I didn’t fool anybody.
“You don’t like guns,” he said. “And Miller took mine.”
I thumped the doorframe with the side of my fist. Dammit, Kyle was working my last nerve today. “Why did he do that? Why did you let him do that?”
I swiped my phone off the dresser and touched Kyle’s name in my favorites.
Straight to voicemail.
I opened a text. Call me when you see this, taking J on a wild bomb chase.
“Pissing him off isn’t exactly in my best interest right now,” Joey said. “He . . . well, he did something that means I’m not currently in a cell. So he asked for my gun, and I gave it to him.”
Something tickled the back of my brain.
Commander Davis.
“Not even his personal detail was allowed in the office.” What was Kyle doing there in the first place? And who had barred the state police from a scene that should have been their job? I put a hand on Joey’s arm.
“Did you see—” I stopped. Of course he hadn’t. He’d probably been in shock. “You know what? Never mind.” I strode to the kitchen, grabbing my bag on the way through and switching my focus back to the task at hand. “I have pepper spray.” And a decent hope that the place we were going would be deserted this time of night on a Sunday, because if Stacy Adams was building nuclear weapons, pepper spray wouldn’t do jack shit to help us, and Joey’s punching hand was out of commission.
I paused with my hand on the doorknob. I had chased enough stories into danger in the past couple of years to know what I was letting us in for. This—the actual catching of bad guys and saving the world—wasn’t my job. It was Kyle’s and Aaron’s and Landers’s and Chaudry’s. It was Sunday night, and I still wasn’t sure whether or not I had my actual job to head off to in the morning. But I was damned sure I’d like to be alive to find out.
I tapped a finger on the doorknob.
Lakshmi.
Hamilton.
The president. If the first woman to hold the office ended up splattered all over downtown, what would that do to the country? To every little girl who’d spent the past two years thinking she could do that someday, too?
I turned the knob and stuck a hand out for the keys to my car.
If I stayed home and a tragedy happened tomorrow night, I’d never forgive myself.
I’d rather go down trying to do good in the world than end up hating myself for living a long life sitting down.
30
A solid twenty minutes after we’d passed another car, human, or house, Joey reached across the console and laid a hand on my knee. “Are you sure this is the right way?”
No, I wasn’t. I had a pile of random information, a tip, a hunch, and a large assumption that my super-hurried search had yielded correct information. But it was all we had to go on, and Kyle still wasn’t answering me. I peered into inky darkness so thick the high beams could’ve been a flickering candle, praying for a break.
“It’s the best lead I have,” I said.
He squeezed my knee. “You really think they’re going to try to kill her, don’t you?” The words were halting. Incredulous. “Jesus.”
“If they’re going to try what I think they’re going to try, she won’t be the only person dead. Not even close.”
I swallowed the panic and shifted my thoughts so it wouldn’t well back up. There was no time for freaking out. And this whole damned thing was so crazy, I could convince myself I was making it up if I just didn’t think about it too hard.
My GPS blipped.
You have arrived at your destination.
I slowed the car, pulling to the side of the deserted two-lane road. Squinted past Joey into the dark.
Couldn’t make out a single thing past the end of the car.
Okay then. I killed the engine, fished my phone and keys from my bag, stuck the former in my pocket, and closed my hand around the pepper spray hanging from the latter. I was more worried about bears than wannabe homegrown terrorists. For the moment.
We made it less than fifty paces before that changed.
“It’s a wheat field, baby,” Joey was saying from my shoulder, half jogging to keep up.
My eyes fell on the dark structures in the distance, the earthy, grassy smell surrounding us laced with a sour stench.
“I hope you’re right.” I turned, plunging into one of the rows.
“What the hell is that smell?” Joey coughed over the last couple of words, the stink closing in on all sides as we moved through the fields.
“Grains,” I said. Growing up in Texas, I’d driven past and through many an unharvested field. “Rotting grain.”
