Page 93 of Renegades

Cronin glanced back.

“This building has a basement, right? Let’s start there.”

The Librarian’s face went blank. “There is nothing in the basement but the furnace and outdated stacks.”

“Then it will be a quick tour,” said Adrian.

Nostrils flaring around his mustache, Cronin abandoned the staircase and headed toward the east room. They followed him through a pair of tall bookcases and down an aisle of desks. In the far corner, Adrian spotted a stone fireplace, though there was no fire currently lit. A young man was seated cross-legged on the floor, reading a picture book to the children scattered around him.

The sight made Adrian’s blood cool. He glanced at the others, and saw the same apprehension mirrored on Ruby’s and Oscar’s faces, though Nova had her gaze intently latched to the Librarian’s back.

There was no reason yet to alarm anyone, he told himself. But still…

“Smokescreen,” he whispered, “you stay up here. Clear the library at the first sign of trouble.”

Oscar glanced at him, and if he was annoyed to be excluded, it didn’t show. Nodding, he stepped back into one of the rows of bookshelves, disappearing from view.

Cronin led them to a door labeledSTAFF ONLYand spent a moment fishing around in his pockets for a key. Once he had opened the door, they descended a narrow staircase into the basement, where the air was mustier and thicker, permeated with the stench of molding paper.

Cronin cleared his throat and stepped aside when he reached the bottom of the staircase, allowing them to spill into the room and look around. More bookshelves took up the space, though they were spaced more tightly together than those above, some allowingbarely enough room to pass between them. Every spare inch was taken up with books. When a shelf could hold no more, the books were piled up on top of the books that were already there, causing some of the shelves to sag under their weight. There were books piled up in corners like snowdrifts. Books stacked under and over desks. Books with broken spines and bent pages tossed haphazardly into a pile that overflowed into the walkway.

A single desk had been shoved against the far wall, its surface littered with takeout boxes and paper files. On the floor beside it stood a plain full-length mirror, like something that would be found in the dressing room of a cheap department store. Though the mirror walker—Narcissa, he’d said—was nowhere in sight.

Not far away, a short concrete stairwell led up to a door marked with anEXITsign—probably, Adrian thought, the side door that led to the alley they’d been watching all night.

“And there you have it,” said the Librarian, picking a book off the discarded pile and lovingly unfolding its bent pages. “Anything else I can do for you? Perhaps you’d care to take back a book on political science for the Council to peruse in their spare time? I think it might benefit them.” He placed the book onto a shelf, tenderly stroking its spine like a pet.

Ruby groaned. “Do you think we’re idiots? Wesawthe Detonator come in here. Just tell us where she is, and things will go a lot easier for you!”

Cronin drew himself upward, uncurling the slump of his spine. “I am sorry, but you seem to be suffering from an overactive imagination.”

Ruby cast Adrian a frustrated look. He knew the feeling. This had all taken up so much more time than he’d expected it to, and he found himself regretting his decision to enter the library, ratherthan wait for backup like they were supposed to. Already he could see the error of his decision. If his team had merely blocked out the library’s exits, they would have known if the Detonator had tried to leave. They would have been able to stop her. Instead, she could have gone out through the back door ages ago.

He felt like an idiot. He felt like his dads had been right to doubt his ability to handle this, and that angered him as much as anything.

But it was too late now to change direction. What would an experienced team do in this situation, to make up for the mistakes he’d already made? Should they threaten Cronin if he didn’t give up the Detonator’s location? Arrest him? Start punching holes in the walls, looking for secret alcoves that held illegal contraband?

“So,” said the Librarian, heading back toward the stairwell, “if you’d like, we can continue the tour upstairs. We have a marvelous collection of rare books and first editions on the second floor—”

A loudclunkmade him freeze.

Adrian spun, glancing at the wall the sound had come from. It was yet another wall sporting floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, no different from the others. But as he stared, the books began to tremble, and the wall began to move outward, scraping loudly against the floor.

“No…,” Cronin murmured. “What is she…no!”

Adrian took a step toward the bookshelf. Ruby twisted her wrist, unraveling the wire that held her bloodstone. Nova settled a hand on her belt.

The wall of books swung outward, though what lay beyond was too dark for Adrian to see. Then there was a quiet click, and a single desk lamp flooded the space with dim, green-tinted light.

They were staring into a room not much bigger than the office cubicle they had spent the night in. There was a single desk in theroom’s center, holding nothing on it but the lamp. A woman sat in the rolling chair behind the desk, her boots kicked up on its surface as she tipped back in the seat.

Ingrid Thompson. The Detonator.

But this was not an office.

This was an armory.

The three surrounding walls were lined with shelves and display cases and neatly labeled cabinets, only this room was not full of books, but weapons. Boxes of bullets and cartridges. Rifles, shotguns, handguns, pistols, bandoliers stocked with ammunition, lethal-looking darts, crossbows, hunting knives, and what he suspected was a box of hand grenades.

---