Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [57]
The frigid air stung my ears as I ran, leaping so fast and so far that I might as well have been flying for all any of the mere mortals could have seen. I hoped.
The largest building, the one I’d mentally denoted as a “barn,” was close enough that I reached it in the span of a couple of leaps and a couple of seconds. I skidded around its side, clamoring up to the door. It was locked, no big surprise there. It only took one hard shove for me to figure out that I could open it, yes—but it’d take more time than I wanted to invest in the endeavor. More time than I could afford to invest.
My pursuers were running in circles, shouting and trying to reorganize. And I guess someone might’ve gotten busy trying to dig those poor bastards out from under all the snow I’d kicked off the roof. But they’d be on my tail again before long.
How long did I have? Maybe seconds. Maybe minutes. No longer than that—no way, no how.
Like the storage shed, the barn’s only windows were high up and designed for passage by few things larger than a leprechaun—which is not to say that they thwarted me, but I’ll confess to being inconvenienced. But while I still had the benefit of uncertainty on my side, I jumped, hopped, and scrambled into position, popped out some glass, and skooched my way into the interior.
My shoulders and hip bones ached from the scraping press of forcing my body into what was, essentially, a ventilation portal, but my first glance around the interior suggested it might have been worth it.
It’d better be. And it’d better be worth it fast.
I knew this, because my first glance also told me that there were cameras inside this big-ass information dump. If they didn’t know where I’d gone yet, they’d figure it out before long.
And to think, I’d been fantasizing about taking a leisurely poke around the place, maybe having a nice picnic lunch and a nap before heading on my way. If there has been any doubt in your mind about the state of my sanity, I hope this revelation cinches that up for you.
Anyway, I dropped down onto a level that was something like a hayloft, loaded up in rows and stacks of crates and boxes, stamped from various facilities around the world and around the country, too. I saw FORT SAM HOUSTON as a return address on one package, and FORT KNOX on another one. I had no earthly idea where info on The Other Thief might have hailed from. I’d never find anything about him by sifting through postmarks, but it gave me an idea. I wondered if anything might’ve been shipped from Jordan Roe, in Florida—but that seemed unlikely, if it was only a facility and not a town.
I shimmied between the rows of stacked containers and let my eyes dilate as widely as they could. My one slight advantage—and the one thing that might buy me extra snooping seconds—was that there weren’t any windows low enough for the exterior commandos to actually watch me do my investigating. But boy, I could hear them outside, buzzing like a hornet’s nest.
The darkness opened enough that I could see piles and rows of discarded secrets, unlabeled and unorganized as far as I could tell. And there I was, standing in the shadow of a towering stack of sawdust-covered crates, with no earthly idea of what I was looking for. And I could’ve hung around and looked in that barn-sized depository for days.
Not an option.
Frantic and serious, I set to work flinging open drawers, smashing open crates, whipping open filing cabinets, and bashing in boxes.
Outside, someone practically shouted into his tiny microphone, relating a string of military abbreviations and acronyms I didn’t understand, but I got the thrust of “Subject in Alpha Building Four. Copy.”
Ah. So I was in Alpha Building Four. For all the good knowing it did me.
“Roger,” the same shouter replied.
And then they surprised me. They didn’t come bursting in—which I’d expected, and begun to prepare for. I was just thinking that the loft where I’d first entered would be a