Origin in Death (In Death #21)(111)

"How can you-"

"I looked. I've already checked. If there was time, there might be a way to bypass. There isn't. We couldn't get them out, Eve, we couldn't get the chambers out and up in time, even if we could bypass. We can't save them."

She saw the horror of it in his eyes, the same cold horror that was balled in her gut. "We just leave them here?"

"We save her." He shifted the baby awkwardly, and with his hand gripping Eve's began to run. "We move now, or we're all buried here."

She ran, past the husks of what she'd killed, through the shattered bodies of boys who'd been created to kill. She smelled death, and her own blood, Roarke's blood.

They'd shed it, and still it hadn't been enough.

Nothing stops the vicious and the ugly, she remembered. She'd said it herself.

Warning, warning, red line for safe evacuation has been reached. All remaining personnel must evacuate immediately. This facility will terminate in four minutes.

"I wish she'd shut the f**k up."

She kept up the limping run. Her hip was now an insane symphony of pain. A glance at Roarke showed her his face was bone-white and clammy under the smears of blood.

She saw the elevator ahead, its doors shut.

"Can't leave them unsecured." Roarke's voice was labored, and Eve was nearly as horrified when he shoved the baby at her as she was with the countdown. "Wasn't time to augment the security and keep them open." Instead he swiped a card, once, twice.

"Buggering hell. Gotten sweaty, bloody, too. Won't read." He dug out a handkerchief and began to polish it off while under his breath he cursed in Gaelic.

Hooked in her arm, the baby screamed as if she were pounding it with a hammer.

Red line plus sixty seconds. This facility will terminate in three minutes.

He swiped the card a third time, and they leaped inside. "Street level," he shouted, then cursed again when Eve pushed the baby at him. "What? You've got her."

"No, you've got her. I'm in charge of this op."

"Screw that. I'm a bloody civilian."

Eve tapped a hand on her weapon. "You even try to give it back to me, I'm stunning you. Self-defense."

Red line plus ninety seconds. All personnel should be at maximum safe distance.

"Cutting it close," Eve mumbled as sweat rolled down her back.

"Is there any other way?"

"This thing could go faster. This son-of-a-bitching thing could really go faster." She gritted her teeth when the warning announced red line plus two minutes. "We're still in this when it blows, it'll take us out, too, right?"

"Likely."

She stared at the controls as if her wrath could speed things up. "We couldn't have gotten them out. No matter what we'd done."

"We couldn't, no." He rested his free hand on her shoulder.

"You brought that one so I'd have to leave the rest. So I'd have to go, get her out. So I'd have something tangible to make me move my ass."

"I also figured you'd be the one holding her on the way out, while she's screaming my eardrums ragged."

Terminate in thirty seconds.

"If we don't make it, I love you and blah, blah, blah."

He laughed, and shifted so his arm wrapped around her shoulders.

"I'll say the same. It's been a hell of a ride so far."

When the final countdown commenced, she reached up, gripped his hand.

Terminate in ten seconds, nine, eight, seven . . .

The doors opened. They flew through them together. She heard the count go down to three as the doors secured behind them.

She snatched her coat from where she'd tossed it, and bolted through the room with him.

There was a rumble under her feet, a wave of vibration. She thought of what was below her, in tanks, in hives. Then pushed it away, shoved it back. Her nightmares would begin soon enough to go back there

now.

She shrugged back into her coat. If her hands shook, he was the only one who knew it. "This is going to take me a while."

He glanced toward the line of cops.

"Take your time. I'll be outside."

"You can pass that one onto one of the uniforms. We'll have CP here shortly to deal with the minors."

"I'll be outside," he repeated.

"Go get treated," she called after him.

"In this place? I don't think so."

"Got a point," she replied, then moved forward to do the job.

Outside, Roarke went directly to his car. Only more relief washed over him when he saw Diana lying on the backseat with the younger girl curled against her.

He opened the door, crouched down when Diana's eyes opened. "You kept your word," he said.

"Deena's dead. I know."

"I'm very sorry. She died saving. .. saving your sister." He held out the baby when Diana opened her arms. "She helped save the children."

"Is Wilson dead?"

"Yes."

"All of him."

"All we found, yes. The facilities are gone. Destroyed. The equipment in them, the records, the technology."

Her eyes were clear, level. "What are you going to do with us now?"