Now what?
31
Three hours passed before I figured it out.
Or thought I had.
Again.
“It’s not the speech, it’s the breakfast,” I said, spinning back from the wall for the thousandth time.
Joey tried to look at me from his spot on the floor in the corner, raising himself up on his good elbow and tipping his head to one side.
“What?”
“Hamilton said that Kyle and Chaudry were thinking they were going to kill the president at the speech, but they’re not. The hotel is too easy for the Secret Service to secure. Nobody will ever get near her unless they have someone on the inside, and if they had that she’d probably already be dead with all the crazypants revolution bullshit he was spouting. Tomorrow morning, she’s supposed to stop at a school and read to the kids, talk with the staff and students at the medical school about the future of the health-care system, and then go to a breakfast at the Coliseum with donors. There will be caterers at the breakfast. It’d be easiest there to slip an extra person into the room.”
“Easy? To get past the United States Secret Service?” Joey shook his head. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Don’t you think one of the stops is a better target?”
I shook my head, the way Lakshmi’s neck stayed angled toward the floor gnawing at me. “I don’t. Lakshmi is . . . well, she’s apparently a few things I didn’t have any idea she was, but at the end of this long, murderous day, I don’t think she’s evil. Setting off a nuclear explosion in a school or a hospital is a bridge too far for most people, even awful ones.”
“But in a big room full of average people, it’s totally fine?” Joey sat all the way up. “I’m not sure I agree with you here, princess.”
“They’re not average people. Not to him. Didn’t you hear him? They’ve paid to hear President Denham speak, which makes them the enemy. And we have no way to warn them.”
He stood, crossed the room, and laid his forearms on my shoulders, staring straight through my eyes into my messy, scattered thoughts in that way he had that made me feel like things would work out okay somehow.
“I know you think you’ve done something wrong here, but you haven’t.” His voice was soft. “I know you feel like you have to fix something, but you don’t. Not every story ends with the good guys saving the day, baby.”
I shook my head. “How about with us living to save another day? I’d take that right now.”
“That little weasel is not going to kill us.” Joey shook his head. “You could take that guy any day without me even in the room.”
“When it’s a fair fight, probably.”
“I’ll make sure it’s fair,” he said. “And I’ll be the one doing the fighting.”
I snorted. “With two bum arms. Okay.” I rested my forehead against the cool cotton of his shirt, the warmth from his shoulder beneath coming through after a moment. “I’m telling you. It’s the breakfast. It has to be. The law of simple averages says I’m due to be right about something today. Yesterday. Whenever it is.”
“And you’re sure Miller was wrong about the bomb thing? Because he said they couldn’t make a bomb from the stuff you were talking about yesterday.”
I leaned back against the wall and sank to the floor, watching him inspect the door before he returned to prowling the perimeter of the room like a hunting jaguar, stalking a way out that flat didn’t exist but unable to sit still.
“Stacy Adams is selling people on this reactor for electricity because it’s a salt reactor that uses thorium—a mineral the US holds almost a fifth of the world’s supply of—as an energy source. As a bonus, it doesn’t have the by-product plutonium that’s so dangerous to the surrounding area.”
“And that people can make bombs from,” Joey said.
“Right. Except. It turns out there’s a way to use thorium in this reactor that creates a weaponizable by-product called U-233. Something they can make bombs out of. Big bombs, with not much material. So the reactor doesn’t even have to run for long to create one.”
“And that’s the thing you think Rey Drake discovered when he worked for the federal government?”
I nodded. “I can’t say that for sure, but I’d bet my shoe closet on it. And, by extension, that this is the thing Grayson was after when he got himself involved with Lakshmi. Here’s what I can’t figure out yet: Angela Baker is dead. She was, as far as I know, the only person who knew why Grayson wanted to know Lakshmi. But given what we’ve seen here so far, why would that get her killed? I’ve been sure since Saturday morning that Grayson was the mastermind behind this mess. Yet Hamilton was crowing about his plan and he never even said anything about Grayson. They can’t be angling for Grayson to be president—he’s a convicted felon. I can’t see how Angela’s murder fits in here.”
