and he'd get them the hell out of here, before this turned into an incident. Wouldn't do for that Eyes Only to get ahold of tonight's fun and games…
Thank God the neighborhood was practically deserted, but for junkies, winos, and other riffraff, not the sort of place where anyone would call the cops over a few gunshots.
Lydecker's thoughts were interrupted by the sound— a few blocks over— of a motorcycle revving, then peeling out. When he turned his rain-flecked face toward the engine roar, Lydecker saw nothing. Something nagged at the back of his mind— that girl, that remarkable girl in LA— but he shrugged. Things were contained. And another X5 could be checked off the list.
No one would ever know what had happened here tonight. The bodies and the blood would be swept away, like the garbage they were; and the money that littered the parking lot would be taken into custody by Manticore.
Things in Seattle would soon be wrapped up. They'd be going home…
… only Donald Lydecker still had the gnawing, nagging feeling that he'd missed something, something important, that for the success of Seth's elimination, an important but unspecified failure had also occurred, making a nasty balance.
Two days later, back in Wyoming, he called a certain TAC team member into his office— the young man who had seen the X5 dive off that observation deck. Lydecker— having learned that one of the dead men was the Russian he'd aided in the Chinese Theatre massacre— wondered if Kafelnikov's presence indicated also the presence of that extraordinary young woman from the Chinese Clan, that unidentified suspected X5.
“Tell me again what you saw,” Lydecker said.
The soldier, Keenan, just a kid himself (from Nebraska), wore simple black fatigues now, instead of his TAC gear. His blond hair was cut close, and he had shown nothing but loyalty to the program in his year and a half of service.
The boy was obviously considering the question carefully before risking an answer. “Sir, I saw the X5 known as Seth. He had his back to me, and—”
“No.” Lydecker rose behind his desk, hands on his hips. “Don't tell me what I want to hear. Tell me the truth— tell me exactly what you
saw that rainy night.”
Keenan met his superior's eyes. “I saw a girl, a woman really… with black hair, dressed in black, sir. Leather, I think. Sort of… motorcycle gear.”
Lydecker's memory replayed the sound of that cycle revving up and taking off, a few blocks from the site. “Did you see her face?”
“Negative, sir.”
“You're sure it was a female.”
Nodding, Keenan said, “Yes, sir, I'm sure. She was… ” And now he risked a tiny smile. “… built like a girl. Woman.”
“Athletic?”
“Oh yes, and… nice.”
Lydecker sighed. “I'm glad your faculties are so acute, Mr. Keenan… well done. Now… this stays in this room… between you and me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
Keenan saluted, spun on his heels, and strode out.
Lydecker sat down, rather heavily, and thought over what he'd just heard. It wasn't completely implausible that the X5s were in contact with each other. But were they
to something, together?
He thought about that revving motorcycle and wondered if he'd screwed the pooch. Maybe there
been two X5s in the Needle that night, Seth and one of the girls… Jondy, Brin, Max… could have been any of them. And very possibly this was the LA X5, over whom so many had died at the theater.
He would find out, when he caught up with them. He knew that someday he'd catch up with all of them.
Now, however, he was concerned that if the X5s were all communicating, maybe they were planning something, too. Maybe they were planning on catching up with him.
Shaking his head, trying to drive away the thought, he went back to work. But the notion that they might be after him as much as he was after them— that the children might come home to take revenge on their father— did not go away easily.
It never would.
Epilogue
RUMINATIONS IN THE RAIN
LOGAN CALE'S APARTMENT
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, 2019
Rain battered the windows of the high-rise condo, as Logan stared out into the night, seeing nothing but shapes and blurs.
Ten days had passed since something had gone terribly wrong at the Space Needle, and— despite what he could only assume were Manticore's best efforts— Eyes Only had managed to piece together only a few details.
At first, Logan had thought Seth had double-crossed him, had taken the money
the masterpiece, and killed everyone, then disappeared across the Canadian border; that the boy's homicidal streak had combined with greed and fear to get the best of the X5.
Then Logan had started thinking about what was wrong with that scenario. Sterling's body had been found in the parking lot, yes; but there'd been no sign, living or dead, of a certain Korean art dealer, and a notorious, ambitious Russian street gang leader out of LA… though street rumors strongly suggested the presence of the latter.
And what of Sterling's bodyguards? Logan knew Sterling wouldn't so much as go to lunch without his muscle. Had there been a gun battle in which only Sterling himself had gone down? Or, if bodyguards had been combat fatalities (and with the X5, that would seem inevitable), why would Seth leave only Sterling's corpse to be found?
And the more Logan mulled it over, the more absurd seemed the story of a billionaire's suicide over business setbacks.
No mention, for example, was ever made of Sterling's car— where was it? Had Seth stolen it? If so, why hadn't it been found? The boy surely would have ditched it by now. And what if Seth
stolen the car? Obviously, Sterling wouldn't have walked the twenty miles from his house to the Space Needle, just to jump off…
So— how had Sterling gotten there? Where was his driver?
Spurred by these inconsistencies, Logan had started digging into Sterling's alleged financial setbacks. At first blush, every column seemed to add up; but the more Eyes Only looked, the more things appeared out of whack.
Stocks that Sterling lost money on had shown only marginal dips, far less significant than officially reported versions of the dead man's deficits. Businesses that were ancillary to his Internet company had failed, but checking
