Chapter 36 #2
“I think I should call somebody.”
“Why don’t you take a look inside the room?” Joel suggests, and my heart stops. “We’ve swept up all the glass. There’s still a strong smell of disinfectant, though, so I suggest taking shallow breaths.”
“Ah, I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” Hesitation replaces the irritation in his voice. “I can’t have any more noise.”
“There won’t be, sir.”
“I’m finishing up something and I need to concentrate.”
“We’ll try to be quiet.”
“Sorry again for the disturbance,” I add.
It’s worked. My shoulders relax. The man turns to re-enter his lab room.
“Hey, any idea where—” Sue steps into the corridor, the steel wrecking bar in her hand.
The man takes one look at her and bolts for the elevator. Swearing, I go after him.
Inside the elevator, the man frantically stabs a button as he cries out, “Close! Close!”
The doors slide shut just as I reach them.
“Don’t let him leave the building!” Joel yells as the elevator starts down.
The stairs are located to the left of the elevator. I run to the fire door, wrench it open, and hurtle down the stairs, sliding the palm of my hand down the handrail so I don’t break a leg in my descent.
Above the sound of my pounding feet and ragged breathing, I hear Joel’s voice echoing urgently down the stairwell. “Don’t let him get away!”
I’m not going to waste precious oxygen answering him.
Reaching the foot of the stairs, I yank open the ground-floor fire door, hearing the ping of the elevator as it stops. The man runs out of the elevator, heading toward the empty reception area.
With a last burst of effort, my lungs burning, I sprint after him and tackle him a few feet from the building’s front door. Sprawled on his stomach, the man tries to get up, but I press my knee into his back.
He grunts in pain. “What do you want?”
“I want all experiments on animals to stop,” I reply, careful to keep out of his line of sight, “but since that’s not happening anytime soon, I’ll settle for rescuing as many as I can.”
“I don’t believe this. Are you one of those animal rights people?”
“Yeah, I belong to the alien species.”
“But the research we do here is—”
I jerk his arms behind him. “We’re not debating here today, buddy.”
Joel and Sue exit the elevator. Sue is clutching the cleaning trolley, her face blotchy with tears. “The place is supposed to be deserted! What do we do now?”
“Don’t say another word,” Joel orders. He looks at the figure stretched out on the floor. “What do you want to do with him?”
The man tries to lift his head. “You can let me go. I won’t say anything.”
I push his head down again. “You’re not part of this discussion.” I look around the reception area. “We’ll have to lock him up somewhere.”
“No gagging him,” Joel says firmly.
“Yeah, he might choke on his own importance.” I eye Joel. “You got a shirt under that overall?”
“Yeah.”
“Take it off.”
Joel shrugs off the top half of his overall and hands me his T-shirt.
I tug the shirt over the man’s head like a hood and haul him to his feet. “Just so you don’t catch a glimpse of our handsome mugs.”
“There’s a broom closet next to the staff area,” Joel says.
We locate the closet and shove him inside, tying him up as securely as we can. Turning the man around to face the wall, Joel reclaims his shirt and locks the door.
“Help! Someone help!” The man’s voice reverberates from inside the closet.
I bang a fist on the door. “Wait until we’ve left, you idiot.”
There’s silence. Moving away from the door, Joel says, “I figure we have an hour before he frees himself or someone comes looking for him.”
“Time enough to get the other beagles out,” I say, heading for the elevator.
Joel stops me with a hand on my arm. “I’m calling it, Justin.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“There are five beagles in that room,” I say in a tight voice. “They’re going to be killed tomorrow.”
“We’re out of time,” Joel says, fatigue and regret lining his face.
“I can’t leave them behind!”
“If we go back for them, we sacrifice the six we can save.”
“I agree with Joel,” Sue pipes up, darting anxious glances around the reception area.
A feeling of helpless rage surges through me. I made a promise to save those beagles. I can’t break that promise. But I also remember another pre-raid promise: to listen to Joel’s voice of caution because I know how hot my blood runs.
“Don’t fight us on this,” Joel pleads.
After a moment, I say tonelessly, “All right, we’re leaving.”
“You got everything?” Joel asks Sue.
“Yes.”
We exit the building and climb into the van.
Joel sits up front with Michael while Sue and I position ourselves in the windowless rear of the van to keep an eye on the beagles.
The dogs are whining nervously in their special carriers.
Sue switches on an interior light and speaks soothingly to them as the van rattles out of the parking lot toward the security gatehouse, the radio turned up to drown out any barking.
“The operation was a success,” Sue says hesitantly.
I simply look at her. I feel no sense of triumph. I only taste failure as I think of the five beagles with holes in their throats sitting in their cages. And what will happen to them tomorrow.
My feelings must show on my face, because she says, “The six beagles we saved will live to have pups, and that effectively translates into, maybe, eighteen lives saved, if they each give birth to three pups.”
“I wasted precious time doing malicious damage.” The confession tumbles out of me. “I might have saved the other beagles if I’d gone to them first.”
“At least you destroyed those smoking chambers,” Sue says. “It’ll be awhile before they can afford—” She stops, her face draining of color.
“What is it?” I ask tersely.
She buries her face in her hands, speaking through her fingers. “When I saw that man...I panicked...I was in such a hurry.”
“What did you do?” I ask, fighting dread. “Sue, what did you do?”
She glances up, looking stricken. “I left the wrecking bar behind.”
I suck in an unforgiving breath. A wrecking bar that I handled before putting on my gloves. A wrecking bar that has my prints all over it.