Shrike (Book 2): Rampant (31 page)

This whole thing would be much easier if we could just take the information Gina already has and hand it to Trevor, who could wave his magic sergeant wand and arrest everyone we tell him to. The unfortunate side of little things like rights and due process is that even if I'm pretty certain someone's a guilty son of a bitch, the law has to prove it. Or at least have a healthy trail to follow.

I think I expect to hear a ding or some sort of indication of success from Gina's computer when she finally gets past the firewall, but instead I hear a grunt from her and a couple hurried keystrokes.

"I'm in," she says. Her eyes scan back and forth on the screen, and she gestures to a piece of paper next to her. "I've been working on solidifying a list of the Britannia families. Taog was a big help in that. You'll have to give him my thanks."

"I'll make sure to pass it on," I say, thinking of the remaining Winnie-the-Pooh stationary in my briefcase.

I lean over to read the list, and the names cause little shocks through me even though some are familiar. Brown, Granger, Frost, MacLeod, Abbey, Park, Church.

"What are you doing now?" I ask Gina as her fingers fly across the keyboard.

She doesn't answer for a minute, but I see she's pulled up a directory. She's already to MacLeod, and she doesn't seem to see any names in the list that make her question. "I'm cross referencing the personnel files at St Leonard's with this list. It's not exactly comprehensive, but we could get lucky."

As if saying the word has breathed it into being, I see her type in the final name. Church.

A result comes up. Grant Church. She pulls up his file.

He's in witness protection. 

My fingers dial Trevor before I know what I'm doing. The phone rings once, twice, three times. Just as I'm thinking this will of course be the time he doesn't answer, he picks up.

"Trevor, you've a Britannia member in charge of the list members at the safe house." My words fall over each other trying to escape my mouth. I'm already up from the table heading for the door. Gina's not far behind me with Magda, and I hear the jingle of car keys.

"What? Slow down, Gwen."

"Grant Church. He's in Britannia."

"Grant? Grant's a good bloke, Gwen, I've known him for years. And he's not a Britannia member; he voted yes on the referendum."

"Och, you followed him into the polling place, did you? Sat there and watched while he marked his X in the box?" I'm out the door, my feet propelling me to Gina's Fiat. Any normal superhero would tell these women to stay where they were, snatch the keys and go. But this is their mission too.

There's a beat, and I can hear Trevor swallow. "You're sure." 

"There's no way this is coincidence. Not on a day like this. What are your bobbies doing right now? What's all of St Leonard's doing right this moment?"

I don't have to hear his answer to know that they're all investigating the protest shooting.

It couldn't be more clearly labeled
distraction
if they'd written it across the sky.

"I'm on my way to the house," Trevor says. "Meet me there."

thirty

A quarter mile from the safe house, a concussive boom shakes the street.

Gina's foot slams down on the brakes, and I pitch forward, hitting my head on the dashboard. 

"
Ja pierdolę
!" Magda's hand bangs into my seat.

My heart sputters, and I wrench the door open. "I'm going on foot," I yell, slamming it behind me. 

A huge cloud of smoke billows up, lit with a red glow like a furnace with the bellows pumping. 

I feel sick even running, and almost have to stop. I'm too late again. I feel like a cat chasing a laser pointer when it comes to Britannia. They're always ahead of me, always getting away, and each time I think I've caught them in my paws, I open them to find that there's nothing there after all. Nothing but dead bodies and fire and smoke.

Ash and dust rains down on me, and a chunk of wood hits me in the arm. I spin out of the way, uninjured. A few people from neighbouring houses are running toward the column of smoke. 

"Stay back!" I yell it at them. "Dial 999 and stay under cover! There's debris falling!"

Flames lick the building on all sides, the heat expanding out from the hollow frame. A wall tumbles inward.There's a familiar car parked in front of the gutted "safe" house. 

Trevor's.

He's nowhere to be seen.

"Trevor!" I scream his name into the roaring fire.

"Gwen." The sound of my name draws my attention to a hedge just off the pavement. It's Trevor. It has to be. I'm in full Shrike get-up, and he's just used my given name.

It takes me a moment to see why.

Sergeant Trevor McLean lies half on the hedge, one leg twisted at a horrible angle. 

His other leg is gone from the knee down. 

"Trevor—" I rush to his side, checking for other injuries. His face is red, red, so red I think for a second that the blast burnt off his first layer of skin. His eyebrows are gone, and his dark blue uniform is blackened and scorched. His leg. He'll die if he doesn't get help. 

I don't know much about first aid, but I know I need to save him from bleeding out. "I'm sorry, Trevor." I don't know why I keep saying his name over and over. Maybe it's to remind him I know him, I know he's here. He exists. I reach out and grab his belt, unbuckling it. "I need to try and make a tourniquet."

I've never made a goddamn tourniquet in my life, and I don't know if I even can do it right, but I snake the belt out from his waist and slide it under the half of the remaining right leg, trying not to jostle the horribly broken left one. I tighten the belt halfway up his femur, and he screams. 

The blood oozing from his stump slows, and my breath hisses out. "Stay with me, Trevor."

"I was too late." His voice comes out like a saw on steel. "I was too late."

He must have been closer to the safe house than I was if he got here this quickly. "If you'd been here five seconds sooner, you'd be a puff of smoke right now, Trevor McLean." I say his name again and reach out with one hand to touch his burnt face. "You're going to be all right."

I spare a glance behind me at the house. The bomb must have been set on the lower level, and he must have been on the front stoop when it went off and blew him backward into the hedge. 

