escaping her mouth, her eyes are open, fixed on his approach. Athena sits before her, still and silent, and Bell stops another ten feet past them, in time to see Gabriel Fuller rounding the corner onto the Flashman Tunnel, heading east and out of sight.
He doubles back, and Dana Kincaid is coming down the stairs, rushing toward them. Bell takes a knee beside his daughter, reaches out for Angel, but the woman shakes her head weakly, blinks with what appears to be a supreme effort. Her mouth works.
“Hold on,” Bell says. “Hold on.”
Cherry-red blood froths over her lips. She’s saying something, the same thing, over and over again, weaker and weaker as she stares into Bell’s eyes.
“Didn’t,” she says.
She says it four more times, until it is her last word.
Bell reaches out and closes her eyes. He looks at his daughter, and Athena answers with an expression that breaks his heart, that will haunt him for the rest of his life. It is the look he has seen on children all around the world, on boys and girls, young men and women, who have seen too much and felt too much and suffered too much. The light and joy that was his daughter is gone.
He puts a hand to his daughter’s cheek, puts his lips gently to her forehead. Meets her eyes again.
“I am so sorry,” he says, because in this moment, his duty will not allow him to release the gun in his other hand. In this moment, he cannot sign. He says it again, and he says, “Mom is safe. I love you.”
He gets to his feet, hoping that she understands why he cannot stay with her. Hoping that she will not think him the monster her mother does. Hoping that somehow, someday, she will forgive him.
“Get her out of here,” Bell tells Dana Kincaid.
He heads down the tunnel, after Gabriel Fuller.
Chapter Thirty-six
At first, he’s just running, he doesn’t even know where he’s going. Painted park characters flash past him on the walls, and his legs keep pumping, and he turns, turns again, until he realizes he’s coming up on Agent Rose’s Safe House, the entrance to the Speakeasy. He pushes through the door, stumbling, knocks over one of the tables, nearly trips himself against first one chair, then another. Makes it to the stairs and stops, leaning against the rail fixed to the wall. The MP5K is still in his hand, and he pops the magazine reflexively, replaces it with the last of his fresh ones.
He should have just surrendered then and there, Gabriel thinks. He should have just given up when Penny Starr saved his life, just as he should have given up when he heard what Dana was saying to him.
Everything he had, he realizes, is now gone.
His phone is ringing.
His hand shaking, he pulls it from his pocket, puts it to his ear.
“Arm the bomb,” the Uzbek says.
Gabriel’s pulse is beating so hard he feels his temples throb.
“Vladimir told me everything, Matias. It was his job to tell me everything. I can get you out. You need to arm the bomb.”
“You can get me out?”
“We put you in,” the Uzbek says. “Of course we can get you out. Out of the park and out of the country and out of this pretend life you’ve been living. But you must do your part, and you must do it quickly. I am watching the news, and they have heard the gunshots, they are coming. You are almost out of time.”
“How?” Gabriel swallows. “How will you get me out?”
“Helicopter.”
He closes his eyes. A helicopter.
“Put the device in position, arm it, and we will lift you out. It will be…” the Uzbek pauses, then continues. “Eight minutes. You have exactly eight minutes. Can you do it?”
Gabriel looks back down the stairs, to the bar, the open door leading back into the tunnel. To where Vladimir, who would have killed him, is lying without his brains. To where he repaid Penny Starr’s rescue with murder. To where Dana has been abandoned, and with her, this life he has deluded himself into believing is his own.
To where Jonathan Bell is surely coming for him.
“I can do it,” he says to the Uzbek. “Eight minutes.”
“I will see you soon, then. Good luck.”
Gabriel closes the phone, then tosses it away in a fury. He pushes open the door, steps out into the early evening of the park. He knows-he
But he doesn’t care.
His life has ended here in WilsonVille, and his only hope for a new one is in choosing to believe the lies. In choosing to believe that somehow, some way, if he does as ordered, the helicopter will come.
If he does that, he can believe he will live.
If that means killing WilsonVille, so be it.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Bell races down Flashman East, hearing broken bursts of static in his ear, the transmissions all but murdered by the layers of concrete and steel that make up the tunnels.
At first, he thought that Fuller was trying to escape, to get out of the park, but that would’ve required sticking to Gordo or at least looping back around to it at the first opportunity. Cutting beneath the river, perhaps, hoping to come out on the north side of the park, the employee lots. He’s at the juncture of Flashman and Pooch when he hears something clattering, plastic meeting wood, and he zeroes in on it, advancing up Nova, finds himself at the entrance to the Speakeasy once again. A cell phone on the floor, abandoned, and he picks it up, pockets it before climbing the stairs and stepping cautiously outside.
Fuller is nowhere to be seen, but immediately, he can hear Chain in his ear once again.
“-lock respond, Warlock, please respond.”
“Go for Warlock.”
“You get him?”
“Negative. Nobody’s seen him?”
“Nobody has eyes. Could be he’s out.”
“Could be.”
Bell turns in place, scanning, thinking. Gabriel Fuller, alone. Gabriel Fuller, who promised him his daughter’s life, who promised him the dirty bomb, if only they would let him go.
“He’s going for the device,” Bell says.
“We have no eyes, no contacts,” Chain says. “Bone has been evacuated, I’ve got Board with me. Where do you want us?”
“It’s a DB. Where do you place a DB to do the most damage?”
“Highest point, best wind dispersal of the fallout. You’re damaging property, people are incidental.”
“Highest points in the park.” Bell turns in place, looking at the WilsonVille skyline he’s been living within for almost two months. “Cardboard, take Mount Royal, west side of the park. There’s a ride goes up to the summit, you should be able to reach it via service ladders.”
“Roger that.”
“Chain?”
“Terra Space,” Chain says. “Would make sense, that’s where he wanted us to stage, the top of the Clip Flashman Rocket is almost as high as Mount Royal.”
