by Chris Holm
“No. Of course not. Count me in.”
29.
CAMERON’S FOOTFALLS ECHOED like a snare drum down the empty hall, mirroring the pounding of her pulse. Just keep moving, she told herself, and don’t look back.
She looked back. Locked eyes with her pursuer through the hall door’s inset pane, narrow and crosshatched with wire.
When Hendricks had told her to get out of the hospital, she was scared—as anybody would have been—but she was also half convinced that he was overreacting. She’d been so careful. So clever. Sure, she’d walked past the Reston boy’s room a few times. It had been easy enough to find once she’d gained access to the hospital’s electronic chart system. She’d peeked through the open door as she walked by, but she’d never slowed, never stopped, never engaged. Instead, she’d set up in the waiting area beside the nurses’ station, which was just a widening of the hallway, really, with a few banks of chairs and a side table full of magazines, where she could keep an eye on them from a distance. When she saw Hannah head for the restroom, she followed.
She was sure no one had been shadowing her then. The only people in the waiting area were obviously camped out while their loved ones were being treated. They all had the greasy, stretched-thin look of folks who’d been awake too long and forced to consider the worst.
The restroom had been empty save for Cameron and Hannah. And once they’d spoken, Cameron relocated to the cafeteria.
So how had this guy gotten onto her?
She’d spotted him as soon as she’d finished talking to Hendricks, closed her laptop, and headed for the cafeteria exit. Not the main exit, the one that cut through the hospital’s small courtyard. She figured the courtyard was less traveled, that someone following her would be more obvious if she went that way—and she was right.
It was no wonder she’d missed him before. He looked to be of average height and weight, and he was dressed to blend in—T-shirt, jeans, and canvas jacket. But his hair was cut high and tight like former military, and it was a little warm inside the hospital for a jacket. He wore it to conceal the shoulder holster beneath it, which was briefly visible when he moved just so.
She thought she’d shaken him when she exited the courtyard. She’d sprinted around the nearest corner, her laptop cradled to her chest like a football, and didn’t slow until she’d taken two more turns. But then, as she headed toward the outpatient surgery entrance, he’d materialized as if from nowhere fifty feet ahead of her, between her and the door.
She turned and ran, slammed into a medication cart, and nearly wound up on her ass. “Watch it!” the nurse pushing it barked, although the damn thing was so heavy, it was in no danger of tipping over. Cameron spun and kept on going, her pursuer close behind.
She thought she’d lost him a second time when she ducked into the elevator as the doors were sliding shut. She got off at its first stop and darted through an automated door labeled AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY as it swung closed behind a pair of nurses wheeling an unconscious patient. But then, somehow, there he was again—scowling at her through the glass. She felt like she was wearing a goddamn tracking device.
He approached the door. Cameron’s heart rate trebled, and she took off running. She ducked around corners at random—a left, a right, another left—and then ran smack into a security guard.
He was a husky kid in his twenties with dirty-blond hair and watery eyes. The kind of guy who looked like he ended up a security guard because he’d washed out of the police academy. But he had a badge, a radio, a gun. To Cameron, his chintzy brown-on-brown uniform seemed like a gleaming suit of armor.
“Are you lost, ma’am? This is a restricted area.”
“I’m not lost—I’m being chased.”
“Chased?”
“Yeah. You have to help me. Some creep’s been following me all over the hospital. I think he has a gun. I only ducked in here because I was hoping I could lose him.”
“Sure,” he said. “No problem. How about we head back to the security office and sort this out? If there’s a strange man chasing women through the hospital, I’m sure my boss will want to hear about it.”
“Actually, I’m in a bit of a hurry, so if you wouldn’t mind just escorting me to the nearest exit—” Cameron said, but the guard cut her off.
“Relax,” he said, “this won’t take long.”
He put his hand around her upper arm—squeezing a little tighter than Cameron thought appropriate—and guided her down the hall the way she’d come. “Hey, easy!” she said and tried to yank her arm loose. But he held fast—and gave the surveillance camera in the corner a subtle nod.
