FREEZE!”
Jeremy turns around.
Men with guns. Police, federal agents, something. Flak jackets.
“Thank God.” It’s Emily.
Jeremy turns to the window. Squints to make clear what he’s seeing: the world is still intact. The skiff, with the Guardians, jetting away.
“It didn’t work. It didn’t go off!” Emily.
He feels a hand on his back, another.
“Jeremy Stillwater?” A man’s voice, the one attached to the heavy hand on his shoulder. “You’re under arrest.”
He turns. In the doorway, Andrea. Wearing a bulletproof jacket. And a grim visage. Black ash smudges on her cheeks. In her hand, some sort of heavy black handgun.
Jeremy: “Andrea. You got my text, you followed the signal.”
Andrea: “I’d advise you not to say anything further.”
Handcuffs clapped on him.
Emily: “What are you doing?”
The fed: “You’re under arrest for the murders of Harry Ives and Evan Tigeson.”
He looks at Emily, then at Andrea. “Tell them! About Surrogate!”
“I advise you to get an attorney, Mr. Stillwater,” she says.
He searches her eyes, looking for a sign, a wink and a nod, an indication of whose side she’s on. She says: “Dr. Ives was killed with one of your knives.” It sounds almost apologetic. Like: there’s nothing I can do.
The fed says to her: “Please don’t say anything further.”
“I . . .” Jeremy looks at the fed, then gets his footing, says: “They’re getting away. You see we were held captive here.” Turns to Andrea: “This is absurd. You obviously had to blast your way in here. It’s not like I was standing outside with a gun. Whoever you killed, that’s who did this . . . Harry, and Evan.”
An arm yanks Jeremy through the door, and, several heavies at his side, he is escorted down the stairs. Outside. He sees carnage. The van in flames. A body. It’s the guy in the denim jacket, bullet riddled, bloody.
Something next to him, on the ground, a glint of metal, a smolder of plastic. The iPad and its cover.
It was wrong. I was wrong.
Jeremy suddenly tears himself away from the beefy fed holding his left arm and sprints to the body prone beside the van. He dives at it, a human fury. “Freeze,” he hears a chorus behind him say, then feels arms groping at him as he scrambles with his cuffed hand to tear at the shirt of the dead Guardian. Rips the garment, even as he’s being ripped from the body. But before he’s yanked away, he manages to do what he’d hoped: expose this Guardian’s naked torso. On his chest, a tattoo. A lion.
From behind, Jeremy hears a seething whisper: “Next time, I shoot.”
He turns, sees Andrea and others, scampering up. Among the group, a tall, thin woman in a flak jacket. It’s Andrea’s second, her assistant, hired gun, bloodhound. She catches Jeremy’s eye and locks on to it until Jeremy turns back to Andrea. “Where’s Nik?”
Andrea looks away.
The fed looks at the body on the ground, says to Jeremy: “Want to tell us the name of your accomplice?”
In the time it takes Jeremy not to respond, he gets yanked toward a black police car, no mercy now, and a hand pushes down on his head and shoves him into the backseat.
The car pulls away, Emily and Kent, standing at the front of the building, entangled, watching in disbelief.