Pitt tried to calm her, his eyes scanned the scene. A file drawer sat open near the professor’s feet, a gap revealing a missing file. Also at his feet was a sealed cardboard box with no label. Papers lay strewn about the desk. An electric cord for a computer dangled from an outlet, but no laptop was visible. In a plastic outbox sitting atop a pair of FedEx receipts, Pitt spied a set of car keys with an attached key card. He glanced back at the professor. A trickle of blood around the entry point was still wet. He’d not been dead long.
“There’s nothing we can do for him.” Pitt shuffled Elise away from the desk. “Let’s go call the police.”
He froze as two muffled pops sounded from the other side of the office. A piece of the door lock fell and rolled across the floor. Pitt shoved Elise behind a file cabinet as the door was kicked open, and the woman they’d passed in the stairwell stepped in. She had short hair, dark eyes, and held a black pistol fitted with a suppressor. Looking toward Pitt, she raised the gun and fired.
Pitt dove past Nakamura’s desk. As the shot zipped by, he reached out and flicked off the wall lights. With the office dark, he jumped to his feet and groped about the professor’s desk. He found the keys, and the papers beneath them, then felt his way to the side lab door.
Two muzzle flashes lit the far end of the office, and shots smashed into the wall behind the desk. Pitt reached out and found Elise, pulling her toward him. He held up the key card and heard the lock click, then pulled open the side lab door and pushed her through. At the far end of the office, the woman found the other light switch and flicked it on. She had just an instant to see Pitt follow Elise into the side lab and slam the door.
The lab was absent students, but filled with computers, microscopes, refrigerators, and an array of high-tech equipment. Elise had shaken off her horror and was scrambling past several crowded workbenches, making her way toward the back of the lab—and an exit.
Pitt lingered long enough to slide a rack of computers in front of the door and turn off the lights. He had followed Elise to the middle of the lab when they heard two more taps. The door opened a fraction, banging hard into the rack. The armed woman shoved again, knocking one of the computers onto the floor.
They wouldn’t make the exit in time, so Pitt pushed Elise behind a workbench and dove down alongside her, sliding against a small refrigerator. As the assailant banged against the computer rack, Pitt searched for a weapon. Finding nothing obvious nearby, he opened the refrigerator. Inside, he found some cans of soda, several small packages of perishable materials, and a gallon bottle of alcohol. He grabbed the cans and the alcohol and turned to Elise. “Turn on that heating plate above your head.”
She reached up to an electric hot plate on the workbench and turned the dial to high. At the same time, Pitt crawled to the aisle and twisted off the cap to the alcohol bottle. He lay the bottle on its side, gave it a shove, and watched it roll down the aisle, spilling its contents along the way. It clinked against the far wall just as the woman pushed the rack aside and entered the lab.
“Stay low and try to get out the back door,” Pitt whispered.
He retrieved a roll of paper towels from the bench and held one end to the red-hot burner. Another pop, and a small chunk of the corner bench disintegrated next to his hand. Pitt could hear the woman moving closer as the paper ignited. He held it to the spilled alcohol until it began to burn, then tossed the flaming roll toward the intruder.
The alcohol on the floor ignited in a low flame that burned across the lab to the bottle, which flared in a small blaze. The woman had to dodge the incoming paper towels, then stomp at the fire around her.
Pitt turned to Elise. “Go!”
He flicked the hot burner over onto a plastic lab tray, then popped up and hurled the two soda cans. The first missed, but the second clipped the woman on the side of the head. Pitt used the opportunity to move closer to the exit, diving over the