Too late, Cameron realized why she’d been unable to lose her pursuer.
“Look,” she said. “Clearly, there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.”
“I don’t think there has.”
“Excuse me?”
“We got word from HQ a few hours ago about a potential threat to the Restons, so we’ve been monitoring their son’s room. The third time you walked by, we sent them your picture—and do you know what they found?” Cameron stared blankly at him. “A sheet as long as my arm. Identity theft. Bank fraud. Unlawful possession of prescription narcotics. You name it. What kind of sicko preys on people in a hospital?”
Theft? Fraud? Drugs? What the hell was he talking about? You have to get out of this, she thought. Convince him to let you go. Beg, if need be.
“Listen,” she began, searching his chest for a name tag. But he wasn’t wearing one. The only marking on his uniform shirt was an embroidered corporate logo made to look like a badge: a shield emblazoned with a crenellated tower. And stitched beneath it, in small block type, were the words CITADEL SECURITY: A BELLUM INDUSTRIES COMPANY. “You’ve got this all wrong. I never—”
“Save your breath. You’re caught. Besides, my boss’ll be here soon.”
Cameron heard footfalls approaching, and her heart fluttered in her chest. She tried to squirm free of the security guard’s grip. He shoved her backward into the wall and pinned her there, his forearm to her neck. She couldn’t breathe. An involuntary squeak escaped her throat. He eased off just a hair. She sucked wind and sobbed. Tears and snot poured down her face.
“Please,” she managed. “Please.”
He was so close that she could see the pockmarks on his forehead. His fetid breath was hot against her cheek. “Beg all you want,” he said. “It’s not gonna do you any good.”
Cameron swallowed hard, her eyes wide as silver dollars.
Then she kneed him in the balls with everything she had.
He released her and doubled over, red-faced and sweating. Cameron gripped her laptop with both hands and swung it at his face. A crack of plastic shattering as it connected with his chin, and he went down. Lettered keys scattered across the floor.
Cameron ran. Her pursuer rounded the corner, cursing when he spotted the fallen security guard. He leaped over the kid with ease and raced after Cameron, quickly closing the gap between them. She felt the fingers of his right hand graze her shoulder.
No. Not graze. Take hold of.
He grabbed a fistful of her shirt and yanked, but as he did, he slipped on a loose keyboard letter, and they toppled to the floor.
The man wound up flat on his back with Cameron on top of him. He tried to wrap his arms around her, but she threw fists and elbows wildly, and felt a surge of savage delight when one connected with his nose. It gouted blood, and when he reached instinctively toward it, she clambered free.
He grabbed her by the ankle. Cameron kicked him in the face, and he released her. She launched herself down the hall like a sprinter from the starting blocks, a feral smile parting her lips as she looked back at the bloody mess she’d made of her assailant.
Then the security guard tackled her and drove her to the floor.
She landed facedown, the wind knocked out of her. The linoleum was gritty from foot traffic and smelled of vomit, of bleach. The security guard climbed atop her and dro
ve his knee into her back. Then he yanked her right arm upward in a hammerlock. Cameron’s wristbones ground together in his grasp. The tendons in her shoulder burned white-hot as they overextended.
“You like that, you fucking bitch?”
He tried to cuff her, but she resisted, bucking beneath him with all she had, so he grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face into the floor.
Cameron stopped fighting.
Her world went dark and silent as consciousness abandoned her.
30.
HENDRICKS SPRINTED ACROSS the Presidio’s grounds, vaulting fences, cutting through backyards, pushing through dense stands of trees. His lungs burned. His muscles ached. His stitches tugged uncomfortably. Blood oozed from his wound whenever his midsection flexed.
At least the fog provided cover. It began to blow in, cold and clammy, shortly after he fled the bridge pavilion. Gray-white tendrils reached inland, smelling of low tide and swallowing everything they touched. Shadows vanished as the fog blocked out the setting sun.
