Hearing me, the courier glances over his shoulder, and for the briefest instant, we make eye contact. Customers pause and look curiously in my direction, but he continues straight ahead at a fast but calm walk, getting ever closer to those flip-style doors. I brush past a woman and her young child, and I’m gaining ground fast, but he’s still going to beat me to the exit. I’m not fast enough, there’s too much floor to cover.
I stop in my tracks. Drawing my sidearm, I dart a couple of steps sideways, trying to get a clear line of sight. “I said stop!” I shout again as loud as I can, “You in the red hat! Stop right there, or I will fire!”
People scream, duck, rush out of the way, rush into the way, panic. In my peripheral vision, I see some dark-dressed figures that I know must be security guards closing in on me quickly. Worse, though, people run for the doors, flooding around the courier, clogging my firing lane with innocents. I can’t line up a shot.
I aim at the ceiling and squeeze. The report rings loud through the vast lobby space, echoing with a dry clatter off the stone floor and ceiling, piercing for a brief instant through the shouts and screams and yells. “Stop him, or we’re all dead!” I yell again, but no one moves to help. “Drop the weapon!” a voice snaps in response—at me, not the courier. I don’t bother to turn, but I know that the security guards have drawn their weapons and have their aim on me, trigger fingers twitchy and anxious.
“Down!” I scream, furious. “Everyone down!”
Many comply, kneeling down, terrified. More ignore the command and keep rushing for the doors, around and over the ones crouching low. The courier doesn’t even flinch, he just keeps walking.
“Dammit, drop the weapon!” another security man commands, overlapping with another screaming, “Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!”
Even though I know all of them are ready to put me down, I ignore them because I’ve got no choice at this point. Taking a shooter’s stance, I draw a bead on the courier. He’s so close to those flip-style doors now, just a few meters, a few steps away from the exit, out in the world and gone. I lower the sights, try to set up a clear shot at a calf or thigh, but there are too many people on the ground, too many heads and torsos blocking those angles. If I’m going to take the shot it has to be a high one.
“Down! Down! Down!”
“Drop the weapon!” one of the security guards shouts. “Do it, or we’ll shoot!” calls another. Their fierce masculine barking rings into a dull, indistinct drone as I focus, staring down the brushed-titanium-and-LED sights of my sidearm, finding the center of that red cap and putting it right on the middle dot.
I squeeze the trigger. The gun jumps with its familiar kick, but the ring of the shot is startling and loud, the puff of red against red immediate. Another report rings out, even as the courier collapses forward, but I don’t see where it came from, and I don’t feel it hit me. Rather than shooting back at whoever fired, I raise my arms in surrender, letting my gun hang slack by its trigger guard on my index finger.
“Down!” one of the security guards shouts again. They close in, encircling me. “Drop the weapon!” “On the ground, on the ground!” “Nobody move! Nobody move!” In the air above my head, five security drones hover in place, their rotors buzzing softly as they point weapons and cameras at me. They probably haven’t fired yet because their protocols have either determined that I’m no longer a threat or that the danger of a ricochet is still too great.
I stand frozen still, surprised I haven’t had half a dozen bullets put through me already. “The device in that man’s hand is a proximity detonator,” I announce loudly, trying to keep the panicky shake out of my voice. “If he got far enough away from the bomb, it would’ve killed all of us.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” says the security guard right in front of me, “and neither are you.”
“What bomb?” asks another.
“Brady?” I call out. “Get the box.”
I’m too petrified to turn my head to see, but the lobby has suddenly gone dead quiet except for the barely audible whir of the drones. I can hear one set of footsteps, one hurried pair of hard-soled dress shoes moving quickly over stone, going away and then coming nearer.
But they stop some distance behind me. “Taryn,” Brady says, his voice strangely quiet, “this doesn’t seem… I’m not sure this is right.”
“What?”
I hear some shuffling like he’s opening the box. “Sir!” shouts one of the guards. “Stop right now! Do not open that package. Put it down, sir!”
“Gentlemen,” I say loudly, trying to push the doubt out of my voice and replace it with authority, “you can see that I am a Collections Agent. I am going to holster my weapon—”
“Put it on the ground! The police are on their way.”
“Good,” I answer coolly, gambling that even though they’re SCAPE employees, these goons won’t risk shooting down a Collections Agent unless they have to. “I’ll cooperate with them when they get here.”
With slow, obvious, demonstrative movements, I lower my gun to my side and slip it into its holster. Still moving slowly, I turn to face Brady and take several paces toward him, the sound of my footsteps isolated in the silence. At about arm’s length, I peer into the box he’s opened.
It’s empty.
Oh, no. No, no.
The world seems to close in on me fast, the quiet in the air suddenly stifling. This was a setup, an obvious trap, and I fell for it. I knew something seemed too obvious. How far back does it go? Did one of the security guards tip someone off that I was here? Was it Brady? Were the names planted on Chan’s patient list just to get me here? It could have been Myra… I can’t think clearly. There’s no time.
What do I do now? What can I do? I’ve shot a man in cold blood. I’ve got no evidence that it was justified, and the police are probably halfway here by now. I will have to answer for what I’ve done. The end of the road is near. I look up at Brady, unsure if I should be furious at him or afraid for him. His eyes look like those of a man who is lost.
“It was a setup,” I say, stupidly. “A setup.”
“Myra?”
“Or was it you, Brady?”
“It wasn’t me,” the newly promoted Deputy Auditor swears, pale-faced. He looks all around him, overwhelmed. “Taryn,” he says, stone serious, “you have to run.”
“What?”
“You have to run.”
He said it loud enough that the security guards surely heard him. But the instinctive part of me tells me he’s right, and the logical part of me can’t come up with a better answer.
Time is running out. Make a choice, Taryn.
I grab Brady by his gray striped necktie, and he’s too surprised to resist as I yank him close, spin him around, draw my weapon, and put it to his temple. Before he can question me I’m already screaming at the guards and at the customers, “Everybody listen up!”
The drones whir slightly closer, probably lining up a better angle to take me out, but otherwise the lobby is silent. I’ve got the attention of everyone here.
“You’re gonna do what I say, or I’m going to start killing people, starting with this man! Got it?” I motion with my gun to a group of people nearby cowering on the ground—three middle-aged men, an overweight old woman, and a trim woman of about my age. “You five, go to a teller’s window.” They hesitate, petrified. “Now!” Frightened, they hurry to their feet and across the floor to a window. “Give each one of ’em a thousand unit chip,” I shout. The teller behind the glass evidently heard me and complies, slipping the chips through the slot even though the glass is bulletproof. “Take them and run!” I command, “Out the door, opposite directions! Go!” The confused customers hesitate again, so I repeat myself louder. “Go!”