"What the fuck is this? The Macy's Day Parade?" she grumbled, and then leaned further out the window. "We need to get through! FBI and ATF!"
She held out her badge, but the man didn’t seem to care; he just continued to waive the procession through.
Horrowitz reached over her lap and held his badge out the window.
"ATF! What the fuck is going on here, officer?"
Chase scowled when the man payed attention to Peter.
Figures.
"I've got explicit orders to escort Congressman Vincente to the White House. No one is to come through—"
As the men spoke, Chase heard something strange.
It sounded like a hairdryer running on low. The noise was barely audible above the sound of Floyd's engine, but it was there. Her eyes darted around as she tried to identify the source.
It wasn't an obtrusive sound, and if she had been inside, Chase would have thought it maybe a vacuum cleaner or a particularly noisy fridge compressor kicking in. But here, outside in the open air, it seemed out of place.
“You hear that?” she said to no on in particular.
She saw the line of cars in front of her, then looked back the other way. Traffic had backed up behind her and people were starting to gather on the sidewalk.
“Where the fuck is that coming from?”
And then, by sheer change, Chase looked up.
“Shit! Floyd, get down!”
And then, a split second later, she felt it.
Fear. Fear spreading through everyone like a collective nightmare.
Chapter 33
"Chase? Chase?" Stitts shouted to the phone.
They were in Pratt’s car again, and the man was already ripping through the downtown streets, moving further and further away from both the White House and Chase. They were tailing another car, which held the suspect from the presser.
"What's wrong?" Pratt asked, the smile that had been etched on his face ever since they’d grabbed the man with the gun finally sliding off.
Stitts just stared blankly.
"I… I don't know," he said, before hammering buttons on both the walkie-talkie and the cell phone at the same time. "I was talking to my partner when she shouted for everyone to get down… then I heard glass shattering.”
The cell phone had since gone dead, but the walkie-talkie suddenly burst to life. The sound was so loud, that it shocked Stitts, and he dropped it to the floor.
When this failed to damper the sound, he realized that it hadn’t been his walkie at all; it had been Pratt’s.
"SO Pratt, over.”
He was met by a second of static before a frantic voice broke through.
"There's been another shooting!"
Eyes wide, Pratt looked over at Stitts.
"What? Where?"
More static and Pratt yanked the car to the shoulder, narrowly missing the fender of a parked BMW in the process.
"Fucking focus, James. Who's been shot? Where?"
As he waited for a reply, Stitts brought his cell phone to his ear and dialed Chase's number again.
There was still no answer.
"Congressman Vincente," James suddenly replied. "Congressman Vincente’s been shot!"
Chapter 34
She'd seen a drone; that was what tipped Chase off. It was also what was making the strange whirring noise. A drone, just like the one she'd seen in the photograph and then video taken outside of Dunkin' Donuts seconds before Senator DeBrusk went down.
But the warning had come too late.
She felt the icy grip of fear first, then heard the sound of breaking glass. Without thinking, she shoved Peter out of her lap and then threw the car door open.
In all the confusion, several of armed guards actually aimed their guns at her.
"FBI!" she shouted. “FBI!”
They eventually lowered their weapons and then started running around again like ants dropped into a pheromone soup. Everyone was trying to figure out where the shots had come from, but no one seemed to care where they’d ended up.
Chase’s eyes were immediately drawn the second in the line of four cars. She didn’t see the glass, but it was the only car from which nobody had, as of yet, exited.
She sprinted towards the black Lincoln, crouching low just in case more shots were fired. When she reached the door, she didn’t hesitate in opening it.
Inside the vehicle, she spotted the target: a large man with thick lips was slumped against his seat. Blood was spurting from a bullet hole in his neck and Chase quickly climbed inside to press her hands against the wound. The blood was hot, and it sprayed from between fingers.
“Help! Medic!” she yelled over her shoulder. But the force with which the blood was coming out of the wound, and the amount that had already soaked her gloves and the seat, made it clear that they would be too late.
Breathing heavily, Chase looked down at the man whom she’d never seen before. His small eyes, buried beneath thick grey eyebrows, stared back.
The man was terrified, and Chase didn’t blame him.
“Medic!” she yelled again.
Someone was behind her and Chase slowly took her hands off the man’s neck and slid out of the car.
“Fuck!” she screamed. Her gloves were soaked with blood, as was the sleeves and front of her shirt. “Fuck!”
Part of her mind registered that Peter Horrowitz was beside her now, asking her something, but she couldn't hear the words.
