With the stop he’d made to call Faith, they’d fallen a few minutes behind the other Coalition cars. As he slowed into the southbound flow of traffic, Sean searched for them. Bank of America Plaza was ahead on his right. He recognized the red, white, and blue logo and saw the courtyard, which was commanded by an unusual modernistic sculpture just off the street: huge reddish orange metal cylinders, each open on one side, all twining around each other, reaching toward the sky.
People were milling around the courtyard, up and down the sidewalks. Men and women in FBI wind-breakers were scattered about. A knot of people broke behind a car that was parked illegally right in front of the courtyard. Sean drew in his breath-it was Jeannie Davis’s van.
“My God,” Daryn whispered.
Sean angled the Jeep into the far left lane, away from the bank on the one-way street. As he drove slowly past the van and the courtyard, he could see more people. He recognized some of the Coalition members. They’d been cuffed and were standing alongside several unmarked cars. CJ was lying on the ground, his hands cuffed behind his back. Several feet away, with three officers standing next to it, was the suitcase full of explosives.
“Who did you call?” Daryn said.
“Someone who knows someone in the FBI,” Sean said.
Daryn bowed her head. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. If Franklin had just told me what-”
They had just crossed Couch Drive, approaching Park Avenue, when they heard the explosion.
Daryn screamed. Britt leaned forward.
“Jesus, what was that?” Sean said.
Then it came to him-he hadn’t seen Sanborn’s car or the truck. The truck into which Don Wheaton had loaded the other suitcase of explosives.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Where’s that other bank?”
“Main and Broadway,” Britt said. “The big tower. Chase Bank.”
Daryn was shivering, arms wrapped around herself. Britt stared at her as if seeing her for the first time.
“He blew the other bank,” Sean said. “He used this one as a diversion, sacrificed the people, and blew the other one.”
“He lied to me again,” Daryn whispered. “He lied again.”
“But Daryn,” Britt said, “what about The Cause?”
Sean jerked as if he’d been poked with something hot. Britt had just called Daryn by her real name.
Daryn seemed not to notice. She was staring forward through the windshield, eyes unmoving, as if in a waking coma.
Sean turned onto Park, a tiny downtown street that dead-ended one block later at Broadway. Directly across the way was Santa Fe Plaza and the Skirvin Hotel, the landmark three-towered hotel that was in a state of constant renovation, always seemingly on the verge of reopening, just to be sold again and again. So Faith had told him, in the early days of her life in Oklahoma City. She’d pointed it out to him during their sightseeing last week.
Was that only a week ago? Sean thought. Seems like a hell of a lot longer than that.
To the right was the Chase Tower.
Thick black smoke rolled out from the glass front of the ground floor. Sean could see broken glass on the concrete, but the smoke was so thick and so dark that he couldn’t tell the extent of the damage.
“Jesus,” he said.
On the far side of the building, along Main Street, was Franklin Sanborn’s car and the other Coalition truck.
“There!” Britt pointed.
“Son of a bitch,” Sean whispered. “Hang on, people.”
He whipped the steering wheel to the left, climbed the median, and came back down on the other side of Broadway. Contradicting its name, the street was very narrow in this stretch of downtown. Sean kept the Jeep pointed diagonally southeast, toward Sanborn’s car on the other side.
Sirens sounded. People were beginning to run, some toward the Chase Tower, some away from it. People fell to their knees, coughing from the smoke. One woman had blood on her face. But Sean could still see very little for the smoke. He drove under it and through it, across the sidewalk toward Main.
Sanborn’s car pulled away from the curb.
“No you don’t, you bastard,” Sean said.
“Why are you chasing him?” Britt blurted. “He just tried…I mean, the Coalition. You didn’t…he-”
“Britt, that’s enough,” Daryn said, turning to face Britt with blood in her eyes. “Don’t get into things you don’t know about.”
“But he called the FBI. You didn’t…you didn’t go through with it.” Britt’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t understand.”
“Shut up!” Daryn screamed. “Shut up, shut up, goddammit, Britt!” She pressed her hands to her head as if she were trying to keep it from cracking in two. “Just leave it alone!”
Sanborn’s car shot into the intersection and into E.K. Gaylord Boulevard, which marked the eastern edge of downtown and the beginning of the Bricktown entertainment district. It was a wider, large thoroughfare, and Sanborn went through against the light.
Sean, three car lengths behind, watched as a burgundy-colored four-door twisted to get out of Sanborn’s way. The driver was almost successful, and wound up just clipping Sanborn’s bumper. Sanborn fishtailed, but he righted the car and made it through the intersection.
The burgundy car’s driver stopped, like any normal citizen involved in a fender bender, and started to get out. Sean whipped around the car and followed Sanborn across the boulevard, under a railroad bridge, and into Bricktown. Main was at the north edge of the former warehouse district that had come to redefine Oklahoma City’s cultural life.
Just past the bridge, Sean blinked at what had to be an apparition: to the left, in a vacant area, dozens of buffalo. Sculptures-ceramic, papier-mâché, he had no idea, but they were all standing in a field, as if in a real buffalo herd, and all were painted with brightly colored designs.
He squeezed his eyes closed. Had to be the booze, playing tricks on his mind. He opened his eyes. The buffalo stood there serenely.
“I’m losing it,” he muttered.
“Look,” Daryn said.
There were brick buildings lining either side of Main, but it only ran two blocks before dead-ending at a high wire fence and several pieces of heavy construction equipment.
“No way out,” Sean said.
He braked the Jeep, and it came to rest in the middle of the street. Ahead, Sanborn saw the dead end too late. He tried to turn, but the car fishtailed again, the passenger side slamming into the fence.
Sean reached over the seat of the Jeep and retrieved his duffel bag from near Britt’s feet. He felt in it, but his gun wasn’t there.
“Goddammit!” Now he remembered-he’d taken it out of the duffel and put it in the little nightstand beside the bed, back in the Mulhall house.
He flung open the door of the Jeep, then crouched behind it.
“Sanborn!” he shouted. “They’ll be coming for you, any minute now. You son of a bitch, you have no idea what you’ve just done! You’ve done more harm to your own movement than you could possibly imagine!”
To his surprise, Sean heard laughter, low and controlled. Sanborn stepped out of the black car. A tiny trickle of blood bloomed from his hairline, running down his left cheek. Behind him, in the car, Don Wheaton was slumped against the passenger door, unmoving. “You’re the one who doesn’t know what’s going on here,” he said. He took a few steps forward. Sean spotted the gun in his hand, pointed downward. “Agent Sean Kelly,” Sanborn added.
Sean jerked again.
Behind him, Daryn got slowly out of the Jeep.
Sanborn made a tsk-tsk sound. “All that trouble with the bottle, Agent Kelly. It could make a man desperate to salvage his career. It could convince him to take a job hunting down the wayward, politically extreme daughter of a United States senator. One of the rulers himself.”