“It’s a live cam, man. It goes everywhere. I just got a shout from a buddy in Amsterdam who saw me.”
It suddenly dawned on me. The receipt. Free WiFi with every purchase. Check us out on the net. I turned and looked at Rachel. The laptop, with a full-screen photo of a Scarecrow on it, was facing the camera. I turned back and looked up at the lens. Call it a premonition or call it certain knowledge, but I knew I was looking back at Carver.
“Rachel?” I said, not looking away. “Did you tell him where you were going to get coffee?”
“Yes,” she said from behind me. “I said I was just going down the street.”
That confirmed it. I turned and walked back to the table. I picked up the laptop and closed it.
“He’s been watching us,” I said. “We gotta go.”
I headed out of the coffee shop and she came out right behind me.
“I’ll drive,” she said.
Rachel turned her rental car through the main gate and went charging up to the front door of Western Data. She was driving one-handed, working her phone with the other. She threw the car into park and we got out.
“Something’s wrong,” she said. “Neither of them is answering.”
Rachel used a Western Data key card to unlock and enter the front door. The reception desk was empty and we quickly moved to the next door. As we entered the internal hallway, she pulled her gun out of a holster that was on her belt under her jacket.
“I don’t know what’s going on but he’s still here,” she said.
“Carver?” I asked. “How do you know that?”
“I rode with him to lunch. His car is still out there. The silver Lexus.”
We took the stairs down to the octagon room and approached the mantrap leading to the bunker. Rachel hesitated before opening the door.
“What?” I whispered.
“He’ll know we’re coming in. Stay behind me.”
She raised the gun and we squeezed in together, then quickly moved to the second door. When we came through the other side, the control room was empty.
“This isn’t right,” Rachel said. “Where is everybody? And that’s supposed to be open.”
She pointed to the glass door that led to the server room. It was closed. I scanned the control room and saw the door to Carver’s private office was ajar. I moved toward it and pushed it all the way open.
The room was empty. I stepped in and went to Carver’s worktable. I put one finger down on the touch pad and the two screens came alive. On the main screen I was looking at an overhead view of the coffee shop where I had just made a case to Rachel that Carver was the Unsub.
“Rachel?”
She came in and I pointed at the screen.
“He was watching us.”
She hurried back into the control room and I followed her. She moved to the center workstation, put her gun down on the desk and started working the keyboard and touch pad. The two monitors came alive and soon she had pulled up multiplex screens divided into thirty-two interior camera views of the facility. But all of the squares were black. She started flipping through several screens and found the same thing each time. All cameras were dark.
“He’s killed all of the cameras,” Rachel said. “What is—”
“Wait. There!”
I pointed to one camera angle surrounded by several black squares. Rachel manipulated the touch pad and brought the image up to full screen.
The camera view captured a passageway between two rows of server towers in the farm. Lying facedown on the floor were two bodies, their wrists cuffed behind their backs and their ankles bound with cable ties.
Rachel grabbed the stem microphone attached to the desk, depressed the button and almost shrieked into it.
“George! Sarah! Can you hear me?”
At the sound of Rachel’s voice the figures on the screen stirred and the male raised his head. It looked like there was blood on his white shirt.
“Rachel?” he said, his voice sounding weak over an overhead speaker. “I can hear you.”
“Where is he? Where’s Carver, George?”
“I don’t know. He was just here. He just brought us in here.”
“What happened?”
“After you left he went into his office. He was in there for a little bit and when he came out, he got the drop on us. He grabbed my gun out of my briefcase. He herded us in here and put us on the floor. I tried to talk to him but he wouldn’t talk.”
“Sarah, where’s your weapon?”
“He got that, too,” Mowry called out. “I’m sorry, Rachel. We didn’t see it coming.”
“Not your fault. It’s mine. We’re going to get you out of there.”
Rachel released the microphone and quickly came around the workstation, bringing her weapon with her. She went to the biometric reader and put her hand on the scanner.
“He could be in there, waiting,” I warned.
“I know, but what am I going to do, leave them lying in there?”
The device completed the scan and she grabbed the handle to slide the door open. It didn’t move. Her hand scan had been rejected.
Rachel looked back at the scanner.
“That makes no sense. My profile was put in yesterday.”
She put her hand on the scanner and began the procedure again.
“Who put it in?” I asked.
She looked back at me and didn’t need to answer for me to know it had been Carver.
“Who else can open that door?” I asked.
“Nobody who’s on this side. It was me, Mowry and Torres.”
“What about employees here?”
She stepped away from the scanner and tried the door again. It didn’t budge.
“They’re on a skeleton staff upstairs and there’s nobody with authorization for the farm. We’re screwed! We can’t get—”
“Rachel!”
I pointed at the screen. Carver had suddenly stepped into the view of the one working camera in the server room. He stood in front of the two agents on the floor, hands in the pockets of his lab coat, and looking directly up at the camera.
