wouldn’t know what she was talking about. His expression confirmed that. The intercom phone on his desk buzzed. He picked it up, listened, said, “Yes, sir,” and then hung up.
“Mr. Keenan wants to see you.”
“He can fuck off and die, too,” she said.
“He’s not my boss anymore. I quit and I meant it. I’ll come back later for my desk stuff. They have my piece and credentials. I’m outta here.”
“But, Jan, what the hell—” Larry said, getting up.
“Obviously there’s been some misunderstanding. Look—” “No, Larry. The more I think about what I’ve just done, the better I like it. You got what you need on the missing kids?”
“Um, only the basic story of what happened to them; I was on my way to talk to the Kreiss girl before I did the actual notifications. Hey, look, Jan, why don’t you just take the rest of the day off. You’ve been through a lot. Go home and think about this. Quitting the Bureau—that’s a big deal.”
“It’s the Bureau’s loss, as far as I’m concerned. Think of it as a logical consequence of my being sent down here to this … this backwater. I’m a Ph.D.-level forensic scientist, for Chrissakes. I’m here because I wouldn’t come up with the quote-unquote right answer in an evidentiary hearing.
Now here we go again. I should have quit the last time. And for the last goddamned time, don’t call me Jan!”
Talbot put up his hands in mock surrender and left the office. Billy got up and came over to her cube.
“Hey,” he said gently.
“What the hell was it they wanted you to do?”
“They won’t go after this guy who’s on his way to D.C. with a big-ass bomb. And they won’t let me tell Kreiss that his daughter is in safe hands.
It’s outrageous!”
“What did they want you to do? Quitting is a pretty big step, Janet.”
“The Agency sent some gorgon down here to give Kreiss a message.
I’m supposed to be the messenger. I’m just tired of all the lies, Billy. First in the lab, now here. This isn’t what I signed up for. Nice knowing you.”
Billy seemed lost for words, so she grabbed her jacket and her purse and left the office. She was home in thirty minutes, and she went directly into the bathroom to take a long shower. As she stood in the streaming water, she reflected on her decision and concluded that it had been the right move. She realized she needed to put it in writing, and that she also needed to get something in that letter referring to the arsenal case. She smiled then: Bureau habits died hard—she was still thinking about covering her ass, even in the process of resignation.
She turned off the shower, got out, and dried off. She put on fresh underwear and was combing her hair when she heard a noise from the bedroom door. She whirled around and found the Agency woman standing in the doorway. She was wearing slacks and some kind of safari shirt with lots of pockets. Her eyes were invisible behind wraparound black sunglasses.
“Brought you something,” the woman said, proffering a shiny object in her outstretched hand. Janet blinked, focused on it, and then there was a shattering pulse of purple light. The next thing she knew, she was on her back in her bed, completely enveloped in a sticky web of some kind. The individual strands were the consistency of raw yarn and smelled of some strong chemical. Her arms were pinned down at her sides, her hands turned palm-in against her hips. Her legs were bent to one side. She made an instinctive move to escape, but the effort only caused the web to contract everywhere it touched her body. She felt as if she were in an elasticized-rubber onion sack. Only her head was free. Everything she looked at had a purple penumbra, and the center focus other vision was a haze of small black dots. The woman was sitting calmly at Janet’s dressing table, watching her, her sunglasses gone now. Janet tried to think of something clever to say, but there was no escaping the fact that she was lying on her bed, in nothing but her underwear, trussed like a de boned turkey. She tried to blink away the haze of purple-black spots. The woman’s expression was totally blank.
“So that’s a retinal disrupter?” Janet asked.
“Yes. The spots will go away in about an hour. Usually, there’s no permanent damage done.”
“Usually? That’s comforting. And you did this—why?”
“To ensure you’d make the page, Agent Carter.”
“I’m not Agent anybody anymore,” Janet said.
“Especially because of that.” The woman looked at her watch.
“We have a little over an hour. I’ve arranged for the return call to bounce here, and then you’ll give him the message I asked you to give him. Still remember it?”
“What if I don’t?” Janet asked.
“What if I simply tell him to run like hell?”
“Same difference,” the woman said.
“That’s what my message is designed to do anyway. It’s just more effective if he knows it’s me. But I think you’ll want to do it my way.”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll go get another capture curtain and wrap it around your throat. Then you could practice some very care mi breathing until someone finds you. Think of it as Lamaze with a twist. Whenever that might be, now that you’re… unattached, shall we say? Why don’t you relax now. Attend to your breathing. That stuff’s like a boa constrictor:
It tightens on the exhale, as I suspect you’ve discovered.”
Janet had indeed discovered that.
“Why the hell are you doing this?
Taking down another federal agent?”
“But you’re not a federal agent anymore, are you, Carter?” the woman said sweetly.
“Not that you ever were. An agent, I mean.”
“Huh?
“Janet said.
“You were a glorified lab rat, Carter. As a street agent, you’re a joke.
You’ve got the situational awareness of a tree. I was standing in that doorway the whole time you were taking a shower.”
“Enjoy the view?” Janet asked.
The woman cocked her head to one side and gave Janet the once-over, staring at her body just long enough for Janet to blush.
“You’re nicely made, for a breast-Fed,” she said.
“Was that why they sent you to get close to Kreiss?”
“That probably wasn’t their brightest idea,” Janet said, trying to feel how much give there was in the yarn. Not very damn much.
The Agency woman laughed once.
“Edwin Kreiss has zero time for amateurs,” she said.
“Of any stripe. What’d they do—tell you to show a little leg, bat your eyes at him?”
“Why are you doing this?” Janet asked again, trying to strain against the sticky web without showing it.
“Because now you’re just another annoying civilian who’s getting in my way. Stop testing the curtain. You can permanently damage your circulation.
Lie still. Rest your eyes. Take a nap. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”
The woman left the room, and Janet immediately tried to move her hands. The sticky rubbery substance clung to her skin like shrink-wrap, but it did give when she pushed out with the back of her right hand. But when she relaxed, it tightened, and she realized that it was now noticeably tighter than it had been. She thought about several coils of the chemical yarn around her throat and involuntarily swallowed. Then she remembered the discussion in Farnsworth’s office about the capture curtain, and the fact that it was water-soluble. If she could roll off the bed and get to the bathroom without Medusa out there hearing her, she could get it off.
