In Death 09 - Loyalty in Death

thought. How much time?
    "It falls apart, everything he wanted falls apart if you don't take his place."
    "I will take his place. We are Cassandra." She laid down a stream of heat and light as she raced up the stairs.
    Sucking in a breath, Eve pounded after her. The heat burned her lungs, had tears streaming from her eyes and blurring her vision.
    She heard Clarissa screaming for her husband, calling for death, for destruction. For glory. The old metal stairs circled, circled up the body of the statue. She saw the second device, hesitated for a heartbeat with some thought of deactivating it herself.
    And hesitating saved herself a laser blast full in the face. The blast shrieked past her and blew out three of the metal treads.
    "He was a great man! A god. And he was assassinated by the Fascist forces of a corrupt government. He stood for the people. For the masses."
    "He killed the people, killed the masses. Children, babies, old men."
    "Sacrifices of a just war."
    "Just, my ass." Eve swung from cover, fired high and blind toward the shouts. She heard a howl of rage or pain; she couldn't be sure which. She hoped it was both.
    Then they were racing up again.
    She saw the third device. Roarke had already dealt with the first, she told herself. Had to. She could hear no sounds of fire or struggle from below. He was in the clear, doing what needed to be done.
    She took a quick look at her wrist unit. Six minutes to backup.
    Her calves burned, her breath came short. For a moment, her vision wavered and the weapons clutched in her hands grew weighty and awkward.
    The crash was coming on. She leaned back against the wall to catch her breath and her bearings. Not now, not now. She could hold out against it, would hold out against it.
    Finally, she heard movement behind her. "Roarke?"
    "The first is down." He called up the stairs, his voice brisk and cool. "Moving on to two. We're on timers with these. Set for eighteen hundred. Locked and loaded."
    "Okay. Okay." She scrubbed the back of her hand over her mouth. It was seventeen-fifty.
    She pushed away from the wall, climbed. She didn't give the fourth device so much as a glance. Her job was the Bransons.
    She was running on pure nerve when she reached the top. Her legs were jellied. As she slid along the wall, she saw the dazzling view out of the observation windows. The last device was set dead center of the lady's crown.
    "Clarissa."
    "Cassandra."
    "Cassandra," Eve corrected, shifting slightly, trying to scan as much of the area as she could manage. "Dying here isn't going to finish your father's work."
    "It will be a great moment in history. The destruction of the city's most beloved symbols. She'll crumble in his name, and the world will know."
    "How will they know? If you're buried under tons of stone and steel, how will they know?"
    "We are not alone."
    "The rest of your group is being searched out and picked up right now." She looked at her wrist unit again, felt sweat slipping down her spine. "Henson." She tossed the name out, hoping it would shake her quarry. "We know where he is."
    "You'll never take him." In fury, Clarissa fired. "He was my father's most trusted friend. He raised me. He completed my training."
    "After your father was killed. Your father and your brother." Roarke was moving up, she told herself. They'd take out the last device together. There was time. "You weren't in the house."
    "I was with Henson. Madia died for me. It was right that she did. We heard the explosion from blocks away. I saw what those pigs had done."
    "So Henson took you under. What about your mother?"
    "Worthless bitch. I wish I could have killed her myself, watched her die. I would've enjoyed that, loved it, remembering all the times she berated me. My father used her as a vessel, nothing more."
    "And when her usefulness was over, he left her, and took you and your brother."
    "To teach us, to train us. But I was his light. He knew I would be the one. Others saw me as just a pretty little girl with a soft voice. But he knew. He knew I was a soldier, his goddess of war. He knew, as Henson knew. As the man I chose to marry knew."
    Branson. Eve shook her head to clear it. Dear God, she'd forgotten about him. "He's been in on it all along."
    "Of course. I would never give myself to a man who wasn't worthy. I could make them think I would -- like Zeke. What a pathetic boy, starry-eyed, gullible. He made those last steps work. The Bransons dead, most of the money in closed accounts, me