"They were all in there," he says. His voice is fading, and I snap my attention back to him. "All of them. Sarah and all the rest we saved from Granger. They got them all. Grant. I tried to call Grant, and he didn't answer his mobile. He always answers his mobile."

"Hush," I say, my heart breaking into more pieces. I wonder if one of these days there will be nothing left of it but dust.

I hear sirens approaching, and footsteps come at me from behind. I know one set is Magda's before I even turn around.

"Gwen," she says. She falls to her knees beside Trevor, looking like she wants to try and make him more comfortable but not wanting to hurt him more. "
Boże świętny, pomóż nam
."

She only gets religious in Polish when she doesn't know what else to say.

Grant Church will be long gone by now. A police van squeals down the street, and two bobbies jump out, running toward us.

"What happened?" One of them looks down and sees Trevor. "Sergeant McLean!"

Trevor's almost unconscious, but the sound of his title seems to jerk him back for a moment. "Grant Church did this," he says. Then he passes out. 

The ambulance arrives seconds later, and they bundle Trevor onto a stretcher. 

Magda, Gina, and I watch as the medics and constables search the wreckage of the house. They don't tell you about the part where people have to bring out body parts. They find Trevor's right boot across the street, and I know it's his because I saw its match on his remaining leg.

There are no other survivors.

The moment the bobbies are finished asking us questions, I ask for the lead investigator. It's a stout woman who says her name is Sergeant Miranda Heinlein, and she's zipping a body bag when I approach her. 

I don't ask who's in the bag.

"Did they tell you who Trevor said did this?" I ask.

She looks me over head to toe. I know she knows who I am. I only have to hope she'll treat me with some modicum of trust.

"I've put out a bulletin to find Grant Church. If Trevor says he did it, then we will pick Scotland up by the tail and shake her till Grant falls out," she says bluntly. 

Something hits me. Taog. The Gu Bràth members. Sergeant Heinlein must see the panic on my face even with the mask, because she snaps to attention. 

"What is it?"

"The quarantine at ERI. They're targets too."

Her eyes widen, and she grabs her radio. "Do you really think they would hit a hospital?"

"They just blew up an entire house of people, most of whose crimes were nothing more than thinking the moon landing was faked." I look to Magda and Gina, whose eyes are glued to the still-smoking building. "I have to get to the hospital."

"I'll get everyone I can spare to protect that quarantine," Heinlein says. I see the way she cringes when she says it, and I know what she's thinking.

A police shooting, a house blowing up inside the city, and a threatened group of people in one of the most vulnerable populations in the city. I don't think she can spare a soul, but it means something to me that she's going to try.

"Thank you," I say, turning to go.

"Shrike." 

I stop. 

"Trevor is a good man, and I know you're used to working with him, but you've a lot of friends in the precinct." She strides toward me and presses a card into my hand. "Please don't hesitate to ring me."

"Find Grant Church. And put out a bulletin on John Abbey, as well."

"Who's that?"

"He's the leader of Britannia. You won't find him unless he wants to be found, but it's worth a try."

I nod at Gina and Magda, and they follow me back toward Gina's car. I don't care that people are staring at me, and I don't care if they're about to watch me climb into a Fiat. My flying isn't impressive enough to go zooming off to the hospital with my arms outstretched.

The drive to the hospital is terse and silent, with only a few sniffs from Magda to break it. I'll have to find out if Trevor's at ERI, and the thought hits me that if Britannia do decide to attack the hospital, they could end up killing him there, too. Frying pan. Fire. 

Lately I feel like my life is like those bloody Final Destination films, and all I'm doing is postponing the inevitable.

All I know right now is that if they don't let me in to see Taog, I really will break a door down.

I don't have to threaten to break any doors.

Dr Jensen is the first person I see when I reach the quarantined area, and one look at my face, mask and all, seems to do the trick. She doesn't try to stop me, and for a second I think it's because she recognises me, but then she calls after me.

"This is a quarantine, lass. I wouldn't go in there."

"I don't get sick," I say, and push through the door.

I go straight to Taog's room and shut the door behind me. The last update I got on his condition was that he was stable, and stable in this case seems to mean sitting up and eating red Jell-O.

"Gwen." His voice comes out with such an explosive force of emotion that I think it's going to send him into a coughing fit. He pushes his plate to the side, making his IV tube waggle.

I hurry to him and almost throw myself on his bed. He smells like hospital and illness, and I don't even care. His arm goes around me, clutching the back of my hair and then moving to stroke my side.

"I got your letter," he says. His voice is still hoarse, but he actually sounds better. That fact sends such relief through me that I pull back to look at him.

The blood vessels in his eyes are healing, and he gives me a smile. 

"I didn't really know what to say," I tell him. I take his hand, frowning. I don't want to tell him about Trevor, but he should know. I wish I could throw him over my shoulder and take him out of here, somewhere far away where I know no bombs can reach him. But I can't. Not with him this ill, even if he is looking like he might be able to stand up without collapsing.

For a moment I allow peace between us. His eyes seek mine out and hold my gaze, and as the seconds tick by, I wonder how it became possible to know a person as well as I know Taog. I never thought I would look at anyone the way I look at this man, like something deep inside of us got woven together, entwining our lives and hearts. When I am with him, I feel like both of us are home.

I don't want to break it. But I have to.

"Britannia blew up the safe house where the other list members were being held," I say. "Trevor—"

My voice catches on his name, and horror dawns on Taog's face. "Is he—"

I shake my head hard. "He's alive. He lost…his leg." I don't add that he might end up losing use of the other one for a long time as well.