The walk back through the kitchen seems to take twice as long. The sounds of frying and sautéing and chopping recede. When you’re about to reach the doors, you turn to the kitchen and cry out, “Excuse me. I need your attention.” A few heads turn but mostly people keep working. “Excuse me!” you bark. The sounds of the kitchen quiet. “There’s been a threat against the hotel. I need everyone here to proceed to the exits immediately. Put down what you’re doing and exit immediately.”
There is a great deal of hesitation. They all look afraid to leave their posts.
“Now! This is not a drill. We got a serious threat! You need to drop what you’re doing and go now!”
And then they’re moving, scattering like mice.
“Tell everyone!” you call after them. “Everyone in the hotel—tell ’em!”
You turn and, without looking back, push through the doors and into the restaurant. You stay against the wall, sure that they won’t set off the vests until you’re closer.
“Quinn, do I got your word on this?”
“Keeper,” she sounds almost sorrowful, “of course you do. Of course you have my word.”
You take no chances this time. You belt it out, as loud as you can.
“Excuse me! May I have your attention please! Right now, please direct your attention to me!” You thump your chest, feel the dark materials beneath. “I need everyone to proceed to the exits immediately. Leave your food. Leave everything and exit the building immediately.”
To your utter disbelief, no one rises. People continue to sip wine while several irritated diners demand to know what’s going on. You spot the man at table fifty-one, and you recognize him. He’s been in the news a lot over the years. He is a famous man. He ran for president. Mackowski is his name. He looks bored and leans over to the woman sitting next to him to ask her something. A nearby diner tells you his skirt steak hasn’t come out yet, and he’s not going anywhere until it does because it’s already been twenty-five minutes. You can’t believe how they look right through you, even in this situation. You try again. “There’s been a threat against the senator’s life, and all of you need to get out immediately. Senator, I need you and all of your, uh, tablemates, your friends, to stay where you are.”
A few people rise and begin to move out, but not the vast majority.
“Are you people fucking stupid?” You take the rubber gun from the holster, and a woman chirps in shock. You begin stalking past the tables. “Go!” You grab an older man by the arm and jerk him out of his chair. There are gasps, but this gets the whole crowd moving.
You lock eyes with the senator.
They filter through doors at the front of the dining area, but not nearly as fast as you would have imagined. You can even see a few of them reaching for their phones. Likely to complain to Guest Services. You move toward the senator’s table, and the Asian woman he was speaking to begins to rise, so you bark at her, “Not you! Sit back down. Please.” And she does.
As the people hustle past, you approach table fifty-one. The senator sits with his legs crossed and his hands stacked calmly on one knee. He wears a blue jacket with a white open-collar shirt. Gray chest hair puffing out the top. His face is weathered but strong. He appears unimpressed with you and this display. He is utterly unafraid. Beside him the Asian, thin and attractive, wearing a sleek purple dress and expensive jewelry, wavy black hair with a pin carefully placed in the side. There’s no mistaking how badly she wants to leave with the rest of the diners. On the other side of the senator is a tall, handsome guy with a beard like a billy goat, the chin all white. His eyes flap from you to the senator and back to you. He has his phone in his left hand and a drink in the right, which he still has not set back down. His thumb is poised above the screen of his phone as if in mid-text. Finally, beside him is a woman, brown like Arma, but older and wearing an expensive black dress. She stares at you coldly, the first to question all this.
“What kind of threat?” she demands.
You stare at the four of them. You don’t see any point in hiding this anymore. You drop the fake gun, pull the trigger from your vest, and flip the cap up. “Bomb threat,” you say. Then you rip the stitching so the false front of the vest tears open, and there it is. Wires. Battery. Cell phone. Plastic-packaged bricks of ruddy orange something held with black electrical tape. The lumps you felt were plastic bags of bolts, washers, and nails. When they see this, the bearded man cries out, and the Asian woman tries to stand.
“Don’t,” you snap at her. “Sit back down.” And again she does. A woman to your left screams, and now people are running for the exit. Now they’re listening to you, and you have to admit, you like that power. However fleeting. As the last of the guests scramble out, the room is silent except for the sounds of the wind and river coming in from the veranda. Holding the trigger in your right hand, thumb hovering over the phony switch, you take a chair and set it between the senator and the bearded man, who is white-knuckling his drink.
“Please,” says the bearded man, breath whistling. “Oh Jesus please, man, please don’t, just don’t.”
“Peter,” says Senator Mackowski. “Settle.” And Peter stops talking. He sets the glass down and sucks a breath into his palm. Tears form in his eyes and spill quietly down the sides of his face. The brown woman keeps glaring at you, her face unchanged since you walked into the room.
“Okay,” you say, speaking to Quinn and Jansi. But you’re looking at the senator, so he thinks you’re talking to him.
“Okay what?” he says and braves a look at the bomb. His eyes quickly return to yours.
The brown woman reaches into her bag, and you jerk the trigger at her in case she’s like Secret Service reaching for a gun.
“Hey—it’s just my phone,” she says, retrieving the device and unlocking the screen. “All I want is to—”
The Asian woman abruptly stands and you swing the trigger at her, spit flying from your mouth: “Sit the fuck back down!” She does so immediately.
“Emii,” says the senator. “Do what he says.”
“No why no why,” whispers the Asian woman, her whole body shaking. This strange combination of words. “No why no why.”
“Hey. My friend.” The brown woman is holding her phone at you. She’s showing you a picture.
“What’s taking so long?” you say to Quinn and Jansi, but they don’t respond, and for a brief moment you wonder if they lost their nerve.
“What do you mean?” the senator asks you. Emii is gasping and rocking, maybe hyperventilating.
“This is our family,” says the brown woman, and she rubs Peter’s arm. She is so calm, her startling brown eyes searing into you. “See these two? These are our children.”
Your eyes well. You understand Peter is this woman’s husband. You don’t want to look at this picture of their family, but you can’t help yourself. In it, they are both skinnier, younger, and beaming. The two kids are a shade lighter than the woman, an older girl in jeans and a purple tank top and a boy who has only half a mouth of teeth and smiles to show off every one of them. Toby would be about the age of the girl.
“I don’t suppose,” says the senator, “that I could talk you out of this.”
“It ain’t really up to me,” you whisper.
“That’s Noor. And the boy is Gregory,” she says, pointing to each of the children. She must be as scared as her husband, but her fear is different. In fact, she swipes her thumb to show you another picture. “These are our children,” she repeats, and finally tears brim in her calm and terrifying eyes.
You’re clutching the trigger so hard your hand hurts.
Then the senator says, “I beat cancer three times—you believe that? Three times.” He nods. “And I feel lucky that this is the way I get to go. They’ll be telling stories about this for the next five hundred years.”