building, coughing and sputtering. A man I’ve never seen before. He’s heavyset, in his forties, maybe fifties, and dressed in a uniform. The logo on his collar is the same as the one on the sign out front. He’s on his cell phone “Look.” I point him out to Zack. “Must be the security guard. Can you hear what he’s saying?”
Zack lowers his window and listens.
Just then, Kallistos strolls out. His car is waiting for him across the street. He ignores the man on the sidewalk, walks right past him, just as the man ignores him. But then he nods toward the guard and winks before crossing to his car.
“Son of a bitch,” Zack growls.
He reaches for the door handle.
I reach for him. “What is it?”
Zack points to the man on the phone. “He’s saying there’s a gas leak. Kallistos is going to blow up the goddamned lab.”
The man takes off at a slow run and starts jogging down the street, away from the building.
Kallistos’ car pulls away. If the speed in which he is making his departure is any indication, we don’t have much time.
I tighten my grip on Zack’s arm. Kallistos’ wink as he passed the guard suddenly makes sense. “You can’t go in there!”
“People could get hurt. Humans, Emma.”
“He said there were only four heartbeats. Yours, mine, Dexter’s, and that guy must be the fourth. The building’s clear.”
Zack points to the adjacent ones on either side. “Those may not be. This is far from foolproof. There’s going to be collateral damage.”
He’s right, of course. I look around. The entire area is a blend of new and old construction. An explosion and fire down here could quickly get out of control. But there’s no way we can stop it now.
“We need to put some distance between us and the building fast,” I say.
Zack is shaking with fury. “Letting him handle the cleanup was a bad call. What the hell were we thinking? Call 911. Tell them to get an emergency crew here. Jesus, Emma. We’re going to need a good story.”
Zack throws the car into gear and steps on the gas. The car lurches forward.
I grab my cell and dial.
It rings once.
We drive past the security guard, huffing and puffing.
It rings again. The emergency operator answers. I give her my name and badge number. “We’re in front of a medical building on the corner of Fourth and Hawthorn. Send emergency vehicles right away. The building’s about to—”
An explosion drowns out the rest. The force of it pushes us forward. I feel the rear tires of the Suburban lift off the ground. The cell phone flies out of my hand and onto the floor. We spin. Somehow Zack prevents us from flipping. When the car comes to a stop, we’re facing the building. Car alarms are going off all around us, and rooftops are covered with the glass that rained down upon them from the nearby buildings. A fire hydrant in front of the building is spewing water into the street. The man who called in the “gas leak” is lying facedown on the blacktop. Zack takes off at a full run in his direction. I search frantically for the cell phone, find it. I’m still connected to the emergency operator.
“There are people injured. Send help right away,” I shout. Then I disconnect and race to follow Zack.
The man is unconscious, and there’s a small pool of blood under his head. Zack’s crouched alongside him.
“Is he alive?”
Zack nods, but his expression is murderous. “No thanks to Kallistos. Fucking vampire.”
I turn in a circle, take in the devastation around us. There are sirens in the background. They’re getting closer.
Zack reaches for my hand. He pulls me forward. Plucks a piece of glass out of my forehead that I didn’t even notice was there. “You okay? Your head hit the side window pretty hard.”
My knees buckle. The adrenaline surge is wearing off. He steadies me.
“I’m okay,” I say.
He lifts my chin until my eyes connect with his. “Listen to me. This may be the only opportunity we have to get our story straight. We were introduced to Barbara Pierce at the fund-raiser. She seemed off. Toward the end of the night she approached, told us she had something important for the FBI, begged us to come to her office. There was a paranoid flavor about her, a sense of desperation. Then she disappeared into the crowd. We tried to follow her, but couldn’t. Are you with me?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“We got her address this morning, went to her office. She was completely unraveled. Said she couldn’t live with what she was doing any longer. She confessed to killing Charlotte, gave up Davis Mager and his scheme, admitted to harvesting organs from dozens of homeless. She said she wanted to show us. She opened the panel leading to her lab. She went ahead of us, slipping through a door and locking us out. You can describe the lab just as it was.”
“We would have tried to go after her,” I say.
“We did. She knew exactly what she was doing. Along one wall were rows of tanks. Some were clearly labeled oxygen. Others were marked with unfamiliar letters and symbols. Pierce opened the valves on all of them. Then she held up a lighter.”
The sirens are getting closer. Zack’s voice is sounding farther and farther away.
He continues. I’m desperately trying to follow. “She yelled for us to go. To get Mager. To tell people that in the end she did the right thing. I started to break the glass, to try to get to her. But she was determined. It was save ourselves or die in the blast. We ran and called for help.”
I can barely hear him now. Darkness is closing in from all sides.
Zack is shaking me. “Emma? Emma?”
It’s the last thing I remember.
CHAPTER 23
My head spins. I feel Zack’s arms around me as he lowers me to the ground and calls for help. By the time the paramedic is at my side, the darkness has receded and I’ve shaken myself back to full consciousness. I sit up, waving the guy away. “I’m fine. Tend to the guard.”
Zack is protesting that I get checked out. But the paramedic shines a light in first one eye and then the other and stands up. “Someone’s with the guard.” He’s speaking to Zack about me. “Her pupils are equal in size and reacting to light. Still, she lost consciousness. We should get her to a hospital.”
“I’m not going to a hospital. The guard, he’s going to make it?”
“Looks like it. We’re lucky he was the only one seriously hurt.” He looks down at me, then up at Zack again. “If she gets nauseated, dizzy, get her to an ER, okay?”
But his words barely register as I try to get my head around all that’s happened.
I can’t believe the mess this case has turned into. I’ve worked missing persons in the San Diego FBI office for six years now. This isn’t the first time I’ve come across a supernatural element in need of containment. In those other rare instances, justice was served and the fantastical easily buried. Yes, the link to the vampires needed to be covered up. But for Kallistos to blow up the place? I think of the guard, lying injured in the street. What the hell was he thinking?
“We should take you to a hospital,” Zack is still insisting.
My head is pounding; my shoulders and neck muscles are clenched so tight that it hurts to turn toward him. Still, I do, even managing to shake my head—carefully. “No hospital. I’ll be fine.” And I will be. Whatever injuries I might have, I won’t die from them. Thousands of years and more than a few bumps and bruises testify that I know my body. Besides, there’s something more urgent we need to do than take what would be a wasted trip to a
