THIRTY-FOUR

 

 

MOVING THE ESSENTIAL personnel was like moving an army. Romey had never been in charge of an operation this big. Someone—and she wasn’t sure who—wanted to take a vehicle to the suspect’s location.

She didn’t. If she had been on her own, she would have run there. But she couldn’t do that either.

So she glanced at her own map of the area, saw that even with a vehicle, they would have had to park two blocks away, and on top of some kind of structure. The real-time map showed vehicles everywhere, trapped because of the lockdown of the entire area.

She couldn’t run. She needed to keep Kilzahn beside her and he didn’t seem like the running type. She also had some squad leaders and lead detectives, who needed to move along as well.

As they hurried through the streets—or whatever this group did that approximated a hurry—she felt increasing pressure.

The suspect was in a coffee shop. The image the on-site officer had sent showed him eating a pastry and drinking something, probably coffee. He looked calm.

Romey hated that.

She also hated the fact that he had found the most upscale part of this little part of Armstrong. He wasn’t waiting in some dive—and there were plenty. She was passing them in her fast walk.

He was waiting in a nice coffee shop, with a pastry that looked edible (and was probably made of real flour, not Moon flour), a mug of something steaming hot, and a chair that had molded to his slight frame. He was comfortable.

He sat beside two banks of windows.

He wanted to get caught.

Or at least get noticed.

This entire plan was about getting noticed. The clones, the attacks in public places, Anniversary Day.

And then she got the on-site street cop’s queries to various agencies, about security vids, about bombs, and she realized something was happening there, something important. She had been about to contact the lead officer on site when he contacted her.

She told him not to engage—and he told her it was too late.

Which meant she had already lost control of the scene.

If she ever had it.

“We’re going to pick up the pace,” she said to her group.

And then she started to run.