I forced my eyes back to Mack. From behind, despite the cramped angles of his bound limbs, he looked as if he'd nodded off. Bound and doused with gasoline-the style seemed more crime syndicate than Secret Service. Had Mack been killed not by Bilton's crew but by his bookie's people? So why would they want to lure me to the scene with a photomat slip? The answer came with a shudder: Mack would've told them I had the money.
Bookie murder or Service hit. Neither option a comforting one.
I scrambled into the bedroom again to continue my search. As I crossed the threshold, something fell from the back of the ledger. An old-fashioned envelope, yellowed and brittle. It was unopened, a date scrawled across the seam in faded blue ink: 5/91. The month of Frank's death. Crouching, I tore at the flap, the paper slitting my finger. A Polaroid fell out into my waiting palm. Bilton at a campaign field office, wearing a smile and a too-narrow brown tie, his arm around a beaming woman in her late twenties. She wore turquoise dangly earrings, and her hair was center-parted behind a pouf of bangs. A sign behind them proclaimed BILTON FOR GOVERNOR! Nothing on the reverse.
Our future president popping up in the back of a gambling ledger with a woman other than his wife. Who was she in all this?
No time to ponder-someone could kick in the front door any second. Pushing the photo into my back pocket, I looked desperately around the bedroom. In my excitement I'd risen from my half squat. Standing in full view of the window. The angle still hid me from the street and the sedan below, but I stared with dread at the windows of the apartments across.
A wink of light from the opposing rooftop caught my eye.
Before I could react, I heard something strike the kitchenette, simultaneous with a pneumatic thump from outside, like a tennis ball leaving a court cannon. I looked through the doorway. Something pinged around the small corner kitchen, sending up chips of tile. Shot in through the open window one room over? I watched it spin on the cheap linoleum, then stop.
A miniature rocket, no bigger than two inches, narrow stem connecting the warhead to a fin assembly. It looked like a fat, olive drab dart.
I don't remember leaping. I only remember flying in the air toward the back wall when the overpressure lifted me from behind, flipping me over. Shrapnel studded the walls instantly. Air sucked past me, drawn toward the front door, and then the room seemed to pulse, flames billowing up everywhere at once, clouds of brilliant orange. I scrambled to my feet as the flames advanced, curling the pictures on the floor, scaling the walls.
I shot a frantic look out the window. The roof across, now empty. Down below, the dark sedan remained in its place, but the door was thrown open, the driver's seat empty. My hand shot to my pocket, instinctively checking for the magnetic key case, but it was gone, the pocket torn. I spun around desperately, the fire flicking at me. The box lay shattered near the flaming futon. Falling to my knees, I jabbed at it. Melting plastic pieces and the top half of the key. It had snapped, a perfect break right in the middle of the brass teeth, but where was the bottom? The fire closing in, I ran a hand through the carpet, until a hot pain bored into my palm. There it was, in a nest of burned fibers. Before I could talk myself out of it, I seized it. Hot metal singed my fingertips, but I clutched it and ran toward the front door.
The fire grabbed at my pants, my hands. Mack's corpse was alight, the smell sickening. Flames ate through the cloth restraints, his corpse sagging as each gave way. I flew past and staggered through the front door into the hall.
A few neighbors were out, older folks staring shocked, a kid on an old-fashioned scooter. A sturdy man was pinning the fire door open with his heel, shouting for everyone to clear out. Past him, way down the hall, a tall, powerful figure wheeled into view around the turn.
Reid Sever.
We stared at each other, me in a half crouch, him frozen in his dark suit. And then I was on my feet, sprinting for him. His hand went to his hip, but I crashed left, hard into the laundry room, and flew out the window, landing with a bang on the pool shed six feet below. My shoes slid out from under me, and I ass-bumped and skidded off the edge, landing in a full sprawl on the concrete. The severed top of the key bounced free from my hand, knocking the pavement with the ring of a flipped coin. I rolled once and caught it just above the surface of the murky pool.
Glancing back, I saw Sever leaning out of the laundry room, readying for the drop, smoke billowing from the neighboring window. I bolted. Over the fence, up the street, fighting my car keys out. Two blocks away and accelerating, I still couldn't catch my breath.
I had to get home before they beat me there and seized the rucksack holding that torn page of mysterious numbers.
Chapter 30
Across the street from my apartment building, an agent sat behind the wheel of a fleet Chevy, his lips moving. I couldn't make out the earpiece, not from this distance, but he wasn't talking to an imaginary friend. Was he in the corrupt cadre with Sever, or was I now official Secret Service business? Either way, more agents were en route. I wouldn't have time for finesse.
I'd left my pickup one block over in a corner spot, facing the intersection, ready to haul ass in the likely event that I was pursued. Stepping forth from behind the mail truck I'd shadowed up the street, I walked briskly to my building.
As I entered the lobby, I heard the Chevy door close behind me. I turned calmly into the stairwell, out of view, and then I bolted, taking the steps three at a time. I reached the third floor before the door banged open below, and then the agent shouted up at me, the words indistinct with stairwell echoes. Spilling out into the hall, I nearly collided with Evelyn, tugging her cat along, a leash on its rhinestone collar. Stuttering an apology, I sprinted into my condo, slamming and locking the door behind me.
Moving furiously, I swept pans and lids out of the cabinet, clawing my way to the giant pasta pot in the back. I snatched out Charlie's rucksack and threw it on, racing to the sliding glass door. Behind me I heard a yell, then splintering wood. The agent tumbled into the room as I whipped the sliding door shut behind me and leapt off the balcony, striking the phone pole harder than I'd intended. I grabbed one of the metal bars, but my other hand swiped and missed. Swinging out monkey style, the pavement a gray swirl below, I caught a glimpse through the glass of the agent rushing to the balcony. Clamping my legs around the pole, I half slid, half fell to the ground. I risked a glance over my shoulder as I ran past the Chevy with its dinging open-door alarm. The agent was straddling the three-story drop between the lip of the balcony and the top foothold of the telephone pole.
The two dark SUVs screeching onto my street interrupted my momentary relief. Rucksack flapping on my back, I sped through the opposing alley, banged through someone's back gate, and tumbled out onto the street where I'd left my truck. There it was, parked a half block up by the intersection. A sedan was parked parallel to it, and
Sever was on his feet, peering through the passenger window. The tan, square face lifted, started to turn my way.
I pivoted abruptly and started walking away, but then I heard Sever shouting into his radio, so I dashed off again. Into the street, a bicyclist swerving and cursing at me, then across someone's terrace and through the lobby of a condo building. I spilled out the back into an alley, looking around wildly. The rev of unseen engines, eager and predatory. Two agents ran by the mouth of the alley, headed for my building. I was standing in full view, but they didn't happen to look over. I jogged the other way, rounded the corner toward Hacmed's store. Stepping out onto the street, I stared at the back of Sever's head. He was standing in the V of his open car door, gazing out at the street. I was so close I could see the white flesh beneath his freshly cropped hairline. I froze. Behind me, around the corner, I heard the crackle of approaching radios.