Lance Palmer kept one hand inside his jacket, the handle of his small .380 Sig Sauer cool against his palm as he and Hadley worked their way through the press of sweating journalists and gawking tourists hoping for a glimpse of the Veep or maybe one of the Hollywood celebrities who were expected to put in an appearance.
The street in front of the museum had been closed to vehicular traffic, but they were letting pedestrians past the barricades. Only a scraggly bunch of unpatriotic lowlifes with a silly rain-drenched banner and a PA system that didn’t work had been banished up a block to Lee’s Circle. Which was a pity, Lance thought; he’d like them to have had a front row seat for the show that was about to take place.
“How much time we got?” Hadley asked, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the crowd. “We don’t want to be standing here when that sucker blows.”
Lance glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes.”
“There she is,” said Lance, his gaze focusing on a small woman in a pale pink sundress, with a guest pass slung around her neck. He studied the lean dude in chinos and a black polo shirt beside her. “And there’s the sonofabitch who’s been causing us so much trouble.”
Hadley grunted. “How’d they figure it out, I wonder?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does if they told someone.”
“If they did, it doesn’t look like anyone believed them,” said Lance as they cut through the press of onlookers. “I don’t see the cavalry.”
There was still a crowd of latecomers bunched at the door, held up by the bottleneck of security and metal detectors and X-ray machines. “You take the girl,” said Lance, moving into position. “The asshole is mine.”
Lance shoved his .380 into the small of Jax Alexander’s back just as Hayden’s fist closed around the girl’s upper arm. “Put your hands in your pockets and keep them there,” Lance said softly, leaning in close to Alexander’s ear. “Your hands come out of your pockets and you’re dead. It’s that simple.”
They walked down a street of painted old brick warehouses, through moist air heavy with the smell of wet pavement and machine oil. Tobie could hear the steady drone of traffic from the interstate that curled away toward their right and the rattling vibration of a helicopter hovering unseen somewhere in the distance.
She threw a quick glance at the man who held her, his fingers digging hard into the flesh of her bare left arm. He wasn’t looking at her, and she had a pretty good idea why. She wanted to say something, but her mouth puckered with a bitter taste like old pennies and she knew there was nothing she could say that was going to change what was about to happen.
“This way,” he said, jerking her around the corner into a street with brick gutters and a massive yellow Dumpster and construction crane that blocked the road, effectively turning it into a dead end. The warehouse beside them loomed some three stories tall, red brick framing old glass windows that showed wavy reflections of the day’s fading flat light. They were maybe a quarter of the way down the block when Palmer said, “That’ll do.”
They paused beside an ancient portico of columns and an entrance door obscured by heavy bolted iron gates. “If you know who I am,” said Jax, his hands still carefully kept in his pockets, “then you know that every last detail of this little project of yours has been turned over to the CIA and the FBI.”
Lance Palmer laughed softly. “Right. That’s why they’ve got every bomb squad in the South crawling all over the place even as we speak. You see, I know all about remote viewing. And I know why every intel agency in the country got out of the business more than a decade ago. Because a guy sitting in a darkened room ‘seeing’ things in some unexplained corner of his mind doesn’t produce verifiable information. There’s a difference between accurate and verifiable.”
“Maybe. But the pieces are there. An idiot could put them together.”
“Only an idiot would try. If you expect me to be scared, I’m not.”
Tobie shifted her weight slowly, carefully, her heart pounding so hard the blood surged painfully in her ears. No one was paying any attention as she slipped her right hand into her bag. She felt for the smooth handle of the Glock and found it, her finger curling around the trigger.
It was awkward aiming through the bag’s canvas side, her elbow crooked out clumsily. She pointed the muzzle blindly at Lance Palmer’s chest and squeezed off two rounds—pop pop—the air filling with the stench of cordite and burned canvas.
Both rounds hit, blooming red across the man’s white shirt. His body jerked once, twice, his eyes widening in surprise and a desperate hope that was fading even as she swung the Glock’s silenced muzzle toward the man beside her.
He’d had time to pull his gun out of its holster, but he was still bringing it up when she nailed him. She squeezed her finger over and over again, his body jerking, stumbling backward. This time she was careful not to look into his eyes. But she was close enough that she felt the warm spray of his blood on her bare arm.
“Holy shit,” said Jax.
Tobie yanked the Glock out of her ruined bag and gripped the stock in both hands, ready to squeeze off another round if she needed to. She didn’t. The men were dead.
Jax wiped the back of one hand across his sweat-dampened forehead. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, although she wasn’t. She swallowed, breathing hard through her nostrils, her grip on the automatic so tight she realized her hands were starting to ache.
“How’d you think you were going to get that gun through the museum’s security check?”
“I forgot I had it,” she said, her voice cracking.
He put his strong hand over hers, loosening her grip. “Here. Give it to me.”
She let him take the gun.
He wiped it down, which she would never have had the presence of mind to do. Then he tossed it into one of the construction Dumpsters and put a gentle hand on her arm. “Our fifteen minutes just narrowed down to five.”