Then the lights went out.
Their ascent came to a shaky stop.
Kowalski swore brightly in the darkness.
“The generators,” Seichan whispered.
The floodwaters must have swamped that level-and continued to rise. The roar of the freight train grew to a howl beneath them.
“Hold on!” Gray shouted.
A force struck the underside of the carriage, driving the cage up the shaft in a bone-jarring, rattling ascent.
At least they were headed in the right direction-but for how long?
“Tucker, help me get the doors open!”
Gray knew they would have only one chance. Once the powerful surge receded, the cage would go crashing back down with it.
With urgency firing their efforts, the two forced the elevator open. The walls of the shaft blurred past them- then the outer-lobby doors sprang into view. The cage settled to a bobbling, shaking stop there, balanced on the tip of a powerful fountain.
But only for a moment.
Water flooded into the open cage, swamping the space and causing it to slowly sink.
“Hurry!”
Gray and Tucker hauled on the outer-lobby doors, cracking them wide enough for the others to evacuate. Seichan helped Kowalski with Amanda’s limp form. All the while, the cage continued to flood and submerge deeper.
Tucker used a free arm to push Kane through the shrinking doorway-then nodded to Gray. They were both chest-deep in water. Only half the cage was still at the lobby level.
“Go!” Tucker said.
“Together,” Gray argued.
They didn’t have the luxury of counting to three-both simply dove through the opening, their feet pulling free of the cage just as it sank away down the shaft behind them.
Gray helped Tucker stand.
They sloshed a few steps, relieved to be alive.
Seichan crouched by Kowalski, examining Amanda, checking her condition. When she stood, she wore a worried look.
“What?” Gray asked.
“She’s had her baby.”
Tucker splashed closer. “But her belly’s still big.”
“Was bigger, I guess.” Kowalski carried her to the steps to get her out of the water.
“She’s early,” Seichan said. “Either stress caused her to deliver prematurely or they induced her to get the baby.”
Tucker stared toward the flooded elevator, his face crushed with guilt. “I didn’t know. If I had, I could’ve searched longer. Tried to find the baby.”
Gray placed a hand on his shoulder. “We barely made it out as it was. If you’d delayed even another minute, Amanda could have died. We all could have died. And there’s no saying the baby was born alive. Or maybe he was already evacuated out.”
Tucker looked little comforted by this logic, and stared at the door. His dog came up and nudged his hand with his nose. Tucker rubbed the side of Kane’s face, finding solace there instead of words.
Gray turned away, splashing across-
He stared down at his feet, still ankle-deep in water. “Why is it still flooded up here?”
“It’s not just here,” Seichan said from a few yards away. She pointed across the lobby to the glass entrance of the Burj Abaadi.
Gray stared out, shocked.
The starlit park beyond the tower was flooded. Black waves washed through the trees and crashed against the steps of the tower.
He understood immediately. The Guild never took half-measures when it came to covering their tracks. They hadn’t just shattered the
They had shattered
He knew what that meant, a dreadful and frightening truth.
29
July 2, 8:01 P.M. EST
Orangeburg, South Carolina
They’d been on the road for an hour, heading west out of Charleston. Kat noted a sign that read ORANGEBURG. Her captors-the head of the fertility clinic, Dr. Paul Cranston, and his three men-kept mostly to the back roads, racing at speeds too fast for the rural areas.
Cranston spent most of the trip on his cell phone. Kat eavesdropped, but she learned little from his end of the conversations. Plainly he and the others still didn’t know what had happened at the clinic, didn’t know the true source of that fiery destruction sat in the backseat of their Ford explorer.
Kat wasn’t about to fill him in, but from the glance over his shoulder, Cranston clearly suspected the cause. But apparently any questions would wait until they reached their destination.
She gleaned that last bit of intelligence from a phone conversation moments later. Cranston sat straighter for that call, the perpetual edge of disdain in his voice gone, his tone turned subservient, frightened.
Whoever lurked at the other end of the line left the man shaking and ashen. Cranston sat for several long minutes, cell phone on his lap, not moving, staring dully out the window at the passing cotton and tobacco fields.
Eventually, he snapped out of it and made one last call.
To his wife.
He finally surrendered, as reception died out in the backcountry.
As Kat listened, she found it hard to couple this devoted family man to the horrors hidden beneath that research facility.
Still, the conversation awakened pangs of longing for her own family. Monk should be getting the babies ready for bed about now, tucking Penny into her footy pajamas, Harriet into her crib with a mobile of bears hanging above it. She thought of Monk sliding his arm around her waist after they both settled down, pulling her close, content to be surrounded by his girls.
As if sensing her thoughts, Lisa squeezed her hand.
Kat appreciated the gesture, but she intended to
The opportunity to accomplish that grew shorter with every passing mile. Once they reached their destination-
At last, she got it.
The SUV turned onto a long, lonely stretch of rural road, not a car in sight. The summer sun sat low on the
