Evan rocketed up Sunset Boulevard in his reinforced Ford F-150, bulling sports cars out of his way. His latex-gloved hands alternated between gripping the steering wheel and wiring an electric cap and detonator into the Nokia in his lap. Because they published their circuits in their manuals, Nokias made for quick and easy receiver phones.
Miraculously, he managed to prep the bang while not T-boning any Porsches—and he got across the city in nineteen minutes flat.
Despite all that, he feared he was already too late.
Having crushed Max’s last burner phone and ordered him to preserve the new one until after his meeting with the cops, he had no way to warn Max that he’d delivered him into the lion’s mouth.
Which meant he had to intercept him.
He was going to raid a police station.
He’d have none of the benefits that generally gave him an operational advantage—no advance scouting of the target location, no analysis of the building’s blueprints, no disabling of security equipment.
He’d like his odds a lot better if he wasn’t largely making up the plan as he went along.
He’d been caught flat-footed when the second problem, Petro, had led to a third problem.
It was becoming a pattern.
Evan whipped into a parking space a block away and jogged for the police station, winding an ACE bandage around his head. Feigning injury was the only way he could thwart surveillance and mask himself without drawing suspicion—or drawing fire.
Once his face was sufficiently mummified, he tucked the wrap in the back and affected a fragile, stumbling walk. He peered out through the slit in the bandages, noting the security cameras positioned at intervals around the building. Then he hovered his hands over his cheeks as if he were in great pain. Given his perennial headache, it wasn’t a terrible stretch.
He hesitated at the side of the station.
He’d carried out his share of improbable missions. But even for the Nowhere Man, this was a bit much.
He ran through the few contingencies he’d anticipated, the few supplies he’d brought. He didn’t have a gun because he’d be unable to smuggle it past the metal detectors. He’d have to get it done with the hastily rigged flashbang in his pocket, a wad of medical gauze pads in a Baggie, and more luck than he liked to count on. A wing and a prayer and not much more.
Last chance to back out.
His own words from the garage echoed in his head like a bad memory: I protect them.
Without limitation? Mia had asked. You’ll go anywhere? Do anything?
Yes, he’d replied, like a virtue-drunk imbecile.
He’d made his pledge—to Max, to Mia, to himself. Now he had to back it up.
If he still had time.
Staggering forward, he leaned against a dumpster and doubled over in ostensible agony. He used the pretense of gripping the side to drop the flashbang in. The duct-taped package—Nokia and grenade—struck the inside of the metal box with a hollow clang, signaling that the dumpster was empty. When the time came, that would help the amplification.
Nearing the entrance, he took a series of rapid breaths, his best impromptu simulation of hyperventilating. He wanted his breathing to sound fast and panicked when he entered. It sent his light-headedness into overdrive, and he pulled back a bit, careful not to overdo it and trigger his other symptoms.
He moved through the door, shuffled to the desk officer. “Officer, I’m … I’m—” He cut off, bending at the waist, floating his palms trembling again above his bandage-wrapped face.
The desk officer found her feet, leaning toward the bullet-resistant screen. “What? What happened?”
“My girlfriend threw burning water on my face. She lost her … fuck … lost her fucking mind—”
“Have you sought medical attention?”
“Not yet. Her daughter’s still in the house with her—and fuck, ow, ow…”
“Sir. Sir! I need you to calm down.”
He shuddered and straightened up, leaning against the screen. The bandages shielded his eyes, which let him peer around her without seeming too obvious. He was hoping for an open record log or a whiteboard showing which cops were occupying which interrogation rooms. But there was nothing in plain sight. The information probably resided on her computer, and there’d be no getting in there.
Evan said, “I’m scared for her daughter, and before I go to the ER, I have to—”
“I understand. I’ll have someone speak to you immediately.”
“Thank you.” He let his shoulders tremble as if he were fighting off sobs. “Thank God.”
The desk officer called across into the bullpen, and a weary-looking detective rose, his rumpled shirt spotted with a coffee stain. He slapped down a file on his desk and blew out a breath that lifted his scraggly bangs. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take it.”
A grating buzz sounded, and the security door clicked open. Evan placed his RoamZone in a red plastic basket and stepped through the metal detector.
It did not alert.
Gathering his phone, he entered the inner sanctum.
Max sat down at the table and folded his hands on the surface. Brust and Nuñez kept their feet. Nuñez crossed his arms and shouldered against the rear wall while Brust set his knuckles on the table and leaned in. The thumb drive rested between him and Max like an avant-garde centerpiece.
“We’re so glad you came in,” Brust said.
Nuñez chimed in from the back. “Really happy to see you.”
“You’re a solid citizen—”
“—who was put in a terrible position. We understand that.”
Max cleared his throat. “You were working with my cousin?”
