The air in the room wasn’t clear, but it wasn’t getting any smokier, either.
“Maybe we ought to get someone’s attention out there,” she said to Lynn.
“Break a window or something. Except I don’t think they’d hear us.”
But Lynn was pointing urgently at the door. Janet turned and saw a dark silhouette on the other side of the cloudy white glass. She got down on one knee, then realized she couldn’t see what was going on with the door handle. She got back up in time to see the table tremble ever so slightly as whoever was out there tried the handle. She reached behind her and drew the .38, checked the loads, and waited, staying upright enough to watch the door handle. The shadow withdrew and she
relaxed fractionally, only to yell in surprise when all the glass in the door shattered and a fully masked fireman thrust a hose nozzle through the broken out window. Janet stood up to get his attention, but she was stunned when he fired a stream of water full force into her face. Her head snapped back and she went flying back into the corner, her gun skittering across the floor into the opposite corner. She tried to get up, but the stream of highpressure water kept coming, rolling her around in the corner of the room like a dog under a truck, until all she could do was curl into a ball while yelling at the guy to stop it. Until she realized that a fireman wouldn’t have done that.
When the stream stopped, she tried frantically to get up, but her eyes were totally out of focus, the eyeballs bruised and stinging from the hard stream of water. By the time she got onto all fours, all she could make out were shapes and shadows, so she couldn’t find her gun. Then she heard Lynn scream, followed by a rocket sound from the other side of the room.
In another moment, Lynn was at her side, grabbing at her, pulling her upright, yelling, “C’mon, c’mon, we gotta move.” She stood up, staggered, and then went with Lynn, blindly banging into the lab stands until they got to the door. Janet felt her foot kick the gun, and she reached down to retrieve it. The table had been shoved aside, so they spilled out into the corridor, which now was murky with smoke. A single portable floodlight stood on the floor, illuminating the doorway. Janet grabbed it and they struggled down the cross corridor through the smoke, keeping low, getting away from the lab room.
“What did you do?” Janet asked.
“Got her with the damn fire extinguisher,” Lynn said.
“Had it under my blanket. She took her mask off and grinned at me, and I shot her right in the face, and then I threw the damn thing at her. Jesus, I can’t breathe in this shit.”
“Stay low,” Janet said.
“There’s more air down here.”
They stumbled over something on the floor—a fireman who appeared to be unconscious, his rubberized coat, breathing rig, and helmet missing.
In the distance was a vertical rectangle of light on the wall.
“The elevator,” Janet shouted.
“The fireman brought a passenger elevator up. Go! Go!”
Lynn staggered through the smoke toward the elevator. Janet grabbed the fireman under his armpits and pulled him backward toward the rectangle of light. Lynn helped her pull the man into the elevator, and then Janet was smacking the buttons to close the door, but nothing was happening.
“Use the key,” Lynn said.
“The fireman’s key—I think it controls the door.”
Janet peered down at the console, saw the black cylinder sacking out of the control panel, but she was barely able to read the instructions on operating the elevator with a fire key. Finally, she succeeded in keying the door shut and punching the button for the ground floor. The elevator started down. She slipped down the wall to a sitting position, where she faced Lynn over the prostrate body of the fireman. He looked far too young to be a fireman. She blew a long breath out of her lungs, glad for the marginally fresher air in the elevator.
“Is he breathing?”
“Yes,” Lynn said.
“What do we do now?” She was still pale-faced, but her eyes were bright with excitement.
“We get off at the ground floor and get out to the parking lot. Tell someone about him.”
“What about her?” Lynn said, indicating upstairs.
“I hope she fucking cooks up there. But somehow, I doubt it. And she probably has helpers in the building.” The elevator slowed as it neared the ground floor. She got back up.
“We’re two hysterical women who got trapped upstairs,” she said to Lynn.
“And now we want out and we don’t want to be seen to by EMTs, grief counselors, priests, or anybody else, okay?”
Lynn grinned at her.
“I can do hysterical,” she said as the door opened.
There was a pack of firemen standing right there and Lynn screamed when she saw them. Janet grabbed her and pushed through them.
“One of your guys was down on the fourth floor,” she shouted.
“We got him in and came down. How do we get out of here?”
There wasn’t as much smoke on the ground floor and there were more portable lights stabbing through the gloom. The biggest fireman pointed her in the direction of the front doors as the rest lunged into the cab to tend to their downed mate. Janet heard one of them ask, “Where’s his nicking air rig?” before she and Lynn bolted out the front door and into the blessed coolness of clean, fresh night air. Janet’s eyes were just about back to normal, except that she couldn’t stop blinking. She realized they were on the wrong side of the building: Her car was parked out back of the hospital. It had probably been visible from the lab windows. She told Lynn to wait and said she would go get her car. Lynn said, “no way in hell,” and went right along with Janet.
Ten minutes later, they were out on the main drag and headed south to
intersect Highway 460. She asked Lynn if she knew the number for Micah Wall, but Lynn did not. Then she remembered she’d written it down, and she went fishing for the scrap of paper. It was soaked but still legible. She dialed the number on her cell phone, but there was still no answer.
She explained her plan, and Lynn nodded.
“We’ll be as safe with Micah’s clan as with anyone,” she said.
“But we have to tell him that she’s a revenuer.”
“We? The idea is to protect you, Lynn. I promised your father I’d keep you out of the clutches of that creature back there.” She kept an eye on her rearview mirror.
Lynn was grinning again.
“And who’s going to protect you? Excuse me for saying so, but you’re not very good at this shit, are you?”
Janet felt a spike of irritation, but then she grinned back. Kreiss had said the same thing.
“Believe it or not, I’m getting better,” she said.
“You have no idea. But I wouldn’t mind knowing where your father keeps that fifty-caliber rifle.”
Kreiss drove the van across the Fourteenth Street Bridge into the downtown District of Columbia. Leaving the bridge, he went straight, past the U.S. Mint and toward the Washington Monument grounds, until he cut Independence Avenue, then went right until he came to Tenth Street. A sign on Tenth Street said NO LEFT TURN, but he ignored that and went up to within one block of Constitution Avenue, where he found a parking place. It was just after 10:30, and what traffic there was consisted mostly of cabs and the occasional long black limousine streaking through the nearly empty streets. A Washington Metro cop car was parked across the street; two cops inside appeared to be reading newspapers. They paid him zero attention when he got out of the van, put on a windbreaker, and walked up the street toward Constitution. It was a cloudy night, with a hint of spring rain in the air. He stopped when he got to the corner.