Dead Ringer (39 page)

The gunshots sent a flood of people crowding into the room. Someone screamed. A uniformed arm shoved at Angelina to get a better view and a few moments later another shove pushed her in the opposite direction. One man looked at the mess of blood and gore and staggered back, white-faced. The young, blunt-nosed man who'd rescued her stumbled to a corner and threw up in a wastebasket.

All this Angelina experienced through a numb haze. Her mind registered sounds and sights from a great distance. Eventually, unknown hands lifted her from the floor and set her in a chair where she no longer had to see what was left of Marian and Victor.

Voice unsteady, she explained what had happened. Men swirled around, arguing what to do with her. Finally, Grisha's name penetrated the fog, and she glanced up to see a clump of men discussing whether or not to go to the mine. Then Finn and her assignment came back with a click, as though someone had turned a switch back on.

Roper was coming to arrest Marian and free Finn.

She looked around the room; no one was paying at-

tention to her any longer. Quietly, she slipped from the chair, went to the desk, and called Roper again.

"Marian is dead," she said in a low, brusque voice, and briefly explained what had happened. "I'll give you the details when you get here. Make it fast."

In the meantime, she left the chaos in the office, crossed the central part of the house where the dining room and most of the public areas were. Slowly, painfully, she limped north.

Holding on to walls for support wherever possible, she slid down the glass-lined hallway, edged past the media room and the game room. Sweat dampened her shirt and pain rumbled with every step, but she didn't stop. Down the small, dark passageway to the steel door at the end.

She leaned her head against it, taking a momentary break. The cool metal felt good against the flush of pain. After a few seconds, she pushed herself away, gazed down at the keypad embedded in the front, and punched in the number Finn's decoder had uncovered the night before.

Had it only been last night?

The lock clicked open, she pushed the door inward, and once again was face-to-face with her mother's shrine.

At the sight of the photo-filled walls, an invisible hand squeezed her heart. The smiles, her mother's face frozen in happiness. So much pain to come, so much grief.

But Angelina didn't have time to dwell on the death of her dream.

Hobbling with care, she began the trek forward. With nothing to hold on to, the trip from door to wall was difficult. She bit her lip but managed to get there and trip the switch that opened the panel. Retreating gratefully to the circular bench, she watched the doors glide open on silent feet.

"Hello, Mother," she said quietly.

She imagined Victor here, sitting in the same place, gazing at his lost love, grieving, hoping for the miracle that would bring her back to him, and never once suspecting he harbored her killer.

The thick window in the tank blurred Carol's face, but Angelina knew she was there. She could smell her, the fragrance deep and rich, more pungent than ever.

She's dead, Mother. Marian is dead.

Was it her imagination, or did the sea inside the tank swirl momentarily? True or not, for a brief minute her mother's face came into sharper focus. She appeared calm. Serene.

As though she were saying thank you.

You're welcome.

Something happened then. Something strange and unsettling, but wonderful, too. A concept Angelina had given up on long ago came rushing back.

Maybe justice
was
possible in this world.

Maybe the good guys did get lucky every now and again.

She sat on the bench, surrounded by pictures of her mother and wanted to believe. Almost did. Somehow it didn't seem as unimaginable now.

Except for two tiny problems. Finn was still trapped in the mine, and the plutonium was nowhere to be found.

She scanned the space around her, gaze skimming hundreds of pictures lovingly placed, and at last came back to her mother's silver tomb. Now that she knew Marian was behind the theft, instinct told her the plutonium was in this room. Nothing would be more satisfying to Marian. Kill her rival
and
desecrate the grave.

But how? Where?

The key was there, if Angelina could only see it.

The tank was truly beautiful. She had to hand it to Victor, he'd spared no expense. The daisies stood out from the surface in three dimensions, so lifelike she could almost pluck them off.

Scattered over the surface, they formed a pattern of pretty daisy chains that wound around and around from top to...

One daisy way at the bottom had jumped the chain.

She cocked her head and stared at the misplaced flower at the lower edge, half hidden by the curve of the tank. It was slightly misaligned, easily missed by a quick glance. She would never have noticed if she hadn't been staring so closely.

Limping forward, she knelt and ran her fingers over the odd-man-out. It was metal like the others, yet on closer inspection, not quite the same. The petals were rounder, the center more prominent. And the whole thing stuck out from the tank at a greater depth.

Her heart began to thump. She shifted position to look closer, but her injured ankle got in the way and she lost her balance. Instinctively, she reached for the tank to steady herself, and her hand scraped against the flower. It moved.

She plopped onto the floor, staring at the thing.

It had moved.

Heart thudding faster now, she bit her lip and tugged at the petals. The entire flower came away in her hand.

My God.

Slightly larger than her hand, the flower had heft and weight, but she could still hold it easily in her palm. She turned it over, the metal cold and hard against her skin. A small rectangle, maybe an inch thick and attached to the back, gave the blossom its extra depth. Covering the rectangle was a thin piece of metal. She put the flower against the tank again and it stuck there.

A magnet. The thin strip was a magnet.

Quickly, she checked the others. They were all soldered on, solid and unmoving.

She turned the detached flower over in her hand, hunting for a way into the narrow box at the back. No latch, no entry.

