Killer Instinct (Instinct #2)(63)

“I know what I saw!” he kept yelling. “I know what I saw!”

Grimes was selling it, and by the looks of everyone gathering around him, people were buying it. His fellow reporters especially.

Sure, they all mostly hated him. But there was also a begrudging respect. Grimes was good at what he did for a living. Very good. He got stories that they didn’t, and his writing sold papers. A lot of New Yorkers bought the Gazette just for his Grimes on Crimes column. He was known for doing whatever it takes in pursuit of a story, and this seemed to be a perfect example. While the rest of the media accepted their fate—shut out from the station and relegated to the sidelines—Grimes had seemingly figured out a way to sneak in.

So what if he got caught and was now getting his ass kicked out to the curb? He clearly had discovered something.

“Cover-up!” Grimes now yelled. “It’s a cover-up!”

As soon as the cops let go of him with a shove, the circle around Grimes quickly tightened so everyone could hear his story. He was no longer screaming; we couldn’t hear him. But we didn’t have to. He was surely sticking to the script.

It’s never the crime. Always the cover-up.

The bomb scare was a ruse. The real story was far less sexy as headlines go but potentially a political house of cards. That’s what Grimes was telling them.

The station had been closed down due to an asbestos find in an area that still contained remnants of the original Pennsylvania Station built by McKim, Mead, and White. The reason for the made-up bomb scare, Grimes would speculate, was because of the legal liability the city would face given how many people had been exposed to the asbestos on a daily basis. Someone very high up, perhaps as high as the mayor himself, had clearly given the order to see if the asbestos could be removed in secret.

“Do you really think they’ll buy it?” asked Pritchard as we kept watching.

“That’s the best part,” I answered. “They can’t buy it.”

“I thought you told me—”

“I said they’d believe him. To buy it and, more importantly, for their editors to run it they’ll need a second source. That’s something they’ll spend all day trying to get and never will. Without that second source, there’s no story.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” said Pritchard. “Or rather, don’t see it.”

Tick-tock. “We don’t have that long,” I said.

“He’s right,” said Foxx. He motioned out the window. “If Grimes pulls this off, nothing’s changed. This station is still the next target, and we need to be ready.”

I glanced at my watch. In less than an hour, the first commuter trains of the morning would be arriving, assuming the station was open.

Pritchard stared me straight in the eyes. I stared right back.

“It’s now or never,” I said.





CHAPTER 89


IT WAS NOW.

After Pritchard briefed the director of Homeland Security, immediate around-the-clock surveillance of Penn Station began. A horde of undercover NYPD and FBI was assembled faster than a New York minute.

At some point the soda cans and magazines in every backpack were going to be replaced by actual bombs. The trick was not only to spot each one but also to tail each courier back to the proverbial nest. This was about more than stopping an attack and apprehending some terrorists. This was about eliminating an entire cell, and with any luck, all the cells attached to the Mudir.

And the Mudir himself.

In the eyes of each and every civilian making their way through Penn Station, there couldn’t be anything out of the ordinary. Everyone assigned needed to blend in seamlessly as commuters or employees of the station.

Backing them up would be additional surveillance personnel manning the cameras all around the station, including the new cameras that had been hastily installed to cover the blind spots. Nothing could be left to chance.

We controlled everything except the timetable.

“I have to admit, I was pretty tempted,” Foxx said to me in the back seat of his bulletproof Ford Expedition as the sun began to rise over the East River. His driver, a young operative he called Briggs, was taking my father and me to the safe house in Brooklyn. Foxx needed to file a report immediately for the Agency’s director, and I needed to finally catch up on some sleep. While my father could crash at Elizabeth’s apartment if need be, the safe house was really my only option. Thanks to the Mudir, I was homeless and a marked man.

“What do you mean by tempted?” I asked.

Foxx chuckled. “Letting Pritchard take a swing at you.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“You do have a way of pissing people off, Reinhart.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said.

Foxx closed his eyes for a catnap, and in the silence that ensued, my thoughts turned to Tracy and Annabelle, and the mess I’d made of our family. I couldn’t help it. As if things couldn’t get any worse, they now didn’t have an apartment to come home to—assuming they were ever coming home again. The idea that I had to call Tracy and warn him to stay away from the city was the ultimate irony. All I wanted was for him and Annabelle to come back. Even if Tracy wanted to, they couldn’t.

Twenty minutes later, in the basement of the Agency’s safe house, I set the alarm on my phone for four hours later. Turned out, I didn’t need to.