He exchanged a look with Abigail Smith and Op Nine.
“Can’t it wait?” he asked.
“Uh, I don’t think so. And I think you’d better bring Kropp.”
“Bring Kropp?”
“Definitely bring Kropp.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for the morgue,” I said.
“I’ll meet you there,” Merryweather snapped at us, and hurried from the room.
Operative Nine and Abigail Smith untied my arms and helped me to my feet. Pain shot up my leg and my knee buckled. Operative Nine caught me before I hit the floor.
“What’s the matter with my leg?” I asked.
“You have been shot.”
“Shot? What about my arm? What happened to it?”
“Shot.”
“Two shots?”
He nodded. We were hustling down the corridor toward an elevator at the end of the hall. The walls were cinderblock, painted lime green, and the floor was gray. Abigail had one side of me and Operative Nine the other.
“What kind of guns do demons use?”
“You weren’t shot by demons; you were shot by Bedouins.”
Abigail punched the Down button.
“Bedouins! What do they have against me?”
“Nothing.”
“So they shot me just for the heck of it?”
The elevator door slid open and they helped me inside. I leaned against the back wall, trying to catch my breath. Abigail pressed the button labeled “LL24” and we started to descend. “They shot you because their master told them to,” Op Nine said.
“Their master? A demon?”
“The Hyena.”
“A hyena ordered some Bedouins to shoot me?”
“It is more complicated than that.”
“How could it be more complicated than that?”
Abigail coughed.
The door slid open and we made an immediate right out of the elevator into a huge room with a metal floor and a bank of freezer-looking doors along the length of one wall.
Dr. Merryweather was there, and the same guy in the white coat who had examined me. He waved us into the room, a finger pressed against his lips. He then pointed that same finger at the bank of doors.
One of them was open and the shelf that had been slid out held a body bag. Half the bag lay on the shelf; the other half looked as if whoever was in that bag was sitting up.