Funny, he thought, he had done all this to escape from death row and yet here he was. But then what did you expect in the long run? In the long run, it was all death row. There was only one way out of the world.
Foster and the slick agent stayed with him through the night. Mostly, they sat silently in the metal folding chairs. Once or twice Foster went into the enclosure. Shannon could hear him in there, murmuring into his cell phone, but couldn't make out what he said. After a while, Foster left the loft altogether. A few hours later, he came back and the slick agent left. Shannon figured they were going somewhere to get some sleep.
Shannon himself slept now and then. He would doze off and then wake with a start, realizing the morning was now that much closer. He figured it was just as well to sleep since the waiting was awful, but still, the end was that much closer, and the suspense and the sickness of inevitability grew worse.
Finally-suddenly-he saw blue dawn at the loft windows and figured he'd dozed off again. There was something lingering in his mind as if it had come to him while he was asleep. It was a story someone had told him a long time ago, when he was a little boy. He must've been very little, because he couldn't remember who had told him the story. He only had the sense that it had been a woman and he'd been sitting cross-legged on the floor looking up at her and she had been very kind. It was strange the things that came back to you and the things that didn't.
As for the story itself, it was about a boy who went to a magical country in his dreams. Shannon couldn't remember the details of it, only that the boy had met a magical fairy and she had given him a golden ring. Then, at the end of the story, the boy woke up in his bed and realized it had all been a dream-but when he looked down in his hand, there was the ring. It was still there. As a little boy, Shannon had been very impressed by the story and had found the ending wonderful.
He lay there on the cot for a moment, gazing out the window at the lightening sky, sick with the waiting and inevitability. He hadn't thought about that story in a long time, but he sort of understood why it had come back to him now. It was his story in some sense. What had happened to the boy had also happened to him. He had had a dream, too-a dream that he could have a new life with a new name and a new face in a new city-and now he was awake and it had only been a dream, but he had met Teresa there, and the way he felt about her was like the gold ring in the story.
Who was it who had told him that story, he wondered. It seemed to him he should remember someone who had been kind to him when he was a boy…
The loft door opened and Foster came in. Shannon had not realized he was gone. He was carrying a bag with him from a local diner. Shannon could smell coffee.
"Let's get ready," Foster said.
Shannon swung his legs over the side of the cot and sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
He was glad the waiting was over.
Now it was full day. Shannon was sitting in one of the metal chairs in the main part of the loft. He had his elbow propped on the card table to steady his arm. He was holding the handset of an old-fashioned landline phone to his ear, the kind with a coiling wire. His grip on the handset felt weak. His palm was sweaty.
He looked at Foster. Foster sat next to him, leaning toward him. He had an earpiece in his ear, wired to the phone so he could listen in. He fiddled with the earpiece and with the wire and tapped at a nearby computer keyboard. The phone was hooked to the computer, which was running some kind of program that Foster said would foil a trace, fooling the electronic switching system into thinking the call had come from somewhere else.
Shannon waited for Foster to finish with the keyboard and give him the go-ahead. He was growing more and more nervous by the second. The other two agents stood over them, pretending to be nonchalant, but watching the whole thing intently.
Now finally, Foster drew a breath and nodded at him. Shannon pressed the buttons on the phone. He waited. The phone started ringing. Shannon listened. He licked his lips to wet them. His heart was beating hard. The phone rang again. Foster tapped at his keyboard. Shannon switched the handset to his other hand. He wiped his wet palm on the leg of his jeans.
The phone began to ring again-then it broke off. Shannon's breath caught. Foster stared at him. The weaselly agent and the slick agent stood straighter. There was silence on the other end of the line. Then a voice:
"Yes?"
Foster nodded. It was Ramsey. It was a moment before Shannon could speak.
"Hello?" Ramsey said.
"You know who this is?" said Shannon.
"Yeah," Ramsey said. "I know."
"You want to meet me, I'll be at Betsy's Cafe at noon."
"No. That's no good for me."
"You're not in charge of this," said Shannon gruffly.
"We've both got to feel safe."
There was a pause. Shannon didn't know what to answer.
"You know Anatomy?" Ramsey said. "It's public, crowded. We can sit in plain sight and talk it out. Everyone goes home happy."
Shannon glanced at Foster. Foster shrugged and nodded.
"Yeah," said Shannon. "That's all right. Noon."
"I'll be there."
The phone line went dead.
Shannon hung up. He let out a long breath. "All right. What's Anatomy?"
"Restaurant downtown. Ground floor of One CC-One City Center. It just reopened about a week ago. They'll be booked solid-that's why he picked it. The place has strong connections with the city machine-obviously, or it wouldn't have that location. We won't be able to get a man in there without Ramsey knowing. You'll be on your own."
"But if it's crowded like he said, he can't just kill me."
"Oh, he'll kill you, Shannon."
"But not just right there with everyone looking."
"Maybe. Or maybe he'll just shout, 'Everyone get down, there's a cop-killer' and open fire. I don't know."
Shannon wiped his hand on his jeans again. "I don't think he'll do that."
Foster took out his earpiece and tossed it down on the table. "That must be nice for you," he said. "But believe me, he'll find a way." THE BUSINESS DISTRICT had been hit hard on the night of the disaster. Water had damaged luxurious lobbies and atria. Rioters had smashed massive storefront windows. Mobs had marauded through skyscrapers, ransacking offices at random. There had been fires everywhere.
No one knew exactly what had destroyed the upper floors of One City Center. Its distinctive spire had somehow been torn free of its moorings and had speared down forty-five stories through the flaming night before piercing the floodwaters, hurling great waves in every direction, and pulverizing itself on the pavement underneath. What was left of the building's top windows had been shattered. Its offices had been gutted by flames. From a distance, the building now seemed a looming charred-black tower rising to a jagged, mangled confusion of light and shadow. It darkened the whole skyline with an aura of malevolence and ruination.
Below, at the building's base on Center Street, there were still rows of boarded windows. There were lobbies and offices still filled with debris. But there were lights on, too, a checkerboard of lighted panes. Revolving doors were turning, people going in and out. The banks and financial and legal businesses had opened again wherever they could. So had the restaurants that served them. Pedestrians crowded the sidewalks and cars passed hesitantly under the sporadic traffic lights, edging around the barriers protecting the broken place in the street where the tower had crashed.