Rachel quickly came around to see the screen.
“What’s he doing?” she asked.
I didn’t need to answer because it became clear that Carver was pulling a box of cigarettes and a throwaway lighter from his pockets. In one of those moments when the mind delivers useless information I realized they were probably the cigarettes missing from Freddy Stone’s/Marc Courier’s box of belongings. As we watched, Carver calmly drew a cigarette from the box and put it in his mouth.
Rachel quickly pulled over the microphone.
“Wesley? What’s going on?”
Carver was raising the lighter to the end of the cigarette but stopped when he heard the question. He looked back up at the camera.
“You can dispense with the niceties, Agent Walling. We’re at the end of the dance now.”
“What are you doing?” she said more forcefully.
“You know what I’m doing,” Carver said. “I’m ending it. I’d rather not spend the rest of my days chased like an animal and then put in a cage. Being put on display, trotted out for interviews with bureau shrinks and profilers hoping to learn all the dark secrets in the universe. I think I would find that to be a fate worse than death, Agent Walling.”
He raised the lighter again.
“Don’t, Wesley! At least let Agents Mowry and Torres go. They did nothing to hurt you.”
“That’s not the point, is it? The world hurt me, Rachel, and that’s enough. I’m sure you’ve studied the psychology before.”
Rachel took her hand off the transmit button and quickly turned to me.
“Get on the computer. Shut down the VESDA system.”
“No, you do it! I don’t know the first thing about—”
“Is Jack there with you?” Carver asked.
I hand-signaled Rachel to trade places with me. I moved to the microphone while she dropped into a seat a
nd went to work on the computer. I depressed the button and spoke to the man who murdered Angela Cook.
“I’m here, Carver. This is not how this should end.”
“No, Jack, it’s the only end. You have slain another giant. You’re the hero of the hour.”
“No, not yet. I want to tell your story… Wesley. Let me explain it to the world.”
On the screen, Carver shook his head.
“Some things can’t be explained. Some stories are too dark to be told.”
He flicked the lighter and the flame came up. He started to light the cigarette.
“Carver, no! Those are innocent people in there!”
Carver inhaled deeply, held it, and then tilted his head back and exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. I was sure he had positioned himself under one of the infrared smoke detectors.
“No one is innocent, Jack,” he said. “You should know that.”
He drew in more smoke and spoke almost casually, gesturing with the hand holding the cigarette, a small trail of blue smoke following it in the air.
“I know Agent Walling and you are trying to shut down the system but that isn’t going to work. I took the liberty of resetting it. Only I have access now. And the exhaust component that takes the carbon dioxide out of the room one minute after dispersal has been checked off for maintenance. I wanted to make sure there would be no mistakes. And no survivors.”
Carver exhaled, sending another jet of smoke toward the ceiling. I looked over at Rachel. Her fingers were racing across the keyboard but she was shaking her head.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “He changed all the authorization codes. I can’t get into—”
The blast of an alarm horn filled the control room. The system had been tripped. A red band two inches thick crossed every screen in the control room. An electronic voice, female and calm, read the words crossing on the band aloud.
“Attention, the VESDA fire suppression system has been activated. All personnel must exit the server room. The VESDA fire suppression system will engage in one minute.”
Rachel ran both hands through her hair and stared helplessly at the screen in front of her. Carver was blowing another round of smoke toward the ceiling. There was a look of calm resignation on his face.
“Rachel!” Mowry called from behind him. “Get us out of here!”
Carver looked back at his captives and shook his head.
“It’s over,” he said. “This is the end.”
Just then I was jolted by a second blast of the warning horn.
“Attention, the VESDA fire suppression system has been activated. All personnel must exit the server room. The VESDA fire suppression system will engage in forty-five seconds.”
Rachel stood up and grabbed her gun off the desk.
“Get down, Jack!”
“Rachel, no, it’s bulletproof!”
“According to him.”
She took aim with a two-handed grip and fired three quick rounds at the window directly in front of her. The explosions were deafening. But the bullets barely impacted the glass and ricocheted wildly in the control room.
“Rachel, no!”
“Stay down!”
She fired two more bullets into the glass door and got the same negative result. One of the ricocheting slugs took out one of the screens in front of me, the image of Carver disappearing as it went black.
Rachel slowly lowered her gun. As if to accentuate her defeat, the warning horn blasted again.
“Attention, the VESDA fire suppression system has been activated. All personnel must exit the server room. The VESDA fire suppression system will engage in thirty seconds.”
I looked out through the windows into the server room. Black pipes ran along the ceiling in a grid pattern and then down the back wall to the row of red CO2 canisters. The system was about to go. It would extinguish three lives but there was no fire in the server room.
“Rachel, there must be something we can do.”
“What, Jack? I tried. There is nothing left!”
She slammed her gun down on a workstation and slid into the chair. I came over, put my hands on the desktop and leaned over her.
