“I’m told there’s an escalator there,” Diaz said.
“I see it. Shit.” She was already rushing toward it. “He might be going for the tunnels.”
“You have visual ID?”
“No.” Charlotte hopped onto the escalator. All the way at the bottom was a man in a black ball cap. “Wait, yes. I see him!”
She elbowed past people, rushing down the steps and trying not to trip. Her Glock was gripped in her hand, but no one seemed to notice as she squeezed past them. She reached the bottom and found herself in a long, narrow hallway filled with throngs of businesspeople moving to and from lunch spots.
“You have him?” Diaz asked.
“Not anymore,” she said as she jogged down the corridor, dodging huddles of people who’d stopped to talk or read their phones. “I need backup here ASAP.”
“It’s coming.”
“I’m hanging up now so I can run.”
She stuffed the phone into her pocket and increased her speed, moving as fast as she could through the congested corridor. She’d lost sight of the ball cap and didn’t even see anyone tall ahead of her anymore.
“Shit,” she muttered, cutting through the crowds.
The corridor emptied into a huge atrium with a food court centered around a giant water fountain. People sat on the wall of the fountain, eating lunch and looking at their phones. Others lined up at restaurants and food kiosks.
Charlotte scanned the crowd, desperately looking for the baseball cap. She spotted it, and her heart lurched.
She took off across the atrium, straining to keep the baseball cap in her sights as she jogged through the crowds.
She caught a blur of movement to her left just as something hit her like a Mack truck. She went down hard, catching herself with her elbow as she struggled to keep hold of her gun.
“Sorry!”
The Mack truck turned out to be a teenage kid on Rollerblades. Charlotte scrambled to her feet, cursing as pain lanced up her arm. She looked around frantically. Where was her guy? She’d lost sight of the ball cap.
“Are you okay?” the kid asked.
“Fine. Go.”
His eyes widened as he noticed the gun in her hand.
“HPD,” she said, moving her jacket to show her badge.
She jogged to the fountain and found a gap between people. Jumping onto the wall for a better vantage point, she scanned the atrium. No ball cap. No tall guy running away.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out as a Segway zoomed over, piloted by a portly security guard.
“I lost him,” she told Diaz.
“Ma’am. You need to get down from there.” The ruddy-faced Segway cop glared up at her. “Ma’am?”
Again, she moved her jacket to show her badge. “I’m in pursuit of a suspect. Tall, jeans, black baseball cap?”
He shook his head.
Charlotte hopped down from the fountain, and pain lanced through her shoulder as her feet hit the floor. She’d wrenched something in her fall, but she couldn’t worry about that now as she scanned the crowd. There had to be hundreds of people in this atrium and hundreds more in the many corridors that radiated out from it like spokes. Frustration churned inside her.
“You there?” Diaz asked.
“I’m here.”
“Your backup should be there now.”
“It’s too late, Diaz. He’s long gone.”
Kira was tired and hungry when she stepped off the elevator into the lobby of the police station. She caught sight of the big, broad-shouldered bodyguard standing beside the door with his back to her. He wore a black leather jacket, and she noticed the bulge of a weapon at his hip.
He turned around, and she realized it was Liam, not Jeremy.
Liam Wolfe, of Wolfe Security, was here to pick her up.
Kira crossed the lobby and stopped in front of him. “Wow. VIP treatment.”
“Are you finished here?” he asked.
“I hope so.”
He nodded and led her to the door, which he pushed open as he smoothly cut ahead of her. These guys had the ladies-last thing down pat.
A shiny black Escalade was parked right at the curb—miraculously, without a parking ticket on the windshield. Liam reached for the passenger door and helped her inside. As she clicked her seat belt, he walked around the front, his gaze scanning the area.
The inside of the Escalade smelled of new leather. The dashboard was sleek and high-tech, with a navigation system that looked like it belonged in the cockpit of a fighter plane.
She glanced in back to see four empty bucket seats and windows tinted so dark she could hardly see through them.
Liam got behind the wheel and quickly pulled away from the curb.
“So,” she said, searching for small talk. “You guys are really pulling out the big guns, huh?”
He shot her a look.
“Is it my imagination, or is this glass extra thick?”
“It’s bulletproof,” he said.
Her nerves did a little dance. “And the doors?”
“Armored.”
“Damn. I feel really important.”
He exited the police-station parking lot. “Why do you say that?”
“Because this is like a presidential motorcade.”
He glanced at her, and she was struck once again by his intense look.
Of course, all the Wolfe guys were intense, including Jeremy. It had to be a prerequisite for getting hired.
“We don’t operate that way,” Liam told her.
“What way?”
“VIP treatment. Each client’s protection plan is determined by the threat assessment, not some organizational pecking order. Or who is footing the bill.”
“Good to know,” she said. “Any updates on Gavin Quinn?”
“He’s at Methodist Hospital, still in ICU.”
Kira’s chest tightened as she thought of him. From the security headquarters of the office building, she’d watched on the monitors as paramedics loaded Quinn onto a gurney and whisked him away. Detective Diaz had told her he’d been shot in the abdomen.
“I can get you an update when we reach the hotel,” Liam said. “We’ve got an agent at the hospital.”
“I thought he wasn’t your client?”’
“He isn’t. But we’re coordinating with his people now, along with local authorities.” He glanced at her. “Information sharing is a win-win in situations like this.”
Situations like this.
Situations like . . . murder. Attempted murder. Ever since she’d sat on Brock’s patio talking to those detectives, Kira had felt like she was living in an alternate universe.
She cleared her throat. “I’d like to thank you. And your agents.”
He gave her a questioning look.
“For reacting so quickly,” she explained. “It was instantaneous. One second we were standing around the lobby talking, and the next second we were in some windowless room. How’d they even know to take us there?”
“We scouted the location ahead of time.”
“Seriously?”
“We scout all the locations.”
“That’s very thorough.”
He smiled slightly. “Standard procedure.”
“And your agents are very professional. You must have a tough recruiting process.”
He nodded.
“I’m guessing it’s extremely competitive?”
He nodded again.