Page 146 of Into the Fire

She was holding Peter.

Relief tore through Evan, something giving way under a strain he hadn’t let himself acknowledge.

Peter was clamped onto his mother, his face buried in her shoulder. Mia spoke to first responders, gesturing at the bodies around the van with her one free hand.

Evan had no idea what she was telling them.

For the first time, it struck him that the life he had built in Castle Heights was now over. As an officer of the court, Mia would be obliged to implicate him. She’d made her position clear. And he’d be on the run once again.

He thought of the informal pardon that President Donahue-Carr had dangled before him, the different life so tantalizingly close.

But staring at Mia and Peter now, he knew he’d make the same choice a thousand times out of a thousand.

She turned slightly and—way across the mob of cops and civilians—spotted him.

For a suspended instant, they locked eyes.

The officers speaking to her noted her shift in position and started to pivot. They were just about to spot Evan when Mia turned and stepped in front of them.

Blocking their view.

She squared to them, hoisting Peter higher to wall out their vantage.

When she turned back around, Evan was gone.

61

Speechless Terror

The boys assembled around the conference table on the seventh floor. The meeting had been hastily called. It was 11:00 P.M., and they were off their usual crisp standards in appearance and demeanor. Crooked ties, untucked shirts, patches of stubble.

The Steel Woman, however, was seamless. Pressed suit jacket and slacks. A perfect veneer of makeup. Her bun as tightly wound as ever, a water-smooth stone at her nape.

With a smudge of dried ketchup on his cheek, Fitz shakily finished his update. “So that’s it. My entire contingent wiped out. I don’t know what the next steps are.”

“Fortunately, I do,” Stella said. “You boys—all of you—will use your considerable resources and reach to hunt down Max Merriweather and the man responsible for this, eliminate them, and retrieve the thumb drive.”

There was no sound save the rush of the air conditioner, blowing an even sixty-five degrees.

“Additionally,” she said, “we are dissolving the LLC until further notice.”

A few of the men leaned forward as if to object, but she stilled them with a single look.

The city treasurer mustered his voice. “I don’t know that that’s entirely fair.”

“I did my job perfectly,” Stella said. “For years I worked to set up this arrangement. Never so much as a misplaced comma. You boys were given a single task, and you fucked it all up. So I share your assessment, Neil. It isn’t fair.”

With a manicured finger, she compressed the intercom button on the hefty telephone before her. “Rolando,” she said. “We’re ready.”

Her assistant coasted in on a breeze of cologne, steel briefcase in hand. She’d dispensed with the handcuff. After the boys’ failure, there was no longer a need to indulge their egos.

Rolando delivered the briefcase and exited as crisply as he’d entered, the soundproofed door suctioning closed with a finality that seemed baldly symbolic. The room had a deflated feel, the men leaning back in their chairs bonelessly. The fun was over, and now there was nothing left except paranoia and the fear of exposure.

But if Stella was good at one thing, it was minimizing risk. She would cover their tracks. They would hibernate. And when the threat had been dispatched, they would reconstitute themselves, perhaps in a new iteration that had shed the deadweight. Once more they’d lodge themselves into the underbelly of the city like a tick. And they’d gorge.

The titanium latches snapped open with a robust click.

She lifted the briefcase lid.