Lock In (Lock In, #1)(83)

Nicholas Bell dropped the knife to the floor, and stepped back, breathing heavily. He stared at the ruined body, as if something about it puzzled him.

Such as: The body he had stabbed eight times now had not one drop of blood coming out of it.

“Brother,” Cassandra Bell whispered. “It didn’t work.”

I launched myself from the chair I was sitting in and tackled Nicholas Bell, who went down rolling and squirming.

He managed to get out of my grip and scrambled to his backpack. I rolled up and saw him, gun in hand, aiming at me.

“Oh come on,” I said. “I just got this threep.”

The crash behind us—the sound of FBI agents breaking down the door to get at Nicholas—distracted Nicholas just enough for me to run at him, but not enough for him to break his aim. He fired, and the bullet took me in the shoulder, spinning me.

Nicholas turned and fired three shots into the sliding glass door separating the living room and the balcony, and then ran into the shattered glass, hands up to protect his face. The glass tore away in a sheet and then Nicholas was through and stumbling over the balcony.

“Fuck,” I said, and followed him.

That’s when I learned the shot Bell took at me had affected the movement of my right arm. I tumbled over the balcony railing and fell hard onto the concrete walkway underneath. If I had been in a human body, I’m pretty sure I would have been dead or paralyzed.

But I wasn’t.

I stood up, scanned around, and saw Bell thirty yards ahead, limping but moving surprisingly fast. His gun was still in his right hand.

“What the hell just happened?” Vann said, in my head.

“He jumped out of the balcony,” I said. “He’s running on Ninth Street. Headed toward Welburn Square. I’m going after him.”

“Don’t lose him again,” Vann said.

“Again?!?” I said, and then went running.

Bell’s limp had gotten worse when I caught up to him just short of Welburn Square. I jumped him and we both went down on the redbrick sidewalk. I grabbed at him with my one good arm. He kicked it off and pistol-whipped me with the butt of his gun.

This did not work as well as he wanted it to. I had turned down my pain sensitivity. He turned the gun on me and I rolled away. Bell took off again, limping, cutting across the central circle of the grass in the square, scattering passersby when they saw his gun.

I went after him again, tripping him short of Taylor Street. He turned as he stumbled, and fired at me, hitting me in the hip. My left leg collapsed under me. I looked up to see Bell give a small grin of triumph and then run out into Taylor Street—

—on which he was immediately struck by a car. Bell splayed dramatically across the hood of the automobile and then collapsed on the road, clutching his leg.

Vann got out of the driver’s side, walked over to Bell, ascertained that he was not in immediate danger of death, and handcuffed him.

Two minutes later all the other FBI agents had caught up to us. Vann walked over to me, still down on the sidewalk. She sat down next to me and pulled her e-cigarette from her jacket pocket.

“That’s the third threep you’ve ruined in two days,” she said.

“Fourth,” I said.

“I don’t want to tell you how to do your job,” she said. “But I will say that if I were your insurer, I’d drop your ass.”

“You hit our suspect with a car,” I said.

“Oops,” Vann said. She sucked on her cigarette.

“You could have killed him.”

“I was going five miles an hour,” Vann said. “And anyway it was an accident.”

“You’re not supposed to be able to get into accidents like that anymore,” I said.

“It’s amazing what you can do when you disable autodrive,” Vann said.

“We promised Cassandra Bell we wouldn’t hurt her brother,” I said.

“I know,” Vann said. “It was a risk. On the other hand, that * just shot my partner. Twice.”

“It wasn’t Bell who shot me.”

“That’s not the * I was talking about.” She put her cigarette away.

* * *

“I’m curious about a number of things,” Vann said, to Bell. They were sitting across the table from each other in one of the Bureau’s interrogation rooms. Vann had a manila folder in front of her. “But I’ll tell you what I’m curious about right this second. It’s that you’re here in an FBI interrogation room, under arrest, and you have neither affirmatively invoked your right to remain silent or asked for your lawyer. You should. You should do both.”

“Yes,” I said. I was standing behind Vann. I was in one of the threeps the FBI used for visiting agents. The agent who had been using it half an hour before was currently stewing in Chicago because I had interrupted her work. She could stew for a while longer. “Although if I were you I wouldn’t try to call Sam Schwartz.”

“Why not?” Bell asked, looking up at me.

“We arrested him this morning on charges of murder and conspiracy, relating to the Loudoun Pharma bombing,” I said. “Won’t his boss be surprised.”

“Hubbard’s in the clear,” Vann said. “Everything points to Schwartz alone. Not the best sort of extracurriculars to have, though.” She turned back to Bell. “Now. Would you like to remain silent?” she asked. “When you answer, keep in mind that the minute you were out of your apartment and on the way here, we executed a warrant to search your residence and belongings. Which is to say we’ve already found the video you made confessing to the murder, and also, your suicide.”