caught there, imbedded in the drywall that separated this office from the one next door.
She dived to the floor and snap-rolled past Andrus, or tried to, but he grabbed her by the hair. Sizzles of pain shot through her scalp as he wrenched her backward, and then she was staring up at him as he struggled to work the knife free of the wall, and she knew that once it was loose, he would run the blade across her throat.
His gun rode in his waistband holster, just above her. She grabbed at it, tried to wrest it loose. He released her hair and snatched her wrist, and she sprang upright, jerking him off balance as she threw her body sideways across the desk, slamming his elbow on the desktop, freeing her wrist from his grip, and now the purse was within reach and she closed her fingers over the strap.
He struck her face with the flat of his hand, a powerful blow that nearly knocked her unconscious, but somehow she held on to the purse and now her hand was inside, groping for the gun.
She curled her forefinger over the trigger and squeezed once, blowing a hole in the handbag.
The gunshot was curiously muffled. The purse had acted as a silencer, absorbing the noise. The dull crack of the gun’s report was a sound in a dream, and only the hard recoil made it real.
Andrus spun. She thought he’d been hit. No, he was pivoting away from her, diving behind the desk, and she knew he would draw his own gun, and in these close quarters the two of them might easily kill each other.
She took cover by the file cabinet, not an ideal position but the only one available.
Then Andrus was up and he fired twice, not aiming. She ducked as plaster showered her. Then the door was open, and Andrus was gone.
He’d fled into the hall. Maybe he was on his way back to the main room, hoping to take out some of the crowd Take out some of the crowd.
She looked at the computer on the desk, still displaying the newspaper story of a traumatized boy who had Gerald Andrus’s eyes.
And she knew.
Mobius had never been interested in the murder of random strangers. He had planted VX on the subway merely to implicate Hayde and give himself cover.
The deaths that mattered to him, the ones that counted, were always traceable to the defining incident in his life, the standoff in 1968, and the way it had ended-with his mother shooting him, then killing herself.
He hated her for what she’d done. Hated all women. Sought to dominate them, to bring them pain, and finally to take their lives.
But not just women. His mother hadn’t acted alone. In his mind, at least, she’d been driven to her final acts of violence-she’d been trapped, cornered-left with no escape except death.
They had done that. The sheriff’s deputies. Men with guns and badges. Officers of the law. Upholders of authority.
He must hate them, too.
All of them.
And now he had a command center crowded with them-windowless, airtight, five stories underground. A full complement of the top law enforcement officers in the city, along with the politicians they reported to.
A crowd of men with guns and badges, men he hated, men he intended to kill.
He hadn’t used most of the VX. He’d been saving it.
For them.
For now.
43
She had to warn them. No one had come this way, so presumably Andrus’s gunshots had gone unheard in the main room. As for Andrus himself-he was probably on his way out of the command center, leaving his victims to die when the VX was released…if it hadn’t been released already.
Tess opened the office door, risked a glance into the corridor.
Gunshot.
There was no sound this time, only a spray of drywall fragments inches from her head.
She ducked back inside, slammed and locked the door.
A silencer. He’d fitted his service pistol with a silencer.
And he’d been waiting for her-she wasn’t sure where-another office or an intersecting hallway. He intended to make sure she didn’t get out to warn the others.
In the subway he’d planted a vial of VX attached to a bomb. Probably he’d done the same thing here. He could have easily smuggled in the package, left it in the main room.
When the bomb went off and the vial burst, everyone within range would be sprayed with deadly droplets. No one was wearing any protective gear. Penetration of the skin, the eyes, the nostrils would be instantaneous-and fatal.
With only a few drops of VX dribbled into her motel room air conditioner, he had nearly killed her. Now he would release a hundred times as much-in a windowless subterranean chamber. Even those victims who weren’t splashed in the explosion would have trouble getting out before the fumes, rapidly circulating, began to do their work.
And all of this would happen at any minute. As soon as the bomb’s timer went off.
She had to clear the station. There must be a way.
By now Andrus might have left. He couldn’t hang around until the explosion, not if he wanted to survive.
She risked another look into the hall. Across the way, the door to another room hung open. Through the doorway she saw cardboard boxes, piles of equipment. Some sort of storage area.
Had the door been open when she’d come down the hall? Or had Andrus opened it, and was he hiding inside?
She glanced in both directions. To her left, a blank wall-dead end. To her right, several more doors, all closed, with the continuing hubbub of the main room audible in the distance, around the corner.
She had to risk leaving cover, even though in the corridor she would be exposed, vulnerable to Andrus if he was hidden anywhere along its length.
She lifted her gun, took a breath, and moved into the hall with one quick step, crossing to the far side and hugging the wall.
No sound but the distant voices.
No movement.
Except…
A crack of light, widening, in a doorway down the hall.
Someone was behind that door, easing it open, preparing to shoot.
On blind reflex she leaped into the storeroom, then shut and locked the door behind her.
Andrus hadn’t left.
And now she was trapped in here.
She looked around the room. Cartons, cleaning supplies, a rack of hazmat suits and helmets, six in all…
And the control panel for the public-address system. A microphone, a bank of illuminated push buttons, a pair of amplifier cabinets.
She scanned the panel, saw something labeled a voice-storage module with a list of prerecorded announcements pasted below. Announcement One was titled ALERT amp; EVAC.
She powered on the amplifiers, activated the first announcement, and a female voice, deeper than her own, blared over the speaker in the ceiling and the other speakers throughout the complex.
'This is an alert. The premises are not secure. Evacuate immediately. This is an alert. The premises…'
Behind her, the door shuddered.
Andrus, shooting at the lock.
Tess ducked behind the PA console, and the door flew open.
She fired three rounds at the doorway before realizing that no one was there.
He’d shot off the lock, flung the door wide-and taken cover.