“Why would they plant it and let it rot?” Joey paused. “Oh. Because it’s not really a farm.”
I caught sight of a light up ahead and took off running, then stopped so short Joey charged right into me, knocking me to the ground. Looking up at the diamond-dot stars, shadows whispering along the darkened ground behind me, I shook my head.
It was not really a farm.
Being smart is fun, for the most part.
But damn, some days it really sucks.
Joey pulled me to my feet with his left hand. “If they’re not harvesting it, what’s with the silos?” he stage-whispered.
I laid one finger across his lips as I looked up at the gleaming metal cylinders, stretching probably five stories toward the sky.
They were harvesting something, all right. It just wasn’t growing out here above the ground.
Waving for Joey to follow, I crept through the edge of the field, keeping the tall stalks around us as cover. I didn’t see any cars. Or hear any voices.
Fairly satisfied that we were alone, I stepped into the clearing. My second foot wasn’t even on the ground when the whole field lit up brighter than noon on the Fourth of July, the huge lights spotted around the perimeter obviously on a motion sensor.
Shit.
We froze in tandem, staying still long enough for my heart rate to drop from the stratosphere before we turned to each other at the same time. “I think we’re clear,” I said at the same time Joey murmured, “So how do we get inside to find your proof?”
I tipped my lips up in a smile, my head whipping between the silos and the field.
I was right. I was sure of it without seeing inside.
I could call Kyle and plant my ass right back out at the road in my (locked) car and let him come save the world.
It sounded awfully damned appealing.
Except he still wasn’t answering, and I had no idea if we were too late, or if we might be able to stop this from happening if I didn’t chicken out.
Bonus: there was nobody around.
I started forward, Joey’s hand warm on my lower back as he walked beside me.
I pulled out my phone, opened the map and dropped a geo-locator, and clicked to send the pin to Kyle.
I think I found your weapons factory. It’s quiet right now, we’re going in to check it out. Send.
We circled the building until we found a door. Flat, blending into the curve of the wall, but there.
On the ground.
Joey pointed to the stairs winding up the side of the building. “I’m a city guy, but in the movies the doors to these things are up high.”
I nodded, running my fingers along the cracks, hunting for a catch.
Joey smiled and pulled out a positively frightening-looking pocketknife. “Maybe this will help?”
I took it with a grin, letting it lie cold and heavy and reassuring in my hand. Better than pepper spray. Way, way better.
“Miller only asked for my gun,” he said. There was the weird reading Nichelle’s mind thing again.
“I love you, you know that?” I squeezed his good hand with my free one, peering up at him. “Whatever happens in here—death, radiation poisoning, heroic acts of patriotism—I need you to know that.”
“I do.” He smiled—soft, brief, but heart-stopping in the middle of the chaos all the same
. “And back at you.”
I slid the knife into the left-hand side of the door a bit above center and pushed the handle back like a crowbar.
It broke.
Bending to retrieve the pieces from the dirt, I saw the shoes before anything else.
Prada.
Eggplant. Box heel. Gorgeous.
This season.
I followed the long legs up, past the pencil skirt and the designer silk blouse, my eyes pausing on the gun trained on us before they settled on her face.
“Nichelle.” Her voice was low. Hard. Not at all the way I remembered it. “Joey.”
I felt the wind go out of my chest and my sails.
We got played.
Again.
“Lakshmi.” I forced the word out over the lump of disgust and disbelief blocking my throat, looking over her shoulder. “And Hamilton.”
Jesus.
The governor’s son nodded and held up a shiny gizmo, pressing a button. I looked over my shoulder. The door slid silently back into the wall behind me, a stairwell leading underground on the other side. Not how I wanted to find that. I slid my hand into my pocket, dropping the blade and fumbling with my phone. I swiped up from the bottom of the screen and tapped the bottom center twice, crossing my fingers I’d hit the right spots. If we didn’t make it out of here, maybe my phone would.
