Dark Ops: Hotshot Part 25

Forget manners and worrying about offending a congressional aide. "I want to find Vince and Agent Wilson."

"I don't think so." The soulless look in his eyes chilled her clean through.

Lewis turned her, tipping her balance. "This young man's going to take very good care of you."

She regained her balance, coming face-to-face with . . . Webber?

Even in khakis and a b.u.t.ton down, she recognized him. His long, dark ponytail draped over one shoulder. His hand seized her arm, FEAR blaring from his knuckles.

She s.h.i.+vered.

"Come with me," he said softly, his lumbering body too big for his age. "Lewis has to go back before he's missed."

Lewis? What did Anthony Lewis have to do with this? Apparently nothing good.

Webber walked faster, a photo security badge clipped to his s.h.i.+rt flapping. No way in h.e.l.l could he have gotten that badge through legal channels. Every instinct she'd honed in her job shouted that something was seriously wrong.

She opened her mouth to shout. To h.e.l.l with causing a scene.

Webber's hand moved forward in a flash. The sharp tip of a knife dug into her side. Painfully.

She gasped. He pressed harder until she could feel the cool steel stabbing a tiny hole through her suit, p.r.i.c.king her side. Not a knife. Anything but a knife.

Oh G.o.d, she was going to be sick.

Somehow he must have palmed the blade. She couldn't even imagine how he had gotten it past security. A moot issue anyway, because somehow he had.

"Really, Miss Ba.s.sett. You need to be quiet, and everything will be okay."

Miss Ba.s.sett? He had a knife in her side and he was worried about formality? Hysteria boiled inside her.

"Webber." She stumbled alongside him, terror making her clumsy. "I don't know what this is all about, but you have to realize-"

"Shhh . . ." He dipped his head, his dark ponytail swinging over his shoulder. "I don't want you to die."

Don't want you to die.

Don't want to die.

The cadence of his voice resonated in her memory. Settled in her brain. Scared her to the core.

Webber was her caller.

Webber nudged Miss Ba.s.sett down the hall, watching for any surprises. But thanks to the information Lewis had provided him, the corridor was clear.

Lewis just hadn't known that security hole would be used against him once Webber took charge.

The breach wouldn't last long, though. Even shorter because he'd squeezed his own agenda in along with Lewis's plan. He had to make sure that no matter what happened, Shay and Amber were safe.

If only Shay understood. She'd tried to scream twice already, and he'd been forced to nick her side to shut her up. Her fear of knives was obvious. He hated to use that to his advantage, but it was better than risking her life.

"Webber, listen to me, please. I don't know what Anthony Lewis has to do with this, but you need to listen to me instead of him." Shay gasped with each hurried step away from the crowd gathered for the hearing.

"Not now. There will be time for you to talk." He had to hurry before Lewis realized the script had been changed.

Webber checked numbers above the doors. Not much farther. He was supposed to walk out into the lobby with Shay Ba.s.sett, the witness, as his hostage, taking her with him in the big blast. Lewis had a weakness for making his statements with too much of a big deal, like that whole bomb scare idea back at the center. By the time Lewis would see Webber had come alone, it would be too late to do anything about it.

He stopped at the janitor's closet where he was supposed to hide out if things went wrong. He unlocked the door and shoved her inside with the buckets and mops and the stink of floor cleaner. He wasted one valuable second on the thing about this he regretted most.

"Miss Ba.s.sett, I'm really sorry about that old man who died in your car."

"The guard at the center?"

"Yeah, he was a loser, but he didn't deserve to die."

She blinked fast. "Do you think I deserve to die?"

"I tried to help you." Her perfume smelled nice, but then he realized he could only smell it because she was sweating.

"By putting a bomb in my car?"

The pain in her eyes bothered him, but he could only trust her so far. He wished she could know he wasn't all bad. He'd taken her bag to try to save her life.

Maybe this was his punishment for everything else he'd done. He wouldn't be able to explain his side of things. Why hadn't those special bomb dogs found the explosives like they did in all the movies?

