His grimace makes it clear that he got nothing, as expected. He moves on to the man, studies him for a few beats, and then straightens up.
“They never met her.”
Jacob’s eyes narrow. “Is it just the two of you working here?”
The woman nods beneath my grasp, and the man does the same a moment later.
Dominic frowns. “There was a family photo in one of the apartments—everyone in it Asian. Neither of these two would fit, and the guards wouldn’t either.”
Trust him to have paid that much attention to the details. We all pause, listening for any sign of another presence in the building.
Our captives stay silent, but mine’s stress spiked at Dominic’s comment. It’s possible that whoever that photo belonged to isn’t here at the moment, but I’m willing to bet they are.
“We should search the other rooms,” I say.
Jacob scowls at me, but it’s the obvious next step. He motions to Zian.
“Let’s get them tied up and gagged, and then we can move on. Make sure they don’t have any other weapons—or phones—on them. We can always question them more later if nothing else pans out.”
I suppose we could at least find out what they’re working on here—although whether it’ll have much to do with what Ursula Engel would have been working on nearly two and a half decades ago, there’s no way to know.
Once the scientists are bound, we venture on down the hallway. There are just a few more doors.
The first leads to a records room with shelves stuffed with textbooks, binders, and storage boxes. The next is merely a washroom.
Zian gazes through the doorway and shakes his head with a frown. The door swings open to reveal another lab room with a single counter and then two desks with computer equipment, and no one in view.
I step inside, my nerves prickling uneasily. The woman I caught was worried about us findingsomething. What are we missing?
A faint tang in the air interrupts my thoughts. It’s a trace of nervous adrenaline—fresh, tainting the air.
Someonewasin here, recently, and now they’re not.
Or at least they’re not anywhere we can see.
The guys have started to pull back, but I wave at them to catch their attention. They watch me as I slink farther into the room, Jacob with unrestrained skepticism, the others curiously.
I make a circuit of the room, taking several breaths, and stop where the scent is strongest. Where a tiny, renewed whiff reaches my nose.
I point at the wall behind the desk and turn to mouth the words to the guys: “There’s someone in there.”
Zian hustles over. His eyes widen as his penetrating vision must confirm my suspicions. He beckons Jacob over and points to where I suppose the opening mechanism for the safe room must be.
The people who run this place weren’t prepared for anyone like us. Jacob focuses on the wall, flicks his fingers, and a hidden panel detaches itself from the edge it sat flush against, whirring open.
Zian didn’t just see the woman who’s hunched in a corner of the narrow room on the other side. The second the panel glides open, he lunges at her and snatches the rifle she was lifting out of her hands.
As he snaps it over his knee, she flinches and cowers back against the wall.
She must be the one who stays in the room with the photo Dominic saw. She looks Chinese or maybe Vietnamese, her smooth skin beige in contrast with Zian’s peachy brown but her rounded features reminding me of his.
Her black hair is streaked with gray, and tiny lines have formed at the corners of eyes and mouth.She’sdefinitely old enough to have known Engel, if she’s been working here that long.
Zian grasps her wrists to hold her in place. There’s no need to gag her when there’s no one left for her to call out to.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” he tells her gruffly. “We’ve just got some questions.”
“I don’t bargain with terrorists,” she snaps.