“She was in prison. Things happen,” Joey said slowly.
I shook my head. “That’s too big a coincidence. There has to be another link in this web I’m not seeing.”
He sighed. “I don’t know, baby. I wish I did.”
I watched his face carefully. He wasn’t lying. So what did he know? And why was he on a first-name basis with the crazy on the other side of the door?
I pulled in a slow breath, steeling myself to ask the question I had batted my lashes at and flirted with for hours now without actually saying the words. “Why did he know you? Hamilton Baine. You tried to get him to let me go, and then he said you didn’t need to know about this place . . . What aren’t you telling me?”
As soon as the words were out, hanging heavy in the air between us, I wanted to wad them up, stuff them back down where they came from. I’d rather live with that knot in my gut than see what the question did to his face.
It twisted. Not unlike when Lakshmi whacked him with the gun. Not mad. Not scared. What I saw on his face was pain. His hand went to his abdomen, his head shaking. “I’m—” He stopped.
I kept my eyes on his face. He was a good man, with a good heart. He knew bad people and had done some questionable things, but I knew who he was.
He trusted me. Loved me. And I loved him.
It was time to go all in. Past time, maybe.
“Just tell me,” I said. “Please. I know you—you wouldn’t be a part of anything like this.”
I shoved the memory of his stricken face when I said I was going to cover the speech back into a dark hole in my brain and locked the trapdoor.
He wouldn’t.
His face closed off right in front of my eyes. Cold. Stoic. Unreadable. “I can’t.” His voice was just as flat and icy, stopping my breath. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone, even you. Please, know that I would if I could. And that I will work for the rest of my days to earn your trust.”
Chips down. Cards to his vest. I had been wrong about enough shit today. I’d believe him until someone gave me evidence I shouldn’t.
“I trust you,” I said, squeezing his fingers. “You’ll tell me when you can.”
I didn’t bother with a question mark at the end of that.
“I can’t get us out of this,” he said.
“I don’t think I can, either.”
He nodded. “The breakfast, huh?”
I tapped my finger on my knee, pulling out my phone to check in vain for a signal to materialize under a thousand tons of concrete, clicking the recorder off when I saw it was still running. Yay, I’d hit the buttons right. At least if Kyle found my phone, he’d know what had happened here.
“I swear. That has to be their target.”
“How much time is left?”
“Nine hours until she arrives at the facility,” I said.
He stood and walked back to the door, waving me over.
I stopped behind him, following his gaze to the top right corner.
“What is that?” I asked, spotting the three unobtrusive little lines in the edge of the frame.
“I’d say it’s a speaker.” Joey sighed. “Re
cording us, maybe?”
Holy Manolos.
I flapped one hand, backing away as the other clapped over my mouth. “Stacy Adams,” I whispered, the high-tech elevator voice ringing in my ears. “Just like the elevators. That’s how he opened it. It’s voice activated.”
“Great. My impressions suck, I’m afraid.” Joey turned and put his back to the wall behind the door, shaking his head. “So, we wait for them to come back and see if we can surprise them, get the jump on her, and get the gun, maybe?” He raised his brows. “You need the restroom? That’s cliché and ridiculous, but we could give it a shot.”
I shook my head, holding up my phone, the voice recorder app still open on the screen.
“We don’t have to. If he opened it with something he said when they left, I’ve got it right here.”
Nine hours. Maybe all hope wasn’t lost just yet.
32
All I had was a string of half-muttered gobbledygook, because Hamilton hadn’t been facing me.
I pulled the phone away from my head, closing my fingers tight around the plastic of the case so I wouldn’t chuck it across the room.
