I punch in Atticus’s number and wait for the automated voice saying it’s Scout Dry Cleaning.
“It’s me. Call me back on this number.”
Atticus calls back thirty seconds later, as I’m heading down to the second floor. By then an alarm has sounded, not the fire alarm but an emergency siren. The door on the second level opens. It’s a man and woman and three kids, the kids shouting and their parents telling them to stay quiet.
I slip the Beretta in the waistband of my jeans. My T-shirt’s not that baggy, and I hope nobody in their panic notices the slight bulge.
Atticus says, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. What about my family?”
“They’re safe. Where are you?”
More people have filed into the stairwell. A few families but mostly business people wearing business clothes.
“We’re evacuating the hotel right now.”
Someone behind me says, “I heard there was a shooting.”
Another person says, “I thought it was a fire.”
One of the kids ahead of us, a little girl, starts screaming, “Are we going to die?”
In my ear, Atticus’s calm voice says, “Have you eliminated all of your captors?”
Captors. That’s one way of putting it.
“Almost.”
“What does almost mean?”
“It means almost.”
The alarm keeps going, echoing in the stairwell just like that single gunshot. We reach the first floor and pile into the lobby. The staff directs everybody to go outside. Police cars have already arrived, officers jumping out of the cars with their guns in hand.
Atticus says, “Holly?”
“Hold on.”
The morning air feels good on my skin as we file outside. I scan the sidewalk and the street, searching for the freelancer. If he’s made it out, I figure he’ll try to disappear. That would be the smart thing to do.
Turns out the guy isn’t smart.
He’s standing across the street, on the fringe of a crowd that’s started to grow, watching everybody exit the hotel.
I hurry over to one of the cops sliding a Kevlar vest over his head.
“Officer? That guy over there—the one across the street—I saw him inside with a gun!”
The freelancer seems surprised that I’m blatantly pointing him out.
The cop, already on high alert, snaps his focus to the crowd across the street.
“Who? Where?”
I point.
“There!”
The freelancer turns away and starts walking down the block, which is the last thing you want to do when somebody’s pointing a police officer in your direction.
The cop doesn’t say anything else to me. He starts running, shouting at another cop nearby, who also starts running. The freelancer, realizing he’s been made, starts running, too.
I drift away from the crowd as more police cars arrive. A fire truck is headed down the street, blaring its horn. I head in the direction the two cops went. They’ve disappeared around a corner. I hear shouts, then gunfire. I pick up my pace, worried that the freelancer has taken out the cops, but when I turn the corner, prepared to grab the Beretta, both officers are still standing and the freelancer is on the ground. Dead.
I say into the phone, “Okay, I think that’s all of them.”
Atticus releases a breath, like he’s been holding it this entire time.
“Where are you now?”
I check the street sign and tell him.
Atticus says, “I can make a call and have somebody pick you up in five minutes.”
I keep walking down the street as two more police cars zoom past headed in the opposite direction.
“Not yet. This isn’t quite over.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was brought here to assassinate President Cortez.”
Atticus releases another breath.
“Yes, I suspected it was him.”
“He’s supposed to arrive at a hotel a couple blocks away any minute now.”
Hurrying down the sidewalk, I spot two crowds outside the hotel, one close to the entrance and one across the street. The one across the street has signboards and are chanting.
Protestors.
Atticus says, “I can make another call. Make sure he’s alerted.”
I pause.
“How many friends in high places do you have?”
“It depends. What are you thinking?”
I tell him. He’s quiet for a moment, then sighs again.
“I’m not sure the plan is realistic.”
“He has people inside his cabinet who are working against him. It’s the only way Hayward and his people knew about the change in schedule.”
“There are other ways they could have learned about the change in schedule.”
“Call it a gut feeling, Atticus. Somebody close to him is dirty. There’s only one way to sniff them out.”
Atticus doesn’t speak for another moment.
“I can make a call, but I can’t make any promises. Besides, what makes you think President Cortez will even give you the time of day?”
As I join the crowd outside the hotel entrance, I think about the night just outside La Miserias, in Fernando Sanchez Morales’s mansion, stepping into the master bedroom to find Morales’s wife and son cowering in the corner while the man known as the Devil stood over them.
“Trust me, Atticus. He’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
Forty-Four
President Eduardo Cortez sat in the back of the armored SUV. He watched the tall buildings slide by outside the window and tried not to yawn.
He wasn’t successful.
Imna Rodriguez, his closest aide and confidant, smirked at him.
“Try not to do that once we get there.”
“Is that your professional advice?”
“It’s what I get paid for.”
Cortez smiled and shifted his focus out his window again. Their entourage consisted of two other armored SUVs—one leading them, one tailing them—as well as a handful of police cars. One of his bodyguards sat in the passenger seat up front, while his other security detail rode in the other vehicles. The middle seat in the SUV had been taken out and flipped around so it faced the rear back seat; Imna sat in this front seat facing him.
They’d left LAX a half hour ago and would be arriving at the hotel soon. And then, after a brief speech and a photo op with the state’s