Chapter 12 · Minute Thirty-One

"Don't touch it." Marco's hand shoots out and grabs my wrist before I even move. The red light on the box doesn't blink. It just stares, steady, like it's got all the patience in the world and we've got none.

"I wasn't going to touch it," I say.

"I was going to walk away from it. There's a difference, Marco."

"Nobody walks anywhere. Not till I know what that thing's wired to." He drops to a crouch, fast, the way a man moves when he doesn't want you to see his hands shake. I see them shake anyway. Cold room, forty-one degrees and dropping since the compressor kicked back on wrong, and Marco Bell's fingers are trembling over a black plastic box that isn't his.

"You keep saying that," I say.

"Not mine, not mine. Who else has a key to this room?"

"Nobody." His jaw goes tight.

"That's the point, Crowe. Nobody."

"Then somebody built a door that answers to two masters," I say.

"Yours and this one. That should worry you more than it worries me."

"It does." He doesn't look up.

"That's why I want you out of this room in the next sixty seconds.