The temperature—low seventies when the sky was cloudless—plummeted. Hendricks’s world shrank as the fog narrowed the margins all around. Distant landmarks became ghosts, fading into the swirling mist. Man-made objects dissolved into the scenery as edges dulled and angles softened. Sounds reverberated oddly, sometimes muffled, sometimes accentuated. His own footfalls sounded dull to his ears, like the idle tapping of an eraser against a desk, but more than once he heard a conversation or an engine’s roar so loud that he assumed he was right on top of it, only to discover it was blocks away or more.
He crossed a street and plunged into a forest, branches lashing. A footpath ran parallel to his route, eastward, ever eastward, and he zigged toward it, picking up speed once he left the underbrush behind. Then, at once, the forest fell away and he was running through a rolling field of grass, the blades slickened by the moisture-laden air, the footing treacherous. A cemetery, he realized. Headstones, low and regular, dotted the field, and threatened to take his legs out from under him. Larger monuments loomed in the mist. A soldier. A cross. An angel. Each a blur as Hendricks ran past. Then the cemetery vanished as the woods enveloped him once more.
This time when he emerged, he found himself on a paved road at the edge of the Main Post. In the dim half-light, the place could be confused for a particularly quaint small town—the streets winding, the sidewalks broad, the houses tidy and attractive, the lawns well tended. Residential and commercial buildings mixed, the former Spanish single-family dwellings, the latter everything from clapboard to red brick. The streetlights flickered to life one by one and cast halos in the fog. Since there was no civilian traffic on the streets, the glow of headlights warned him of approaching Park Police patrols and afforded him a chance to hide, to duck behind a building or a parked car or merely linger in an entryway, face averted, pretending he belonged.
At one such stop, outside the old officers’ club, he checked his phone. According to the map, his destination was just around the corner.
He tried not to think too much about what he was walking into or what might happen to Cameron in his absence. The U.S. government had trained Hendricks and his unit to operate autonomously behind enemy lines, and it had trained them well. What he needed now was to trust in his abilities, his instincts, his muscle memory. Overthinking led to distraction, doubt, and failure.
His muscles twitched from the sudden stillness. His breath plumed with every ragged exhalation. Blood roared in his ears. He willed his heart to slow. Felt the wound in his side throb in time. He moved the gun to his right jacket pocket. Thumbed the safety off and kept his hand around the grip.
And then rounded the corner, headed toward Segreti.
31.
REYES GLANCED AT his watch and frowned when he realized the hands had scarcely moved since the last time he’d looked.
“If you’ve got somewhere else to be,” Segreti said, too loud due to the aftereffects of the flash-bang grenade, “don’t let us keep you.”
Reyes eyed the man—whose name Yancey had never divulged to him—with disdain. He looked so thin and frail as he sat zip-tied on the couch, but the fact was, he’d put up one hell of a fight when they’d stormed the place. He’d played possum until the lead team got within striking distance, then attacked, slicing Liman’s forearm open with a folding knife and kicking out McTiernan’s legs. He’d nearly gotten hold of McTiernan’s gun before Stahelski put him down with a rifle butt to the face.
Lois sat beside Segreti on the couch, frightened, trembling, with Ella on her lap. Lois’s bound hands were buried in the dog’s coat, and she muttered an endless string of soothing nonsense in her ear. It was unclear to Reyes whether she was comforting the dog or vice versa. Either way, it was getting on his nerves.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Reyes said. “Just counting down the seconds until I’m rid of you.”
“You wanna get rid of me? All you’ve gotta do is let me go. I swear you’ll never see me again.”
“Sorry, pal, but I’m not the guy to talk to. You want to plead your case, you’re going to have to take it up with my boss when he gets here.”
“Uh-huh. That’ll go well. Anybody who’d order a raid on an innocent lady’s house is bound to be real reasonable.”
“I’m sure he had his reasons.”
“Yeah? What are they?”
“Above my pay grade,” Reyes replied.
“Oh, I see. You’re just a goon. A lackey. You’ve got no idea what’s going on here. Tell me, this boss of yours—he got a name?”
“Do you?”
