Lock In (Lock In, #1)(61)

“Designed to take over someone’s brain,” Vann said.

“Pretty much,” Tony said.

At the end of the alley I saw a familiar face. “I think I see Brenda Rees,” I said. I waved until she saw me. She smiled, waved back, and started walking toward us.

“And we have to get going if we want to catch our movie,” Tayla said, to Tony.

“Last question,” Vann said. “Any way this software can work on a network that’s not this one?”

“You mean on a different Integrator,” Tony said.

“That’s right,” Vann said.

“Long answer or short answer?” Tony said. Tayla groaned.

“Short answer.”

“Seems unlikely,” Tony said.

Brenda Rees reached into her handbag, pulled out a gun, and aimed it at Vann.

I yelled “Gun!” and pulled Vann down at the same time, covering her body with my threep. One bullet cracked my back panel and another pinged off my arm. I felt an excruciating pain with both and immediately turned off my pain perception. The patio of Alexander’s erupted in screams and panic. I grabbed my stunner and wheeled up to return fire. Rees was taking off down the alley with the panicked crowd.

“Oh, f*ck,” Vann said. I looked down to see her bleeding from the shoulder. Tayla was already there, applying pressure.

Vann looked up at me. “The f*ck you doing, Shane?” she said. “Get her.”

“Tayla,” I said.

“I got this,” she said, not looking up from Vann’s shoulder.

I ran after Rees.

Rees had run left onto Thirty-third Street. As I got onto Thirty-third I saw her go left again onto M. There was the sound of another gunshot, followed by screams. I turned the corner and was nearly knocked over by people running. I went into the street to avoid them and saw Rees halfway down the block, scanning for me.

I didn’t have a shot. There were still too many people around. I ran straight to her instead.

She saw me when I was about twenty feet from her, managed to raise her gun and take a shot at me. It either missed or nicked me in a way that I didn’t feel at the time. I barreled into her and knocked her into a wall, taking a chunk of her leg out as it jammed into a fire hose coupling. Her gun flew away.

My momentum smashed me into the wall a fraction of a second later. I let go of Rees. She scrambled away, limping out into the street, reaching for something else in her handbag. I trained my stunner on her and prepared to fire.

And then held fire when she turned and I saw the grenade in her hand, pin pulled.

“You’ve got to be f*cking kidding me,” I said.

Rees smiled, limped farther out into the street, and released the lever.

Then her face changed.

She looked confused for a second, and then saw what she had in her hands.

She screamed, dropped the grenade, and turned to run away from it. I ducked my head in against the wall and waited for the detonation.

It punched me into the wall.

Fragments from the grenade embedded into the wall above me and jammed into the glass storefronts all around me.

I looked up and around to see if there were any casualties. The only people I saw were running away too quickly to have been wounded.

I looked over to Rees.

The grenade had taken off her legs.

I went over to her and was amazed she was still alive, looking down at her body. Her left arm was a mangle. Her right arm pawed at her leg.

She saw me. “I can’t hear anything,” she said to me, shakily. “I can’t hear. Help me.”

“I’m right here,” I said, even though she couldn’t hear me. I took her right hand and held it.

She started to cry. “I didn’t want this to happen,” she said. “I didn’t choose this.”

“It’s all right,” I said. On my inside voice I was calling 911.

She stopped looking at the mess of her legs and looked at me. “You,” she said. “I remember you. Dinner. I remember.”

I nodded, to let her know I remembered her too.

“He wasn’t there the whole time,” she said. “I was there the whole time. I was. I was. But not him. He wasn’t. He wasn’t. He.”

She stopped talking. I held her until she died.

Five minutes later I looked up to see Detective Trinh looking down at me, gun drawn, two other cops behind her, both aiming at my head.

“Don’t you start,” I said.

“You want to explain this to me, Agent Shane?” Trinh said.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“I have time.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

She motioned to Rees with her gun. “Who is that?” she said.

“For your purposes, her name is ‘Property of the FBI,’” I said.

* * *

I got back to Alexander’s and found Vann on a stretcher, oxygen mask on her face, EMTs prepping her for travel. “I’m fine,” she said.

I glanced over to Tayla, who was wiping blood from her threep with a towel the EMTs had given her. “She’s not fine,” Tayla said. “She’s got a bullet in her shoulder. It looks like it missed anything major but she’s still on the way to the hospital. I would take her to Howard so I could look after her myself, but Georgetown is closer. I’ll go with her there. I know some people. She’ll get looked after.”