Page 135 of Prodigal Son

That’s who they were, weren’t they? Hers. She was an outlaw now, no denying it.

She made her way around to one of the side entrances, the one that fed out into the parking garage, where a group of disgruntled MI5 agents had created a holding area for the Lean Dogs who’d rendezvoused. The Dogs, by contrast, looked triumphant, shooting smug looks at the agents who’d been told to hang back, and not make any arrests.

She spotted Raven, and Ryan; Mercy, Ian, Walsh, Shane, Reese, Evan, and, thankfully, little Cassandra, glued to Walsh’s side. And Miles, and Tommy, and…

“Where’s Fox?” she asked as she walked up to Morgan.

Her old boss looked not just tired, but defeated, but he offered a lopsided smile. “He’s alright. He and Phil and Abe stayed back a bit. One of the guards was going to show them to the basement. Just some last-minute ghosts to lay to rest. Speaking of ghosts…” He turned, and that was when she saw someone dressed all in black, trussed up like a Christmas goose, slumped down at Mercy’s feet. It seemed obvious that the largest member of their group would be in charge of carrying the unconscious man. “It seems Devin had one more son.”

She jerked like she’d been slapped. “Are you serious?”

Morgan’s smile turned grim. “There’s no mistaking those eyes. I imagine he’s a very wanted man.” He nodded toward the agents. “But I think Devin’s brood have it in their minds to take him home.”

“Yeah.” She glanced up toward the building and suppressed a shiver. “I bet.”

~*~

Why was it always in the basement? In every movie, and every book, the secret, scary stuff was always housed in the basement. Fox had found that was true in real life, too.

The guard who showed them down, compelled at gunpoint, had a hand pressed to a wound on his neck, blood oozing through his fingers. Just a graze.

By the time the service elevator finally shuddered to a halt, and the double layer of steel and cage doors began to slide apart, Fox could feel the temperature drop. It was cold down here; it smelled of metal, and industrial solvents.

They stepped out into a wide room, with low ceilings, walls made of cold, poured concrete. Fox registered the hum of machinery, and saw a long computer bank, and tables loaded with what looked like medical equipment.

“It looks just like the old one,” Abe said, voice distant, steps slow.

They walked through it all, Fox and Abe, while Phil held a gun on the guard. They found a shooting range, and rooms with gym mats on the floors, kickboxing dummies, and cabinets full of neatly rolled bandages. A room with a desk, and projector, like a classroom. And they found a row of bedrooms with heavy locks on the doors that were really cells. Utilitarian cots, and toilets, and sinks. In nine of them, they found the other original members of Project Emerald, dead and left to rot.

Fox turned to Abe, and found the man’s expression haunted. “You’re all sterile?” His voice sounded flat; it would take a long time for his shock to wear away, and he wasn’t looking forward to the moment it finally did.

Abe sighed, and his shoulders slumped, and he didn’t look like a warrior anymore, only an old man. “I thought we all were. Vasectomies, all of us. Neat and tidy. The things we knew…they didn’t want us having children, for obvious reasons. Not for the emotional attachment it would offer, but they’d done things to us, too. Chemicals, steroids, like he said.

“I didn’t realize they’d left Devin intact until Phillip was born. He came around and told me. Sounded proud, even.” He shook his head. “And then he kept having more, but different women, always.”

“Why? What was Morris talking about? Prodigal Son?”

“I don’t know, Charlie, and that’s the truth. We all have secrets, but Devin…”

Had more than any of them, obviously.

“Did you know about the tenth?”

“No.” Several theories were kicking around in the back of Fox’s head, but he didn’t want to examine any of them too closely.

He cast a look around the main room, the lab. “He’s like a robot. And he nearly killed Albie. I don’t know if there’s any coming back from that.”

“There was for us,” Abe said, and shrugged. “And there’s that other boy, the one who got Cass.”

“Reese? Yeah.”

Another glance, like maybe all this empty concrete could tell him something.

But whatever he was searching for, it wasn’t here. It was probably halfway to France by now.

“Come on,” he said, turning back for the elevator. “Let’s go.”

They took the guard back, and marched him out to the rendezvous point, turned him over to MI5.

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