Memory Zero (7 page)

The SIU had them. The defense forces had them. So, too, did a few more covert government departments. As far as he knew, Sethanon
didn’t
have them.

He rose and moved into the next room. This room, a bedroom, had been shielded from the main blast by the kitchen cooking units. It had more smoke and water damage than anything else. Sodden masses of boxes and clothes lay everywhere. Even the bed was laden down with junk. Samantha Ryan might live in the apartment, but she sure as hell didn’t sleep in this room. There wasn’t space enough for a gnat to move.

He was about to turn around when the window caught his attention. Why was it broken when the bomb had destroyed nothing else in this room, not even the infinitely more fragile lightbulb? He weaved his way through the waterlogged boxes. Broken glass had scattered over the layers of junk near the window. If the explosive force of the bomb
had
caused the break, it would have blown out, not in.

He placed his hands on the sill, and, carefully avoiding the sharp shards still embedded in the window frame, leaned out the window. No stairs, and no obvious way of getting to this window from the ground. He glanced up. Another two stories, then the roof.

He headed back to the main room. “Captain, have you assigned anyone to the roof yet?”

Marsdan looked up, sudden interest evident in his hawklike features. “No. Why?”

“Might be worth a look. I think someone broke in through the bedroom window before the blast.”

Two officers were immediately assigned. He started to follow, but a long slash across the wall under the living room window caught his eye. He walked across to examine it. Another laser wound—and one that looked to have been caused by firing at a moving target.

He rose and looked out the window. If she’d jumped out this window, then surely she would still have been lying down on the rain-washed pavement when the police arrived. No human could survive a fall like that, and she certainly wouldn’t have been well enough to get up and run.

Then again, Finley’s test results had indicated Samantha Ryan was definitely something more than human.

He watched the rain gust across the pavement below. The fact that the bomb had destroyed only one section of the apartment suggested it was meant to either cover the attack on Ryan or destroy something specific. Maybe even both. No matter what that something was, no matter whether the bomb succeeded in destroying its intended target, she would have had a
backup. It would be in this apartment somewhere, and she would be back for it.

All he had to do was sit here and wait.

S
AM RUBBED HER ARMS IN
the vague hope that the friction might stop her shivering. She was soaked to the skin and so cold she was beginning to lose sensation in her feet, which was probably a good thing, considering the depths of the laser burns. She hadn’t worked up the courage to look too closely at the wounds, but a cursory glance had revealed a shocking amount of scorched skin and something that might even have been exposed bone.

She blew out a breath and leaned out of the shadows again. Across the street, her apartment building had slipped back into dark silence. The flashing blue and red lights had finally left. Also gone were the teenagers masquerading as State Police officers, and the solitary gray Ford with its government plates.

She still didn’t understand why the SIU had been called down here. Granted, she was under investigation, but the bombing of her apartment was IIU territory—not State and definitely not SIU.

Maybe she
should
have arrested those two prostitutes last night. Maybe then her life would have remained sane.

But it was far too late for regrets. All she could do now was try and figure out what the hell was going on. She studied her apartment building again. All that remained was the solitary blue light hovering near the front steps. It designated a crime scene and warned anyone entering the building not to go near said crime scene. Upstairs, near her apartment, there would be
another one, along with a monitor that would activate the moment anyone tried to enter her rooms. If the SIU were involved in the investigation, she had no doubt there would be a nonhuman guard somewhere in the vicinity.

Getting around them all would be a problem. She could probably get past the first monitor using the State’s override code, but the monitors guarding the immediate crime scene usually had specific codes. The general override code wouldn’t work. While Jack might have managed to get past, she’d never had his aptitude for hot-wiring. But someone else did. Either that or someone from State had given the invaders her security codes. How else could they have gotten past the heat sensors near the windows? It was only thanks to the alarm she’d installed the day after Jack disappeared that she was alive right now.

A chill ran down her spine—a chill that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with fear. The stranger had said Jack was still alive. And Jack had all her old codes.

It didn’t make sense.
Nothing
that had happened in the last twenty-four hours made sense.

Including her surviving a two-story swan dive out the window and onto the pavement.

She was bruised and sore all over, and her feet burned something fierce from the laser wounds. But she had no serious injuries from the fall, and that was definitely a miracle.

However, it would take another damn miracle to get in and out of her apartment without being caught by the State and SIU watchdogs. And with her feet burned so badly, she couldn’t exactly run.

Sighing again, she wriggled her toes as the not-so-gentle rain briefly alleviated the pain of the burns. But sitting in the shadows of the building across from her own, getting wetter and colder by the minute, was achieving nothing.

She had to get into that apartment and retrieve her backup com-unit—if it had survived the blast. It should have, hidden and protected as it was by the mountains of junk in her bedroom.

But Jack knew about her backup system. If her partner was alive, and if he
was
behind the bomb, then that, too, would be gone. Though she
had
shifted its location since his disappearance, and the new alarm hadn’t allowed the invaders time to look around before they’d attacked.

At least she still had the comlink bracelet she’d stolen. And they’d been developed to survive just about anything—even a bomb blast. The files would be safe, as long as Marsdan and his juniors hadn’t found her bag—or, at least, bothered to look inside it. But to find out, she’d have to move. She grabbed the railing lining the steps for support and pulled herself upright. Fire leapt up her legs the minute she put any weight on her feet, and for a moment, she thought she was going to puke. Swallowing heavily, she tried to ignore the throbbing rush of pain and hobbled forward as quickly as she could.