“You have to keep trying! There’s got to be a back door to the system. These guys always put in back—”
I stopped and looked out into the server room as I realized something. And the horn blasted again, but this time I barely heard it.
“Attention, the VESDA fire suppression system has been activated. All personnel must exit the server room. The VESDA fire suppression system will engage in fifteen seconds.”
Carver was nowhere to be seen through the windows. He had chosen an aisle between two rows of towers out of view from the control room. Was this because of the location of the smoke detector or for some other reason?
I looked over at the undamaged screen in front of Rachel. It showed a multiplex cut of thirty-two cameras that had been turned dark by Carver. I hadn’t thought about why until now.
All in a moment the atoms smashed together again. Everything became clearer. Not just what I saw in front of me but what I had seen before—Mizzou out back smoking after I had seen him go into the server room. I had a new idea. The right idea.
“Rachel—”
The horn blast came loud and long this time. Rachel stood up and stared at the glass as the CO2 system engaged. A white gas exploded out of the pipes crossing the ceiling of the server room. Within seconds the windows were fogged and useless. The high-velocity discharge created a high-pitched whistle that came loud and clear through the thick glass.
“Rachel!” I yelled. “Give me your key. I’m going after Carver.”
She turned and looked at me.
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s not killing himself! He’s got that breather and there’s got to be a back door!”
The whistling stopped and we both turned back to the windows. It was a complete white-out in the server room but the CO2 delivery had stopped.
“Give me the key, Rachel.”
She looked at me.
“I should go.”
“No, you need to call for backup and medical emergency. Then work the computer. Find the back door.”
There wasn’t time to think and consider things. People were dying. We both knew it. She pulled the key out of her pocket and gave it to me. I turned to go.
“Wait! Take this.”
I turned back and she handed me her gun. I took it without hesitation, then headed into the mantrap.
Rachel’s gun felt heavier in my hand than I remembered my own gun ever feeling. As I moved through the mantrap, I raised it, checked the action and sighted down its barrel. I was only a once-a-year-at-the-range type of shooter but I knew I would be ready to use the weapon if necessary. I went through the next door and entered the octagon with the muzzle up. There was no one there.
I quickly crossed the room to the door on the opposite side. I knew from the website tour that this led to the large rooms that housed the power and cooling systems for the facility. The workshop where Carver and his techs built the server towers was back here, too. My guess was that there would be a second stairwell also.
I moved into the plant facilities room first. It was a wide space with large equipment. An air-conditioning system the size of a Winnebago sat in the center of the room connected to numerous overhead ducts and cables. Past this were backup systems and generators. I ran to a door on the far left side and used Rachel’s key card to open it.
I stepped into a long and narrow equipment room. There was a second door at the other end and my sense of the building’s plan told me it would lead to the server room.
Moving quickly to it, I saw that there was another biometric hand scanner mounted to the left of the door. Above it was a case holding the emergency breathing devices. It had to be a back door to the server room.
There was no way to tell whether Carver had already made his escape. But I had no time to wait to see if h
e would come through. I turned and headed back. I quickly moved through the plant facilities room again until I reached a set of double doors on the far side.
Holding the gun up and ready, I opened one of the doors with the key card and stepped into the workshop. This was another large room with tool benches lining the right and left walls and a work space in the center, where one of the black server towers was in midconstruction. The framework and sidings were complete but the interior shelves for servers had not been installed.
Beyond the server tower I saw a circular stairway leading up to the surface. This had to be the way up to the back door and the smokers’ bench.
I quickly moved around the tower and headed for the stairs.
“Hello, Jack.”
Just as I heard my name, I felt the muzzle of the gun on the back of my neck. I hadn’t even seen Carver. He had stepped out from behind the server tower as I had passed.
“A cynical reporter. I should’ve known that you wouldn’t buy my suicide.”
His free hand grabbed hold of my collar from the back and the gun remained pressed against my skin.
“You can drop the gun now.”
I dropped the weapon and it made a loud clatter on the concrete floor.
“I take it that was Agent Walling’s, yes? So why don’t we go back and pay her a visit? And we’ll end this thing right now. Or, who knows, maybe I’ll just end it for you and take her with me. I think I’d like to spend some time with Agent—”
I heard an impact of heavy object on flesh and bone and Carver fell into my back and then dropped to the floor. I turned and there was Rachel, holding an industrial-size wrench she had taken off the workbench.
“Rachel! What are—”
“He left Mowry’s key card on her workstation. I followed you out. Come on. Let’s get him back to the control room.”
“What are you talking about?”
“His hand. He can open the server room.”
We bent down to Carver, who was moaning and moving slowly on the concrete floor. Rachel took her weapon and the one Carver was holding. I saw a second gun in his waistband and grabbed it. I secured it in my own waistband and then helped Rachel drag Carver to his feet.
“The back door is closer,” I said. “And there are breathers there.”