This was, Seth knew, not quite as nice as Logan's pad.
After changing into his work clothes— black fatigues and black boots— he also laid out a black jacket, gloves, and stocking cap. The weather had turned nasty on his way home, a driving rain rolling in like it planned to stay a while.
It hadn't rained in over a week— which was a drought in Seattle— and it seemed that just when Seth needed a dark, starless night, he was going to get one. What he didn't need, though, were these relentless sheets of torrential rain. He hoped it would let up before he had to go out.
With some time left, he picked one of the books out of the pile. An old travel guide of the city, it helped him to quickly learn about the Space Needle.
Built in 1962 for the World's Fair, the Needle rose 605 feet, was protected by twenty-five lightning rods, and, at the time of its construction, was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. Three elevators led up to the observation deck and the revolving restaurant below. One hundred feet up, the Needle had a banquet facility, and on the ground floor a gift shop. It wasn't a lot of information— the guide had been written in the heyday of the now dead tourist attraction— but it was more than he'd had.
That was when he heard the car on the street.
In this neighborhood the sound of an automobile motor was rarer than laughter— few around here could afford to own a car (Seth kept his own wheels, an old beater Toyota, off the street, hidden in a warehouse blocks away). Car motors meant cops, nine times out of ten, so the sound of one always set off Seth's mental alarms.
And when he heard the second car, he
knew something wasn't right. He moved to one side of the window and edged back the curtains enough to see down on the street.
Two police cars were parked diagonally, blocking the way. Just behind one of them, a third vehicle— this one a SWAT van, pulling in now— meant not only was something wrong, that something was probably him…
He invested another second of watching, to get a better sense of what was coming down…
…
Seth lost another second, frozen by the sight.
He grabbed his jacket, gloves, and cap, jerked open the door, and went flying up the stairs. Lydecker would have the building surrounded, but they could only work their way up from the bottom. By the time they got to Seth's place, he'd be vapor.
Slipping on the jacket, cramming his hands into the gloves, and tugging on the stocking cap, he kept running up flights of stairs. When he reached the door to the roof, he tried it and found it locked. On the other side, he could hear the rain noisily pounding on the door, anxious to get in. A howling wind cried out in protest of its own existence.
He took a step back, and threw a shoulder into it and the door gave, splintering at the jamb, lurching open while Seth jumped through, the rain slashing at him like a killer with a knife.
Turning back, he slammed the door, then picked up a stick from the roof's blacktop and jammed it under the knob.
Drenched already, he struggled to see through the downpour. He could make out the edge of the building, and sprinted there, to look across a fifteen-foot gap between his building and the next… a matching tenement, also six stories. Gazing down, the unyielding rain pointing the way, he saw cops and SWAT running around the building, some heading up the fire escape on that side.
Seth backed up, took a running leap, jumped the gap, landed on the other building, turning his sliding arrival into a roll, and came up running, to head for the far side of this neighboring building. Two jumps later, he was at the corner building and calmly walked, feet splashing on tar, to a rooftop door that took him down the stairs to the street.
On the sidewalk now, looking back toward his building, he saw Lydecker pounding a fist on the roof of the police car, his clenched teeth flashing in the night like tiny lightning.
It delighted Seth that he could still get the smugly self-controlled Lydecker that pissed off.
Turning, Seth started off at a slow trot. No point drawing attention to himself. Now, he just needed to put distance between himself and Lydecker's team.
On thing was certain, though: tonight would mark the last act of his new fledgling partnership with Logan Cale. Seattle was used up for the X5.
If his old commander had found him once, he'd do it again. Seth knew the man would never give up. Lydecker didn't know how to quit— it wasn't in the bastard's makeup. The cash that would be exchanged, when Sterling and Kafelnikov's art deal went down a few hours from now, was more important than ever… it was a future for Seth, maybe the only one he had…
Everything was riding on what happened tonight, and that was fine by Seth. The Manticore X5s had been designed for difficult missions— the greater the pressure, the better they performed.
With the possible exception of Zack, Seth felt he was the best of the X5s.
Tonight, he would get his chance to prove it…
… though he doubted his former teacher would take much pleasure out of Seth's graduation ceremonies.
Chapter Twelve
NO SALE
SUBLIME LAUNDRY
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, 2019
In a dark T-shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes, Max sat perched on the edge of the chair across the desk from Vogelsang. The office of the goateed, overweight detective had its own unique bouquet— a distilling of egg rolls, detergent, cigarette smoke, and something that was either cleaning fluid or really rank barbecue sauce.
The funds Max was contributing to this small business were obviously not going into cleaning the place, nor for that matter was there any sign Vogelsang had upgraded his wardrobe: the private eye still dressed as though he picked his clothes at random in a very dark room… unless actual thought had gone into the choice of a slept-in sky- blue shirt and a pair of alarmingly bright green pants, which together turned his waistline into a bizarre, convex horizon where the sky and grass met.
“What have you found?” Max asked, not wanting to spend any more time here than she had to; she wasn't sure the peculiar aroma of this room would come off her clothes, particularly not if she used this laundromat. And she still had plenty to do yet today. The sky was threatening rain and she knew it wouldn't hold off much longer.
“I've got nothing on the woman or the Tahoe,” the detective said, riffling through some papers on his desk, avoiding his client's direct gaze.
“Nothing.”
He looked up and twitched a nervous smile; shrugged. “It was ten years ago. I told ya— this is gonna take some time.”
“What about our badass kid?”
Vogelsang shook his head, said, “Nothing on him, either— and a contact at the PD ran the computer looking for that barcode tattoo, too. Got squat.”
Max sat way forward, her eyes tight, intense. “This kid is tied to Eyes Only— and Eyes Only is somebody the cops are interested in… so there oughta be
