The Flock (20 page)

Mary Niccols was sitting quietly in a very small and very dark room. Kamaguchi and Levin had tied some pretty good knots for college boys. They must have taken classes in that as electives, she figured. At any rate, the knots had been well tied, and it had taken Mary all of an hour to work her way free of them. Good rope the boys had, too. High quality nylon, similar to the stuff she used on the occasional bobcat she trapped and trussed from time to time. As soon as she was no longer a human pretzel, she slowly and carefully undid all of the kinks in the rope and rolled it into a neat bundle, passing it through and through her callused palms, trying to decide what to do next.

The room was small. In fact, it probably wasn't really a
room
at all. Probably some sort of storage bay, or perhaps a nook for an absent mainframe. There were some small grates in the walls that she had found with the tips of her fingers, but far too small to pull free and escape through. She doubted she could get her forearm through them, much less her body. The ceiling wasn't very high, either. She couldn't reach it by extending her arms full length, even while on the tips of her toes, but she had managed to touch it when she'd leaped up. Her vertical jump wasn't bad for a short person. But the hops had proved that the ceiling was a solid section; there was nothing there to shunt aside and creep through.

It looked as if the only way out was also the way she had come in. As soon as she had gotten free of the ropes, Mary had gone to the door and had put her ear to it. In fact, she had done so every couple of minutes since freeing herself. The idea of her captors suddenly reappearing to check on her did not seem appealing. If she surprised them, there was a chance she could deck them before they knew what was going on. But there was also a very good chance that if she surprised them they might shoot her full of little holes. She damned sure did not want that to happen.

After pressing her ear to the door for some time, and placing her ear at the sliver of a crack at the bottom of the door, she had decided that there was no one directly on the other side. They must have all been quite happy and confident of their knot-tying abilities, since it seemed they had left her alone in that small room. Having decided that there was no one outside to hear what she might do, she had simply put her hand on the doorknob and had tried it.

The door had opened right up, having not been locked.

Niccols cursed herself. Shaking her head in disbelief, she inched the door open to chance a peek outside.

She was at the end of a short, dimly lit hallway. Looking up, she could see the fluorescent lighting, creating diffuse and somewhat disorienting shades.

Carefully, she went down the hall. It was a very short one, and again gave the impression that all of this area was some kind of utilitarian space. She probably was not far off the mark (or perhaps right on the money) in thinking that the room in which she'd been imprisoned was meant for a mainframe computer or for some similar use.

This place was all new to her and she couldn't recall having come this way. One of her captors had stuck her in the arm with a needle soon after Ron and Kate had been forced into that other room, and she had gone immediately woozy. Her last memory before waking up in the total blackness of the tiny room was of pairs of hands on either of her arms, supporting her.

At the end of the hallway Mary stopped and looked down. There was a wider space between the bottom of the door and the tile floor than there had been in the room. She could actually see under it, a bit, and could even see that there was light brown carpeting covering the floor of whatever room lay just beyond. She froze and listened. There was nothing. She couldn't hear anyone talking or moving or breathing on the other side. It
seemed
as if she was alone, but you never could tell. There was always the possibility of some very resigned and silent person waiting in there. She thought of herself standing patiently along some lakeshore, watching the surface of the water, ready to catch a glance of an elusive gator surfacing, ready to see it and act. Many a gator had gone to that great leather store in the mall for such foolishness.

Instead of just trying the door, Mary slowly and silently went to all fours and inched her way to a prone position. Once lying flat, she bellied up close to the entrance and put her head directly on the tile. With her right eye, she peered through the crack between door and tile. She was looking for shadows, a flicker, any movement at all that would alert her to someone standing in there, or someone pacing by. But all she could see was a standard and somewhat brighter lighting in the other room.

She breathed silently out, letting go with a mild sigh. There was nothing else for it but to just stand up and try the door. Basically, these guys weren't really
villains
. They were just misguided tree-huggers, she figured. In fact, she could identify with them to an extent. Maybe she did make a living trapping displaced animals who were only trying to reestablish themselves in the homes they had been forced out of, but she was no less an environmentalist because of it. Mary understood the passion of Levin and the others in wanting to save these dino-birds or whatever they were. But she really did not want to get plugged over it. Those guys probably wouldn't shoot her, she figured.

And so she sucked in a breath, stood up and took the doorknob in her strong right hand. Slowly turning it, gripping the cool brass so that it did not slip and make a slight noise, she felt the bolt come free and the door pull quietly toward her. She opened the door a sliver and peered out.

It was another computer room. There was a bank of monitors and keyboards in cubbyhole-sized cubicles all along the eastern wall. Seeing no one, she pulled the door to her a bit more and stuck her head out. The room was definitely empty, and was rather dusty, in fact. None of the monitors appeared to have been used in some time, a thin sheen of dust coating them all. Each covered keyboard was similarly decorated with fine dust, and now she was pretty sure the room in which she'd been placed was going to be a mainframe for all of these monitors. Niccols wondered just what Holcomb was up to. Why was he going to need all of these cubicles, unless he intended to fill them with people tapping away all day on those keyboards?

