Fry knelt down and retrieved his knife. “What about the weasel?”
“Leave him. He’s dead weight.” Tristan wound Lila’s scarf around her hands, trying to stop the blood.
After he tied off the ends, Lila retrieved her Colt and slid it back into her holster, eyes unable to avoid Reaper’s twisted face and the pool of blood around his body.
Tristan picked up Dixon. “Please, Lila. Get us out of here. Fast.”
If her fingers hadn’t hurt so much, Lila would have crossed them for luck. She started down the tunnel, hoping she would remember the way.
The path began to look more and more familiar the deeper she walked into the tunnels. She turned off a path and led them up a flight of stairs, holding on to dim memories of late nights out with Alex a dozen years before.
Covering her fingers with a clean piece of scarf, she punched in the code beside an iron door. The lock snicked with a booming echo off the concrete walls. Fry swung it open.
The group emerged in the basement of an abandoned restaurant, clutter and dust spilling into the tunnels.
“We should be near the truck,” she said.
Fry cracked a glow stick and lead them through the boxes and linens. They crept up the stairs. The restaurant was not unlike Chaucer’s Ghost, except that the tables still waited for patrons.
No pigeons had found their way inside, either.
Fry burst through a sheet of plywood nailed over a window. It clattered as it hit the sidewalk outside.
Lila stuck her head through the space, squinting back toward the estate. They were only a block away from the Wilsons’ front gate. Militia reinforcements paced around the stone wall, staring at the top, tranq guns drawn and ready. None of them seemed to care about what might be going on behind them.
She even couldn’t tell which family the blackcoats belonged to from so far away.
“The militia is busy guarding the wall,” she told the others. “It’s clear, but we should tread carefully.”
Fry lifted Frank from Dice’s arms and ducked through the window, helping Tristan pass Dixon through immediately after.
Lila winced as Dixon’s face passed under the light.
His skin had paled, and his lips had turned blue.
Chapter 28
Lila paced in the lab’s staff lounge, hood in the front pocket of her coat, her boots clomping on the white tile, passing back and forth in front of the red curtains and chairs. One of the phlebotomists sat at a table, wide eyes following her movements, vainly trying to focus on her hamburger and fries despite Lila’s presence. The smell of fast food clawed at Lila’s nose. Rather than making her hungry, it made her nauseated.
She’d also begun to yawn every time the woman took a bite. The pacing was as much for her nerves as it was to stay awake.
The ring that had injected her hadn’t been empty, after all.
Chef’s daughter, Rosemary Tirel, leaned through the doorway. Her red scrubs matched the curtains, and her dark hair contrasted against her pale skin. She crooked a finger, and Lila followed her into the lab, walls white with pops of red cabinetry throughout. Several machines hummed on the tables as they passed.
“That was fast,” Lila said, checking the display on her palm. She’d been in the lab less than fifteen minutes.
“Well, you told me to rush, and your information let me narrow down the search considerably.”
Rosemary pull
ed out two stools from under her workstation, but Lila refused to sit. She didn’t want to fall asleep.
“It’s not poison,” Rosemary assured her. “It’s Midazolam, a general anesthetic. If someone injected this into your friend, then they should be brought to the emergency room immediately. The drug can cause respiratory arrest if you’re given too much.”
“Could the amount in that ring been too much?”
“Not if he’s healthy. It would be just enough to give him a hard time. He’ll need a doctor watching over him for the next few days, but I suspect he’ll be fine.”