All she could hear was that goddamn buzzing sound.
Chase ripped her gun from the holster and took aim at the drone that still hovered above the, albeit higher now. She fired off a shot, then a second, but the drone dipped and sped out of sight.
She was about to fire again when Peter gently put his hand on top of hers. Chase cursed and removed her finger from the trigger. She looked around and noted that the Secret Service and police had already made a perimeter around the cars and were actively shoving onlookers back.
I have to get out of here, she thought, looking down at all the blood on her clothes. The last thing I want is for Director Hampton to turn on the news and see me like this.
Chase hurried back to the car. When Floyd saw her, his eyes bulged, and he started to get out of the car.
“I’m fine, stay in the car,” she instructed.
Floyd took a moment to collect himself, and then handed her a cell phone as she climbed into the backseat.
"It's Stitts, he's been ca-ca-calling you," the man stuttered.
Chase snatched the phone from him and brought it to her ear. Adrenaline still flowed through her veins, and she found it easy to block all sounds except for those coming from the cell phone.
"Stitts? You still there?"
An exasperated Jeremy Stitts replied quickly.
"What the fuck’s going on, Chase? There's been another shooting?"
Chase turned back to the vehicle that had been struck. Several people were standing in front of the open door, shaking their heads.
He didn’t make it. The poor bastard didn’t make it.
"You said you got the guy," Chase snapped. "You didn’t get shit. Another person’s been shot, Stitts; another person has been killed.”
Chapter 35
SO Pratt slammed on the gas and yanked the wheel to the left. The tires squealed as they started back the way they’d come. Stitts was thrust backward so violently that his phone flew into the back seat.
"Hold onto your fucking hat there, Stitts," Pratt said out of the corner of his mouth.
Stitts struggled to peel himself off the seat and reach into the back. His fingers had just closed around the cell phone when Pratt made another turn and his face bashed against the seat.
“Goddamnit," he swore. Stitts brought the phone to his ear and Pratt yanked the wheel again. This time, he was able to brace himself before his head smashed into the window.
"Chase? We are on our way to you. Just hold tight,” he said, glaring at Pratt.
"There was anot
her fucking drone, Stitts. I took a couple of shots at it, but I couldn't hit it."
"Just stay low, Chase. Stay out of the line of fire. We’ll be—" he looked up Pratt.
"—two minutes,” the man growled. “We’ll be there in two minutes."
Chase said something but there was too much noise for Stitts to make it out. And then the line went dead.
"Shit," he said, sliding the phone into his pocket. Then to Pratt, he said, "Who the fuck is Congressman Vincente?"
Stitts was nervous about distracting the man—he’d narrowly avoided clipping several pedestrians at this point—but couldn’t help himself.
"Before it was Bill S-89 and heading to the Senate, it was Bill C-89. Vincente was the one who made sure that it passed in congress.”
The man swerved and Stitts was hammered against the door. Then he slammed on the brakes just inches before t-boning a squad car. Several officers whipped around, guns drawn and aimed at the windshield.
"Secret Service," SO Pratt yelled out the window. Following his lead, Stitts shouted his own credentials.
Thankfully, one of the men recognized Pratt and told the others to stand down.
"Jimmy, what we got here?" Pratt demanded as he stepped out of the car. Stitts quickly followed.
"Two shots fired from an unknown location. Smashed the window and struck Congressman Vincente once in the neck and once in the side. Ambulance couldn’t get here fast enough."
"Shit."
Stitts was following Pratt, but then he noticed Floyd’s car and hurried over. The rear door was open, and he leaned inside.
"Chase? You okay? What—oh my God, is that your blood?"
Chase looked down at herself and then shook her head.
“No, the Congressman’s. He didn’t… he didn’t make it, Stitts.”
Stitts nodded.
“Yeah, I heard. Floyd, you got something to help clean her up?”
“I’ve got some whe-whe-wet naps.”
“Great, toss ‘em back.”
Stitts did his best to wipe some of the blood of Chase’s clothes, but it was a losing battle.
"I saw the drone in the sky before the shots were fired,” Chase said as Stitts continued working on cleaning her up. “In the sky, just above Vincente’s car.
"The same one as before?"
“I dunno… I guess,” Chase said. "What about your guy? You think the attempt on the President is related?”
Stitts thought about it; the MOs were vastly different, and even the motive was off. Bill 89 had been a Democratic push. As far as he knew, the President was dead set against it.
“I don’t know. Maybe, but I doubt it. Young Arab guy… he had a gun, but it doesn’t really fit.”
