Two Weeks' Notice (37 page)

“I was,” Jane said. “And you’re going to wish you were, too. Especially if you don’t
listen
.”

“Knew I forgot something,” Joe said, and pulled a strip of duct tape from a row of them stuck to his pants. He put it over Jane’s mouth. “
Now
you’re secure.” He wasn’t taking chances. He searched her and removed anything that could have possibly constituted a weapon, or a lockpick, and propped her into the corner. She was trying to yell through the gag, and her eyes glittered furiously.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Bryn said. She felt horribly numb now and resigned. “None of you should have come.”

Joe turned to Bryn and gave her the warmest, most heartbreaking smile she’d ever seen. “Hey,” he said. “Come on, cheer up. This is a rescue, not a wake.”

Riley put her hand on Bryn’s shoulder and said, “If we stay here, they’ll burn us. There’s no question about it. Annie, too.”

“And if we go?” Bryn raised her head and stared into Riley’s face, saw the flash of silver in her eyes. Knew it was in her own. “My
God
, Riley. Look at what we
are
.”

“We’re what they made us,” Riley said. “And we’ll have to deal with that. But
we will
.”

“No,” Bryn said. “I can’t. I won’t take the risk.” She pulled in a deep breath. “Patrick. Jane’s right. You can’t take us out of here. We’re infected.”

“I know,” Patrick said. “Manny figured out the incubations, and what they were planning to produce. We’ll take precautions, but I’m not letting you stay here and burn, Bryn. I can’t.”

“You can’t trust me. And I can’t trust you,” she said, and met his eyes. She saw him flinch, and knew he was having the same reaction she’d felt on recognizing Riley’s change. “Go. Take Annie and
go
.”

“Shit,” Riley said. “You mean that, don’t you?” She looked past Bryn, and her eyes widened. “Annie,
don’t
!”

It was a bluff, and it worked, because for a split second Bryn took her attention off the threat in front of her, and looked toward her sister…who looked utterly shocked, and definitely not attacking her.

Damn it.

Even her nanite-fueled reaction time wasn’t enough to stop Riley from crushing her neck.

Bryn came back to life strapped down to a gurney—not with Velcro, but with heavy-duty leather and chains that would probably have held a ship’s anchor, much less a somewhat woozy woman. Without leverage, there was no way to break free.

She was in the back of a van, and the van was moving.

Patrick McCallister was sitting next to her, staring down at her face. Annie and Riley were next to him, and Joe Fideli. She didn’t see Liam, Manny, or Pansy; she guessed they were up front in the cab of the truck.

“How?” she asked. “How did you get us out?”

“I had help,” he said. “The FBI wanted in; they knew something had gone wrong in there. I just tagged along. They were looking for a missing agent who’d tipped them to problems.” He glanced aside at Riley. “I let them know she was probably still inside and in grave danger.” He looked grim and tense, and didn’t quite meet Bryn’s gaze. “I
knew you were headed to Pharmadene, and once we understood that Riley had gone missing, we knew that was no longer safe. Mercer talked about the new generation of nanites they were brewing; that was enough for the FBI to make the decision to move on them.”

Then how
…“They don’t know about me and Riley,” Bryn said. “You didn’t tell them about us. About the nanites we’re carrying and incubating.”

“I couldn’t,” Patrick said. A muscle jumped in his jaw, and he tried to relax it. “Riley says you won’t be contagious, either of you, for about thirty days. It takes that long for the new generation being built inside you to mature.”

“Riley lies. You should remember that.”

“Sitting right here,” Riley murmured, but she didn’t dispute it.

“I did remember,” he said. “Manny pulled files from the servers, and she’s telling the truth. We’ve got about thirty days to stop you and Riley from replicating. If we don’t make it, Manny says he can still safely remove the excess nanites to storage and start over.”

Bryn realized she was crying—slow, inevitable tears of fury and failure. Her head was strapped down in place. She couldn’t even shake it. “You cannot take this risk. You
have
to turn us over.
God
, Patrick, we
eat people
and we can’t be
stopped
. Did Riley tell you that?
Did she?
”

He didn’t say anything to that. None of them did until finally Joe said, “If it comes to burning you down, I won’t let him get in the way, Bryn. But it ain’t gonna come to that.”

“Trust me,” McCallister said, and took her hand. “Please.”

“You should have told me about Jane,” she said. The pain she was feeling inside was nothing the nanites could fix. “God, Patrick, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I would have, but it’s not a pretty time of my life. I wanted—I wanted you to think better of me, just for a while. And I had no idea she was alive.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I love you. And I’m not letting it end like this. We
will
stop this.”

It’s too late,
she thought. She could feel the nanites inside her, building their own future generations and destroying her life in the process. What if Jane was right? What if the nanites
could
infect regular, living people? What would stop them?

You will,
she told herself.
And Riley. And Patrick. And Joe. And even Annie and Manny and Pansy. We will stop them.

Patrick was holding her hand, and after the instinctive flinch of horror that she might somehow transfer her doom to him, she was grateful for that. For the warmth and the silent promises. She knew he hadn’t lied to her about Jane; he would have told her. And she knew he didn’t love Jane.

We will stop this. We have to.

She opened her eyes and met Patrick’s steady, warm gaze. She didn’t need to say what she was thinking. He knew. His fingers brushed the hair back from her forehead, and he pressed a gentle kiss there in a bloom of warmth. “We will,” he said.

It was a promise she would have to trust.

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