Never before had the street seemed so wide. But after what felt like an eternity, she reached her building’s front steps and grasped the railing as fiercely as a drowning swimmer did a life buoy. Her breathing was little more than hungry pants of air, and her stomach heaved, leaving a bitter taste in the back of
her mouth. Maybe her first port of call should have been a hospital, but the staff were required to report laser burns, and she’d have ended up in the hands of the State Police again.

Until she figured out just who was trying to kill her, she intended to trust no one but herself.

The churning in her stomach began to ease. After taking several more deep breaths, she resolutely hobbled up the front steps. The blue light hovering near the door became agitated, and a stern voice asked for her name and apartment number, adding the warning that she was about to enter a crime scene. As if she didn’t already know. She flipped open the monitor’s control box and punched in the State override code. The sharp voice stopped, and the globe ceased its whirling. Of course, when the State boys did a link with the unit to check who was coming in and out of the building, they’d know she—or at least someone with access to the codes—had entered. But hopefully, by then, she’d be long gone.

She edged inside the door and quickly scanned the lobby. There was no one around. She limped across to the stairs and looked up. Everest had surely never seemed so high. She grabbed the handrail and began to haul herself up.

By the time she got to the first landing, the pain in her feet was so bad her legs were shaking and her head was spinning. She collapsed in a heap and stared at the remaining steps in despair. She was never going to make it the rest of the way. Not like this. Sweat dripped down her forehead, stinging her eyes. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, then groaned as her stomach rolled and rose. On hands and knees,
she lurched toward the nearest planter. Luckily for the plant, she’d consumed little more than coffee over the last twenty-four hours.

Once she’d finished heaving, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, closed her eyes and leaned back against the balustrade. God, she felt awful. And there was still another set of stairs to climb.

She was contemplating how she was going to manage it when the softest of sounds flowed across the silence—a resonance as soothing as the whisper of silk shimmying across a bed.

She opened her eyes and looked up. A man stood at the top of the stairs, staring down at her. The warm corridor light flared strangely across his back and shoulders, almost giving him the appearance of wings as it cast his features into shadows.
A dark angel
, she thought, and wondered briefly if death had come to collect her.

Nah
. Hell was more likely to be her last resting place.

He moved, and the angel image fled. What remained was a tall man, with dark brown hair, dressed in a dark gray suit. The color of choice for those in the SIU.

She groaned again. She really wasn’t up to another tête-à-tête with the boys from the spook squad—if indeed he was one of them.

He walked down the steps, loose-limbed yet somehow graceful, then stopped near her feet and knelt down. He reached out but didn’t quite touch her right foot. She sucked in a gasp of air anyway. “Don’t—”

“I wasn’t,” he said, voice soft as he glanced up at her.

She knew those eyes. Would have recognized the
odd, green-flecked hazel depths anywhere. This was the man who’d rescued her last night.

“What are you doing here?” she muttered, unable to keep the hint of annoyance from her voice. “And how did you find me?”

A dark eyebrow rose. “Haven’t you heard? The SIU knows all.”

So she’d guessed right; he was with the spook squad. “Let me see some ID.”

He reached inside his suit jacket and drew out a small ID card. She studied the photo and eye scan, and then glanced down at his name. Gabriel Stern. Assistant director, no less. Which was better than being confronted by Hanrahan, the formidable man in charge of the spook squad, she supposed, but it still begged the question—what was it about either her or her case that required involvement by the squad’s upper echelon?

She handed back the card. “Not a good photo, Mr. Stern.”

“They never are. And please, call me Gabriel. I prefer less formality.”

She raised an eyebrow. He’d have to be the first SIU officer in history to ever say that. Most were sticklers for regulations, and regulations said no first names. She’d never understood why. She doubted if anyone else did, either.

“So why didn’t you back up my story about Jack and that creature? You were chasing the thing, for Christ’s sake.”

His eyes gained an intensity she suddenly found unnerving. Her breath caught in her throat and, for an instant, it felt as if she could simply reach out and touch his thoughts, his soul.

And, for some reason, she found that a more terrifying thought than anything else that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

“I have my reasons,” he said after a moment, and looked down at her feet.

She suddenly found herself able to breathe again. Damn, maybe she
did
need more psych tests.

“These are some pretty bad burns,” he commented into the silence.

The men from the SIU were observant, no doubt about it. “No kidding. And here I was thinking about running a marathon.”

He glanced up again. This time the slightest hint of a smile touched his full lips, softening the impact of his eyes. “Maybe tomorrow.”

He seemed in no great hurry to move, which was odd. She knew from past experience that SIU breezed in and out of situations before you had time to blink. Him squatting at her feet simply didn’t make sense. Unless, of course, he had a motive for doing so.

Her heart began to beat a little faster. Maybe they’d discovered something about Jack’s case, something that implicated her. But if that were the case, why didn’t he simply arrest her?

Swallowing to ease the sudden dryness in her throat, she asked, “What are you doing here?”

He rocked back on his heels slightly. “Direct. I like that.”

“I don’t care what you like, mister. Just answer the damn question.”

If her tone was less than civil, who cared? If he was here on official business, she had the right to know. And if he wasn’t … well, what in hell
did
he want?

The slight smile tugged the corners of his lips again.
She had an odd impression it was something that didn’t happen often. Which would be a pity, since even a slight smile transformed his angular features into something worth a second look.

“The SIU have assigned me as a temporary guard. We believe your life might be in danger.” He glanced up the stairs, then back at her. “It looks like we were right.”

“Yeah, except you’re just a little late.” She paused, her gaze narrowing. “Why the hell would an assistant
director
be assigned such a menial task?”

“Because the squad is stretched to the limit and there is no one else. And we’ve never claimed to be perfect.”

She snorted softly. The squad might well be short on people, but she had a feeling this man was here for reasons other than that. “Right. Am I able to get back into my apartment?”