“And help ’em shed their skins for the New Year,” she said, and they bumped fists and started down the wooded hillside.
Max was in the lead, with Alec several paces behind her, guiding Bostock, who had to sort of hop along, else be dragged bodily by Alec. Joshua and Mole, carrying the corpses, were several paces behind Alec. Max’s point position allowed her to spot one of the three-man patrols, in camouflage TAC apparel.
Bostock made some noise, and Alec slapped him with the pistol.
But Max was already on the move, throwing a kick into the lead guard. Suddenly Joshua and Mole — having laid down their gruesome burdens — were right there with her. A martial-arts blow to the neck from Max cancelled her guard’s contract with life, and Joshua broke his guard’s neck with a quick twist of both hands. Mole buried his gun so deep in his man’s body that the guard’s flesh muffled the shot.
Max looked over at Mole, the gun in his hand as he stood over the dead Familiar. He returned her gaze and whispered, “I know you don’t like firearms, Max... but I gotta do this my way — ’kay?”
Hating it, she nodded. Some part of her mind wondered how she could be such a hypocrite — after all, she’d crushed her opponent’s windpipe with a knife-blade of a hand, the “gentle” giant Joshua had just snapped a Familiar’s neck like a twig... and she was having trouble with Mole killing a man with a gun?
Maybe she could talk to somebody at Big Sky about this psychological hang-up of hers...
They were still fifty yards from the building when her cell phone rang.
“Go for Max.”
“Time’s dwindling, 452,” Ames White said, in the same distant, processed sound as his previous calls, as if he were on the moon and not, most likely, within shouting distance. “Do you have my son?”
“Yeah,” she said. “He’s here with me.”
“Put him on”
“Not possible. We have to talk about that...”
“... I’m getting the feeling I’m not going to like where this is going.”
“Are you at Big Sky?”
Perhaps the question took him by surprise, as there was a long silence; she could almost hear the wheels turning, as her longtime antagonist tried to figure out just how much she knew.
“Yes or no?” she asked finally.
“... Yes.”
“Are you on a secure line?”
“What do you mean, 452?”
“I mean, are we ‘alone’ or are your friends listening in?”
“I’m on my cell,” he said, the tone implying he could talk.
“We’ve been enemies for a long time, White.”
“We agree on that much.”
“But you need to know something... We have mutual enemies.”
Another pause.
Then: “Where is my son?”
“If you really are at Big Sky, step outside the front door and we’ll talk about it. And White? Bring Logan.”
She knew he’d be running to a window to try to see if she was serious. They were still behind the building, so there was no chance of White actually catching sight of them as they made their way through the trees toward the front.
“And don’t bother contacting your foot patrol,” she said, “to come up behind us. They’re busy being dead.”
White’s voice took on an icy note. “You always did know how to make an entrance, 452... I’ll be right out.”
“Don’t forget what I said, White — about mutual enemies.”
“How could I?”
“Bring Logan.”
“I will. We have an exchange to make, right, 452?”
“Right.”
She clicked off.
Only a few stars dotted the night sky and a heavy chill hung in the air. Mole and Joshua, their arms filled with the dead, waited at the border of the woods as Max, Alec, and their duct-taped captive moved into the clearing, their feet crunching on the snow-powdered ground.
Floodlights on the corners threw pools of light around the building, spotlights awaiting a star performance; but Max and her company avoided them, stopping at the edge of an arc of light that shone from a floodlight above the main entrance.
She looked behind her, toward the trees; she could barely make out Mole and Joshua there, though the white of the boy’s bedsheet shroud finally guided her to them. She gave a hand signal — stay put — and then nodded at Alec. He nodded back. Bostock, his ear a little bloody from where Alec had disciplined him, held his head up. He seemed to think he was about to turn from hostage to hero.
Max doubted that.
Then she, Alec, and the duct-taped prisoner moved into the pool of light.
The main entrance — double steel doors with wire-mesh-and-glass panels — was at the top of five concrete stairs lined with metal rails. The new masters of the world had selected unprepossessing main headquarters, to say the least. The trio faced the entrance in a loose line, Alec holding Bostock by the scruff of the neck, to her left; Max standing with her hands on her hips, defiant to the last.
The doors flew open and White — in a black suit and a thin black raincoat — stormed out. He stopped at the edge of the top stair, his eyes going to Bostock. He had changed not at all since she’d seen him last — his spiky dark hair looked frozen in place, his face ghostly pale under the floodlight, and his lips seemed to have no color at all, his dark eyes intense, burning.
Alone, he came down the steps, moving within fifteen feet of her.
“My son!” he yelled. “Where is he?”
Voices traveled clearly in the chill night air.
“I don’t see Logan,” Max said.
The doors erupted open and two dozen or more Familiars streamed out of the building and down the steps, in flowing reddish-copper hooded robes, monklike, the wind catching the garments. Some wore round metal collars engraved with pagan motifs; others had decorated their faces with black war paint; a few others had tattooed faces, reminiscent of heathen cultures from far-flung Pacific islands. Many, though, were bare of face — cultists who had infiltrated the world of the ordinaries... as Ames White had done, with the NSA. They filled in behind White, in a wide arc, a wind-shimmering wall of copper-red.
“Okay,” Alec whispered to her. “We’re officially outnumbered...”
One Familiar stepped up to White’s side, immediately to his right — a tall wraith of a man with angular features and a hawkish nose, his hood back, exposing flowing silver hair; he wore neither markings nor tattoos. His regal bearing combined with the long robe — which included a scarlet tippet — gave him the appearance of a cleric or even a wizard.
Max had never seen this one before, yet his distinctive presence told her that he was their leader — that this was the Familiar who wielded the power.
At least, here at the nuthouse.
“Franklin,” White said, acknowledging Bostock.
Behind his gag, Bostock said something unintelligible.
“Where,” Max asked, “is Logan?”
White’s head tilted. “Where’s Ray?”
She gestured with open hands. “Look — you’ve got us outnumbered. We’re on your home field. Give us what we came for — how are we gonna get away before you get want you want?”
White considered that, then gave a quick nod.
“Bring him!” the silver-haired Familiar called.
Two more hooded, robed figures burst through the doors, one on either side of Logan Cale, who they dragged down the stairs.
The crowd parted and the Familiars hauled Logan up by either arm; he wasn’t bound, but seemed weak, even groggy. They stopped on White’s left, maintaining their hold on him.