"Stomping?" Judith retorted. "I'm as silent as a cat."
"How silent do you think a 115-pound cat would be?" he asked, irritated.
"A lot quieter than you," she replied angrily.
"Listen before you answer, lady. Have you heard me scuff my foot once since you met me?" Remo demanded. "Have you even heard one single footfall?"
Judith paused. Her temper seemed to dissipate somewhat.
"No," she conceded. The admission appeared to puzzle more than anger her.
"And while we're at it, you're not exactly a poster child for subtlety after that performance back in Boston," Remo pointed out. "So back off."
Leaving the cowed geneticist, Remo marched over to Billy Pierce.
The aging hippie was picking himself out of the rubble of his mother's shattered sewing table. As he dragged himself to his feet, he shook loose the remnants of one of the wooden legs, which had somehow gotten stuffed up the right leg of his bellbottoms.
The same hand that had thrown him halfway across the room now lifted him the rest of the way to his feet. Remo deposited Billy on the concrete floor.
"Okay, Wavy Gravy," Remo said, "what do you know about the stolen animals?"
"I didn't do anything yet!" Billy begged. The words tumbled out. "All I did was get the plans from the city hall. That's legal. You can't do anything to me if I haven't done anything yet. Besides, I wasn't going to steal them. I was going to free them. And I wasn't even going to do that 'cause you can't prove I was."
As he spoke, he indicated the curled-up blueprints on the floor. Remo raised an eyebrow. Silently, he gathered up the plans, drawing them open.
He glanced at Billy. "These are to the Salem dog pound," Remo said, reading the border caption. Judith bounded forward, snatching the blueprints from Remo.
"You put my BCWs in a dog pound?" she barked.
"B-whats?" Billy asked, confused. "I don't know what you mean. I was planning to liberate the Salem dog pound. That's what all this is about." His eyes narrowed. "You're not with the city?"
"No," Remo snapped, shaking his head.
Judith had had enough. She shoved Billy roughly in his flabby chest. "Where are the laboratory specimens you stole from BostonBio last night?" she ordered.
At the mentioning of the genetic firm's name, Billy Fierce's eyes grew wide amid his acne-flecked face. He tried to bolt again, but Remo held him fast. His legs kicked for a moment in air like a frozen cartoon character's. When he realized that he was making no progress, he reluctantly surrendered.
"Where are they?" Remo asked, his face hard. Billy was panting from his exertions. Remo had to lean back to avoid the foul vapor that oozed from his mouth.
"You won't turn me in if I tell you?" Billy asked hopefully.
"I'll turn you into hamburger if you don't," Remo warned.
Billy spoke quickly. "I don't really know about the BBQ liberation per se," he said.
"Liberation?" Dr. White scoffed.
He seemed surprised. "Don't you agree that all animals have a right to freedom?" Billy asked.
"The BCWs don't have a clue what freedom is," the geneticist snapped. "They were conceived in a test tube and born in a lab. They are things. Not animals."
"Where?" Remo stressed, steering Billy back to the matter at hand.
"I'm not really sure," he said. "I'm supposed to meet some people from the Animal Underground Railroad near the Concord rotary tonight. There's some farmland on Route 117 near there. They're going to smuggle the BBQs to freedom."
"Freedom!" Judith screamed, exasperated. "They're glorified lab rats! They have no natural instincts except for what I've bred into them. They've got no sense of how to survive in the wild. If you morons let them go off and fend for themselves, they'll starve to death in a week!"
Billy Pierce puffed out his wounded chest. "Says you," he said bravely. He instantly regretted his daring.
Judith's eyes squeezed to angry slits. Without any warning, she sprang into action.
One hand was held up and away from her body. The other was tensed in a fist near her abdomen.
The loose hand swooped down toward the dirtsmeared throat of Billy Pierce.
There was enough power behind the blow to sever the aging hippie's carotid artery. Her long nails could have shredded his neck to the point that he would have bled to death before the paramedics arrived.
Of course, to do this, she would have had to make actual contact.
The hand flew down. Billy's eyes widened in shock.
The vicious, fatal contact was inevitable.
Her hand mere inches away from the creased and crusty flab, Dr. White was stunned when her narrow wrist met something powerful and unyielding. A strong hand wrapped around her forearm, locking it in place. The hand had moved much faster than her own blow. She blinked back her surprise.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Remo asked. His hand was wrapped around her wrist. Her claws were frozen three inches away from Billy's filthy neck.
Though she said nothing, her eyes shot daggers at him. She looked back to Billy and snarled. Billy fell back in fear, stumbling into an unused workbench. He dropped loudly onto a wobbly metal stool, panting madly.
"Listen, lady," Remo growled. "I don't know what kind of junk you're pumping into your veins, but it's making you a real pain in the ass."
Her head snapped around to Remo. She regarded him coldly for a moment. With surprising strength, she wrenched her hand free. Remo let her.
"I was a pain in the ass before I started shooting up," she snapped.
"There's something to be proud of," he said aridly.
Without another word, Judith skulked off to a dark corner of the basement. She stood there in the shadows, her eyes trained suspiciously on the two men. Remo felt her gaze was directed more at him now than at Billy Pierce.
He had gotten a strange sense of calm from her back at HETA headquarters when she'd assaulted Curt Tulle. It was the same here. Her heart thrurnmed low and constant in her chest. It wasn't the erratic heartbeat of someone who had just attacked another human being.
The drugs. Had to be. Whatever she was injecting must have been a weird combination of both stimulant and calmative. Probably something she had synthesized herself.
It figured. The woman who was hell-bent on feeding the world was a certifiable lunatic.
Remo turned his attention away from the lurking shape of Judith.