“Why is it that every single break I think I see coming with this bullshit evaporates faster than Eunice’s armadillo eggs at the sports desk the second I close in on it?” I asked, falling back to the floor and pillowing my head with one arm, blinking back frustrated tears and trying to focus on the ceiling.
I closed my eyes, the tears leaking out and trailing across my temples into my hairline anyway. Joey’s footsteps crossed the concrete and stopped next to me, his hand cradling my jaw, thumb wiping them away.
“It’ll be okay,” he said.
“How? We’re stuck. This was the last hope I had of getting us out of this room, certainly in time to stop their presidential assassination plot—presidential assassination plot, Joey.” I paused, shaking my head. “How am I even saying this? And that’s not considering that we may not make it out of here alive at all. If they’re harvesting that shit in this building, we could die of some kind of radiation poisoning even if we manage to see daylight again.”
His hand moved to my arm, his fingers trailing slow, soothing circles on my skin. “That doesn’t sound like you,” he said. “Doom and gloom isn’t your thing. You’re a fighter to the core. Come on, baby. What’s wrong with your recording?”
I opened my eyes, the overhead light searing my corneas and making me shut them again. “They were facing away from us across the room, and he wasn’t talking to me. The phone was in my pocket. Apple’s engineers are good, but they’re not wizards.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “It’s so muffled I can’t even make it out. If I could remember what the hell he said, even, that would maybe help.” Of all the times for my photographic memory to retreat into panic.
Joey nudged my hip with his knee, tickling the tip of my nose with one finger until I opened my eyes. “What?”
“He said, ‘We’re done here, and we still have work to do.’” He grinned. “See? I’ve learned something, hanging out with you so much.”
I sat up, blinking, the words filtering back through my brain in Hamilton’s voice. “He did.” I nodded. “And right before that, he was talking to Lakshmi like she was a dog. ‘Come,’ I think is the command he used. He even patted his leg at her.” I wrinkled my nose. “Jackass.” I tapped the phone screen to life, going back to the beginning of the long recording clip and hitting “Play,” laying a finger across my lips as I wished for a pen.
There it was. I hit “Pause.” “Rewind.” “Play.”
Again.
Checked the screen. “Remember eight fourteen,” I said, raising the phone back to my ear and hitting “Play,” hearing Hamilton say “Done, I must say” for the fourth time.
I kept searching, another hour and a half passing as I found and noted the time of each word. When we had them all, I looked at Joey as I clicked open the GarageBand app I was suddenly thrilled I’d never gotten around to deleting and selected the file to load. “You remember them all?” I asked.
“Eight fourteen, twenty-three thirty-one, and twenty-six fifty-three,” he reeled off. “What’re you doing?”
I held up one finger and set about isolating each clip, then dragged them into order, crossed my fingers, and pressed “Play.”
“We’re done here,” Hamilton’s voice said from the speaker.
“Making a key, I hope,” I said, pumping my fist in the air and laughing when Joey sucked in a sharp breath and then leaned forward to capture my lips in a kiss that was far too hot for our current predicament.
“Hold that thought, will you?” I asked, shooting to my feet and crossing to the door, pressing one ear to the inside.
I didn’t hear anything.
Which might be good and might not. And there was no way to know. Suck it up and throw the very large loaded dice.
I felt Joey’s hand land on my shoulder. “You ready?” he whispered.
“No. But we have six hours and we’re two from the Coliseum. So I don’t have time to not be ready.”
I raised my phone to the speaker in the doorframe, whispered a fast prayer, and pressed “Play.”
The lock hissed as it slid back, the door hanging loose on the hinges. I pulled it open a crack.
The hallway stretched in front of us, longer than I remembered, but empty and silent. I scooted through and felt Joey step up beside me, his fingers closing around mine.
“Let’s go save the day?” He flashed a smile that told me he was more nervous than he wanted to sound.
