Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,21

out of that one. Anyway, Gavrikov has a shield of fire around his skin, so tranq darts can’t make it through—”

“So how did they get him?” I was getting impatient. I blame Wolfe. He didn’t have much to do with this one, actually, but I blame him anyway.

“It was pretty ingenious, I thought,” Zack said with a smile. “He wasn’t willing to leave the facility. He’d just fly to a different building whenever they came for him, throw some fire if they got close, do anything to keep them at bay while he jetted off—”

“He doesn’t sound so dangerous,” I said. “Except for the fifty people he killed, I suppose.” I felt sheepish. He sounds like fun, Wolfe thought. You should let him out. I ignored him.

“Anyway,” Zack went on, “they managed to set a trap for him when I got there. They used me as bait.”

“What?!”

“Well, I went in and tried to reason with him, pinning him in place while the hammer fell. See, I was a new face—he’d seen them for weeks on end while they went back and forth. They tried to talk to him at first, too, I guess. Didn’t work out. Anyway, once he figured out I was human, he shot at me like a missile— I mean, he was gonna kill me, but Clary was positioned perfectly, took the hit for me, got a hold of Gavrikov and managed to knock him unconscious.”

I was going over what he had told me, but it didn’t quite make sense. “How did Clary put a hand on Gavrikov if he had his fire shield up?”

Zack’s smile was smug. “Clary can change his skin. In this case, he shifted into some kind of metal. It was actually dumb luck; Clary moves a lot slower than Gavrikov, and if he had been even an inch to either side, he wouldn’t have been able to grab him and club him out.” He leaned back in his chair. “After that, we stuffed him in the containment unit and carted him back here.”

“Bravo,” I said in a hushed voice, thinking of the containment unit. It was tiny, a coffin by any other name, a horrible, claustrophobic nightmare. I tried to think of Gavrikov’s victims rather than about the means of his confinement. I forced a weak smile. “I’m sure the world is better off with one less monster wandering around.”

“I think so,” Zack said, eating another piece of bacon. The smell of my plate had stopped being appealing, so I watched him in silence as he ate, trying to think of something else to talk about. “You know,” he said, “you still have quite a list to work through.”

“List?” I stared at him, blankly.

“You know,” he said. “Of things you haven’t done—go to the movies, a mall, an amusement park...”

“Oh.” I had forgotten that we had talked about that when last we saw each other. Nothing like having a mass murderer rattling around in your head to put some of the irrelevant things in perspective.

“You do still want to do those things, right?” He looked at me, all earnestness, and I couldn’t flinch away from those eyes, those deep brown eyes, rimmed with concern. I got a sudden, uncomfortable feeling, like I was being put on the spot.

“Yeah,” I said, and felt like my answer was burdened with a reluctance that seemed like metal scraping across stone. Slow and painful.

“How about this,” he went on, “why don’t we go out tonight—get dinner and see a movie. You can cross it off your list.”

He smiled, and I felt my stomach twist. Did he just ask me out? Did I just get asked out for the first time? I blinked, almost in disbelief. Was it that he was spying for Ariadne and Old Man Winter that prompted this or had what he told Scott been true? Maybe he felt like he owed his life to me.

I mentally slapped myself. It wasn’t like that, it couldn’t be. After all, even if things went well and the date ended with a kiss, it wouldn’t just be my first date—it’d be his last, and the next time I saw him would be at his funeral.

“Just friends,” he added, as though that would make me feel better. It didn’t. It made me feel a hell of a lot worse.

“Sure,” I said with another weak smile. Wolfe was cackling again, that bastard. “Thanks for offering to...be my guide.”

“It’ll be fun.” His phone rang and he answered, pulling it out