AllFreeNovel
Share Us
They're going to have to take me out. It's the only way they can cover their asses. One day soon, one of them's walking in here and slicing my throat.
I've got to go under. I've built and handed over to them enough to blow me out of here as soon as they're done with me. I've got to take what I can and go under deep. They won't get inside my place, not for a while, and they don't have the brain power to get to the data on here. This is my backup. The proof, the money, they're going with me.
Jesus, Jesus, I'm scared.
I gave them everything they need to blow this city to hell. And they'll use it. Soon.
For money. For power. For revenge. And God help us all, for the fun.
It's a game, that's all. A game played in the name of the dead.
I have to go under. I have to get out. Need time to think, to figure things out. Christ, I might have to go to the cops with this. The fucking bastard cops.
But first I'm getting out. If they come after me, I'm taking the two drones down with me.
"That's it." Eve curled her hands into fists. "That's all. He had names, he had data. Why didn't the stubborn old fuck put the info on his machine?" She whirled away to pace. "Instead, he takes it with him, whatever he had on them, he takes with him. And when they off him, they have it all."
She stalked to the window. Her view of New York hadn't changed. It was five after two. "Peabody, I need everything you can get on the Apollo group. Every name, every incident they took responsibility for."
"Yes, sir."
"McNab." She turned, stopping when Feeney stepped into the doorway. His face was drawn, his eyes too dark. "Oh hell. What did they hit?"
"Plaza Hotel. The tea room." He walked slowly to the AutoChef, jabbed his finger into the controls for coffee. "They took it out, and the lobby shops, most of the goddamn lobby, too. Malloy's headed to the scene. We don't have a body count yet."
He took out the coffee, drank it down like medicine. "They'll need us."
• • •
She'd never lived through war. Not the kind that killed in indiscrimina
te masses. Her dealings with death had always been more personal, more individual. Somehow intimate. The body, the blood, the motive, the humanity.
What she saw now had no intimacy. Wholesale destruction accomplished from a distance erased even that nasty bond between killer and victim.
There was chaos, the screams of sirens, the wails of the injured, the shouts of onlookers who stood nearby, both shocked and fascinated.
Smoke continued to stream out of the once-elegant Fifth Avenue entrance of the revered hotel to sting the air and the eyes. Hunks of brick and concrete, jagged spears of metal and wood, glittering remnants of marble and stone lay heaped with grim pieces of flesh and gore scattered over them.
She saw tattered rags of colorful cloth, severed limbs, hills of ash. And a single shoe—black with a silver buckle. A child's shoe, she thought, unable to stop herself from crouching down to study it. It would have been shiny, a little girl's dress-up-for-tea shoe. Now it was dull and splattered with blood.
She straightened, ordered her heart to chill and her mind to clear, then began to make her way over, around the rubble and waste.
"Dallas!"
Eve turned, saw Nadine picking her way through the filth in lady heels and thin hose. "Get back behind the press line, Nadine."
"No one's put up a line." Nadine lifted a hand to push at her hair while the wind blew it back in her face. "Dallas. Sweet God. I was finishing up a luncheon speech deal over at the Waldorf when this came through."
"Busy day," Eve muttered.
"Yeah. All around. I had to pass on the Radio City story because I was committed to the lunch. But the station kept me updated. What the hell's going on? Word was you evacuated over there."
She paused, scanned over the destruction. "It wasn't any water main problem. And neither was this."
"I don't have time for you now."
"Dallas." Nadine caught at her sleeve, held firm. Her eyes, when they met Eve's, were ripe with horror. "People have got to know." She said it quietly. "They have a right to."
