recognized him as a guy named Carter.
“You have a picture?” Carter asked.
“Yes. Could use a little light.”
“Hold on.”
A few seconds later, the picture lightened up by twenty percent.
“Better,” Tucker said. “Let me see him.”
“Over here,” someone barked on the other end.
A body moved into the shot. Male, dark clothes.
“Can’t see his face. I need to see his face,” Tucker said.
Someone adjusted the light on the other end, illuminating the intruder’s face. Tucker couldn’t help feeling a moment of disappointment. He’d been hoping the man was Jonathan Quinn. He would have liked to have seen the look on the cleaner’s face once he realized who was in charge here. A fucking laugher that would have been. But apparently Mr. Quinn had lost the Dupuis woman’s trail.
“Who the hell are you?” Tucker asked.
The man kept his face neutral and his mouth shut.
A rifle butt swung into the frame and slammed into the captive’s stomach. The man doubled over and fell out of the frame.
“Get the fuck up,” a voice off camera yelled. “You hear me? Get the fuck up.”
Tucker could hear retching off camera, then something scraping against the concrete floor. For several seconds nothing happened, then the captive’s head moved back into the frame, rising unsteadily from the bottom.
“Let me ask you again,” Tucker said. “Who the hell are you?”
“No,” the man said.
This time the rifle hit him in the kidney. The man flew forward, screaming, almost running into the camera.
Tucker smiled. Not because of the man’s pain, he was ambivalent about that. He smiled because the man spoke, and in Tucker’s experience once someone opened his mouth, he would eventually tell whatever he knew.
“Bring him in,” Tucker said.
He could hear Carter starting to say “Yes, sir,” but the guard was cut off as Tucker quit the program.
He pushed himself away from his desk and stood up. There were two empty cells along the hall where they were keeping the woman. One of those would be fine for their new guest.
He took a deep breath, then picked up the phone and punched in the number for the lab.
“Yes?” The voice was young. One of the technicians.
“I need to talk to Mr. Rose,” Tucker said.
“He left a couple of minutes ago. Headed up to the main level.”
Tucker hung up without saying anything, then rushed out of his office hoping to catch his boss before the old man disappeared into his quarters. Mr. Rose’s rule number one: If the door to his private room was closed, he was not to be disturbed. There wasn’t even the phrase “except in cases of emergency” tacked on. If he was inside, all could wait until he reappeared.
Tucker passed only one other person in the corridors on his way to the elevators, one of his security men on patrol. When the facility had been built, it was designed so that a hundred people could work inside at the same time. Mr. Rose’s operation was manned by less than half that amount — twenty security personnel, seventeen technical staff, Mr. Rose, and Tucker. Thirty-nine total. Of course, that wasn’t counting the Dupuis woman. Or Mr. Rose’s special packages.
When he reached the elevator, the car was already there and empty.
Frowning, he headed to Mr. Rose’s suite, hoping he wasn’t too late. As he turned onto Mr. Rose’s hallway, he nearly ran into the old man. He was standing just five feet around the corner, talking to a technician Tucker had seen a couple times before.
Whatever conversation they’d been having had stopped the minute Tucker appeared.
“Glad I caught you,” Tucker said.
Mr. Rose just stared at him.
“We’ve caught an intruder.”
That woke the old man up. “What? Where? Here in the base?”
“No,” Tucker said. “He was outside the fence, near the gate. He tripped the sensors, then hid when my men went to find him.”
“But they caught him.”
“Yes,” Tucker said.
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know yet. He wouldn’t give us his name. My men are bringing him here right now.”
“Into the facility?” Mr. Rose did not sound happy.
“I can question him here, and we can run his prints through the system.”
“Do a complete scan of him before you bring him down,” Mr. Rose said. “Understand me? We can’t chance anything jeopardizing the operation.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Not ‘okay, sure’! It should not even be an option. You should have already thought of that.”
“Of course,” Tucker said. He’d known his mistake even as he’d spoken the words. He tried to do a little damage control. “It’s standard operating procedure is all I mean. We’ll definitely do it.”
“That’s not what it sounded like.”
“I apologize if I was unclear.”
“You were,” Mr. Rose said.
No one spoke for several seconds.
“Was there more, Mr. Tucker?”
“No,” Tucker said. “That was it.”
“Give me a full report when you are done talking to him.”
“Of course.”
“Come on, come on, come on.” The words were more in Quinn’s head than spoken.
He and Nate had crawled to within a foot of the gate. It was built like the fences, horizontal wires about half a foot apart. And while it looked like it could also be electrified, it wasn’t humming like the double fence that converged to meet it.
“Come on,” he whispered again.
Getting to the other side should have been simple. They should have been able to slip through the deactivated fence while the others were inside with their prisoner. The problem was that one of the guards had decided it was a good time to take a leak. And even though he had finished, he was taking his sweet time zipping up and rejoining his friends inside.
Each second longer meant it was a second closer to more of the guards coming back outside. Perhaps they would take the prisoner through the gate and to the Yellowhammer facility. Maybe even after they were gone, someone would flip a switch turning on the power to the gate. Quinn’s best chance was to move now, before any of that could occur, but the son of a bitch seemed to be enjoying a little alone time.
Finally, the guard finished up and went back inside.
He glanced at the window. No one seemed to be keeping tabs on the outside. What was inside was more interesting to them at the moment.
He gave Nate a quick nod, then crawled forward into the pale light that illuminated the gate. Once he was moving he didn’t stop. He pushed his backpack to the other side first, then squeezed between the wires. They were pretty taut, but they gave enough to let him through. Nate followed right behind him.
Once they’d both made it, they ran in a crouch down the road until they found a good spot from which to keep an eye on the gate. Turned out their precautions were unnecessary. It was another ten minutes before the
