I was wasting time. I returned to the freight elevator and looked down to the floor below, where Clayborn lived. I’d go there and interrogate him, provided Jolie hadn’t ripped him to pieces already.
I smelled a different odor from the burned explosive in the lab. This smell came from below. Was the annex on fire?
I leaned forward and caught the elevator cables. I shimmied down one floor to the next door. The smell grew stronger. I swung from the cable and balanced on the ledge below the elevator door.
I felt heat coming from the metal door. There was a fire. I had to find Clayborn.
I jabbed my talons through the door. Smoke jetted past my fingers. I sawed a gap wide enough for me to use both hands and tear the door in two.
Heat and smoke rolled over me. I started to panic. I had to act fast or I’d lose any way of ever finding Carmen. I dropped to the floor, where the air was clearer.
I shouted, “Jolie.”
“Felix,” she answered from inside the smoke-filled room, “he’s coming your way. Get him.”
Before I could think to ask whom, Clayborn rushed from the smoke, bent over in a stooped sprint, those big clown feet of his propelling him with amazing speed. He clasped a ray gun in his right hand.
I pushed from the floor and clotheslined him. His neck folded over my arm and those Bozo feet of his arced through the air. The gun clattered across the floor and down the elevator shaft. Clayborn landed on his back, and his head smacked the hard floor.
Jolie appeared through the smoke and crouched beside Clayborn. “The little fucker shot at me with the ray gun, missed, and started the fire. Now that we’ve got him, let’s rescue Carmen.”
I didn’t move.
Jolie looked at me. “What’s the matter?”
It was hard to admit my failure. “Carmen’s gone.”
Jolie remained stone-faced. “What do you mean?”
The next admission was even harder. “She’s been taken from Earth. She’s in outer space somewhere.”
Jolie’s aura blazed as bright as hot, glowing metal. She wrapped her talons around Clayborn’s neck. “Where is she? Tell me or I’ll gut you like a fish.”
Clayborn struggled for breath. He gasped. “There’s nothing you can do for her now.”
Jolie tightened her grip. “You better hope not.”
The fire gained on us. We didn’t have much time.
I peeled her fingers loose. “We better get moving.”
“What about him?”
“We’ll take him with us. He wouldn’t let himself get stranded here without a way to get home.”
Jolie jumped and tore a light fixture from the ceiling. She grasped the wire dangling from the hole and cut a length of about six feet using her talons.
“Here, bind him with this.” Jolie handed the wire to me.
Clayborn remained dazed and docile from the blow against the concrete floor. His black eyes bulged from their sockets. A corona of pain flared around his yellow aura.
I looped one end of the copper wire around his skinny neck and twisted the wire tight. I wrapped the rest of the wire around his torso, cinching his arms against his chest, and trussed him like a pot roast. I picked Clayborn up and tucked him under my arm. He weighed the same as a medium-sized dog.
I returned to the elevator, paused at the threshold, and planned my jump.
Clayborn started to moan.
“Shut up,” Jolie hissed. She tore a swatch from his pants cuff and stuffed the cloth into his mouth.
Flames roared in the room behind us.
I bounded against the opposite wall and zigzagged up the elevator structure to the access hatch I’d torn loose.
We emerged on the roof through the column of smoke pumping out the elevator shaft. Jolie and I coughed to clear our throats. Clayborn gagged and squirmed against me.
Jolie punched him in the head. “I told you to shut up.”
We stepped away from the smoke and crouched on the roof.
Guards shouted in a frenzied chorus. Red and amber lights flashed across the resort. Alarms and claxons blared like wounded animals. Trucks and carts raced over the grounds in carnival-like pandemonium.
“Felix, if your intent was to confuse them, good job.” Jolie dug a cell phone from her hip pocket. She glanced at the phone briefly. “That was Antoine. He’s almost here.”
Jolie lifted her head toward the west. The chopping noise of rotor blades approached.