Hour of the Assassin

by Matthew Quirk

  “I can pull up Sam’s location when we get to the car.”

  “David said he and Sam would be together. Someplace safe.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “If I can get to them, I can put an end to all this from the top down.”

  They kept going past the mansions and row houses, all cobblestones, narrow streets, and alleys here. He stopped at the corner beside a high brick wall covered with ivy and leaned out, peering toward the car. He wanted to check if the attackers had found it, if they were lying in wait.

  As he searched the dark, Delia’s fingers drove into his forearm. She pressed against him.

  He turned to see a man coming at them from behind. The gun in his hand shone dully under the streetlights as he raised it and aimed straight at them.

  Nick threw his arm around Delia’s shoulders and brought her into his chest, twisting away from the gunman and covering her with his body as he drove them both forward around the corner.

  Tss. The bullet sounded like a knife on a sharpening stone as it flew past and he took another step.

  Tss. Chunks of the brick wall blew out to their left in a red cloud. Bits dug into his neck. He held her and pushed on, fully around the corner now. He pressed against the wall, taking cover, his left arm around her shoulder, cradling her against him while he raised his own gun and faced the corner, waiting for the man to come, ready for his shot.

  “Nick,” Delia said as she pushed him away from the wall.

  Snap. Her body tensed against his. She cried out in pain.

  77

  He turned, swung the gun away from the corner, and saw a second figure coming toward them with a pistol in his hand on the street where they had taken cover.

  That man’s bullet had struck Delia.

  Nick took aim and squeezed the trigger. The gun flinched in his hand and spat white from the end of the suppressor. The man fell.

  Nick felt blood on his arm, and he saw the flat terror and pain in her eyes. “No no no.” He said it over and over.

  He supported her as they walked toward Ali’s car. She grew heavier, weaker with every step. “Just hang on, okay? Hang on.”

  He scanned the street behind them as they walked, sweeping it with his gun. A figure emerged near the corner, pistol in hand. Nick fired two shots, opened the passenger door, and helped her in.

  He ran to the driver’s side, still covering that corner, then started it up and gunned it out of the spot.

  She was still breathing, her heart still going, her hand over the wound. It was high up on her chest near her shoulder. She had slipped her backpack onto the floor.

  Her eyes closed, and she fought to open them, then shut them again. He reached and pressed his hand over hers, putting pressure on it, on her fingers so cold. She whimpered, ground her teeth together.

  “Delia, it’s going to be okay.”

  She shut her eyes, tilted her head back, and took long, slow breaths through pursed lips.

  The moment when she’d been shot kept replaying in his head. Nick had her covered with his body, but she had tried to push them both out of the way, had exposed herself to save him.

  He maneuvered the car with one hand, flying through the side streets, racing toward Georgetown University Hospital.

  “I’m cold, Nick.”

  “One more second, okay? Just stay with me.”

  “How’d I do?” she asked.

  “Great, sweetheart. You did great. You saved us both back there.” He could barely talk, seeing her there so small, holding out against the pain, silent, still. “Your mom and dad would be so proud.”

  A faint smile touched her lips, then disappeared as her head slipped to the side.

  78

  Nick stopped the car outside the ER and jumped out to help Delia from the passenger seat. A nurse marched toward them, and they eased Delia onto a stretcher.

  He had called ahead as he drove and said he had a gunshot-wound victim, using all of the priority language he remembered from his Secret Service days. He spoke like a first responder and wanted them ready. He dropped the call before they had a chance to ask for his bona fides.

  He walked in beside her and handed over Delia’s wallet, with her ID and insurance cards. He needed to forestall as many questions as possible, standing here in damp clothes, looking like a psychopath. The gun was in his jacket pocket, the suppressor now removed, too big to conceal attached.

  “And you are?” the nurse asked.

  “I found her on Water Street. I don’t know what happened. She was on the ground, bleeding.”

  This was the closest hospital to the attack. Nick knew that this would most likely end with him in the hands of the police or the killers. It didn’t matter. All he cared about was whether Delia, her fingers like ice, would make it.

  He moved with the nurse quickly down the corridor, out of the waiting area. Over his shoulder he noticed a uniformed cop.

  Delia’s eyelids were just barely open, showing only the whites as the nurse checked her airway and they rolled toward the treatment rooms.

  “You’ll have to stay out here, sir,” the nurse said, but he couldn’t let go, couldn’t take his eyes off Delia’s face, strangely serene in the middle of all this horror.

  A hand pressed on his chest, and he turned to find himself facing another nurse, a guy maybe six foot two, with deep-set eyes and heavily muscled arms sticking out from under his scrubs.

  “It’s for her sake you can’t go in,” he said. Nick stepped back. He saw the cop again, and the intake receptionist, armed with her clipboard. He pressed against the wall and noticed a side corridor.

  Two doctors strode past him, looking serious, heading for the room where they had taken Delia. The first nurse had disappeared, and in the reflection on a glass partition on a desk, Nick saw her talking to the police officer.

