Uncaged Read Online Free Page B

fast. He had the third-row seat all to himself, and the girl named Laura said, “We gotta figure out what to do. What if Aubrey’s dead? We’re gonna be in so much trouble.”
    “I gotta go home, this is my dad’s van,” the driver said, checking the rearview mirror for flashing lights. “What about you, Odin? Take you home?”
    “Can’t. Not with the dog,” he said. “Besides, I don’t really have a home. Drop me at the park, I’ll hook up with Rachel later.”
    “I can’t believe this,” the driver said, and Laura started to sniffle.
    Odin said, “This is what happens sometimes. We were never playing games here. These people are killers—all you have to do is see the lab. But Aubrey: jeez, I hope she’s all right. Jeez, I hope she’s okay.”
    The wolfish gray dog with the single yellow eye took it all in, but the dog hadn’t known Aubrey Calder.
    All the dog felt was:
    Freedom
.

3
    McClane, the security guard, was read his rights and taken in handcuffs to police headquarters, the cops talking about a possible charge of aggravated assault, or even murder, if the girl died. At the police station, he was uncuffed, said he didn’t need a lawyer, and gave a straightforward statement, except for one small lie. He had, he said, fired his weapon deliberately into the ceiling, and the third shot had unintentionally gone straight down the hall as a result of his being shot with a Taser.
    He knew that the tasing had come after the shot, but he’d picked up enough bad feelings from the cops that he thought it best to adjust the time line.
    An attorney from the prosecutor’s office sat in on the interview, and made the point with detectives that it would be difficult to make a case against McClane if he fired a gun in defense of the laboratory, which was precisely what he’d been hired to do. In fact, he had been certified by the city to do just that. They released him at six o’clock in the morning, but the police kept his gun.
    Two days later, when detectives reviewed the security video of the raid, they saw clearly that McClane had shot Aubrey Calder before he was tased, but by then McClane was covered by an attorney and no longer talking.
    On the morning of his release, confused, frightened, and depressed, McClane went back to the laboratory. The lawn and streets around the lab were crowded with dozens of people who looked like crazed golfers, running stooped across the grass and blacktop, trying to catch ricocheting golf balls—the thousands of white mice that had been shoveled out the windows.
    Inside, the entire staff was also attempting to corral loose mice and rats.
    McClane was spotted by Mary Trane, the personnel director. She did a double take, then said, “Thank God. Sync has been asking for you.”
    “I was with the police,” McClane mumbled. He’d always found Trane intimidating.
    “Yes, yes, we know,” she said. “Come this way.”
    “I didn’t … I didn’t mean to shoot that girl, it was an accident.… Ah, God …” McClane began to snuffle. Trane looked away.
    Trane rattled down a first-floor hallway in four-inch heels—McClane had never seen her without them—not flinching when a couple of tiny black-eyed white mice dashed past her.
    “This man is from San Francisco, company headquarters,” she said, over her shoulder. “He flew here on the company jet. He’s the one you called.”
    “Mr. Sync?”
    “It’s not ‘Mr. Sync,’ it’s Stephen N. Creighton,” she said, still halfturned as she walked. “His initials are SNC and everybody calls him Sync. That’s what you should call him. Sync.”
    “Sync,” McClane repeated after her.
    “One more thing, Mr. McClane,” she said. She stopped to peer at him. “Do not lie to Sync. Tell him the absolute truth, whatever that is.”
    “I will,” McClane said.
    She led him down to the conference room, where a tall, silver-haired man in army-style steel-rimmed glasses and a pin-striped suit was talking to the lab