“Yes,” Nuñez said. “Very smart guy. Very capable.” He scratched his cheek. His fingernail was polished, his cheeks shiny from a close shave. He grinned, but the skin around his eyes did not wrinkle in the least.
Max shifted in the chair. Cleared his throat. “Yeah, he was. Grant was good.”
Brust placed his forefinger on the thumb drive as if it were a poker chip he was considering adding to the pot. “Do you know what this is? I mean, have you looked at what’s on here?”
“Yeah.” Max’s unease grew, but he heard himself still talking. “They look like spreadsheets. Real and fake.” He suddenly felt detached from the situation, as if he were floating above the table looking down at himself answering the questions like a good little boy. “Some kind of money-laundering operation, from what I could tell.”
“Ah,” Brust said, the single note holding disappointment.
“That’s too bad,” Nuñez agreed.
“Has anyone else seen this?” Brust asked. “I mean, did you share your cousin’s work with anyone?”
“No,” Max said, shaking his head. “Just me. I went to Grant’s office, and some guy shot at me, so I got scared and I went into hiding.” Sweat trickled down his neck, burrowed beneath his collar. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. And yet the conversation kept proceeding, and he felt bizarrely incapable of stopping it. “Look, is there…? I mean, is something wrong?”
Those automated smiles once more. “No,” Brust said. “Everything’s finally right. You did great. You did great bringing this here to us.”
He slid the thumb drive off the table and tossed it to his partner.
“Where did you say you went?” Nuñez asked, coming off the wall to pocket the drive. “When you were hiding?”
Max looked over at the bullet security camera wired into the corner of the ceiling. In the curved black lens, he caught a distorted fish-eye reflection of the room—Nuñez’s broad shoulders stretched to Olympian proportions; Brust looming over the desk, his torso swirled; and Max in the center, shrunken and diminutive.
His gaze caught on the sticker adhered to the camera’s side: IRONKLAD KAM. The same equipment had been installed in the hall outside Grant’s office, an unsettling coincidence. And something was different. When he noticed what, he felt the awareness as a chill tightening his flesh, making his scalp crawl.
No glowing red dot to show it was recording.
Which meant that Brust and Nuñez had turned it off.
What reason would they have to be in here with him and not want to be recorded?
“Is there…?” Max’s voice went hoarse, and he had to start over. “Is there someone else I could talk to? Another cop?”
“Oh, no,” Brust said. “I think it’s best we keep this discussion between these four walls.”
Nuñez’s eyes were shaded by the brim of his baseball cap. “All nice and soundproof.”
Brust keyed to Max’s gaze, traced it to the security camera. “Ah,” he said. “All these budget shortfalls have us operating on a shoestring.”
Nuñez again. “Sometimes we have to turn off the cameras. You know, to save electricity.”
The words were pleasantly delivered, without a trace of menace. Max was having trouble processing them. Was he reading into some dark intent? Was this all in his head?
Nuñez fished a digital recorder from his pen-laden shirt pocket. He half turned, shielding Max’s view with a muscular shoulder, and spoke into the microphone softly.
“Wait,” Max said. “What are you saying?” He looked at Brust. “What is he saying?”
Nuñez’s voice carried to him then. “—can be used against you in a court of law.”
“Guys,” Max said. “What’s—”
“Shit!” Nuñez shouted so abruptly that Max jerked back in his chair. “Oh, shit—grab him, he’s—” He fumbled the recorder in his hands purposefully and then clicked it off. Immediately he was as calm as before. He tucked the recorder back into his shirt pocket.
Nuñez and Brust looked at Max silently. Expressionless.
Max had broken out in a full sweat. He stared at the two faces, but they gave nothing away.
And then Brust set his foot on the chair across from Max and hiked up his pant leg. Strapped to his ankle was a banged-up, nickel-plated .22. He plucked the pistol from the holster and set it on the table between them.
“What … what’s that?” Max asked.
“Oh, that?” Once again Brust gave with the grin. And once again Nuñez mirrored it. “That one’s yours.”
The bullpen was bustling, abuzz with overlapping conversations, most of them unpleasant. Perched on a hard wooden chair to the side of the detective’s desk, Evan made sure that each breath sounded labored, pushed through increasing pain.
The detective—O’Malley by his nameplate—looked exhausted, dark bags beneath his eyes. He wore sweat-matted brown curls in no discernible style and was slender to the point of frail. Lower body weight would prove useful.
His security key card was in full view, clipped to his belt, but his holster was empty. Evan guessed O’Malley had either locked his weapon in the drawer or secured it in the gun safe before he’d entered the chaos of the bullpen.
His desk was one of four currently occupied in the immediate area, the other cops conducting similar interviews, keying in similar reports. A drug-animated prostitute waved his arms around, using a high-pitched voice and noodle arms to illustrate his story. “—thought you were my brother-in-law when I approached the vehicle, uh-huh, that’s right. It was all a big mix-up, sweetie pie.”
