“We should keep moving,” Porter said, and guided Sturm across the floor to a hallway that led to the smaller exhibit halls, careful to keep his face turned from the law enforcement contingent.
“I still haven’t seen the mayor,” Sturm said.
“Don’t worry. It’s only a matter of time. He’s around here somewhere.”
“You know…I was thinking. If we’re going to go down, we should do it in style.”
“What do you propose?”
She smiled and he could have sworn she actually giggled.
“Oh, no,” he said.
“Hear me out first,” she said.
By the time she finished telling him her idea, he couldn’t hide the grin on his face either.
* * *
The actual ribbon-cutting had gone off without a hitch. It had been somewhat lackluster, and less a ceremony than a photo op. Only a small crowd had gathered in front of the center, where the patrons were outnumbered by photographers from the local papers and the news wires. A two-foot wide red ribbon had been strung between columns. After a brief and uninspired speech, the mayor had raised a comically large pair of scissors and conferred the honor upon a famous software developer. It was surely an arrangement brokered behind closed doors, but one that added a necessary bit of levity. The software developer had struggled to make the scissors work and ended up delivering a one-liner about how hard it was to cut through American red tape that had left the audience in stitches.
Every face was lit with a smile and flushed with the glow of alcohol. These men and women were in their element. This was a completely different world than the one Sturm knew. She imagined that in this one building, she could undoubtedly find the president of the bank that had foreclosed on her family farm and all of the brokers who had denied her father’s loan applications. These were people separate from the rest of their species, people who lived inside a bubble of affluence that couldn’t be popped by the realities of the suffering around them, an opaque sphere that blinded them to the deterioration of the society from which they had excepted themselves.
They were seated under the gazebo tents, all business set aside. Soft music drifted across the patio from inside the building, a pleasant undertone to the clanking of serving trays and the more subdued rumble of conversation. Stewards tipped cloth-wrapped bottles of champagne with their trademark flair, never once making eye contact. The steaming cuts of meat and fish smelled positively divine. A cool breeze flowed inland from the sea with barely enough strength to ruffle the tablecloths. The stars shined down upon them from a night sky so clear it appeared incapable of ever producing rain.
Sturm twisted Porter’s wrist so she could see his watch.
9:53 p.m.
Sturm and Porter sat at an out-of-the-way table at the eastern periphery, on the wrong side of the aisle the servers used to usher the meals from inside the building, where they could hear the caterer barking orders like a drill sergeant. It was obvious they would be the last to be served, but neither of them cared. They hadn’t come for the food. From their vantage point, they could barely see the mayor at the head of the central table, flanked on either side by ice sculptures of ancient frigates bursting through cresting waves. There was a podium between them, and behind it an enormous rectangle draped with velvet like a stage curtain. The mayor appeared to be preening for invisible cameras as he talked and laughed with the others at the table of honor. His wife sat at his left shoulder, demure and petite, her blonde-highlighted hair drawn up on top of her head to showcase her slender neck. Her face was taut with Botox, her lips plump with collagen. The senator sat to his right, a more impressive presence who tipped the balance of power in such a way that the table seemed to lean. Around the circle were the chief of police, Red Gardener—whom Sturm now understood fancied the commissioner’s office—and two software designers who looked like mannequins in their tuxes beside stunning companions who looked like they were probably being paid by the hour.
Once all of the food had been served, the mayor rose from his seat, straightened his tie, and assumed the podium. He held up his glass and tapped it with a spoon. Conversation trickled to silence and the music ceased inside. The only sounds were provided by the waves rolling in from the timeless Pacific.
Sturm caught a glimpse of Porter’s watch when he checked the time.
9:56 p.m.
They were running ahead of schedule.
She looked up and met Porter’s eyes. His expression was calm and confident. She wanted to borrow some of his strength, because right now her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might leap out of her chest. She clenched her hands into fists to keep them from shaking. She closed her eyes and pictured the despondent souls she had run out of their home for just this occasion, so that their suffering wouldn’t spoil anyone’s appetite. She pictured the little girl who might have been a monster, but never should have been hunted down and burned alive. She could still feel the child crawling into her lap and trembling in her arms. There was no doubt that the girl was different and that she had been responsible for the horrible deaths of so many, and yet Sturm couldn’t help but feel as though the blame should be shared by all in attendance. A government-sanctioned private defense contractor was responsible for turning her loose on her victims, for all of the bloodshed she caused, and the people sitting around her had helped to cover it up. None of this should ever have come to pass. None of it. And now here these people sat in their expensive clothes, as though the deaths of sixteen men and one little girl they had turned into a savage killer had never even happened…
Her face flushed with anger. It was all she could do to keep from streaking across the patio and grabbing the mayor by his throat. She focused on her breathing, on clearing her mind. When she made her move, she needed to be in complete control.
