Page 82 of Now Until Forever
Carlos fired back. “Any thoughts about you guys taking over their murder case, or inserting yourselves into it at least? You can see what she knows yourself.” He stuck his thumbs in his belt, which made things creak, but then he needed the reminder of who he was and the limitations that placed on him. A cop couldn’t just go about investigating for the FBI, practically becoming one of their informants.
Fox shrugged. “We need evidence before we can point fingers at a Chicago PD officer.”
“Funny,” Carlos said. “I could say the same.”
The involvement he could have in this, or the lack thereof—at least officially—was determined by department procedure. Not what he wanted. In fact, he should probably be filing a report with Internal Affairs, except that he had no evidence.
As much as he might want to go vigilante and take down everyone who threatened Chicago, he found that he didn’t really care about the city. Maybe he should, because Chicago seemed like it might be under attack right now. The truth was, he cared more about his sister. About Eliana and what happened to her. At least more than the rest of the people in this city.
Carlos didn’t want to admit to anyone how much seeing her sitting on the floor in that bare kitchen with her hands over her ears had shaken him. He’d had to cut her free. He didn’t want to admit how it felt seeing her injuries and talking to her while she lay in a hospital bed. Not even to himself.
The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out into a brightly lit hall.
“Hold up.” Fox touched Carlos’s arm for a second, and he turned to her. “So you’re out? You don’t want anything to dowith this, when there’s a dirty cop in your department and no one knows but you?”
“I came here, didn’t I?” Carlos shrugged. “I just have different priorities than you. I’m not your lackey, so figure it out. You guys are the ones who are supposed to find the Mother and bring these people down before they hurt anyone else. All I want to know is where to find my sister.”
A second after he finished talking, an alarm sounded. The hall flashed with red light from above one of the doors down the hall, to the right.“Biological contaminant in Autopsy Three.”Klaxons sounded, three loud blaring tones, then the voice repeated its warning.
Carlos jogged down the empty hall to the door, where reflex had him reaching for the handle.
“Don’t.” Glor pulled him back. “There are protocols. Don’t go rushing in there.”
“It’s locked.” Fox pointed to the join of the doors beside the handle. “You can’t get in anyway.”
“So what do we do?” Carlos peered in the small window, the glass crisscrossed with wires, and spotted two metal autopsy tables side by side.
The two women who had been shot in that apartment were?—
“They’re sitting up.” He let out a tight breath and stepped back, glancing both ways down the hall. No one had come running from elsewhere in the building.
What was the protocol? Surely, a team of people should be here by now.
He looked back at the window, but they hadn’t moved. And why would they? These two women were dead. Sitting up, with their lower bodies still in the half-unzipped body bags.
What on earth?
Glor bent to look through the window. “Look at their mouths.”
Fox peered in beside her partner. “Smoke coming out. Some kind of gas that’s probably the contaminant.”
Carlos moved to the window on the other door and looked in. “I don’t see any staff. Who hit the alarm? And where is a team of people to contain this? If there’s a gas in the air, it could be leaking out of the vents.”
“Unlikely, since the autopsy room is in lockdown.” Fox shook her head. “There will be safety protocols to stop contaminated gas from going into the HVAC system.”
“But we have no idea.” Carlos walked over to a phone handset on the wall and picked it up. Hammered his finger down on the button. “This thing isn’t working. There’s no dial tone.”
“So we’re cut off down here.” Glor pulled his phone from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
Carlos retrieved his cell from his belt. No signal. He didn’t know if that was typical.
A loud thump from inside the autopsy room rocked the doors.
Carlos whipped around and saw a dark-haired man fog up the window. The guy cried out, but Carlos couldn’t hear more than a muffled scream through the sealed doors.
“We have to help him!” Fox grabbed the handles and tried to tug the doors open.
Glor pulled her back. “We can’t go in there, remember? They’ve locked down the room.” He turned to Carlos. “I’m going to run upstairs and find help.”
