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And then he heard it.
Different footfall, closer to him, two-thirds down. Quiet steps, awkward and rushed.
One or more civilians trapped between him and descending CAT members who were sufficiently alarmed to use lethal ammo.
The Tenth Commandment roared in his head:Never let an innocent die.
Evan froze on the landing, his mind flurrying through various civilians he’d seen in the plaza. Pregnant mother with twin toddlers. Chemo-bald middle-schoolers. Father and baby with hearing aids. Exhausted mom toting a newborn in a BabyBjörn.
Evan couldn’t risk anyone getting caught in the crossfire. And he didn’t have the luxury to move to another plan.
For the first time, fear set in, ice-hot cortisol and epinephrine firing through his bloodstream.
The civilian footsteps neared, the sound becoming distinctive.Flip-flop. Flip-flop.
Evan felt his stomach turn with realization an instant before a meaty hand gripped the railing above. A pudgy face, scarlet with fear and framed by a mullet, peered down at Evan.
Frank B.
The guy in the sleeveless dri-FIT who’d collided with Evan beneath the umbrella.
Frank B.’s mouth was agape, square white teeth even whiter against his flushed face.
Evan said, “Goddamn it.”
The Tenth Commandment didn’t allow wiggle room for assholes.
Cursing, he drew back and leapt down the stairs, hitting the crash bar hard and spilling into the corridor, the stupid Tacofornia! cap tumbling off his head. He’d kept the flowers in the unlikely event he could generate another ruse but had drawn his ARES again, leading the way in his left hand.
Naomi Templeton stood ten meters from him, stark in the bare corridor. She was aiming at his face.
He was aiming at hers.
Her chest was heaving, and he could see a flush at the base of her throat where her white button-up parted beneath her Kevlar vest. She wore her hair in a utilitarian cut—sharp bangs, a small stick of a ponytail, sweat-darkened wisps forming a neat fringe at her neck. With ice-blue eyes and clean features, she was striking but always seemed to underplay her looks, as if she were annoyed at the kind of attention they might bring her.
Just the two of them, alone in the rear hall.
They might as well have been on their own planet.
“Civilian on the stairs,” he said. “Call it in.”
Keeping her pistol locked on his critical mass, she tilted her shoulder radio’s mic toward her lips. “No-shoot on the northwest stairs. There’s a no-shoot on the stairs.”
Heartbeat fluttering in the side of his neck. The grab of the front frame checkering, eighteen lines per inch, against the inside curl of his fingers. High-profile straight-eight sights zeroed in on the bridge of her nose.
He knew he could get off the shot and roll to safety. She wouldn’t stand a chance.
The whites of her eyes were pronounced, but her grip was steady. He’d have expected nothing less.
He could taste his breath, bitter and hot. He felt something olderthan fear, something deep in his DNA, the terrified surrender of prey skewered in the jaws of an apex predator.
His entire life since the age of twelve had been a narrowing to this moment.
“Okay,” he said, more to himself than to her.
And he holstered his pistol.
He held his hands wide, his right fist still ridiculously clutching the bouquet. He took a step back from her, and she lowered her SIG Sauer and fired, the round embedding in the tile a few inches in front of his boot. It sent a spray of chips into his shin, hard flecks like sleet. “Freeze.”
