Page 27 of Circle of Death
Deva gently breaks off the kiss and cups Maddy’s face in her hands. “Great night,” she says. She quietly opens the door and slips inside. Maddy just watches. Her heart is pounding. Her head is swimming.
She turns toward the street. In the glow of the limo’s dome light, she sees Moe’s head whip around to face front. She walks down the sidewalk and reaches for the front passenger door. She pulls it open and slides into the front seat, then just sits there for a few seconds, breathing out and breathing in.
“Home?” asks Moe.
Maddy nods.
Moe eases the car slowly away from the curb. Maddy can still feel the blood flushing her cheeks. “Not one word,” she says.
“About what?”
“About what you just saw.”
Moe shrugs. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”
CHAPTER 29
DAWN IS BARELY breaking when I walk out of my bedroom in my robe the next morning. I heard Maddy come in at four. She’ll get a few choice words from me when she wakes up. Margo is still sound asleep. As I make the turn toward the stairs, I see Burbank pacing in the hall. He looks nervous or happy, or both. Burbank is a hard man to read, even for me—and I consider myself an expert. He looks up when he spots me.
“I need to show you something,” he says.
“Pre-coffee?” This better be important.
He nods. Clearly, it is. At least for him.
I follow him down the hall and up the back staircase to the third floor, where my live-in help used to reside. Cook. Housekeeper. Valet. Those were the days.
“So how do you feel?” I ask. “After the accidental sedation?”
“Fine. No cobwebs.”
I can’t remember the last time I was on the third floor. Probably a hundred and fifty years ago. Burbank shows me toward a cramped space under the attic stairs—an architectural dead end. Always bothered me.
I stop in the doorway and look in. I was not expecting this.
Burbank has made the place his own.
There’s a metal table with a desk chair against one wall. On the other side, the wall is lined with heavy-duty shelves, packed edge-to-edge with electronic devices. Controllers. Monitors. Meters. Scanners. The room is glowing from dozens of blinking LEDs. Wires and cables poke through ports in the walls and loop in fat coils on the floor.
“What do you think?” asks Burbank.
I take a step inside. “Where did all this come from?”
“The basement. It was a gold mine.”
“What about the power?” Residential voltage is still being rationed, even on the better streets like ours.
“I’m siphoning off the main municipal feed,” says Burbank. “I doubt we’ll trip any alerts. This stuff is pretty light on amps.”
“What the hell isthis?” It’s Jericho, peeking in from the hallway. His room is directly underneath us. He must have heard our footsteps.
A few seconds later, Moe pops in right behind him. “Jesus! Iwonderedwhat Burbank was hiding up here,” he says. “I thought it might be a blow-up doll.”
I can see that Burbank isn’t happy about Jericho and Moe intruding. He seems to get anxious in close quarters—and this room is barely big enough for two people.
On the other hand, he clearly wants to show off. I think he wants to prove that he’s every bit as sharp at communications as theoriginalBurbank.
I wave my hand toward the wall of gear. “Okay. I’m officially impressed. What have we got?”
