I’d thought guiding others in for the kill was the same as pulling the trigger. I’d been wrong. I walked forward in a daze, oblivious to the possibility of additional attackers, ignoring everything but the body on the street. I had done this. All by myself.
He was lying on his back, the jacket half-open. Slowly, with thumb and forefinger, I pulled it all the way open.
The blocks of explosive strapped to his sides should have silenced any qualms. And at the time, they did. The Sense surged back and I felt the relief of my platoon mates, knew I had saved not just my own life, but dozens of others, knew the man before me would have been dead of his own hand, regardless of what I’d done.
That’s how it stood for years. Until the flashbacks. Now, all I see is his face: broad planes with incipient crows-feet. Startlingly blue eyes. A blunt, square nose. Matching jaw.
In the flashbacks, there is no suicide vest. Instead, he’s clutching a paper, covered in feminine handwriting. Handwriting just like Denise’s.
What would my dreams be if I had to shoot Jerret? I didn’t want to think about it. But when Laurel gave me a handful of clips, I took them.
The rest of the supplies were exactly what I needed. I didn’t ask Laurel where she’d gotten them and she didn’t volunteer. All those police connections, perhaps, though a lot of it was easy enough to get elsewhere.
Denise arrived shortly after. The night before, we’d argued about roles. I’d lost. I tried again now, but she was adamant: no more waiting at home. We also argued about timing. Laurel and Denise wanted to go in right away, perhaps catch everyone still sleeping if Perkins kept the type of hours guys like him do in movies.
But that was the type of nerves you see in soldiers on their first patrol. We’d do better later, when there were more people going up and down the elevators and when Jerret had had all day to become jumpier himself.
What I didn’t want to do was think about Cora, so I took Laurel and Denise to the Art Institute. A Picasso exhibit, I think. Afterward, I couldn’t have described anything I’d seen. Nerves aren’t just for first-timers.
Happy-hour found us again in the lounge: just Denise and me, no alcohol, waiting. I wanted the lounge at its fullest when the alarms went off. The more confused people filling stairwells and elevators, the better.
Her part of the plan was the simplest. Thanks to Laurel’s bag of goodies, her purse was full of smoke pellets—easy-to-use ones, made for paintball and for training firefighters. Better for our purposes than the military kind because they were smaller and non-toxic.
Denise, again in her schoolmarm glasses and tight bun—home-dyed a rather severe gray this time—would hit the eighteenth floor. That was a hotel floor, so she’d be looking for a supply closet, or better, a maid’s cart with a full trash bag. If she could do it without getting caught, she’d light a trash fire and supplement it with enough smoke pellets to make an impressive smudge. Then she’d be down the nearest stairwell, pulling fire alarms and dropping more pellets—anything to increase the confusion. Meanwhile, I’d go to the twentieth floor and wait for the alarms.
By 6:30, the lounge was standing-room only. Denise looked around. “Time?”
I nodded, reached across the table, took her hand. “Be careful. Stick to the plan and let me be the one to improvise. It’s what I do… did.” Her hand felt warm, natural. I gave it the tiniest of squeezes. “I—” My throat felt blocked, the words trapped. “I never—”
She squeezed back. “I know.” She gave a tight-lipped smile.
“Yeah.” There really wasn’t any more to say. “Let’s go get her.”
No battle plan ever goes off without a hitch. This one’s was an unexpectedly long wait for a second elevator, after Denise’s had left. Maybe I should have used the same one she did, but that would have left me on the twentieth floor, with nothing to do while waiting for the alarm.
As it was, I’d barely stepped off when the alarms sounded. Distant at first, muffled through multiple floors, then ear-splitting. I pulled the striker pin on a smoke pellet and tossed it in one of those useless brass wastebaskets hotels, banks, and convention centers love so much. Found another wastebasket on the far side of the lobby and dropped one in it, too.
Down the hall, a door popped open and a head peered out.
“Fire!” I yelled. “Get everyone out!”
Then I ran the opposite way, shouting and banging on doors. This was a condo floor, but it had a supply room, unlocked, as I’d hoped. I wrenched open the door, pulled down a shelf of paper towels, wadded them up in a big pile, and struck a match. Tossed in a half dozen smoke pellets for good measure, along with a couple of interesting-looking aerosol cans. By the time I left, one of the cans had already produced a satisfying bang, the sprinklers were starting to fire up, both in the closet and the hallways, and the smoke was thick enough that other people, hurrying for stairwells or elevators, were merely shapes in the gloom.
I found a stairwell at the end of the hall and pushed through. No panic bar, but a fire alarm, which I pulled in passing. No security cameras anywhere in sight. I’d not seen any yesterday, either, except on the elevators. Either this place had really good, hidden security, or the bare minimum. Hopefully the latter. Otherwise, even if we got Cora out, I was going to have a lot of explaining to do. Not the way I wanted to find out how good Laurel’s police connections really were.
The stairwell smelled like the Fourth of July. Apparently I’d hit the same one that, hopefully, had already led Denise to the basement.
The door snicked shut behind me, and I tested it. Locked. Damn. That meant it would be the same on Jerret’s floor. I’d been hoping the lack of panic bars meant no automatic locks, but touring the place yesterday, there’d been no way to find out. I dropped down a flight, suddenly glad for Laurel’s gun. But just as I got to the first landing, the door flew open, and I found myself staring down at a wiry, tough-looking man with a beard shaved into tiger stripes and what looked like a champagne glass shaved into the side of his head. A fashion-model-gorgeous Asian woman was behind him, in jeans and a silk blouse.
“Shit, Ray,” he said into a phone as I pressed backward against the wall, hoping he wouldn’t look up. “It’s real… Yeah… Yeah…”
“Yeah, it’s real,” the woman said. “Stay here and get cooked if you want.” She pushed by and clattered down into the smoke, pausing a few steps later to pull off her high heels.
Champagne-hair ignored her. “Forget that Jerret guy, bro. All he does is stay with his bitch ‘n’ all those flies. What the hell good’s he done us… ?” He stepped backward toward the corridor. “We really ought to get out of here.”
I was on the move even as the door started swinging shut. Even so, I barely managed to get to it. For a whole minute afterward, I held it, only millimeters from clicking shut, as several groups of people pounded down the stairs, some glancing at me, others fixated on getting down.
Alone again, I pulled a bandana out of my pocket and put it on, partly as additional disguise, partly to cut the fumes. I pulled the pins on three more smoke pellets, then opened the door just wide enough to toss them through. No yells, so apparently the hallway was now vacant. Blocking the door open with my foot, I lit a couple of strings of lady-finger firecrackers with a cigarette lighter, tossed them inside, and followed them up with a couple of M80s. Happily, the nearly closed door saved most of my hearing, but Jerret had to feel like he was on the receiving end of my tripwire nightmare: concussion, smoke, shock—and probably a bunch of insects already knocked off-line.