Halfway down the steps, a whipcrack split the night. The suspect tumbled awkwardly to the grass, and Hardesy threw himself at Rogers. With her partner piled on top of her, she was sandwiched facing the man who’d been calling himself Tony Evans. He now had a dime-sized hole in his forehead and his empty eyes were more glazed than any drug could manage.
Getting out from under and to her feet — the dead man in the same spread-eagle posture he’d been in when they first saw him — Rogers scurried to the nearest parked car. Staying low, she called back to Hardesy, “Did you see where it came from?”
He nodded toward the cluster of buildings to the east, the other half of the complex. “Over there someplace!”
“Cover me,” she said, and headed into the parking lot, keeping her head down, hugging the shadows, but knowing she’d given Hardesy an impossible job — the rifle shot had come from a good hundred yards away. He could neither cover for her nor effectively return the shooter’s fire.
As she ran, keeping low, Glock in hand now, she focused on those buildings, watching for any sign of movement. The trajectory made a shot from a window at any height unlikely. Somebody had been in the bushes or flat-out stood there and fired, and maybe was already gone.
But no vehicle in the parking lot had taken off in the aftermath of the rifle fire.
Then she caught a corner-of-the-eye flash of navy blue — a person running toward the parking lot toward the far side of the complex!
She stopped short and ran hard in that direction. If the shooter made it to his vehicle this chase was over...
The distance between her and the navy-blue suspect wasn’t narrowing but if he tripped or slipped, she had a chance. She was still a building and a half away when he got to the parking lot, where almost certainly his car would be close by.
She was near enough now to get something of a bead on him — an average-sized guy, black hair cut very close, an African American. He had the rifle in one hand, like a soldier charging up a hill. Then he came to a quick stop behind an older model Dodge and swung toward her, the rifle in two hands now, and pointing.
She threw herself to the pavement. The roar of a motor behind her brought her head up — Hardesy, in their vehicle, was closing fast on the Dodge! He was three car lengths away...
... when the shooter put one in the Ford’s radiator.
She got to her knees and raised her Glock as the shooter worked to rack another cartridge, then the shooter again took aim at the Ford, which swerved and slowed, steam pouring from the hole in its grill.
The guy in navy blue was in her sights when he pulled the trigger at the same time she did, not aiming at her, rather at the oncoming vehicle. The sniper dropped out of sight — she’d got him! — but then he scrambled up into the Dodge. Then her eyes went to the spiderweb hole in the Ford’s windshield.
The car rolled ever slower to bump up and over a curb, finally stopping.
“Hardesy!”
No answer.
Instinct kicked in and she sprinted toward their car, resting now in an apartment building yard on Temple Lane, headlights lancing through the night. In one final taunt, the Dodge gunned out of the parking lot.
Apparently she hadn’t hit the shooter, after all.
Hardesy was already climbing out, looking a little shaken and a lot pissed off.
“Son of a bitch shot the Ford!” he roared.
“You all right?” she asked.
“Hell no, I’m not all right! Suspect is dead, shooter’s in the wind, and the son of a bitch killed our car! Saving grace is, it’s the taxpayers’ money.”
She let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” she said somewhat breathlessly.
He grinned at her. “See how much better we’re getting along these days?”
Then he called in a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) on the Dodge while she walked over to where the vehicle had been parked. She clicked on her small mag flashlight and pointed it down: two rifle cartridges lay on the pavement next to a quarter-sized drop of blood. So while she hadn’t killed the shooter, she had hit him.
“Good,” she said to herself.
Hardesy came over. “BOLO is up. He keeps that car, we’ll get him.”
She pointed at the blood on the ground.
“So you hit him! Atta girl. Meaning no sexist disrespect.”
“None taken. The best part is, we have his DNA.”
He nodded. “I’ll get the word out to hospitals to look out for anyone seeking treatment for a gunshot wound.”
“And I’ll call in the evidence team... and talk to Miggie. Nobody knew we were coming here today but him. And I trust Miggie.”
Hardesy was frowning. “Me, too. Obviously someone else set us up. But who, and how?”
“Miggie ran Evans in the computer. Somebody must be doing some electronic eavesdropping.”
“Shit. That happened once before, if I remember.”
“You remember correct. There are some people in our government who would appear not to be trustworthy.”
“You mean, besides Congress?”
They both smiled at that, but not for long.
“Somebody,” she said, “is trying to keep us from investigating Secretary Yellich’s death.”
Hardesy was shaking his head hard enough to clear cobwebs. “What the hell has Reeder got us into?”
Even if she could have told him about the presidential mission, Rogers didn’t have an answer.
“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.”
Seven
Melanie Graham, the ex-Mrs. Joe Reeder, glared at the man she’d divorced, who still loved her.
“Jesus, Joe,” she said, “when is enough going to be enough?”
He guessed that was a rhetorical question.
Slender, she was wearing her brown hair very short these days, a change he regretted but hadn’t commented on. Her brown eyes burned into him and her teeth were bared, her upper lip curled back.
Okay, so she was pissed at him — at least she still cared.
“You’re a very successful businessman,” she said, biting off words, “and you’re not a kid, and yet you insist on getting yourself involved in these dangerous fixes and then everybody in your life has to uproot themselves for God knows how long until you sort the crap out and try not to get yourself killed.”
She didn’t get raving mad like this very often, but when she did, Reeder knew there was nothing he could say. He tried anyway: “I’m on a mission for the President—”
“The President! The President! How many years, how many damn decades, did I have to hear about one president or another whose life was more important than ours! Goddamnit, Joe, I’m still tied to you! We might as well still be married!”
He wouldn’t have minded that — normally.
She raved on: “How am I supposed to explain this to Donald? That we’re to pick up and pack up and go running somewhere and hide?”
The reference was to her current husband, Donald Graham, a lobbyist. Reeder was standing in what had been Graham’s house and was now Melanie’s as well. The framed landscapes that were scattered around the room, the floral sofa, the antique table lamps, were all touches his ex-wife had brought to what had been Graham’s male domain.