside.”

Roston
. The man with the Irish brogue—the man who’d called Jack several times in the week before he disappeared. He had blond hair, a scraggly ginger beard, and green eyes that were feral and full of anger. A wolf shapechanger, she thought, and one not in full control of his other nature.

The door behind the desk slid open. Beyond it, she saw warm amber walls and a tapestry depicting two knights at battle, one dark, one light. Oddly fitting, given the situation. Jack had often considered himself something of a dark knight. But was she the light? Or something else entirely?

Roston motioned her into the room. She rose and entered. Jack stood at the far end of the room, hands behind his back, staring at another picture rather than facing her. The door slid shut and the lock clicked home, trapping her in the room with a probable madman. She looked quickly around. No windows through
which to escape, and very little in the way of loose furnishings to grab as a weapon—which certainly was deliberate.

Jack finally turned around to face her. He looked no different from the last time she’d seen him. No different from the clone she’d shot. Only his gaze gave the game away. It held a coldness that went beyond anything she’d ever seen before.

He was a vampire with an agenda all his own. Not her partner. Not her friend.

“How nice of you to join me,” he said.

Her smile was thin. “Why? Were you falling apart?”

“Still seeking sanctuary in humor when faced with tough situations, I see.” He motioned her to a chair that was firmly bolted to the floor. “Please, sit down.”

“Thanks, but I prefer to stand.” At least she could run if he tried to jump her for a little sunset refreshment. “Why aren’t you in the land of nod, like all good little vampires should be at this hour?”

He smiled. There was nothing nice about that smile. “Sunshine may be dangerous to a vampire’s health, but that doesn’t mean we can’t move around during the daylight hours.” He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Have you learned nothing in the years we’ve been together?”

She crossed her arms and leaned against the door. “I’ve learned that friends can’t be trusted.”

“Ah.” He gave a small smile, swiveled his chair around and sat down. “Come and sit. I promise not to jump you.”

She remained exactly where she was. A small vein near his temple pulsed slightly in response.

“If I wanted to harm you, I could have well and truly done it before now.”

“But you didn’t want me harmed. You wanted me scared.” As Gabriel had suggested. Her gaze roamed the features that were so familiar, and yet somehow so foreign. “Why, Jack?”

Surprise flared in his eyes and just as quickly died. He leaned back in his chair. “You never were a fool.”

Yes, she was. She’d called this man her friend. Had trusted him beyond common sense. “Just answer the question.”