Don't panic.
A hand banded on her arm. "Careful, now," Perry crooned. "If you want to stop, just say so."
She balled up her fist. "Okay, I want to stop."
"No problem."
Her eye caught a flash, low, in Perry's hand.
She arced back to punch. Nailed him in the face.
A pinch, then a sting spread through her leg. Confusion swirled. A spider again? She looked down.
A syringe dangled from her thigh, piercing through her flight suit into her skin. An empty syringe. Oh, God.
"You son of a bitch." Darcy knocked it aside, kicked, screamed, prayed like hell someone would hear her before whatever he'd given her...started to...slow her reflexes.
The edges of consciousness sucked inward like in a rapid decompression. Fogginess rolled over her. Consciousness faded with Perry's voice echoing in her dazed mind as he pulled from behind the building and drove through the front gate.
Perry swiped the trail of blood from his nose, his blond hair not so neat anymore. Darcy didn't have time to appreciate the damage she'd done with her right hook as reality drifted with his fading voice.
"Let me tell you about an episode of Batman and Robin where Robin decides it's time for him to run the show."
Chapter 15
Max peered through the window into the security police station interrogation room where Lieutenant Colonel Kat Lowry sat, ramrod straight and not budging on her responses. Her voice echoed through the speaker as she answered routine questions from the steely-haired OSI Special Agent.
Alone in the narrow observation hall, Max processed her answers piping through the speaker. But more important, he studied the Army intel officer's eyes to gauge her reactions. He absorbed her every betraying twitch, already compiling a list of rebuttal questions to pass along to the interrogator.
After a quick briefing from Crusty and Max, the OSI had picked her up hours ago—a cold victory, revealing a traitor. Hell, it all made sense. Her encryption specialty with the tap. Her knowing precisely when Max and Darcy had left to dive. Her ensuring Vinnie was in the wrong place at the wrong time to appear guilty.
How many other minds and lives had she played with? The scope of damage could ripple for years. The Army CID officer perched in the steel-backed chair with a calm no doubt honed from years in the field.
He'd waited for this moment since Eva's death, longed to find a link to the intelligence leak in the South Pacific. Still, the closure didn't settle within him.
Max rested his palms on the ledge and canted closer to the one-way mirror while she answered another round of questions. His gut told him they had the right person. She insisted she didn't need a JAG, but he could sense the edginess in her even through glass.
Yeah, it fit. Almost. He couldn't reconcile the image of this woman wasting time on spiders or tampering with a plane to taunt Darcy.
The tension in Lowry built until Max could almost see it pulsing from her, like the heightened Technicolor world he'd missed underwater for so long. Darcy challenged the hell out of him, bringing all senses alive until the world sharpened.
Focused.
Until he could see Kat Lowry was ready to...
"I want to cut a deal."
Max exhaled the victory.
Her voice remained calm through the speaker. "You can arrest me—just one solitary little leak." She leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Or I can give you at least fifty military and CIA leaks in exchange for immunity."
CIA? Alarms jangled in Max's head.
"Colonel," the interrogator intoned, "I don't have the power to grant that and you know it."
"Find someone who does. You can buy me off with a deal. Piece of cake. Other countries have been doing it with money for years. And while you're at it, here's a token of good faith, a freebie to give you a sample of what I know. Maybe soften the folks farther up the chain."
The interrogator folded his arms. "I'm listening."