Well, this was no time to ponder. What she needed to do was get the hell out of Dodge. If she could, she would try to find Ron and Kate along the way, but if not she was just going to get out. She didn't like being attacked and locked up. It went very much against her grain. There were things she wanted to see done to the ones who had put her in this position.

At that point, she was facing yet another closed door and this was beginning to get on her nerves.

Steeling herself, she paced quickly across the floor to the door opposite. This one had a large pane of glazed glass in it, and the hallways outside looked darker than the room. That meant that if anyone had been standing out there looking in, they would definitely have seen her silhouette and they'd be waiting for her to come out. Thinking of that, thinking of Kamaguchi standing there with that rifle, she stood at the door for more than a minute, gathering up the nerve to open it. Finally, she did it.

There was a loud and, for her, tooth-jarring click as the bolt came free and the door swung inward. She stepped out into the hall and moving as fast as she could glanced right and then left down the long corridor before pulling herself back into the room. Once more, she allowed herself a sigh of relief. There had been no one in the hallway. All she had seen were some doors, all closed, and the corridor-turning north at either end. It was time to go on. She went out, decided to take the left side.

At the next bend in the hallway she stopped, as she had each time before, and quickly peered down it. At the end of the hall, where it ended in a pair of double doors, each standing wide, she'd seen something.

She ducked back, took a further step in the direction she'd come, and pressed her body to the wall. Her heart pounded against her ribs. At the edge of the door, near the floor, she'd seen something. The glance had been a quick one, and she was glad that she'd continued to be careful even though she'd been having an easy go of it. But what she thought she had seen was a shoe. It appeared that someone was standing, or perhaps sitting just at the end of the hallway, beyond those doors and out of sight.

Mary had made virtually no sound, though. She doubted anyone had heard her, and the shoe had not moved. But it had been just a quick glance lasting a fraction of a second. Maybe it
had
moved, or maybe it wasn't a shoe, at all. It was possible it was something else. But in her present situation she couldn't be too careful. She'd have to take another look.

Carefully, Mary bent down and went to one knee, inching closer to the edge of the hallway. She hoped that she would present less of a visual target if her head were low to the floor. Slowly, she crept out and looked down the hall. The dark object was still there, and it was a shoe, as she had thought.

However, it was not the foot of a man standing, or even sitting in a chair and biding his time. The toe was pointed toward the ceiling. Mary could even see the ankle attached to that foot, black sock pulled down to show a smooth-skinned ankle. Whoever was in that shoe was lying on his back. She squinted, trying to see some movement, anything at all, but there was nothing. The foot was still, and she could see nothing casting a shadow onto the floor in there.

Mary retreated to a kneeling position in which she was not visible from those double doors. She crouched there and thought. Who was it? And why was he lying there like that, not moving?

She got up and calmly and carefully stepped into the other hallway and began to walk down it. The double doors grew and grew in her field of vision until they resembled something like the entrance to some gigantic coliseum, until that foot seemed like a boulder blocking her way out of a cave-in. A few seconds passed interminably, and Mary found herself there at the doorway. Without pausing, she went through it and looked down.

Kamaguchi
. It was the Japanese biologist. And he was lying there on the floor, a great fan of blood around the top of his skull. Tearing her eyes from the sight of the dead man, Mary looked at the wall against which Kamaguchi was lying, his arms splayed out dramatically, and she could see blood and bits of brain matter stuck there, drying like some kind of gory sauce. There was the rifle, partially propped against the dead man's torso. Whatever had happened, it had happened some minutes before. Blood and brain matter didn't just dry out on contact with the air. How long had she been trapped in that room? Mary wasn't sure, but suspected it had been at least two hours, probably more. That meant that it was late afternoon, evening perhaps.

And then, even though her gaze and attention were locked onto the face of dead Kamaguchi, Mary heard something. It was very slight, just the tiniest scuff of shoe sole against carpet. Someone was coming. Mary's eyes took in the dead man, took in the gun lying there within her reach. Niccols was a damned good shot with a rifle, and she wanted that firearm almost more than she wanted anything. But if she took it and retreated, whoever had done this would know she was there, would know she was free of the ropes,
would, perhaps, think that they had someone else to kill
. It was possible the sound was coming from the approach of someone who was there to help her. But Mary did not want to bet her life on it. Especially when she noticed that the sound was increasing, that it was coming directly her way, and that it was not the soles of one pair of shoes, but of several.

Quickly, she backed down the corridor, returning the way she had come, and she did not look back. As she retreated toward the place from which she had escaped, the footfalls kept coming her way.

“What's wrong?”

There was a great gulf of darkness between them. Each stared across the blackness, seeing only that.

“How can you make that accusation against Mary? What evidence do you have?”

Kate didn't reply. Ron stood against a wall, and he wasn't sure any more where the door was. Kate sat precisely where she had been when she and Ron had embraced. Short embrace.

“Two minutes ago you were kissing me,” Kate said. “Two minutes ago I was the object of your desire. You were enjoying it, so don't lie.”