She studied the daisy. The center bulged slightly. On impulse she pressed it, and the center popped open.

Her heart bolting into her throat, she jumped and nearly dropped the thing.

Jeez. Calm down.

But she couldn't. Not when she finally peeked inside and saw a small metal capsule.

For no apparent reason, she began to shake uncontrollably. Tears raced up her throat and in half a second she was bawling like a baby.

She'd done it. She'd found what they'd been looking for.

Her job was over.

* * *

The corridor in Helena's St. Peter's Hospital was so well lit Angelina felt like a spotlight beamed down on her.

No place to run, no place to hide.

She stared down at the Life Extension Foundation brochure Roper had just handed her and tried to concentrate on what he was saying. But all she could think about was Finn. He was there, somewhere in the hospital. Doctors were taking care of him, and he was going to be fine. Everyone said so. But a layer of uneasiness simmered inside her like a low-grade fever.

Roper's quiet, soothing voice melted into the white
.,6

noise of the hospital corridor with its bright light and antiseptic smell, and she forced herself to focus on his words.

"... company with experience in storing cryonics tanks. I've made arrangements to have your mother's body shipped there."

"Thank you."

"Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"You're sure Finn-Agent Carver-will be all right?" She'd asked the question a dozen times and received a dozen reassuring answers. Roper's was no different.

"The doctors tell me that none of his injuries are life-threatening. He'll have a long healing period, especially the leg, but he should be fine."

She nodded, needing to hear it again. He'd looked so awful when they lifted him through that ancient trapdoor and out of the mine. Strapped securely to a gurney, his leg splinted and cushioned for the trip up, he'd been dirty, blood-streaked, and unconscious. She'd stood on the mountaintop, watching as they hauled his inert body into the hovering medevac helicopter, and that was the last she'd seen of him.

"How is your ankle?"

She glanced down at her foot, wrapped tightly in an Ace bandage. "I'll live."

Roper patted her hand, covering the Band-Aids over the cuts on her knuckles. "You've done more than I can say. Marian had that flower custom-made so it could be hidden in plain sight. You were clever to find it. Your country is grateful, and so am I."

She shrugged self-consciously, embarrassed by the official-sounding praise. "Well, if you're handing out medals, I have a chest you can pin one on."

Roper coughed, which turned into a barking kind of laugh, which in turn became an overdrawn attempt to clear his throat. "Yes, well, we all owe you a debt. Now, can I have someone take you to the hotel?"

Yes. Please.
She was desperate to leave, but frantic to stay. "I'd appreciate a ride, but first... can I see Agent Carver?"

"I think he's sleeping."

"That's okay. I just want to... to see for myself that he's all right."

The little man shrugged, but escorted her to Finn's room. "I'll... uh... I'll wait outside," he said.

'Thank you." She took a breath and pushed open the door.

Finn lay on his back, eyes closed, body connected to a morphine drip through an IV in the back of his hand. His leg was wrapped and trapped, held still in some kind of Rube Goldberg medical contraption.

As she crept closer, she saw he'd been cleaned up, the blood and dirt replaced by sterile gauze and clean bandages. He didn't seem as scary as he had the last time she'd seen him, and the tightness inside her chest loosened a little.

She brushed the dark hair off his haggard face. Even in sleep, lines of exhaustion cut deep into his cheeks and around his mouth.

But his chest rose and fell in steady, reliable rhythm.

He looked broken but not destroyed. Worn out but not beat.

Alive.

And so damn good, tears welled up.

No use fighting it; she was a goddamn waterworks today. Once she would have died rather than cry over a man. But this man was worth it.

Besides, he was dead to the world and would never see.

She pulled the only chair up close to the unencumbered side of the bed.

"Hey, Sharkman," she whispered. "Looks like we're both going to live." His arm lay limply at his side and she, ran her hand over his palm, straightening out the fingers.

Those fingers had made her body sing and she had paid him back with cruelty and lies.
Just one in a long line.
Would he believe it?

People always thought the worst of Her. What if Finn was no different? She didn't want to stick around to find out.

She swiped at her seeping eyes with the back of her hand. The important thing was that he was alive. He would heal. No matter what he thought of her, somewhere on the planet he'd be walking and talking.

The damn tears started again, clogging her throat and making her nose run.

Besides, she'd spent too much of her life using men as a shield between her and the world. It was time she stood on her own.

"Got something for you." Her voice was husky and thick. "Been carrying it around for hours." Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the pearl brooch. "Something to remember me by." She pinned the circle to his pillow, and then, because she couldn't help herself, she leaned down and brushed her mouth over his.

"See you around, Sharkman."

Before she could change her mind, she turned and walked out the door.

CHAPTER
24

F inn didn't remember anything about the cave-in, but he read about it in the report Roper brought to the hospital. He would have preferred to hear what happened from Angelina herself, but since she never came to see him, that wasn't an option.

So he lay in bed while his leg and shoulder mended and read the cold, impersonal phrases that described how she'd dragged him to safety, sustained an injury but had been clever enough to use it to get to a place where she could call for help. Then she managed to keep herself alive while Marian and Victor killed each other, found the plutonium, and though she didn't dig him out herself, was the instrument that saved his life.