Flynn reached over and grabbed a thick towel off the heated towel rack. With a heavy sigh, he buried his face in the soft cloth and dried his face with a vigorous rub.
Their ace in the hole was Tess. Flynn smiled grimly. Tess was his ultimate secret weapon.
He snapped the towel back over the rack and headed for the living room. As he reentered the elegantly appointed room, there was a light knock on the door.
“Come,” he ordered.
The door opened and Bloom stepped in.
Flynn moved over to the well-stocked bar in the corner of the room. “You’ll join me in a drink?”
“No, thank you.” Bloom walked to one of the chairs and sank into it with a contented sigh.
Flynn busied himself with preparing his own drink. Vodka was his beverage of choice. “I’m guessing from your appearance that our guest is safely stowed in her cell?”
“She recovered nicely from the session we conducted earlier. Feisty and defiant as ever. As previous, she retains no conscious memory of the session.”
Flynn lowered himself into a chair across from Bloom and took a healthy swig. “Tell me, how long before she’s ready to go into operational mode?”
“Well, as you saw this afternoon, I was able to conduct the final series of programming. Essentially, that was all that needed to be done. The rest is simply fine-tuning things. She’s ready whenever you need her. The command has been installed in her memory. She’ll obey when she hears it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“So you can assure us of the success of the mission?”
Bloom laughed, the tiniest quiver of anxiety evident in his voice. “As I’ve said before, nothing is assured. We’re functioning in the cutting edge of science. But I’m relatively sure Tess will perform her duties as required.”
“Starling is planning to make his announcement to switch parties and run on the Progressive Independent’s ticket in less than a week. I want the lesson to be taught that day.”
“And it shall,” Bloom said.
Flynn raised a hand as if to make another point but was interrupted when Bloom’s beeper went off.
Bloom made an expression of apology and went to the phone, punching in a number. “This is Bloom.”
Flynn waited, something telling him this wasn’t good news.
Chapter Ten
As they stepped off the elevator, Ryan could see the security desk. Their final barrier to freedom.
Everything looked normal. Calm. No alarms. No sign that anyone knew Tess was gone. So far, so good.
Several feet beyond the security station, Ryan could see where the cement floor ended and the loading dock’s huge bay doors opened to the outside. Freedom. His heart hammered. So close, yet still so far.
The doors were open and a semi was backed up to the edge of the dock. Four men and a forklift operator were unloading pallets filled with heavy boxes and stacking them against the wall.
Beyond the parked truck, he could see the brilliant orange of the late-afternoon sun touching the field bordering the parking lot. A tinge of pink licked the edge of the horizon, and a warm breeze floated down the corridor to brush his face.
Two uniformed men stood at the final checkpoint. One had his elbows propped on top of the computer console, his expression bored and his eyes half-closed.
The other guard was younger, more alert. Hypervigilant. But Ryan had a feeling the other one, the one with the bored expression, would be the one to watch out for. He was the seasoned pro. Even now he could tell that the guard was studying them from beneath hooded lids.
Suddenly Ryan stiffened and swore softly under his breath. Tess shot him an alarmed look. “What’s wrong?”
“We’ve got a problem,” he said under his breath. “See the guy walking up the outside ramp?”
Tess nodded.
“Unfortunately, he’s the owner of this badge, the man whose identity I assumed.” Ryan checked his watch. “The computer pegged him as chronically late for work, but he’s only late by five minutes. We need to get to the gate before him.”
FLYNN WATCHED as Bloom shifted the phone from one ear to the other, his annoyance disappearing to be replaced by an expression of total horror. The doctor’s eyes met his across the room but then he quickly blanked his face, a blatant attempt to hide what he was feeling.
Flynn straightened up. Something was definitely wrong.
“What do you mean she’s gone?” Bloom shouted into the receiver. His gaze slid away from the general’s.
Flynn sat forward. What now? The back of his neck heated. Why had he ever been convinced to trust a bunch of bumbling intellectual eggheads to carry out the most important security job of their lives? He must have lost his mind.
Across the room, Bloom’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the receiver, pressing it to his ear. “She must have had help. There’s no way she could have gotten out of those restraints on her own.”
The doctor’s eyes widened and he met Flynn’s. His level of panic was palpable. Flynn stood up, the steel of his spine bringing him to attention. Within seconds, he was across the room, grabbing the phone out of Bloom’s hand.
“How long has she been missing?” Flynn snapped into the receiver. Silence met him on the other end of the phone. “Answer me, dammit!”
“We-we just checked her cell two minutes ago, General. She can’t have been gone long. S-someone fiddled with the video-surveillance program. One of the nurses was found drugged and in her clothes.”
“There’s no way she could have done that alone. She had to have outside help.” He touched a button on the phone’s base and put the guard on intercom and then turned toward Bloom. “It isn’t hard to bet that the culprit in this mess was your prodigy-Ryan Donovan. Where is he?”
“Donovan?” Bloom frowned. “Why would you suspect him?”
“Because I saw the way he looked at Tess when we went to bring her back. The man has a savior complex. When we get to the bottom of this fiasco we’ll find him. Where is he?”
Bloom shrugged. “I have no idea.” He checked his watch. “In his office probably. But he knows nothing about what we’re doing in the secure labs. He doesn’t even have access to them.”
The guard on the other end of the phone cleared his throat. “I just checked the computer-we have a log-in time for Dr. Donovan. No log-out. He must be in the building.”
“Check his office,” Bloom said.
Flynn dismissed Bloom with a single look. “Find Tess. Do
“Yes, sir!” the guard said. “We’ll have her back in her cell pronto. You can count on my team.”
“I counted on your team once,” Flynn snorted. “You’ve already failed me.” He hung up on the guard.
“How do you know it’s Donovan?” Bloom pressed.
“Because he isn’t the type of man that is easily put off. I knew he wasn’t satisfied with our explanation of why Tess needed to come with us. I should have had him taken into custody right then and there and saved us all the trouble of dealing with him now. His meddling has put us right back to where we were when she first escaped.”
“You should have allowed me to bring Donovan into the fold. If you had agreed, none of this would have happened.”
“I’m a good judge of character, Doctor. And if you truly believe that Donovan would have cooperated with what we have going here, then you’re crazier than I thought.”
Flynn moved over to the antique hat rack standing in the corner of the room, pulled down his uniform jacket