“I didn't say anything about not
enjoying
it,” he told her. He repressed an impulse to draw his arm across his mouth. “It. It's just. Hell. I can't believe that about Mary. I've…We…”

“You know, I'll never be able to understand your kind. I tell you something that's obviously the truth, then you're scared and frightened and
angry
because you don't want to hear it.” She shifted, let one of her long, long legs slide until it was flat against the tiled floor. Ron heard her booted heel squeaking along the way.

“Angry isn't what I'm feeling. I'm confused.”

“Think about it.”

“Why would she do that? That's not like her. What evidence do you have?”

“See? You
are
angry. I can hear it in your voice and I can hear it in the way you're talking. You're pissed off with yourself, for not realizing it, but you're taking it out on me. Now don't deny it, because I've seen it too many times to mention.”

“Crap,” he said. Finally, he too slumped to the floor, the wall at his back as he came to a sitting position. “I just want out of here.”

“That's not what you were saying a few minutes ago. A few minutes ago you were probably hoping no one bothered us for an hour or so.”

“Yeah. Well, maybe. But that was before you were accusing Mary of murder.”

“
Think
about it, Ron! Who else was with you when Dodd passed you the disk? Who else knew about it?”

“But she didn't know what was going on there, what he passed on to me. She…”

“But she was there. You even told her you were going in to town to see Dodd. And he never made it, did he? You don't know what she saw when he gave you the disk. She's a sharp young woman. Maybe she knew what it was before you did.

“And you're going to tell me it was just a coincidence that she showed up at your place just in time to save you? And I'm willing to believe a woman can defend herself. But come
on,
Ron! She bested two professional killers? Give me a break!”

“I…I…can't believe it.”

“You'd better start believing it. Or at least consider the possibility,” she said.

There was a long pause. They sat there in the total blackness, each hearing the other breathing. From time to time Ron lifted his hand and passed it before his eyes, saw nothing, blinked, repeated the process. It had been a long time since he'd seen darkness this complete.

“You okay?” she asked. “Your head, I mean. Where he hit you.”

Ron reached back and felt the large but unpleasantly soft knot on the back of his skull. “I'll survive,” he told her. “If we had any light, you could ask me how many fingers you were holding up.”

Neither of them laughed.

“We'll be out of here soon,” Kate said, as if she were certain of it and could have announced the precise moment if only she could read her watch.

“How do you know that? They haven't seemed too anxious to check up on us.” He rolled his head on his neck, checking out the muscles there, and for any traces of dizziness.

“I know Adam, and I don't think he'll leave us here for too much longer. Even if Vance doesn't come right back in, I think he'll let us out. At least out of this room. Kamaguchi won't let him keep us cooped up in here. For a stoic Asian, he's got a soft heart, and he'll talk Adam into letting us out to use the facilities and get something to eat and drink.”

“Well, you know 'em better than I do. Whatever they do, they're up the creek, I can tell you that. You can be damned sure I'm going to have the lot of them arrested for this stunt.”

Again, an uncomfortable silence settled in. They sat apart, facing one another across the pitch-blackness, the soles of their shoes perhaps six feet from the other. Ron coughed. Kate sighed, cleared her throat.

“What?” he asked.

“I wasn't going to say anything. I just cleared my throat.”

“Oh.”

They blinked. Breathed. Rested. A few minutes creaked past.

“When they let us out, we have to tell them about Mary. About what we suspect of her,” she said.

“But we don't know. Not for certain.”

“Are you willing to risk your life on it? If she helped to deep-six Dodd, she can arrange for the rest of us to go, too. Think about it.”

And even though he could not see her, could barely even hear her, Ron could feel a wave of anger emanating from where she sat. “But you still haven't given a reason why would Mary do such thing.”

“Why does anyone do such a thing? Money, Ron. And the folks who offered it to her have very, very deep pockets. Take my word for it. Even Vance is nothing more than a bump in the road to them. She'd do it for the cash. I mean, the gator trapping business can't be
that
lucrative.”

“But, Mary and I…”

“What? You had a thing going? You made love to her? It's sometimes not that big a deal, Ron. Not to someone who would cooperate in the murder of another human.”

“That's hard to take,” he told her.

“Well, start considering the possibility really fast. I doubt we have a lot of time left if she's able to get word out to whomever it is helped her take out Dodd. So stop being mad at
me
for bringing it to your attention.”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry I reacted that way. But there's nothing I can do about it. It's just natural for me to come to her defense. It would be cruel to believe that about her.”

“And we have another possibility to worry about,” Kate continued.

“And what would that be?” Ron asked.

“She may have already gotten in touch with the other side.”

“Other side?”

“The bad guys.”

And although he didn't like what he was hearing and the suspicions that were creeping into his mind, he couldn't deny that Kate was onto something. Mary had been there when Dodd had passed him the disk. She had become a familiar face in Salutations—at least in certain quarters. There had been the surprise that she and Tatum were acquainted. She'd even known Dodd.

It was possible.

He had decided that he would not say another word until their captors returned to release them, or someone appeared to rescue them. Ron would just sit there and keep his mouth shut. It would be best all around.

And that was when the first shot rang out.