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“You’re yelling, of course I understand you.”
“Good. So that must mean your brain is functioning again.” She looked neither to the right nor to the left, marched right up to him, saw him open his mouth, and shoved him back. “No, you keep your mouth shut. We need to get downstairs. I believe Dillon will be there, although I don’t exactly remember what we’re going to do with him, but it will come to me.”
She smacked her hand again against his chest. He started to grab her wrist, but didn’t. Nicholas stared at her furious face, saw the pounding pulse in her throat, the snap and fire in her eyes, and couldn’t help himself. He laughed, then cleared his throat and called out to all the staring hospital staff, at all their now-blooming smiles, the stirrings of laughter, “As you were! No charge for the show,” and he punched the elevator button and they waited, silent, side by side. Nicholas heard Craig Swanson hoot with laughter, and others joining him, talking, laughing, a couple of them even shouting suggestions to the Bad Dog. He even heard a bark and a woof.
When the doors opened, a nurse stepped out, humming the theme from Frozen, “Let It Go.” She took one look at them and said, “Whoa,” and hurried off.
“What!” Mike yelled after her. “We have our clothes on! What’s wrong with you?”
As the doors closed, they heard more rolling shouts of laughter. A couple more barks.
He opened his mouth.
“Be quiet unless you can verify that Dillon is meeting us in the lobby.”
“I believe so. It’s about the video feeds from that diner in Baltimore. I think. Then we’re going home with him to have lasagna for dinner. But I suppose that could have changed, what with no power. I’m not really one for cold lasagna, are you?”
“No.”
“Would you like me to call Savich? Verify?”
She shook her head, kept staring at the slow-moving numbers. The elevator stopped on the second floor, the doors opened, and there stood two white-coated doctors talking about nausea. One look, and by mutual unspoken agreement they turned and walked quickly away.
When the bell dinged and the doors opened onto the lobby, he watched Mike march out of the elevator, head high, never looking at him, not looking at any of the dozens of people in the lobby. She spotted Dillon, waved, and continued her march toward him.
She had to stop when three teenagers, one of them with his arm in a brand-new cast that was already covered with lewd drawings and scrawls, blocked her way. She couldn’t knock the kid out of the way, he was hurt and drug-addled.
“Wait,” Nicholas said, and she ignored him, then reluctantly slowed.
Mike could smell him, that fine Nicholas scent that was his and his alone, but more than that, she felt him, felt him drawing closer to her. She knew he was leaning in, felt his warm breath on her cheek.
“No, not a word, do you hear me? No pathetic excuses, no going on about what a mistake that was.”
“Okay. Shall I?”
“Shall you what?”
“Tell you to fix your ponytail? It’s rather lopsided.”
Mike grabbed her hair and pulled it back into place and slipped the band back on.
“I guess your shirt needs to be tucked in again, too.”
She shoved her shirt back into her trousers, called out, “Dillon, we’re coming,” and she stalked away from him, going around the teenagers, leaving him to listen to the boy with the broken arm laugh like a hyena since he was happily floating on pain meds.
61
KNIGHT TO F3
The White House
Callan had spent half the evening on the phone—talking either to the president or to Ari, or the head of the Iranian security services, who swore up and down his government had nothing to do with the reactors turning on. She wanted to tell him he was a lying moron, but of course she didn’t. It drove her mad, but denial was woven into their brains, par for the course. Then who did know about the reactors? But he didn’t have an answer to that.
A big muckety-muck had ordered someone to push the button and keep pushing. The Israelis had taken one look at the Iranian landscape lit up like a series of way stations across the desert and started planning a preemptive offensive, launching drones and preparing their battlements, which made the Iranians move more troops into place, shuffling their missile batteries around for the best offensive. How long would the Iron Dome last under a true barrage of nuclear warheads? Not long, and the collapse would be immediate around the entire region.
It was all happening lightning-quick, too, a match set to a fuse, flaring to life and settling in to burn fast and hot. If they didn’t nip it in the bud right here, right now, too many people to count would be dead.
The talks had fallen apart, no great surprise there, considering one of the parties was lying big-time. What had started as Bradley’s hopeful road to lasting peace was fast turning into a fistfight to see who would kill the other first. Again.