“I’d like to start by thanking all of you for joining us on this most beautiful and historic evening,” the mayor said into the microphone. His voice was amplified by small speakers mounted high up in the tents above them. “It’s because of people like you that Seattle is indisputably the greatest city in the country, and because of your generosity that it will remain that way for the foreseeable future. So why don’t you all give yourselves a hand.” He stepped back from the podium and led the applause. When he stepped back up, he raised his glass. “Now, before we all share a glimpse into that future, I want to propose a toast.”
The mayor scanned the gathering and waited until every glass was held high.
Sturm’s legs tensed and her pulse accelerated.
This was the moment she’d been waiting for.
“To each and every one of you, for—”
“Driving the homeless back into the streets,” Sturm shouted. She leapt to her feet, glass held high, and made her way toward the podium. “For conspiring to cover up murder, and—”
“Who is this woman?” the mayor shouted. His expression shifted from surprise to anger.
“—for killing a little girl!”
“Someone shut her up!”
Sturm felt hands grab her right arm and jerk her backward. From the corner of her eye, she saw Porter lunge from behind the table and the pressure abated. She turned her focus on the chief of police.
“Tell them, sir. Tell them all how you had us down there, night after night, running the homeless out of this area so that no one would have to even look at them while eating these overpriced meals.”
She slapped a plate of steak from the table beside her for emphasis.
When she caught the senator’s eye, she held it.
“Tell them how you sanctioned a private defense contractor to unleash toxic nerve gas on this very site just twenty-four hours ago!”
The strobe of flash bulbs behind her was disorienting. The news crews had obviously stuck around in case anything interesting actually happened.
“I want this woman arrested!” the mayor shouted.
A man leapt from his seat, grabbed Sturm around her waist, and lif
ted her into the air.
“Let go of me!” she screamed. “I’m not finished yet!”
There was a loud cracking sound behind her head. The man grunted and released her. She spun around in time to see Porter flinging blood from his knuckles.
“You think all of your money makes you untouchable?” Sturm shouted. “None of you are above the law!”
There was a loud explosion, like the sound of a head-on collision.
The ground trembled.
The lights died with a resounding thud.
Someone grabbed her and wrenched her arm behind her back. She was driven forward and lost her balance. She hit the ground flat on her chest with someone’s weight on her back, knocking the wind out of her.
Men shouted for someone to turn the lights back on. Voices rose in tumult. Chair legs scraped the paving stones. Tables crashed to the ground. Plates shattered. A woman cried out.
Sturm couldn’t see a blasted thing. She couldn’t move her arms and could only thrash her head from side to side. She kicked at the ground for leverage only to find out that she’d lost her shoes.
When she caught her breath, she expelled it as a scream.
FORTY-TWO
Seattle, Washington
10:00 p.m. PST
Spears inched the scope slowly from left to right, watching the chaos for what he knew was soon to come. Men and women trampled each other in their hurry to distance themselves from the melee. The mayor still stood at the podium with the same dumb expression on his face, frozen in place. Screams echoed across the overgrown lot. Bedlam reigned. He kept an eye on the edge of the rubble and the fence line, knowing that at any second a pink and gold form would come streaking across his field of view.
He tensed his finger against the trigger, eased his cheek down onto the stock, and readied himself for the kill shot.
This time, he would not miss.
* * *
Frances Mueller stood perfectly still in the middle of the main exhibit hall. She had just changed out of her period costume and was on her way to the front door when the explosion killed the lights and the screaming commenced. After wearing the heavy garments for so long, it felt as though every vertebra in her spine had been compressed. Her hips ached, her knees and ankles throbbed, and her feet had swollen to the point that they threatened to burst out of her shoes, but her ears seemed to be working just fine. She heard hollow thumping sounds and the crumpling of the aluminum ductwork overheard, then the crashing noise of something heavy falling into one of the replica ships suspended above her. The guy wires screeched in protest, then snapped with a twang and the crack of a whip. Something struck the ground behind her, something large and yet simultaneously soft, that made a slapping sound. She felt the change in the air as it passed beside her, smelled filth and rot in its wake, and heard the whooshing sound of the model boat plummeting down toward her. It crashed to the floor mere feet behind her and threw her forward into a display case. Her head impacted the glass and her vision filled with sunbursts. She was mercifully unconscious before her forehead bounced off of the marble tiles.
* * *
Marty Knapp tucked the champagne bottle under his vest as he peered out through the doorway, curious as to what had transpired while he ducked off to enjoy a little of the bubbly himself. There was barely enough starlight to show him a herd of stampeding bodies, all of them shouting and wailing as they shoved through each other, stomping those who fell before the human tide. He shrugged, stepped to the side again, and tipped back the bottle. Shame to let this expensive stuff go to waste. He belched and crinkled his nose. Something reeked. He smelled a godawful stench like a turned compost heap a heartbeat before someone collided with him from behind. Nails pierced his back, lancing right through his skin and between his ribs. Something scurried up his jacket, tearing the fabric as it went. Searing pain in his neck. And then the weight was gone. When he raised his trembling hand, the pulsing heat drove it away from the wound.
