Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,74

save the city, to make amends for what I had let happen with Wolfe, I was going to have to consign Aleksandr Gavrikov to a fate I was all too familiar with—confinement in a coffin-like containment chamber. A box of his very own.

I cursed the irony of the whole situation, of how it had all played out. I turned back to Headquarters, studying it and wondering how I was going to make this work, when I heard the scuff of a shoe behind me and turned, ready to strike—

Scott Byerly stood there, hands in front of him. “Whoa, I’m just here to visit Kat,” he said, circling around me toward the Headquarters building.

What was it he had said about writing me that note? “Hey,” I said. “You have family in Minneapolis?”

He stopped, turned back to me. “Yeah, my whole family is from around here. Why?”

I steeled myself for what I was about to have to do. “Just thought you might want to know—the guy that blew up the science lab?”

He furrowed his brow. “Gavrikov, wasn’t it? Russian guy?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He just nuked Glencoe, you know, that town west of here.”

Scott’s face paled, his dark complexion going white. “I heard about that earlier. I didn’t know it was him.”

“Yeah, well...” I tried not to belabor the point, but I wanted to draw him in a little, “...I was there when it happened. He did it as a warning to us—to show us what would happen to Minneapolis if we didn’t bring Kat to him by tomorrow morning at six.”

“Excuse me?” The reaction was immediate. His jaw clenched, he took a step toward me, his fist balled up. “He threatened the city?”

“Said he’d nuke it to the ground,” I said. “Bye-bye, City of Lakes.”

He turned without saying anything else, started to stalk off. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“To stop him,” he tossed back.

I ran after him. “Wait. You can’t just attack the guy, he’d turn you into the stuff you find in the bottom of a microwave.”

Byerly stopped, but the fury was still evident on his face. “What, then?”

“Well,” I said, “M-Squad and the boys have a kill order—”

“Not good enough,” he said and started to walk again. I reached out and grabbed his arm, keeping my grip firm enough to catch his attention but not enough to spin him around. He did that on his own, looking like he was ready to explode on me, his face red, his eyebrows locked into forty-five degree angles, and his mouth in a thin, downturned line.

“Whoa!” I held my hands out in a gesture of peace. “I’m with you on this one. I think M-Squad is gonna foul it, big time. I mean, if you heard about how things went for them in South America, or you’ve had five minutes to consider that Clary is the linchpin of their strategy, you recognize that giving them this shot means that you’re basically comfortable with turning Minneapolis into a burning wasteland. Which I am not,” I said, trying to reassure him and dislodge his angry face. “But you can’t just charge after him without a strategy.”

“I have a strategy,” he said in a kind of roar. I took a step back, more out of concern for his safety than mine. “I find Gavrikov and I drown his ass.”

“And a fine strategy that would be,” I said, suppressing all my smartass instincts for the sake of my penance, “but may I suggest one that’s got a better chance of success?”

He drew up to his full height, arms folded in front of him and said, “I’m listening.” His posture said he was not, but I was desperate enough to try anyway.

“The thing you have to understand about Gavrikov is that he thinks Kat is a clone of his sister,” I started.

“Why the hell would he think that?”

“Because she actually is his sister,” I said, “and don’t interrupt me. He feels guilty because he thinks she died or something, back in the early 1900s, and the only thing he cares about is giving her spiritual successor a chance at freedom.” I paused, taking a breath. He looked at me with less rage, but also a look that told me he didn’t totally understand. “Because he thinks the Directorate is keeping her imprisoned here.”

He frowned. “They are.”

“Yeah, but not totally,” I said. “I mean, if she really wanted to, she could probably get out—speaking from personal experience.”

He looked at me with skepticism. “I have my doubts. Kat doesn’t