Toys - James Patterson [63]
It displayed a life-size image of Lucy’s face. I did, in fact, love it.
“Recognize her?” Moore said.
“She’s one of the terrorists—the ones who attacked Lizbeth and me when we were leaving the president’s party,” I said grimly, as if my hatred of her was still fresh in my mind. But my guts twisted as I guessed what was coming next.
“She goes by the code name Lucy, or sometimes Megwin. How folksy those humans are,” Moore said. “She’s very good at eluding surveillance, but now we’ve got her located and we’re ready to move on this worthless skunk bitch.”
I was seething with anger, but I had to say yes to my boss. Backing out would look suspicious, and besides, I’d rather go after Lucy myself than let someone like McGill get the assignment to kill her.
“You’re right I’d love it,” I said. “I want to take that one out myself.”
Moore smiled and relaxed back in his chair. “Hays, you’re sure you’ve never seen her, except that one time with Lizbeth?”
“Of course I’m sure,” I said, looking surprised at the question. “I’ll never forget that one.”
“Lizbeth said you were still confused from the anesthesia. If I’m going to put you out there, I want to be damned positive you’re at one hundred percent.”
“That was just one small glitch—right as I was waking up. There’s been nothing else since then. In fact, I feel perfectly rested and ready to go.”
“All right, but don’t get overconfident,” Moore warned. “She and her people have killed a lot of Elites, including those executives at the Baronville Toyz store.” A cruel look came into his eyes. “Hays, we want to take her alive. Her interrogation will be most entertaining. This Lucy/Megwin bitch has a lot of secrets we need to know.”
Chapter 84
MY OLD PARTNER and “good buddy,” Owen McGill, was waiting for me on the city’s south side, at the fringe of the so-called Human Slums, or Darkness. It was already night when I got there, but McGill’s height and build were easy to spot. Some things never change.
“My main man!” he said, hurrying to give me a bone-crushing hug. “Welcome back, Hays. The good times are about to get rolling again.”
“Going to roll right over whatever gets in our way,” I said with equally false heartiness. I was remembering how McGill had spat in my eye while I lay strapped to a hospital bed. And how he had punched me in the face.
That was another score I wanted to settle, but now wasn’t the time for vendettas. Now was the time to find a way for Lucy to escape from an Agency trap, whatever it might be.
What a foul night this was turning out to be. I’d driven here with my hands clenched so tightly on the wheel that I almost snapped the damn thing off. I couldn’t think the situation through because I didn’t know enough about this mission, the plan of attack, or even where Lucy was supposed to be hiding. Jax Moore had told me that McGill would fill me in, then he hurried me out of his office—probably because he still had doubts about me. Moore is nothing if not clever, devious, paranoid, and a chilling murderer.
“You’re probably thinking the skunkess is in there.” McGill jerked his head toward the slum’s squalid streets, which were crowded with hapless humans, plus violent Ghools—wyre addicts—moving through the smoky glow of the cooking fires. “So did we at first. It took us a while to locate the clever bitch. But we’ve got her, Hays. We have her nailed.”
He pointed in the opposite direction, out to where the slum ended at a dried-up river channel and a dark wasteland stretched into the distance. The only structure I knew of there was the city’s old water-filtration plant—a concrete hulk about the size of a sports stadium.
“That old plant?” I said. “How has she managed to sneak in there?”
“That’s where we’ve got a small problem,” McGill said. “Take a look at this.”
He handed me a perspective imager, a slender mask that fit across my eyes and relayed a sharp picture of the building’s interior.
I knew that Lucy would be there—but actually seeing her was like taking a hard punch in the stomach. She and two men were working at tables