“I’ll settle for getting out of this building right now,” I whispered, squaring my shoulders and moving purposefully toward the stairs, so thankful for my silent, rubber-soled sneakers on the concrete floor, I could almost kiss them. I scanned the entire hallway with every step, my ears pricked for the slightest sound, keeping my center of gravity low so I couldn’t be knocked off balance easily.
Halfway to the steps, I pulled my keys from my pocket and laced them between my knuckles, gripping the pepper spray canister tight and finding the trigger with my index finger. It made for an awkward fist, but two quasi-weapons were better than nothing.
We were twelve of about a thousand stairs toward the top when I heard a round slide into the chamber of a gun behind us.
Joey froze next to me, his head turning in tandem with mine, our eyes meeting for a split second as we spun back. I raised the pepper spray. He nodded, a bare flicker of movement someone not looking for it would miss.
I kept turning, raising my arm in the same motion, my finger tightening on the red trigger as my hand came up.
Too much happened at once, my brain running a delay processing the information my eyes were sending it.
Lakshmi.
Maybe three stairs down.
She had a gun.
But she was holding it by the wrong end.
Her fingers were tight around the barrel, extending the butt Joey’s way.
Wait.
What?
He reached for it as the spray permeated the stairwell, sending us all into a coughing fit and sending Lakshmi to her knees, her eyes closing, her head shaking. She waved a hand in front of her face.
I let go of the canister and stepped backward, pulling Joey with me, the gun hanging useless at his side thanks to his bilateral battle injuries.
He tried to raise it and winced, shaking his head. “I can’t,” he coughed, looking up at me and holding the thing out. “Take this.”
I shook my head. “I’ll shoot you on accident the way this day has gone,” I said. “Just hang on to it. At least she doesn’t have it.”
He shoved it into my hand more insistently. “It’s just like laser tag. Remember when we went to play laser tag?”
I kept shaking my head as my fingers closed around the metal, warm from his hand. “I don’t like guns.”
“Nichelle, please.” He bent his head and caught my gaze. “You can do this.”
I handed him my ke
ys so I could wrap both hands around it. It wasn’t like I’d never shot one. And I’d seen twenty thousand action movies and watched my cops handle guns up close and personal.
He was right.
I could do this. Brandishing a handgun beat the hell out of dying.
I rested my right index finger on the trigger guard like I went to the range four times a week.
“There you go.” Joey leaned in, his lips close to my ear, fighting back a cough. “Make sure the safety is off.” He nodded to the barrel. “That little button there.”
I clicked it.
“Now, just point it at anyone you think will try to hurt you and pull the trigger. Aim lower than you think you need to.”
I nodded, my eyes on Lakshmi, who was crawling up the steps under the fog of pepper spray floating toward the vertigo-inducing high ceiling.
“Stop.” I tried to sound forceful without being too loud.
Joey leaned into my shoulder. “Wait.” He gestured to the gun. “Something isn’t right.”
I cut my eyes to him. No kidding. I just didn’t want her close enough to reach us until I knew what and why.
She did what I said, raising a tearstained face to us that I couldn’t attribute with any certainty to the pepper juice.
Keeping her crouched position, she tried to widen her eyes and had to reach up to swipe at them, highlighting the angry red mask around them. If she wasn’t going to shoot us, I’d feel at least a little bad for trying to blind her. She shook her head, pointing up. “Get out of here. Before it’s too late. Just go.” Was that a cough or a sob?
Joey put one foot on the next step down, coughing and crouching under the pale cloud of paper spray. “Lakshmi, what the hell is happening here?”
She shook her head. “I can’t. My dad . . .” The way her face collapsed told me everything I needed to know.
“It is his research they used to make their weapon.” I didn’t bother with a question. Hamilton told Mrs. Powers he had reasons she wouldn’t understand for being with Lakshmi. But it wasn’t all Romeo and Juliet, written-in-the-stars blind love—she was a tool, a means to get what he wanted from her father.
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