"Webber, why does someone want me dead?"

"I'm already risking a lot for you. Good-bye-"

"No, no, please, just stay for a couple more seconds." She blinked fast, those eyes of hers so honest, like she cared. "You don't have to talk about any of this. Let's talk about you. You have important people in your life. People who care about you. Think how they'll be hurt if you die."

She went on just like she'd done on the phone, trying to help him. It hurt to listen.

With a speed honed on the streets, he whipped a gag over her head, into her mouth, and yanked the slipknot tight. He held the knife high. "Turn around."

Her eyes went wide. She shook her head.

"Miss Ba.s.sett, look behind you."

She backed away, her eyes darting as if searching for a weapon.

"Do it," he barked.

She tensed, only half turning. Then sagging as she must have finally seen Amber.

Her pretty brown hair sliding down her shoulders, Amber sat crouched in the corner, bound and gagged. It had been the only way he could be sure she was safe as well. Lucky for him, Shay had a soft spot for Amber, too.

"Now kneel down, Miss Ba.s.sett. I'm just going to tie you up like Amber. This will all be over soon."

She knelt slowly, her eyes nowhere near trusting. He tugged out another slipknot and secured her hands. She would probably work her way free after a while, but he would be done by then. "Move over there, across from Amber."

He hunkered down beside Amber to talk to her just once more, but he had to make it fast. He was running out of time.

Webber leaned toward Amber's ear, the smell of her shampoo so much nicer than anything he could remember. "There's fifty thousand dollars in a box at the bottom of the trash can." His payoff from Lewis. Lewis thought he was stupid enough to send his mother here after the hearing. There were other ways. "If I don't come back, take it for you and the baby. Use it to go away from here, and don't come back."

He wanted to hide Amber and Shay somewhere else, but this was the only place Lewis had secured for him. If everything went according to plan, the cops would escort Lewis in the gym and he would never get a chance to return here.

So many problems to work out, but at least there was a chance Lewis wouldn't get away with this. There was a chance for Amber and Shay and his mom.

He didn't want to think about what chances he might have.

For himself, just something for him today, he touched Amber's hair, just a strand to see how she felt. She winced. He wanted to cry.

Webber turned away from Amber, Miss Ba.s.sett's horrified eyes slamming into him. He owed her something. He owed her the truth.

"Miss Ba.s.sett, you made me decide to live."

He wished he could have trusted her with more, maybe even earlier, but she would have gone to the cops or to that big military boyfriend of hers. Then Lewis would have found out for sure. Amber and his mom would be murdered while he was forced to watch. He really couldn't trust anybody but himself.

Bomb strapped to his chest, Webber stepped into the hall and locked the door behind him.

"Where the h.e.l.l is Shay?"

Paulina heard Vince just behind her. She wished she had the answer for him. Somehow, as they'd been going through the first security, they'd been separated from Shay and Anthony Lewis. She was concerned but not completely freaked out.

Not yet.

She scanned the audience in front of her in a C-SPAN kind of sweep, then the stage with a witness table prepped with microphones and pitchers of water. Two of the seats were already filled, and one remained empty where Shay should be. The panel of congressional committees who were interested in this testimony glad-handed the local press and university officials. Cameras were rolling, after all.

"There, Vince . . ." She pointed over the sea of heads. "I see Lewis."

The aide skirted the edge of the group, but there was no sign of Shay.

The large crowd outside the political event worried her. People were pressed into such close confines, hepped up, discontent brewing in some of the protestors.

She wished they had some of Vince Deluca's crowd control options he'd used during that Honduran election mission she read about in his file. But with everyone inside, they would have to use more standard options in conjunction with the military's nano-bug flight surveillance.

Even now, she could hear Vince in her earpiece speaking low with his crew back at the hangar, instructing them to use their intelligence technology to expand the search for Shay. Paulina breathed a little easier knowing she had backup beyond regular mounted surveillance cameras.

