The sound of sirens drifted up to the twelfth-floor balcony.
Evan scooped up the kill brass and hustled across the hotel room, leaving behind the empty Hardigg Storm Case. Stepping over the bodies, he cracked the door and peered down the corridor.
Empty save for an overturned housekeeping cart, probably upended by a fleeing employee when gunfire had broken out.
He jogged to the cart, fluffed out a transparent trash liner, and slid the FN Ballista inside. Tommy had been right. It was an excellent rifle, and if Evan had been the type to grow attached to tools, he wouldn’t have been so quick to discard it.
He grabbed a jug of bleach and emptied it inside the bag as he moved swiftly down the hall. Knotting the bag, he dumped it in a trash chute and then stepped onto the elevator.
A Muzak rendering of Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away,” heavy on woodwinds, accompanied him down. His heart rate started to slow, the epinephrine easing off to a more gentle glow in his veins.
Though the lobby was largely cleared out, a few workers and guests huddled behind the front desk.
Evan stepped out into the street and hustled up 6th to the intersection. The intensity of holding perfect focus had cost him, as he knew it would, the concussion symptoms seeping back, messing with his perception. Squad cars were pulling up on Grand Avenue from all points of the compass, clogging the side streets, corralling the damage zone. He misjudged a step and banged into the fender of an abandoned car hard enough to knock himself into a quarter turn. Straightening himself up, he progressed more cautiously, ignoring the mounting pressure at his temples, concentrating to keep his vision clear.
Looking up the block, he spotted Mia.
She was holding Peter.
Relief tore through Evan, something giving way under a strain he hadn’t let himself acknowledge.
Peter was clamped onto his mother, his face buried in her shoulder. Mia spoke to first responders, gesturing at the bodies around the van with her one free hand.
Evan had no idea what she was telling them.
For the first time, it struck him that the life he had built in Castle Heights was now over. As an officer of the court, Mia would be obliged to implicate him. She’d made her position clear. And he’d be on the run once again.
He thought of the informal pardon that President Donahue-Carr had dangled before him, the different life so tantalizingly close.
But staring at Mia and Peter now, he knew he’d make the same choice a thousand times out of a thousand.
She turned slightly and—way across the mob of cops and civilians—spotted him.
For a suspended instant, they locked eyes.
The officers speaking to her noted her shift in position and started to pivot. They were just about to spot Evan when Mia turned and stepped in front of them.
Blocking their view.
She squared to them, hoisting Peter higher to wall out their vantage.
When she turned back around, Evan was gone.