Into the Fire(113)
Fifteen yards out. Now ten.
She saw the bore come full circle. Stared down the throat of the rifle. Every muscle clenched, a razor edge of rage slicing through her fear, cutting her to ribbons.
And then he was gone, a blood spray painting the van’s rear door.
She halted before the bumper, panting, terrified. Glanced back, sweaty hair whipping across her eyes. A trail of dropped bodies charted her wake. She turned back to the van.
The rear door gleamed in the late-afternoon sun.
She reached with a trembling hand and opened it.
It creaked on ungreased hinges.
A boy was balled up in the corner of the cargo hold, face tucked behind the tops of his knees. Through a fall of golden hair, Peter peered up.
The tiniest of voices. “Mommy?”
He scrambled forward and fell into her arms.
Sobbing, she held him.
60
Fly Away
The sound of sirens drifted up to the twelfth-floor balcony.
Evan scooped up the kill brass and hustled across the hotel room, leaving behind the empty Hardigg Storm Case. Stepping over the bodies, he cracked the door and peered down the corridor.
Empty save for an overturned housekeeping cart, probably upended by a fleeing employee when gunfire had broken out.
He jogged to the cart, fluffed out a transparent trash liner, and slid the FN Ballista inside. Tommy had been right. It was an excellent rifle, and if Evan had been the type to grow attached to tools, he wouldn’t have been so quick to discard it.
He grabbed a jug of bleach and emptied it inside the bag as he moved swiftly down the hall. Knotting the bag, he dumped it in a trash chute and then stepped onto the elevator.
A Muzak rendering of Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away,” heavy on woodwinds, accompanied him down. His heart rate started to slow, the epinephrine easing off to a more gentle glow in his veins.
Though the lobby was largely cleared out, a few workers and guests huddled behind the front desk.
Evan stepped out into the street and hustled up 6th to the intersection. The intensity of holding perfect focus had cost him, as he knew it would, the concussion symptoms seeping back, messing with his perception. Squad cars were pulling up on Grand Avenue from all points of the compass, clogging the side streets, corralling the damage zone. He misjudged a step and banged into the fender of an abandoned car hard enough to knock himself into a quarter turn. Straightening himself up, he progressed more cautiously, ignoring the mounting pressure at his temples, concentrating to keep his vision clear.
Looking up the block, he spotted Mia.
She was holding Peter.
Relief tore through Evan, something giving way under a strain he hadn’t let himself acknowledge.
Peter was clamped onto his mother, his face buried in her shoulder. Mia spoke to first responders, gesturing at the bodies around the van with her one free hand.
Evan had no idea what she was telling them.
For the first time, it struck him that the life he had built in Castle Heights was now over. As an officer of the court, Mia would be obliged to implicate him. She’d made her position clear. And he’d be on the run once again.
He thought of the informal pardon that President Donahue-Carr had dangled before him, the different life so tantalizingly close.
But staring at Mia and Peter now, he knew he’d make the same choice a thousand times out of a thousand.
She turned slightly and—way across the mob of cops and civilians—spotted him.
For a suspended instant, they locked eyes.
The officers speaking to her noted her shift in position and started to pivot. They were just about to spot Evan when Mia turned and stepped in front of them.
Blocking their view.
She squared to them, hoisting Peter higher to wall out their vantage.
When she turned back around, Evan was gone.
61
Speechless Terror
The boys assembled around the conference table on the seventh floor. The meeting had been hastily called. It was 11:00 P.M., and they were off their usual crisp standards in appearance and demeanor. Crooked ties, untucked shirts, patches of stubble.
The Steel Woman, however, was seamless. Pressed suit jacket and slacks. A perfect veneer of makeup. Her bun as tightly wound as ever, a water-smooth stone at her nape.
With a smudge of dried ketchup on his cheek, Fitz shakily finished his update. “So that’s it. My entire contingent wiped out. I don’t know what the next steps are.”
“Fortunately, I do,” Stella said. “You boys—all of you—will use your considerable resources and reach to hunt down Max Merriweather and the man responsible for this, eliminate them, and retrieve the thumb drive.”
There was no sound save the rush of the air conditioner, blowing an even sixty-five degrees.
“Additionally,” she said, “we are dissolving the LLC until further notice.”
A few of the men leaned forward as if to object, but she stilled them with a single look.
The city treasurer mustered his voice. “I don’t know that that’s entirely fair.”
“I did my job perfectly,” Stella said. “For years I worked to set up this arrangement. Never so much as a misplaced comma. You boys were given a single task, and you fucked it all up. So I share your assessment, Neil. It isn’t fair.”