The other cops burrowed further into their desks, trying to focus. That was helpful.
A corridor across the bullpen, guarded by a key-card-protected security door, led back to what Evan guessed were the interrogation rooms. That’s where Nuñez and Brust would have taken Max. They’d need privacy to talk to him. And to do whatever else they needed to do.
O’Malley slurped at his coffee and reviewed the monitor onto which he’d begun to input the complaint. “Okay, so surname ‘Case,’ first name ‘Justin.’ Is that right, sir?”
“Yes.”
A few desks over, the prostitute grew increasingly agitated. “Bitch, puh-lease! I’m a upstanding member of this mothafucking community!”
Evan set his RoamZone on his knee. Then he dug the Baggie from his pocket, rested it on his thigh just out of O’Malley’s line of sight. He took a deep breath, held it, and cracked the zippered seal. Given the state of his brain, the last thing he needed was a whiff of this stuff.
The cop at the adjacent desk was no more than five feet away, but his face stayed down as he chicken-pecked at the keyboard with two fingers, his brow furrowed from the effort. The faintest turn of his head and he’d have Evan dead to rights.
O’Malley squinted at the monitor. Taped to the top was a frayed photo of a dachshund wearing a Spider-Man knit sweater. No wedding ring. He rubbed at his eyes once more. “Wait a sec,” he said. “‘Justin Case’? ‘Just in case’?”
His face snapped over to Evan. Already Evan had the sodden gauze pads in his palm. With his other hand, he hit REDIAL on the RoamZone.
There was a half-second delay as the call routed through to the Nokia in the dumpster outside. The flashbang’s effect, compounded within the metal walls, literally vibrated the building, the boom loud enough to send a passing officer airborne. Coffee rose from his cup in a brown fountain. The detective to Evan’s side hit the floor, hands laced over the back of his head.
Evan was up beside O’Malley in an instant, cupping his hand over the detective’s mouth and nose, steadying him and pretending to lean over the desk in an improvised duck-and-cover.
Desflurane was Evan’s preferred halogenated ether. Its TV-trendy cousin, chloroform, was nearly useless, taking a solid five minutes to be effective and requiring ongoing inhalation to keep the target unconscious. In Evan’s experience the onset of action for Desflurane hovered around two minutes, but a lightweight individual like the unfortunate Detective O’Malley would be functionally incapacitated at the thirty-second mark.
The drug was also much safer than chloroform, a key consideration if you were planning to knock out an innocent cop.
Over the furor in the lobby, the desk officer shouted, “Everyone please evacuate in a calm and orderly fashion!”
As the bullpen cleared, Evan caged O’Malley’s head with his arm, tilting him forward at the big monitor to hide his face and the soaked gauze from view. O’Malley whipped his head back to crack into Evan’s, and Evan pulled away just in time so it thudded ineffectively into his chest. A heartbeat slower and Evan would’ve been laid out on the floor with second-impact syndrome, a second concussion ballooning the first, leaving him unconscious or dead.
Exhaling with relief, he held his grip firm. O’Malley’s knees rattled against the underside of his desk, but already they were losing steam. His eyes rolled up to Evan, showing white, and Evan whispered, “Don’t worry. It’s harmless. I’m not going to hurt you.”
At last the detective slumped, but Evan maintained the seal over his nose and mouth.
By now the detectives and cops had grabbed their weapons and were streaming toward the front, herding the citizens with them. Evan held Detective O’Malley in place in his chair and spoke to his unconscious face loudly, “Okay, okay. I’m coming. It just hurts if I move too fast.”
The exodus from the bullpen was nearly complete, the last of the cops filing through the door to the lobby.
Evan lowered O’Malley gently to the desk, resting his forehead on the mouse pad. Then he unclipped the key card from the detective’s belt and crossed the bullpen.
He had no weapon. But he had no time either.
With a tap of the key card against the pad, the security door clicked open. The corridor beyond had three doors on either side. Except for one, all stood open, likely left ajar in the explosion’s aftermath.
If Nuñez and Brust had taken Max to a back room as Evan anticipated, they’d have good reason to remain behind during an evacuation. They’d require the privacy.
Evan gritted his teeth. He had to enter the fray unarmed and face whatever came at him. But he could not afford to take another blow to his head. It would put him out, maybe for good.
The closed door was locked, so Evan stepped back and kicked it in.
It smashed the wall, the doorknob sticking through the drywall.
“Hurry up and—” Nuñez cut off his words to his partner, his eyes lighting with alarm at Evan’s bandage-wrapped face, his hand already reaching for his sidearm.
At the center of the room, Brust stood facing Max over the table, one arm extended, his Glock aimed at Max’s head. An executioner’s pose.
Before Evan could move, Brust fired.