Vox(88)

It’s already open.

And inside is a face I recognize like a mother recognizes her own child.





SEVENTY-FIVE




The elevator doors might as well be the very mouth of hell, complete with their ominous Abandon all hope warning inscribed where the lighted numbers should be. Still, I step inside, following the others. Hope be damned.

This is my son.

Steven slumps toward me, suddenly more boy than man. In two days, he’s grown leaner, and the rippled bones of his ribs rise and fall under my hands as I draw him close. Wherever Poe is taking us, we’re on this trip together.

Poe interrupts, gently breaking this mother-child embrace. “Time for that later, Dr. McClellan. When we get to the main floor, don’t look up and don’t speak.” He takes three black bands from his hip pocket and passes them to Lorenzo, Petroski, and me. “Put these on.”

“No way,” Lorenzo says. “No fucking way.”

Petroski blanches, shaking his head.

“They’re plastic,” Poe says. “Just do it. Sergeant Petroski can’t get you out of here. But I can. As long as you do what I tell you.”

I snap the band around my wrist as the elevator doors hiss closed. The men do the same.

I look a question at Poe.

“Go ahead.”

“What’s going on?” I say, bracing myself for the familiar jolt of pain.

Nothing happens.

“Trust me,” Poe says. “Keep your heads down and—I don’t know—try to look tired until we get past security.”

Not one of the people in the elevator—including me, I note, as I catch my reflection in the polished steel wall—needs to be told to look tired. I check Lorenzo’s watch and see that it’s two in the morning, but an entire year might as well have passed since Morgan brought us back here yesterday afternoon.

Poe presses the button for the main floor. “When we get out, you stay in line and get into the back of the van.”

The ride up seems to take an hour.

“Okay,” Poe says. “Ladies first.”

We file out, Lin, Isabel, Jackie, then me. I feel something press against my back as I leave the elevator, and for a brief irrational moment, I think it’s the barrel of Petroski’s .45, but it’s warm and reassuring. Lorenzo’s hand.

“I’m right here, Gianna,” he whispers.

Where there were two soldiers, I now count ten pairs of shined boots. One pair steps forward smartly.

“Can’t let them leave, sir,” a voice says. “Dr. LeBron’s orders.”

I’m itching to tell him Dr. LeBron isn’t going to be ordering anything in the near or distant future, although he may be putting in a few requisitions for ice while he burns in hell. I find myself smiling and bite the insides of my cheeks.

Poe, directly in front of me, waves a familiar-looking envelope. In the upper-right-hand corner is the presidential seal. In the left corner, where a return address would normally go, is a silver embossed capital P.

“Tell him,” Poe says, handing over the envelope.

There’s an anxious rustle of paper as it’s torn open and the letter inside is unfolded.

“Fort Meade,” the soldier says. “I see. All right, then, you know where to go.” Then, in a gruffer voice, “Stand aside, men. Let them through.”

Whispers circulate around me. “Isn’t that the doctor?” “Hey—he’s the kid on television last night.” “I think I know her from somewhere.” “Damn, seven today.”

Burke’s quote comes back to me, the same one Steven paraphrased when the men came for Julia King: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

As we pass by the rows of boots, as I hear the whispers and murmurs of these men, I can’t decide whether I feel disgust or pity.

Maybe it’s a mixture of both.

Lorenzo is the last to climb into the van and takes a place next to me on the bench. Before Poe closes us in, I note an uncomfortable absence of windows, or of an interior handle on the rear doors. Terror creeps under my skin as the engine fires up, and I wonder if I’ve—we’ve—just been played.

“Everyone okay?” a voice says. It’s male, soft, and low. I recognize it but can’t place the timbre. “Turning lights on now, Christopher.”

That voice. It’s so damned familiar.

When the lights flicker on, illuminating not seven, but nine faces, I see why. Del and Sharon are in the back of the van with us. I reach out to take Sharon’s hand, squeezing it. She squeezes back and I almost want to fling myself into the arms of this woman I barely know.

“Time for that later,” she says.

“Sharon, honey, you get to work on those bracelets,” Del says, pointing to Jackie’s, Lin’s, and Isabel’s wrists. “You remember how to do it?”

Sharon rolls her eyes. “I did our girls, didn’t I?” Then, addressing me, she adds, “Men. They all think they’re the only experts.” She plants a kiss full on her husband’s lips. “Don’t you worry, honey. I’ll love you ’til you’re dead. Maybe a while after that.”

She works with the same steadiness on Jackie’s counter as Lin did when trepanning the chimpanzee. “You might get a little buzz, girl, but don’t say a word unless you want both of us knocked on our asses. Del’s good, but his key isn’t the same one those goons who put this on you used. Okay. Ready?”