“Don’t hang up! I’m the FBI. What’s your name?”
“I’m Melissa Granby, sir—Agent Sir.”
“Take a deep breath, Melissa. That’s good. Now, tell me what’s going on.”
“A couple of seconds ago this guy—he said his name was Makepeace—he called us, said a bomb was going off in the hotel in Room 415. Then there was this loud explosion, and everyone’s screaming, guests are running down the stairs, it’s crazy—”
“Stay with me here, Melissa, slow down. You’re doing fine. Are there any police there?”
“Police? Yes, I see a uniformed guy running toward the stairs.”
“This is critical. Stop him. Now.”
Bless her young heart, he heard the yells, the running, the panic in the background, then he heard her shouting above them all for the officer to stop.
A few seconds later, a man’s impatient voice came on the line. “Who the hell is this? You better really be FBI and not some dumb-ass reporter.”
“Yes, I’m FBI, Agent Dillon Savich. I’m in on the operation with Lieutenant Ramirez. Please go straight up to Room 415, then call my cell and tell me what’s going on.” Savich gave him the cell number. “What’s your name?”
“Officer Clooney.”
“Officer Clooney, please hurry.”
There was nothing more Savich could do except speed, which he did. He felt Sherlock’s hand close around his. She said, “I’ve got our I.D. ready to shove in a cop’s face if we’re stopped.”
Savich let the Beemer ease up to ninety. He slammed his fist against the steering wheel. “I was afraid of a bomb, but there wasn’t time—damnation, I should have gotten bomb squads there straight off, bomb-spotting equipment—”
“Yeah, yeah, maybe we’d have had them in a couple of hours, which we didn’t have. Stop beating up on yourself. Concentrate on getting us there safely.”
“You’re right. But Dix and Ruth—Kathryn Golden—”
“Be quiet, Dillon. Dad’s Beemer needs you.” Savich eased the speedometer to one hundred. Thank heaven traffic was fairly light.
Sherlock said, “So Makepeace calls in the bomb himself, even identifies himself, tells everyone the room number, and blows it right away. Why? Are you making any sense of this?”
Savich said, “Maybe he told them the room number because he wanted people to find Kathryn right away, wanted everyone focusing on her, on the explosion, getting tied up in all the chaos. Meanwhile he’s hoping to see Cheney or Julia, betting everyone will haul butt down to Palo Alto. Or, maybe hoping we’ll leave Cheney and Julia in San Francisco.”
Sherlock said, “Problem here, Dillon. Makepeace is down in Palo Alto setting off a bomb, he as good as asked Cheney to come on down and let him try to kill him again. Does he think we’re that stupid? Wouldn’t he be able to figure out that Julia’s safe in my folks’ house in San Francisco, with Cheney protecting her?”
At that moment, Savich’s cell played “Born to Be Wild.”
“Is that you, Officer Clooney?”
“Yes, sir. It’s bad, Agent Savich. Here’s Sheriff Noble.”
Dix stood in the midst of the rubble, swiping his hand over his eyes to clear away the dust, holding his arm. “Ruth and I are both okay, well, nearly. Kathryn Golden’s in bad shape, Savich. There’s lots of blood, and she’s unconscious. Ruth’s stanching the blood from a wound on her leg. Lieutenant Ramirez’s face is bloody, mine too. Two of his men are slightly wounded.
“The room’s a mess, lots of smoke, lots of alarms, but maybe more noise than real damage. He probably used about half an ounce of Semtex, or some equivalent. But why not more? What I’m not getting here is why this little boom when he could have blasted the whole hotel to hell and gone, and us too? Why didn’t he?”
“Dix, hold on a second. Was the bomb detonated after you untied Kathryn and she stood up?”
“I’d say so, yes, wait. That’s right, it didn’t blow right away. Actually, she’d stepped away from the chair, three, four steps, then bang.”
“So he’s close by, using binoculars to see into the room, which means he blew the charge exactly when he wanted to. He probably connected the bomb to his cell phone. Get the cops to canvass the buildings across the street, he’d have to be able to look into the room. Are the drapes open?”
“Yeah.”
Savich heard Dix speaking to Ramirez, heard Ramirez talking to his officers. Then Dix was back. “Okay, done. And we’ve closed what was left of the drapes.”
Savich said, “I’m thinking he could be across the street, or— am I an idiot or what? You said it yourself, Dix, it doesn’t make sense. Quick, check around the hotel room—up at the ceiling line—see if there are any digicams pointed at you, or a cell phone—that’d be the easiest way.”
Dix said, “You think he’s got two cell phones and he’s been watching the hotel room ever since he left? That would mean Makepeace doesn’t have to be across the street, Savich, he doesn’t even have to be in Palo Alto. He could be in frigging Oregon.”
“Yeah, he could. If Makepeace blew the bomb exactly when he wanted, that would mean he didn’t want to kill Kathryn Golden or any of the hotel people or cops who found her when he sent them up to her room.”