“Let’s go inside, shall we, folks?” Hamilton Baine’s smile was fifty degrees colder than the evening air. “Chilly out here tonight.”
Lakshmi waved the gun, her eyes darting from the weapon in her hands, to the doorway, to her boyfriend anxious-rabbit style, never staying on one thing for more than a split second.
She wouldn’t look me in the face.
She wouldn’t even look in Joey’s general direction.
My fingers brushed over the lump in my pants that concealed the pepper spray canister, my eyes measuring the distance between Lakshmi and Hamilton.
It was too risky. If I sprayed her and she shot blindly, she might hit us. Or he might get his face turned away and get the gun before we got into the field, even at a sprint. And if I sprayed him, she would probably just shoot me.
I couldn’t get close enough to reach them with the knife.
So the smart move was to play along. For now, anyway.
I turned for the door.
Joey shot a hand out to stop me, his eyes on Hamilton.
“Leave her alone, man. I’m the one you want. Let her go.”
Hamilton snorted. “Are you on something? You want me to let a newspaper reporter famous for sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong and fucking things up out of my sight on the eve of the most important night in American history since a bunch of drunk assholes chucked some tea into Boston Harbor?” He smirked. “Chivalrous of you, but I’m gonna go with no.” He grabbed my arm for good measure. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”
Joey lunged forward.
I put an arm out to stop him, but didn’t get it all the way to him before Lakshmi’s gun whipped through the air, butt first, the blunt end connecting with the elbow on Joey’s uninjured arm. He stumbled backward with a guttural moan, managing to keep his footing as he cradled the arm and glared at her, his eyes going flatter, colder than I’d ever seen them. I’d have been shaking in those pretty pumps. She just stared back at him.
“I appreciate that, but I don’t need an attack dog,” Baine said, not bothering to look at her.
“I’ve seen what he can do to someone with his bare hands,” Lakshmi whispered, her eyes still on the dirt. She righted the gun in her hands, resting a light finger on the trigger, and gestured to the door. “We should get them inside. You’re going to run out of time.”
Hamilton’s fingers sank into the skin around my bicep until I was fairly certain my hand was no longer getting blood, half dragging me forward as Joey walked in front of Lakshmi, still holding his injured elbow with his bandaged hand.
We proceeded down so many spiraling stairs we had to be a good bit of the way to China by the time we reached a long sterile hallway with smooth white walls, overhead florescent lights, and a door at the far end.
Hamilton let go of me and strode to the door, waving for us to follow. Lakshmi stayed between us and the foot of the steps, blocking the only exit and keeping the handgun trained on our backs.
I shuffled my feet forward, drifting in a fog of disbelief I knew wasn’t doing me any favors, unable to shake it.
The very people I’d spent the whole weekend trying to help, to give voice to, to make matter . . . were the ones behind all this?
How in the ever-loving fuck-all hell did I manage to miss the mark by that much? I drove out here thinking I had it all figured out. Finally. After a thousand fits and starts, I needed to protect Lakshmi, I needed to save Hamilton Baine and help Joey, and I could do it all by way of making sure Stacy Adams was about to go to a very small cell for a very long time.
I was so far off we might as well have ended up in Montana.
Hamilton opened the door—I couldn’t see how with his backside between me and the knob—and waved us through. Joey let go of his elbow and put a protective arm around me. Two injured limbs, and he was still trying to be the hero. I slipped one of mine around his waist and squeezed, but edged in front of him when Hamilton closed the door and crossed to us, Lakshmi standing just inside the room, her gun no longer raised.
Hamilton raised a brow and grinned at me. “Spunky, aren’t you?” He laughed. “I like some spunk in my bitches, don’t I, Lala?”
She didn’t answer, and I didn’t take my eyes off him.
He tipped his head forward. “Well done, I must say. Since Joey here wasn’t on the need-to-know list, I imagine it was you who found us here, Miss Clarke, was it not?”
I didn’t move, even to blink.
