The pressure of the man’s grip drove Nathan’s elbow squarely into his bullet wound. The pressure and the pain made it impossible to take a whole breath.
“Let go of me!” Nathan yelled. “Help! Get this guy off of me!” He kicked wildly and wriggled in every direction. As the man’s grip weakened, Nathan started to slip through his grasp. The man grunted and staggered back as a flailing heel found his kneecap. When Nathan drove the back of his head into the man’s nose, he let go completely and staggered backwards. Nathan landed on his feet and coiled into a half-crouch, preparing to defend himself against the next attacker.
For a long moment, no one in the crowd moved as the realization hit them. Nathan heard his whispered name work its way through the crowd like The Wave at a baseball game.
“I didn’t kill those people,” he declared in a voice so soft that only the four or five people closest to him could hear it. “People are trying to kill me. Please let me be.”
The big man on the ground groaned loudly and cursed the boy. “Somebody grab him!” the man yelled.
“No!” Nathan yelled. “Please, no. I didn’t start this. He—”
“Just hold it right there, Mr. Bailey,” a voice said from behind.
The sound of Pointer’s voice made Nathan jump as though zapped with electricity. He whirled around, and there the killer was, still in his police uniform, his gun drawn and pointing directly at Nathan’s chest. Both of them knew that he couldn’t miss at this range.
The cameraman in the Action News helicopter was the first to notice the activity on the ground, about a block and a half frOm the square. It looked as if there were a fight in progress. When he zoomed in with his big telephoto lens for a better look, he saw that an arrest was being made.
“They’ve got him, Paul!” the cameraman shouted into the intercom. “They’ve got the kid! I’m getting the arrest on tape!”
Paul Petersen, the on-air reporter, darted to the monitor to confirm his cameraman’s report, then radioed the station.
“It’s going down right now!” Petersen exclaimed to the news desk. “Tell the network we’ve got a live feed of the arrest!”
A patrol car spotted Michaels at the base of the memorial.
Sheriff Murphy’s plan was simple enough. Find Warren Michaels, keep an eye on him, and sooner or later, they’d have Nathan Bailey in custody. From the way the lieutenant had been acting, it only made sense that he’d arrange a meeting. And after Petrelli had explained the business about Michaels’s son, the intense protective streak made sense as well. Clearly, the man had lost perspective.
Or such was the message delivered to Deputy Steadman. Now codenamed Sniper One, he’d been dispatched to commandeer a corner office belonging to an accountant on the third floor of the professional building across from the Lewis and Clark Memorial. From there, he would have a clear view of the area around the obelisk. For the last ten minutes, while Steadman had been on station, Michaels had done nothing but pace and check his watch. As Sniper One watched him through his ten-power scope, the detective seemed distraught. Steadman read that as proof that his party was running late.
Steadman had rehearsed this scene and dozens like it in his mind hundreds of times. After three years as a SWAT sniper, he’d been called out only once to prepare a shot, and that time the bad guy gave up without a struggle. Nonetheless, he knew he was ready, physically, psychologically and technically. He’d read everything he could find, and talked to many successful snipers, and shot thousands of rounds into all manner of targets-moving, stationary and partially concealed. He knew he’d be able to handle whatever came his way.
The thought of avenging his friends’ deaths made it all that much easier. Steadman had seen firsthand how the kid reacted when he was cornered. He’d seen the gun on the seat of the car and he’d seen the gaping holes blasted through his buddies’ heads.
Steadman wasn’t fooled by Nathan’s age. He knew what a criminal mind like that was capable of. The arrest was going down soon, and if the cop-killing bastard even thought about violence, Steadman was going to blast him straight into next month.
The sniper’s nest sat back about six feet from the open window. Two phone books and an accounting manual stacked on top of the expensive wooden desk served as the rest for his beanbag rifle support. Steadman sat comfortably on the edge of a high-backed leather chair that he’d wheeled around to the front of the desk. He double-checked to make sure the safety was on and took care to ensure that his finger stayed out of the trigger guard before bringing the crosshairs to bear on Michaels’s head.
The range was seventy-five to eighty yards, close enough that Steadman could put a round through the center of a dime. Though Michaels’s head filled the sight picture, Sniper One concentrated on the single spot over his eyebrow where the crosshairs intersected: the no-reflex zone. He inhaled deeply, let out half the air and held it. He tightened his finger on the trigger guard.
“Pow!” he whispered, simulating the rifle’s recoil. Piece of cake.
“He’s the one, not me!” Nathan cried as he backed toward the circle of bystanders. “He’s the one who killed those policemen!”
Pointer felt his face flush red. He wasn’t used to performing his craft in front of an audience. He fought the urge to scan the crowd for its reaction, fearing that it would appear out of character.
“Get down on the ground, boy,” Pointer commanded, gesturing with the muzzle of his gun.
Nathan shook his head frantically and tried to worm backwards through the line of people. They wouldn’t let him through.
“I didn’t do anything!” he yelled, his eyes pleading for someone to help. “Don’t let him take me! He’s the guy I talked about on the radio! He’s the guy who killed the cops!” Still, no one made a move to assist. “You’ve got to believe me!”
A tall man dressed in a business suit stepped forward out of the crowd and positioned himself an arm’s length from both the police officer and the boy, taking care to stay out of the line of fire. He wore his thick mane of gray hair slicked back in a pompadour and sported a neatly trimmed white beard. Nathan saw kindness in the man’s eyes.
“My name’s Albert Kassabian,” the man said. “I’m an attorney. I think I have a solution to this problem:’
“So do I,” Pointer hissed. “Mine is for you to stay the fuck out of the way and let me do my job.” His eyes never left the boy.
“I don’t recognize your uniform, Officer,” Kassabian said smoothly. “Where are you from?”
Pointer felt his control slipping. These assholes were going to screw it up for him again. He should just take his shot now and make a quick getaway, but that would be stupid. If the crowd pounced, he wouldn’t be able to fight them all off. He decided to play the charade one step further.
“I’m from Braddock County, Virginia,” Pointer explained, “where this young man is wanted on a murder charge.”
Kassabian nodded pensively, as though he’d been sold on Pointer’s answer. “Tell you what,” the attorney offered amicably, “let’s just hold what we’ve got here until one of our own sheriff’s deputies can come and make the arrest. That way, we won’t have any jurisdictional improprieties.”
Nathan knew that Pointer was going to have his way in the end, and he knew that right now was the best chance he’d have to make a break. He bent low at the waist, pivoted to his left and squirted into the crowd.
Pointer saw the boy disappear before his eyes and snapped off a quick shot, splintering the kneecap of the lady standing behind where Nathan had been. The Hit Man cursed bitterly and turned to Kassabian, firing a round into his intestines. The intent was not to kill, but to inflict maximum pain. The old lawyer doubled over and fell to the sidewalk, spewing blood and vomit onto the white concrete.
Pointer brought the gun around again, and the crowd parted, dropping to the ground as though they, too, had been shot. In less than ten seconds, Nathan had gained a good fifty yards. Pointer took off after him.
The race was on.
“Oh, my God,” Denise gasped into her microphone. “The police officer has just shot two people! ning down the street trying to get away! The poor thing has been telling the truth.” She was crying, something she’d never before done on the radio.
“Run, sweetie!” she begged. “Where are the real police, dammit!?”
The 911 lines exploded at the Emergency Operations Center, giving frantic reports of people shot outside of Fisher’s Hardware Store. More than half of the callers took the time to explain that Nathan Bailey had been there,
