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He’d made his point. He released his grip.
She stood and stared at him, composing herself. Then she caressed the spring gun, admiring its workmanship. “High caliber, automatic fire. How many rounds? Thirty? Forty? There would have been little left of me.”
He could not care less. “You have the cipher solution.”
“Voccio emailed it to me a few hours before you arrived. But I suppose you already know that. Hence, your anger.”
“I have more than that to be angry about.”
She apprised him with a long gaze. “I suppose you do.”
“That solution will not remain a secret for long.”
“Jonathan, you have such little faith in my abilities. I had it emailed from outside the institute. Only Voccio knew from where. Now he’s dead.”
“Isn’t that convenient?”
She caught his drift. “You believe those men there last night came from me.” She pointed to the spring gun. “You probably believe that I planted this here, too.”
“Both are entirely possible.”
“It would do no good for me to deny either. You wouldn’t believe me. So I won’t.” She relieved him of the scissors, which he still held. “From my desk?”
He said nothing.
“I like you, Jonathan. I always have.”
“I didn’t know you liked cigars.” He’d caught the lingering scent in the air and found three antique humidors, each filled with smokes.
“My father once made them. My family lived at Ybor City, in Tampa. Many of the 1960s Cuban immigrants settled there. Florida was like home. It was once quite a place. Ever been?”
He shook his head.
“Spaniards, Cubans, Italians, Germans, Jews, Chinese. We all coexisted, thriving off one another. What an exciting place. So alive. Then it all ended, and they built an interstate highway straight down its middle.”
He kept silent and let her talk. She was buying time. Okay. Buy it.
“My father opened a cigar factory and did well. There were many in Ybor back in the 1920s, before the Great Depression, but gradually they all disappeared. He was determined to bring them back. No machines for him. All of his smokes were hand rolled, one at a time. I acquired a taste for them early in life.”
He knew that her parents had fled Castro in the 1960s and that she’d been born and raised here. Beyond that, she was a mystery.
“Have you always been a man of few words?”
“I say what I need to say.”
She stepped around the gun and came closer. “My parents were quite wealthy when they lived in Cuba. They were capitalists, and Castro hated capitalists. They left everything they owned and came here, starting over, intent on proving themselves a second time. They loved America, and at first this country gave them another chance. Then bad economies and bad choices took it all away. They lost everything.” She paused and stared at him through the dark. “They died broke.”
He wondered why she was telling him this.
“The opportunists who fled Cuba in the 1980s? The Mariel boat people? They tried to buy into Castro, and when it didn’t work out they decided to come here. All they did was make it hard for the others, my parents included. They should be sent back to live with what they embraced.” She paused. “I worked my way up. Every step. No one gave me anything. When my father died I swore to him that I would not make the mistakes he made. That I’d be careful. But unfortunately, I made an error today.” Her eyes locked on him. “Yet you gave me a reprieve. Why? So you could kill me yourself?”
“I’m going after the Jefferson Wheel,” he told her. “If you interfere, I’ll kill anyone you send, then I will kill you.”
“Why do you care? This really doesn’t concern you anymore.”
“A man died last night for no reason other than he did his job.”
She laughed. “And that affects you?”
“It affects you.”
He saw she understood. He could cause her problems. Change all of her plans. Screw up her life.
“Malone has the cipher key, too,” she said. “He emailed it to himself last night from Voccio’s computer, then deleted it from the institute’s server. There is no other record of the solution. Only you, he, and I have it.”
“He’ll go straight to Monticello.”
He stepped around her toward the door.
She grabbed his arm, her face only inches away. “You can’t do this alone and you know it.”
That he did. Too many unknowns. Too much risk. And he was not properly prepared.
“You don’t fool me, Jonathan. This isn’t about me and what happened last night. It’s Malone. You don’t want him to succeed. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Maybe I just want you to fail.”
“Go to Monticello. Get what we both want. What you do with Malone is your business. What you and I do is between us. I’m betting you can keep those two separate. You need me. That’s why I’m still alive.”
She was right.
The only reason.
“Get that wheel,” she said.
“Why don’t you get it yourself?”
“As I told you in New York, I prefer to owe only you.”
That meant she was nearing the end of whatever she’d planned. Involving any of her agents would only require more cleanup.
“You actually wanted Scott Parrott dead, didn’t you?”
“If he’d done his job, he wouldn’t be dead.”
“He never had a chance.”
“Unlike those three agents you ordered in after banging Malone in the head with a gun? They had a chance, right?”
The fingers in his right hand tensed into a fist, but he caught himself. That was exactly the reaction she wanted.
“Get the wheel, Jonathan. Then we’ll talk.”
MALONE SPUN AND KICKED ONE OF THE RICHMOND CITY COPS in the shin. He then planted a right cross to another and kneed the third in the gut.
All three went down.
The sound of a motorcycle roaring into the lobby had provided the few moments of distraction he’d needed to act.
Cassiopeia raced toward him across the marble floor. She slowed enough for him to hop onto the saddle, then gunned the engine, turning left, heading for the staircase fifty feet away. He wrapped one arm around her midsection while the other hand found his gun. He turned back to see the cops coming to their feet and unholstering weapons.
The cycle slowed as the staircase approached.
Risers descended in three long, straight flights, maybe a hundred feet from top to bottom, two wide landings in between.
This was the part he hadn’t been looking forward to.
“Here we go,” she
said.
He aimed and fired a shot over the cops’ heads.
They plunged to the floor, scrambling to use Jefferson’s statue as cover.
CASSIOPEIA HAD NEVER ACTUALLY DRIVEN A MOTORCYCLE down a staircase. A carpet runner lining the stone risers should help with traction, but it was going to be a bumpy ride.
She downshifted to second and plunged forward.
The suspension bucked as she and Malone fought for balance. She worked the handlebars, keeping them stable. She knew this machine. A low center of gravity made it easy to handle. European police had successfully utilized them for years. An earlier model was parked in her French chateau’s garage. Familiarity was exactly why she’d chosen it for the trip to Fredericksburg, as opposed to one of the Secret Service cars.
Cotton was holding her tight, her grip on the handlebars equally firm.
They found the first landing.
She added a quick burst of speed, then a nudge of the disk brakes, before dropping down more stairs. At the second landing the front end twisted hard left. She immediately yanked the handlebars right, the front wheel slamming into the final set of risers as gravity kept sending them toward the floor below.
“Company,” she heard him say.
Then a shot.
From Cotton.
A few more bumpy meters and they found a smooth surface.
She revved the engine and they sped ahead, threading a path across rugs through chairs and sofas, across the faux-marble hall, beneath the stained-glass ceiling.
People who’d been sitting rushed out of the way.
The exit doors waited thirty meters away.
MALONE WAS SURPRISED THEY’D MADE IT THIS FAR. HE’D GIVEN the whole thing about a 30 percent chance of success. They’d caught the police off guard, and he was glad to see that the way ahead was clear. Behind was their problem. He caught sight of the cops, bounding down the stairway, finding the first landing and readying themselves to shoot. He fired three times at the second set of risers, bullets ricocheting off the marble and scattering the would-be attackers.
He hoped none of the rounds hit anybody.
“Cotton,” he heard Cassiopeia say.