He nodded. “It’s helpful, when you get right down to it. I have you out of the way, and there’s one more thing for your friends Agent Miller and Agent Chaudry to worry about when they can’t find you two.” He swept an arm through the air around him. “Welcome to Hotel Hamilton,” he said. “Not the most comfortable accommodations, I’m afraid, but you’ll make do for a day or two, won’t you? You two might be useful if your federal agent friends are smarter than I thought they were.”
He began pacing the width of the long room. “Now I know you’re wondering what will become of you after we’ve returned the leadership of this country to its rightful owners.” He wrinkled his nose. “Women aren’t worthy of high office—sniveling, cheating, lying, emotional creatures. And I’m going to make this right.” He clapped his hands together and turned a beaming smile on us. “But what fun would it be if I told you that now?”
Sweet Jiminy Choos, he wasn’t depressed—he was crazy.
And I didn’t catch it because I saw what I wanted to see. The way he looked at Lakshmi in the photos wasn’t love. It was disdain—he was half glaring at a piece of meat. Stacy’s comment about him not being good with women wasn’t cute, it was telling. Because Hamilton didn’t trust them. Us. Any of us.
Governor Baine’s panic-stricken insistence that Aaron find his son made a whole different sort of wickedly frightening sense. He wasn’t afraid the kid was in danger. He was afraid the kid was the danger.
Would’ve been nice to put all that together a couple hours ago.
Lucky for us, I had ridden this roller coaster a time or seven. I cleared my throat. “So, you’re going to kill the president. Solid plan, except for the part where the Secret Service knows you’re coming.”
Baiting the crazy guy is pretty safe when he’s not the one holding the gun.
He shook his head, clasping his hands behind his back.
“They know no such thing,” he said. “They know there’s a threat at her speech, exactly as I wanted them to. I’ve watched Thomas’s security detail for over a year now. They get laser-focused on one thing that becomes their mission, whether the actual issue has anything to do with their thing or not.” One side of his mo
uth twisted up in a grotesque mockery of a smile worthy of a comic book villain. “But we’re not waiting for the speech. And they’ll never see us coming.” He crossed to me, crooked a finger under my chin to tip my face up to his, and leaned in. I felt everything in Joey go still and coiled behind me, and I blindly reached a hand back to keep him where he was. It seemed two could play the baiting game here, and I couldn’t let Joey get himself shot diving for this cheap, smelly little worm.
Hamilton’s ten o’clock shadow brushed my cheek, his lips hovering close enough to my ear to tickle the lobe. I kept rigid, determined not to flinch, scream, or vomit until he was out of sight.
His breath was humid and sticky hot on my ear and jaw, his words sluicing chills through me I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of reacting to. “Everything about this has gone according to plan, except the part Joey here mucked up saving the day. Hell, I told people she was dead before I found out he’d decided to play the hero. You played your part perfectly, Miss Clarke. Much appreciated. Now, before you get me bragging on my brilliance and somehow parlay that into my downfall, I have important chores that need my attention. Y’all sleep tight, you hear?”
I swallowed hard.
He withdrew, striding back to the door and patting the side of his thigh as he walked past Lakshmi. “Come,” he said, like he was talking to Darcy. “We’re done here, and we still have work to do.”
She followed him out the door, his voice muffling to almost nothing when it shut behind them.
I listened to the lock slide home and shrank back into Joey. Furious, terrified tears stung my eyes, blurring the stark white walls and cold gray concrete floor into a fog of colorless despair. But the anger stopped halfway up my throat and stuck there, a hard, scorching, bitter ball of resentment I wanted to hurl at someone.
Except the person I was the maddest at . . . was me.
Joey and I were stuck in a hole in the ground, and they were going to kill the president, and Kyle and his friend were looking in the wrong fucking place. None of it was entirely my fault, but my attempt at helping had failed more spectacularly than a line of Christian Louboutin flip-flops.
Deadly Politics Page 26