  He needed to be here in case anyone came for her, but getting thrown in jail wouldn’t help them. He would have to find a place out of sight where he could stand post. He looked for his moment, then slipped down the hall and into the night.

  He took a spot outside near the exit with a view of the main door and the entrance to the parking lot, rested his hand on the pistol in his pocket, and waited.

  79

  Nick paced, fighting to stay warm. How long until Jeff and his men found out that she was here? He saw the headlights of a truck pulling into the lot and gripped the gun.

  As it came closer, he could make it out: a white pickup with a college-aged woman driving. He relaxed slightly and turned toward the hospital doors as they swept open.

  It was the cop from the waiting area, backed by two hospital security guards, both armed. Nick weighed his options, decided in an instant. He had already seen the patrol car parked a hundred feet up the sidewalk. There was only one cop. That was good.

  He wasn’t going to kill three men just for doing their jobs, and if they tried to detain him, the easiest way out was to get locked up in the back of that car. He stepped to the side, ditched the gun and suppressor discreetly in a bush, and walked away from them.

  “Hey, sir!”

  He kept walking.

  “Stop!”

  It was a direct command from law enforcement. Playtime was over. He stopped and turned.

  “Were you with that woman who came in? The Water Street incident?”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She was shot.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “How did you find her?”

  “I don’t want anything to do with this. I found her. I helped her. That’s it. Can you tell me how she’s doing?”

  A light shone in his face. He knew he looked like a drifter.

  “What’s your name?”

  Nick had left his ID in Ali’s car. He didn’t want to show up on any system, didn’t want to lead the men hunting him here. Surely the police had his name, his description. Perhaps it was a good thing that he felt barely recognizable after being dragged through the silt. />
  “I don’t want to get involved.”

  The light lowered. The cop stood a few feet away, right hand drawn back, hanging a few inches from the grip of his pistol.

  “Do you have some ID?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Nick raised his hands, no threat. “Can you tell me if she’s going to make it?” He wasn’t sure if that was aiding his case, but he couldn’t help it. He had to know.

  The policeman appraised him. “Turn around,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “Turn around.” The cop put his hand on the gun. Nick complied. Cuffs wouldn’t be too much of an issue. The bracelets closed on his wrists, and the cop walked him over to the patrol car, sat him on the bench seat in the back. The two guards walked off.

  Alone. Good. The cop was calm. That was what he needed.

  Nick sat against the vinyl, took in a shallow breath, the smell of sick and fear that always lingered in a cruiser’s back seat. A steel cage separated the back seat from the front. The officer closed the door and sealed him in.

  He saw him talking on his radio, standing a few feet from the car. The officer pressed his lips together until they disappeared. Bad news.

  Nick just needed a minute alone. That man was the only officer on duty. He would go back in to question the nurses, find out more. There would be a chance.

  The driver’s door opened, and the cop sat down behind the wheel and started working on the mobile data terminal. It was turned so that Nick couldn’t see it.

  “So start at the beginning. How did you find her?”

  Nick didn’t answer. He could wait this rookie out. He kept his eyes on the driveway.

  “There are just some simple questions and I can let you go.”

  No answer. The cop glowered at him and kept working on his terminal, searching. Nick watched the entrances and exits. This was not his first time working surveillance from a patrol car, though the cuffs were new.

  Headlights at the top of the drive. Black Suburban. It stopped near the other hospital entrance. Two figures emerged.

  They were here.

  It felt like his heart had ground to a halt in his chest. He leaned forward.

  “I will tell you one thing,” Nick said. “If she is still alive, she isn’t safe. She told me that much when I brought her here. Whoever shot her will find her and try to kill her.”

  The officer looked at him in the mirror.

  “She needs protection,” Nick said.

  “From you?”

  “No.”

  “Is that why you’re not talking? You know who did this?”

  “They are going to kill her. Just go inside. Keep watch. They’re coming.”

  Nick craned his head to the side, saw the glowing text of the cruiser’s data terminal, read the messages scrolling down the side window. There was a call out, with a description. His description. And as the text scrolled by, he saw an image at the bottom: an old headshot from his time in the Secret Service.

  “Please,” he said, and ground his teeth together, trying not to slam his body against the barricade in rage and frustration, trapped here while those killers closed in on Delia.

  The officer swallowed and looked him in the eyes.

  80

  Jeff strolled down the hospital hall, his shoes squeaking slightly against the linoleum, utterly at ease. Doing high-end security often involved working with the police, and he knew how to copy their mannerisms, that unmistakable bearing of the law. There were always cops waiting around in emergency rooms. They would have to get an arrestee checked out at a hospital and given a clean bill of health before he could be transferred to custody.

  He carried false credentials, too, just in case, but no one tried to stop him as he walked past triage and up to the nurses’ station.

  “Hey, I’m here about the GSW.”

  “Trauma three,” the nurse said.

  “She going to make it?”

  “You should ask them.”

  “Did anyone come in with her?”

  She opened her eyes wide and nodded. “Weird guy, looked like he rolled through the gutter.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Disappeared as soon as he dropped her off,” she said.