Her BlackBerry buzzed against her hip. Absently she lifted it and scrolled, reading . . .

Holy s.h.i.+t.

"Don, Deluca," she spoke into her sleeve, "my people have a lead from the cell phone web your trackers have been building. Looks like something's up at the Port of Cleveland. Jaworski's on his way over with backup now."

She could see Don's frown from across the room. "The Port of Cleveland?" his voice softly stroked her ear over the airwaves. "What's that got to do with the threat here?"

Maybe nothing. Maybe coincidence. Or maybe- A teenager stepped from the audience in the back of the room, a familiar teen. Not surprising, necessarily. They'd expected teens from the center, thus the three levels of security checks.

Still something about him niggled at her. The way he walked. His clothing was actually fairly appropriate-khakis and a b.u.t.ton-down-a bit loose, but that was the norm for kids these days. He even had some kind of security tag. The kind for a student volunteer, perhaps?

She shoved the Port of Cleveland issue out of her head and focused on the here and now. She worked her way around the edges of the gymnasium toward him, angling carefully past a woman with a cane.

The teen stopped, his back to a wall.

She shouldered through harder, already calling into the mic in her sleeve. "Back left of the gym. Check the teenager with a ponytail."

He jumped up onto a chair.

Webber.

His name came to her in a flash as fast as his hands ripping open his s.h.i.+rt to display explosives.

Paulina stopped, the crowd around her screaming. Security drew weapons in a stadium wave of raised barrels.

"Stop," Webber said, not even shouting.

People froze like in some sick and twisted game of freeze tag.

Dead silence thrummed through her earpiece for three stunned seconds before a barrage of voices filled the airwaves. Experience on the job served her well in sifting through the chatter while keeping her focus full front.

The boy-Webber-raised his hand, thumb resting on top of what must be a plunger.

Paulina whispered into her sleeve. "Hold your fire. Hold your fire. We don't want to risk so much as a twitch from his hand on that detonator."

As much as she trusted her sharpshooters stationed throughout the building, she didn't much like the idea of bullets flying around so many people. She eyed the explosives strapped to the boy's chest. Thin metal cylinders, plenty of wires. It looked authentic.

So did the intensity on the young man's face.

"Stop running away, or I'll blow this thing and half a city block right now. I want you to listen. I need for people to listen."

Where was Shay Ba.s.sett with her suicide prevention skills?

Paulina tried to eye a path to the front of the room, but the press of people rus.h.i.+ng out squashed her back against a wall. The smell of fear and too much cologne rolled off their bodies. Footsteps pounded from all directions as uniformed cops and plainclothes security converged to form a semicircle around the boy.

And in the far corner of her peripheral vision she saw Don, edging along the wall toward the boy.

Bile soured in her mouth.

Webber's hand didn't so much as shake. "I see the way you're looking at me, all judgmental like. I'm just another thug to you. But this could happen to any of you. It could be someone closer to you than you think." He looked straight into the television camera, red light for Record blazing. "Anthony Lewis. He's the one to blame for all of this. He planned it. I would have gone to the cops, but n.o.body ever believes us or listens to us. I would have been arrested, and he would have been free to keep right on working. Well, I'm making you listen."

He paused, staring straight into the camera. "You don't know me. People like you don't want to know me. You see me and others like me every day on street corners and close your rich-a.s.s eyes, hoping we'll go away and not rob you or your uptown friends. Maybe you even hope we'll kill each other off. But the more you close your eyes, the more we grow. The meaner the streets get. The more you turn your own backyard into a war zone."

He raised his hand higher. "Well, I'm not closing my eyes anymore. I've been pounded on, and I've seen people I care about abused. In more ways than I can-" He cleared his throat, no doubt willing away the catch in his voice. "It ends today."

The boy spoke like someone with nothing left to lose.

At least most of the room had emptied out, but oh G.o.d, Don was still inching closer from the side while Vince kept the boy's attention on the cameraman still rolling tape.