* * *
Senator James Hawley lowered his shoulder and bulled his way through the scrum. The woman in front of him shrieked as she tumbled to the ground. He stepped up onto her back and used her to lunge forward, grabbing two men by the shoulders and knocking them down in the process. One of the tent’s support posts fell sideways and the whole works started to come down. He juked right, then left, just like in his old football days, and saw the opening to the end zone. A door leading inside. All of the others were fighting their way along the side of the building. If he could slip inside and make a break for one of the other exits—
A shadow, nearly indistinguishable from the darkness, fired up at him from near the ground, striking him high up on his chest. His legs ran out from beneath him and he knew he was going down. Pressure under his chin, driving his head back. Something sharp clamped down on his throat like a bear trap, probing under the flesh, through the muscles, and then it was gone. He hit the ground on his back. His own blood rained down on him.
* * *
Porter fought through the surge toward where Sturm had fallen, following the sound of her cries. His mind was racing at a million miles an hour, trying to rationalize the situation. Either the main power line had overloaded and exploded, or someone had sabotaged it. None of the men they had come to expose had been prepared for it, which meant that they were undoubtedly every bit as surprised as he was. It was either the most perfectly timed accident ever, or someone had rigged the power to be cut at precisely ten o’clock. And if all of the higher powers were in attendance, then that left only one wild card for which he couldn’t account, one faction that could ill afford to have its activities brought to light.
Phobos.
And if he was right, Spears was out there right now, prepared to do whatever it took to keep his involvement secret. This was only the first phase of the assault. Spears and his men couldn’t allow any of them with knowledge of the events to survive long enough to talk. They would be coming in fast and hard. Their willingness to openly attack could mean only one thing. They fully intended to make sure there were no survivors.
But there was one glaring flaw in his stream of logic. Why would they initiate this siege now? It was all too public, too visible. Even if they did manage to kill every last one of them, there would be no way the slaughter would go unnoticed. It didn’t fit. All of the men who were ultimately responsible for keeping the secret had too much invested personally to risk any kind of exposure. They would have taken it to the grave with them, regardless. He could only think of one reason for killing the lights and causing such chaos.
The girl.
With her night vision and predatory instincts, she would have been drawn to the commotion like a lion to a herd of wounded gazelle. But he had seen Spears carrying her corpse out of the ruins last night. Unless that had all been for show and the girl was still—
Something hot and wet spattered his cheek. He tasted copper on his lips. A man plowed into him from the side, driving him to the ground. The man was limp. Dead weight. Spilling blood onto Porter’s head, down under his collar.
He shrugged out from beneath it and crawled toward Sturm.
A small foot stepped squarely on the center of his back.
He felt it clearly.
A small, bare foot.
Jesus Christ. The girl was still alive.
Spears was using them all as bait.
“Layne!” he shouted, and scrabbled forward as fast as he could, trying to separate her screams from all of the others.
* * *
Mayor Elgin Marten shook off the shock and stumbled out from behind the podium. Every inch of his body was numb. His brain threatened to shut down. He was witnessing the end of his career. By the time this catastrophe hit the news in the morning, the entire city will have rallied to build the cross they would use to crucify him. The screams were horrible, and they were everywhere. The tables were toppled, the dishes destroyed, the tents coming down like the final curtain on his mayoral tenure. Everyone had shed t
heir gentility in favor of self-preservation, and now attempted to crush one another to death in their mad rush for freedom. How had this happened? He had planned everything meticulously. How had he allowed—?
The woman.
This was all her fault. She had seized control of events in an effort to publicly crush him. She had verbally attacked him for the whole world to see and had sabotaged the electricity in hopes of producing just this kind of bedlam.
Well, he would definitely have to deal with her.
He crunched over the broken ice from the shattered sculpture and worked his way through the jostling bodies toward where he had seen the chief of police take her down. In the midst of the chaos, no one would see him close his hands around her scrawny neck and wring it like a dishrag. No one would ever know. He could think of nothing else.
Marten stepped on a woman who cried out in pain. Somewhere, deep down, he knew it was his wife, but he kept on going.
He was nearly to the point where he had watched Gardener tackle the woman when he heard the chief’s voice.
“Hold your goddamn hands still!”
“Let go of me!” the woman cried.
Marten smiled. He could already feel her windpipe compressing in his grip.
Something unbelievably sharp pierced his left cheek and nearly flayed the skin from his face as it spun his head roughly to the side. Teeth on the side of his neck. Digging, ripping, wrenching. He felt a mouthful of himself tear away and tried to scream, but he was already falling. His chin ricocheted from the paving stones before a pathetic whimper crossed his split lips.
* * *
Sturm struggled to roll out from beneath the chief. He had already cuffed her right wrist and had the leverage to keep it pinned up near her shoulder blade. It was all she could do to keep her left out of his reach or the game would be over. In her mind, she knew it already was, but her heart insisted there was a whole lot more that needed to be said. These men needed to not just pay; they needed to be ruined.
Predatory Instinct: A Thriller Page 25
