“Blackwell says he’s found a fix. Might have caused the problem before he left.”
“Oh! Well, then.” Whitaker’s face settled into a jovial expression that was deeply unsettling, given the circumstances. “Sounds like we’re a go after all. X-minus”—he glanced at his watch—“four days, twenty hours.”
“Yes.”
“Oh—have you found the wife?”
“No,” Morse bit out, and Beatrix—in no doubt whatsoever that they were talking about her—shuddered at his tone.
Whitaker crossed his arms. “I don’t like loose ends.”
“I don’t leave any. I will get her.”
“Good. Heading out?”
Morse, dropping the soundproofing spell, gave a terse jerk of his head, once up, once down.
“I’ll walk you to the checkpoint,” Whitaker said, and their footsteps faded as they strode off.
Beatrix sat in a huddle on the floor, shattered.
Five miles.
Could they really meanfive milesfrom every direction around the point of detonation?
That was an explosion the size of a city. An entire city.
How many people would die because she’d imprudently thought that bits of rubble hidden amid underbrush in the middle of a forest couldn’t in a million years give Draden’s men what they wanted?
CHAPTER 29
Breakfast was a bust. Lunch, too. But at dinner, they finally managed to get Red Coat to come to a halt in one of the few surveillance blind spots where they’d calculated none of the cameras could see.
“Out of my way,” the wizard hissed as they clustered around him.
Peter fell to his knees, grasping the man’s coat right at the pocket where he kept his fuel. “Please—please, I’mbeggingyou, give us more time!”
“How the heck do you think we can completely overhaul this weapon in three days?” Martinelli put in, waving his arms.
“We need more time?—”
“The whole thing isinsane, that’s what it is?—”
“Get off me,” Red Coat spat, yanking his coat back—several leaves lighter. He stalked off, and for ten minutes,Peter and Martinelli ate in charged silence as they waited to see if they’d been found out. Was someone going to come bursting in?
No one did.
They’d done it. He couldn’t believe it.
Now they just had to get into the laundry or garbage chute without being caught, climb up it somehow, find a way to escape whatever place this was and get to Beatrix—before Morse saw they were missing.
He tried not to think about the odds of this plan going disastrously wrong.
Beatrix hopedPeter had been exaggerating when he’d told her that the complex was mostly underground, but alas, it was true. Below the main level were two other levels, equally large if not larger.
The first clearly housed soldiers, with rows of rooms full of bunk beds. It was too late to safely search here—full of people—so she left it for the morning and went down one more flight. This level had the same rows of rooms, perhaps once used for housing as well but now either empty or storing piles of items. Bags of potatoes. Laboratory gear. Crisp uniforms. Dirty uniforms. All the doors had little windows, and she looked into every one of them—easily dozens. In none of them did she see a kidnapped wizard, though Morse would really be slipping if he put Peter in a room like this.
Still: Should she have been opening all these doors to look into corners?