Stitts was considering the real possibility that they’d just had two unrelated terrorist attacks in the past two hours.
“It doesn’t fit at all.”
A man suddenly popped his head into the car from the other side.
"Agent Stitts," Peter Horrowitz said with a polite nod.
Stitts acknowledged him with a nod of his own.
"Look, I'll know better when I get back to my computer, but see those three buildings right there?"
The man pointed at three high-rises made of glass about a block and a half away.
"Yeah? What about them?"
"Those are the same ones that the program singled out as the most probable location where the shots that took out Senator DeBrusk came from. It can be a coincidence that they are also the highest point around here, as well."
Stitts couldn’t help but agree… especially with the last part.
Chase, on the other hand, was shaking her head.
"But didn’t you scramble ATF Agents to that location after the DeBrusk shooting? You’re telling me that our shooter took aim while your agents were still in the building?”
Peter Horrowitz’s face twisted.
“Maybe they didn’t make it inside, maybe they got called back when all that shit went down with the President,” he offered.
“Who called them back?” Stitts asked.
Peter shrugged.
“Fuck, I don’t know. I’ll find out, though.”
"No, those aren't the right buildings," Chase said, still shaking her head.
"But the program—”
"The shots didn’t come from there," Chase said with such authority, that both Stitts and Horrowitz just stared at her for a moment. Horrowitz waited for her continue, but she abstained from speaking. Instead, she gave Stitts a look.
That look.
And then he knew.
He knew that Chase was convinced that the shots didn’t come from there because someone had told her. Or, more accurately, she’d shared someone’s memories.
Horrowitz, if for no other reason to break the awkward silence, simply shrugged.
"Back to the drawing board I guess," he muttered.
The sound of chopping blades drew Stitts’s head out of the car. His first thought was that the drone had returned, and he braced himself for more bullets. But it wasn’t a drone, it was a military helicopter.
“Air force is scanning rooftops using infrared and heat signatures,” SO Pratt said, appearing out of nowhere. “If our shooter is still out there, they’ll find him. DoJ and Homeland already have their people on the ground, fanning out from this location and from where DeBrusk was shot.”
Stitts looked around, noticing that the street was now teeming with Agents from every agency imaginable. While he was grateful for the sheer number of bodies, he cringed at the thought of trying to get anything done with so many different alphas trying to be in charge.
“We’ll get him, don’t worry,” Pratt said. “You wanna stay here on foot and help the search, or head with me to interrogate our would-be assassin?”
It took a moment for Stitts to realize that while he was proposing this as his own plan, someone else must have suggested it. After all, the Secret Service played second fiddle to both DoJ and Homeland—and the FBI for that matter—when it came to the Congressman and the Senator’s murders.
But an attack on the President, even a foiled one? That was all Secret Service.
Stitts glanced back into the car at Chase, who was still trying to get the blood out of her clothes.
"Yeah, we'll tag along," he said at last. “We won’t be much use here on the ground.”
Chapter 36
Chase finally realized why Stitts hated working in multidisciplinary teams so much. No sooner had they arrived at what to her appeared to be an abandoned warehouse, were they confronted by Homeland Security. SO Pratt immediately started barking that he was in charge, that the Secret Service had apprehended the man and that it was their jurisdiction. But while Pratt might have been right, Homeland had soldiers, and eventually, they won out.
When it came down to interviewing the man with the gun, however, it was someone else entirely, who never got introduced to Chase or Stitts. To her, he looked like a lawyer, but it wasn’t clear who he worked for.
"You guys stay here," Pratt said. “I’ll make sure everything is kosher in the interview.”
He was just saving face, of course, after his manhood had been damaged. Chase herself wasn’t entirely clear about how all them were supposed to work together. So far, she’d seen agents from the ATF, DEA, Secret Service, Homeland, local law, state law, the feds, DoJ, and the IRS of all things. Oh, and the FBI, of course. And aside from the latter, and maybe IRS, everyone thought that they were in charge.
Chase wished that there was some sort of ancestry.com for government organizations.
Regardless, as the only woman she’d seen today, not to mention she was only a hair over five feet tall, Chase knew better than to argue with these men.
"Fine," Stitts conceded for the both of them. Pratt nodded and started toward the door to the interview room, only to be stopped by one of the soldiers guarding the door.
“Our man gets a crack at him first, then you can go in.”
&nbs
p; Pratt growled, eyed the man’s machine gun, and eventually backed down. Not before he muttered something under his breath.
Dirty Money (A Chase Adams FBI Thriller Book 5) Page 10