Segreti ignored his question. “Whoever he is, I can tell you he’s crooked as fuck. I don’t know what sort of line he’s fed you, but I can promise you he means to kill me.”
Reyes said nothing.
“Maybe that’s fine with you,” Segreti continued. “Ain’t like I know you from Adam. But if you people are gonna kill me, I say let’s get it over with—don’t make me wait around all day. But please, I’m begging you, let Lois go. She’s not involved in any of this. Only thing she did wrong was let me in when I came knocking.”
“For fuck’s sake, nobody’s killing anybody,” Reyes snapped. Then, to his men: “Gag him, would you? In fact, gag them both.”
The truth was, Reyes didn’t know what to believe. Nothing about this assignment felt right to him. The guy was more dangerous than he let on, sure, but he didn’t strike Reyes as a zealot—and if he really was involved in the bridge attack like Yancey said, why the hell had he been here playing house when they’d busted in?
Still, orders were orders—and Yancey had been handpicked by Bellum’s CEO to head up West Coast operations, which carried weight among the rank and file—so Reyes kept his questions to himself.
While McTiernan and Stahelski gagged the captives, Reyes parted the curtains and looked outside. Night had fallen and a fog bank had blown in. Visibility was terrible, but near as he could tell, the street was empty except for the Humvee he’d arrived in, which was parked along the curb. Civilian vehicles were temporarily banned from all Presidio roads—he’d had to send a man in the other Humvee to meet Yancey at the Veterans Boulevard barricades. Across the street, he could just make out the vague suggestion of two homes identical to the one in which he stood. The fog reduced the nearby streetlights to nothing more than faintly glowing orbs that seemed to hover in the milky white.
Eventually the second Humvee emerged from the mist and parked behind the first. Yancey climbed out, his cell phone to his ear. When he walked through the front door, Segreti’s eyes went wide and he struggled against his bonds, grunting unintelligibly through the gag in his mouth. The Bellum operative standing guard to his right stilled him with a jab to the ribs.
“Listen, Yancey—” Reyes began, but Yancey held up a finger to say Just a minute.
“No shit? Charlie Thompson’s on the line too?” Yancey said into the phone. “Tell me, is she still an insubordinate pain in the ass?” He chuckled. “Easy, T
hompson, I’m just busting your balls. You never did know how to take a joke.” A pause. “That’s very kind of you, Assistant Director, but I think we can take it from here. How about you send us what you’ve got so far, and stand down—we’ll let you know if there’s anything else we need. In the meantime, I’m kinda busy here, so…”
Yancey rolled his eyes at Reyes and made a sock-puppet gesture that suggested the person on the other end of the line was blabbing on. “No, not at all. I’m glad you called. It’s always nice to have a chance to catch up with an old friend,” he said, his gaze settling on Segreti.
When Yancey hung up the phone, Reyes asked, “Who was that?”
“Feds,” Yancey replied. “Offering assistance, they said. Pissing on their territory, more like.” Then, to Segreti: “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Frank. You are one slippery motherfucker. I never thought I’d see your ugly mug again.”
Reyes eyed Yancey with suspicion. “Wait—you know this guy?”
“Our paths crossed a thousand years ago when I was with the Bureau. Seems like folks are coming out of the woodwork left and right today. I know he doesn’t look like much, but believe me, he’s a grade-A shitheel. We liked him for dozens—if not hundreds—of deaths back in the day, but we could never make them stick. Once he got wind that we were onto him, he up and vanished.”
Segreti snorted.
“That tracks,” Reyes said, his doubts allayed somewhat. “He didn’t go down easy. Had a folding knife hidden in the front pocket of his sweatshirt and wound up cutting Liman pretty good. Poor bastard’s off getting stitched up as we speak.”
“That true, Frank? You get a little feisty with my men?”
Segreti just glared.
Yancey turned his attention to the woman beside Segreti. “Who’s the skirt?”
“Lois Broussard,” Reyes replied.
“This her place?”
“Looks like. It’s leased from the Presidio Trust under the name Calvin Broussard. I’m guessing he’s the gentleman in all the pictures.”