  Jeff scowled. “All right. I’m going to be hanging out outside the victim’s room.” He pulled a pad from his coat, jotted down a number, and tore out the page. “If you see that guy again, call me immediately. That’s my cell. He did this. He may come back and make sure he finishes the job. Don’t let anyone else back there.”

  “Okay,” she said, and took the paper, her lips pressed into a flat line. Nurses were tough by necessity, but that kind of cruelty got to her.

  He pressed his hand against his pocket, where he carried a small kit with a fourteen-gauge needle and two vials. “Don’t worry,” Jeff said. “I’ll look out for her.”

  He tapped twice on the desk and started down the hall toward the treatment rooms. He passed the trauma room—empty—and then found her in a bay. He pulled the curtain closed.

  Delia’s head was to the side, but as he got closer, he saw her chest move, saw the bandage poking out from under the gown. He looked at the heart-rate monitor. It seemed like they had gotten her into a stable condition. An intravenous line ran into her arm.

  He traced its plastic tubing and saw what he needed, a small port in the IV that could be used to inject medicine.

  After pulling on a pair of latex gloves from the box on the wall, he took the syringe out and looked at the two vials.

  Jeff chose the one on the right and filled his needle with a faint yellow liquid.

  He slipped the syringe into the port on the tube, put his thumb on the plunger, and poured the liquid into her arm. She moaned softly, turning her face toward him, and he sealed his hand over her mouth. Her eyes fought to open and now stared into his.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered, pushing down as she struggled weakly against his weight. “It’s okay.” He said it over and over, in that soothing bedtime-story voice, until her eyes closed and she fought no more.

  81

  Nick stared into the cop’s eyes. The man’s cell phone warbled, and he answered it, then stepped out of the car. He talked for a moment, looked at the patrol car and the hospital, and then walked toward the entrance.

  Nick watched him until he stepped inside and then rolled onto his side. He took a deep breath, relaxed his shoulders, and eased the cuffs around, under his legs. He barely had room in the confines of the back seat, but he managed to pass the restraints under his feet and brought his hands in front of them. The chains on the standard Smith & Wesson cuff gave him slightly more latitude than the cuffs that Delia had shown him two days before.

  He thought of her, of her half smile as she said “yoga.” He pictured the killers moving toward her now, imagined her gone, her young life ended, never another word, and it filled him with a rage like a high fever, left his mind empty of all but a simple drive to close in on and destroy Jeff and anyone else who got near her.

  He dug his fingers underneath the armrest and tore it off. Ten wires ran to a plastic harness inside the door near the window control. Four were cut. That was how they disabled the back windows in police cruisers. He pulled them all from the harness and started connecting different wires, looking for power.

  He heard the whine of an electric motor deep in the door, but the window didn’t budge. That must have been the switch to put it up. He touched another pair together and the windows slid down. Fresh air streamed into the car.

  Nick grabbed at the roof and hauled himself out. He crouched low, using the car for cover, and then ran to the bushes and retrieved the gun, holding it in front of him, his hands still cuffed.

  He started moving toward the black car parked near the other entrance. Its lights turned on, so bright he could barely see someone going toward it: a man pushing a wheelchair. Nick ran along the side of the hospital, sticking close to the landscaping for co
ver. Shielding his eyes as he moved closer, he saw the man carrying a small figure into the back of the truck. The interior light shone on their faces. It was Jeff and Delia.

  The truck’s door slammed shut as the driver pulled out and sped through a quick U-turn. Nick’s feet pounded the concrete as he sprinted after, flying over the ground. The red taillights grew smaller in the distance as the SUV neared the exit. He pushed faster, lungs tightening, thighs burning, heart hammering in his chest, but he had no chance now as the truck pulled through the exit, barely slowing as it turned onto Reservoir Road.

  Nick stopped and nearly collapsed as the dread overtook him, an awful weight low in his gut. She was gone.

  82

  David Blakely pulled open the oak front door of his country house.

  Alan Ambler stood outside.

  “Come on in,” David said, and waved him across the marble foyer. Normally, David didn’t answer his own bell, but there was no household staff working this evening. Tonight’s conversation would be closely held.

  The first floor was a cavernous open space with sweeping views of the mountains that hemmed in the compound. It looked more like a clubby resort hotel than a private home. Modern chandeliers hung from the cathedral ceilings, filling the space with soft yellow-orange light.

  They turned down a side hall, and Sam MacDonough walked out to greet them.

  David ushered the two men into the library, all blond wood and Alvar Aalto originals, and left them to talk as he went behind the bar for a fifth of Pappy Family Reserve. He slit the foil on the five-figure bottle. Tonight they were celebrating. He poured three glasses and joined Sam and Alan in the sitting area.

  He watched Ambler leaning in closer, inch by inch, while Sam eased back in his chair. It was Sam’s final audition for the presidency, and he looked as relaxed as a guy sitting at home on a couch watching a ball game.

  David’s second phone vibrated in his pocket. He quieted it, then slipped the screen out for a glance. He stood and left the room. He’d been waiting for this call.