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Evan decided not to stick around.
He slid off the side of the hood, ankles and knees screaming as his boots struck concrete. His flank was knotted up, and his elbows ached.
All around, people were streaming out of the South Tower, a messy evacuation overseen by armed operators. Bizarrely, in the midst of the commotion no one seemed to take note of him.
A familiarthump-thump-thumpoverrode the ringing in Evan’s head, and then a blast of wind nearly knocked him over, a Black Hawk setting down in the middle of Gracie Allen Drive. Two more spun into view above. Now the intersection was clogged with dark SUVs screeching in at all angles, sirens screaming, blocking off every avenue of egress. Agents hollered into radios, staticky bursts coming back at hiked volumes.
“—shots fired at street level. Repeat: shots fired—”
“—switching to lethal—”
Evan was in the eye of the storm, and his only hope was to lose himself in the maelstrom.
They’d be expecting him to run away.
So instead he’d run back to where it had started.
As he stumbled beneath the overhang, he could hear Naomi exit the van, charting his movement, yelling into her radio.
A stream of CAT members poured out of the stairwell from which he’d just ejected, and they stopped, heads swiveling to find him amid the turmoil.
But he was gone inside, the glass doors to reception parting politely. He nodded at the receptionist and shuffled past two undercover agents jogging out, their eyes on the crowd outside.
Through their radios, he heard Naomi’s voice:“—no live ammo! He didnotfire on us. Repeat: He didnotfire on us.”
“—already got orders from the—”
“Keep on less-lethal!”
A wattle-necked worker was leaning out the door to the gift shop, gazing at the bodies washing by.
Ducking into the shop, Evan pulled on a mesh hat, its puffy white front panel sporting bubble letters announcingTACOFORNIA!He grabbed a bouquet of lavender flowers and spun back out, holding them to partially block his face.
A few nurses evacuated patients in wheelchairs. Another agent stood post by reception, ushering them out, chattering into his radio, “—clearing a few more from the rooftop. I’m securing the lobby.”
Evan walked briskly toward the heart of the hospital, elbow-knocking a handicap push plate, the sturdy door yawning open to a corridor. He scampered toward a stairwell sign pointing around a corner.
A single pair of footsteps quickened back in the lobby, a radio broadcasting off the hard surfaces:“—coming down now, flushing the stairs—”
He picked up the pace, reaching a trot down the long corridor before slicing into the intersecting hall.
And then Naomi’s voice came from behind him just around the bend. “Okay, okay. Alpha Team members each take a staircase and start up from ground level to trap him. I got the one off the lobby.”
“—lethal if we’re gonna—”
“No! Donotuse—”
“—dealing with Orphan X. I’m not taking any fucking—”
He could hear Naomi sprinting now, her breath coming harder.It was the closest he’d been to her since that night they’d cat-and-moused around her apartment in D.C.
“Less-lethal only!” An uncharacteristic note of concern animated Naomi’s voice. “Those are the ROEs straight from the top! Confirm!”
The rear stairs were up ahead. Evan slipped inside, eased the door shut, flew up and onto the first landing, flowers thrashing against his thigh.
Footsteps way up above, boots hammering. Leaning over, he peered up the stairwell. Gloved hands visible near the top floor, sliding briskly down railings.
He would fight them on the stairs. Close quarters hand-to-hand would cut their numerical advantage. Tight space, metal handrails, concrete walls. He’d claw, fight, and grapple his way to the plaza and then assess other stairwells and fire escapes or lose himself once more in the South Tower.
