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“Remind them that somebody already followed them here,” Letty said.
Longstreet said, “Give me one of the radios. I’ll go watch the garage. Seems like that’s a likely place for them to stage. And our people will have to go in and out of there.”
Letty: “Good. Go. Both of you.”
As Longstreet and Sovern hurried out of the room, Kaiser asked, “Where do you want me?”
“Right next to Patty, looking at her telephone. If they come in, you gotta knock them down. Barb and I will do escort down to the garage and the cars.”
“You think they’re coming,” Kaiser said.
“I think they have to, if they know what we’re doing,” Letty said, and Cartwright nodded.
The hackers didn’t quite panic, but packed up in a rush, a near-frenzy, red books and laptops and clothes and notebooks bundled into anything handy—suitcases, shopping bags, pillowcases.
“We want everybody to leave at once,” Letty shouted at them. She’d scooped up her cane, and was using it like a music conductor, directing traffic. “Make as many trips as you have to, but we want everybody back up here after you’ve packed your cars. We need to go as a caravan so we can cover everybody. Sovern will lead us out.”
That caused some noisy complaints, but Sovern backed Letty, and so did some of the others, and as the first people started down the hallway, they’d all agreed to come back up.
At the end, with all the hacks and their friends in the two suites, checking couches and beds for random paper and flash drives, cleaning the place out, four of the men picked up two of the printers and carried them down the hallway to the fire stairs.
Able could handle one by himself, and was carrying it down the hall, back in the original box, heavy and awkward. “Left a goddamn half ream of paper in it, shoulda...”
He continued toward the stairwell. Down the hall in the other direction, the elevator dinged, and the Russian scout stepped out and looked toward them. Cartwright looked at Letty: “What?”
“Gotta...” Letty started down the hall, Cartwright a step behind her. The woman saw them coming and stepped casually back into the elevator as though she’d gotten off at the wrong floor. Letty shouted, “Hold that,” but the woman didn’t, the doors were closing, and Cartwright stuck her foot between them and they rebounded and the woman said, “I was just...”
Letty had reversed her hold on her cane and now she swatted the woman on the face, as she had with Harp, and just like Harp, the woman went down, bouncing off the back of the elevator car, then going flat on the floor.
Cartwright held the door and said, “Help me,” and she started dragging the woman out of the elevator by her streaky blond hair. The woman struggled and fought and Letty got her by the collar of her blouse and lifted her upright and said, “Move-move-move,” and Cartwright had her pistol out and pointed at the woman’s head and they pushed and shoved her down the hall and into the suite.
Inside, they kicked her to the carpet and Cartwright took her purse, which the woman still had looped around her body, and emptied it on the floor. First out was a pistol, a compact Ruger, followed by an iPhone. Letty picked up the pistol, pulled the magazine and jacked the shell out of the chamber, and put the gun in her belt and the magazine in a pocket. Then she picked up the cell phone.
“Who are you working for?” Cartwright asked.
“I’m a Realtor,” the woman groaned. She was bleeding from one eyebrow and her nose and a split lip.
Letty: “What’s the phone code?”
“I’m not going to give you...”
Letty lifted the cane. “I’ll break your arm. If you still won’t give it to me, I’ll break your other arm. If you still don’t, it’s a leg...”
Baxter was there, pulled in by the noise. He crouched, looking at the woman’s face: “Maybe you weren’t told, but we already shot and killed two of your guys and shot and wounded two more. If you don’t want to get hurt really bad, like dead-bad, you better listen...”
The woman looked from Baxter to Letty and said, “9-2-2-3-3.”
Letty punched in the code and scrolled down the list of contacts until she got to Tom Boyadjian.
“Tom Boyadjian,” she said, showing the screen to Cartwright, who was digging through the woman’s wallet, pulling out a driver’s license and a variety of wallet trash.
“We kind of knew that,” Cartwright said. “Her name is Catherine Shofly... Looks like she really is a Realtor. Former Dallas cop.”
Letty looked down at Shofly: “You know you’re working for the Russians? That they’ve murdered at least three people? That you’rean accomplice now? We expect that some of their shooters could be showing up here and there’ll be a mass shooting. Feds still have the death penalty for you spies...”
“I’m not a spy,” Shofly sputtered.
“Yes, you are. Maybe you can cop a plea, but that’s about your best hope,” Letty said. “Otherwise, you’re going to prison forever.”
