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Three people boiled out a door farther down the building: two boys and a girl, teenagers. The girl and one of the boys wore varsity sweaters, each with a big white letter sewn on the front, bordered in gold thread. The girl’s sweater hung halfway down her thighs and the sleeves covered her hands. The other boy had on a grubby sweatshirt and his face was painted to look like a big cat’s, whiskers and all. They stumbled onto the pavement, giggling. They smelled of beer for yards.
Startled, Plevin swung their direction, clapping the gun to his side.
Mapes’s reflexes were faster this time. The tape fell to the asphalt and rolled. He dove for the pistol. But Plevin was already turning back. Anne stepped between them, an act of pure instinct.
Cooke snatched at his own shirt, his fist closing on something and he tore the pocket bringing it out. He swung hard, missed Plevin’s arm as the gun came up. He followed through, felt the object in his hand sink deep into soft flesh.
Now it was Plevin’s turn to shriek. Mapes got hold of the pistol and wrenched it free. The founder of Aspectus stood with his arms out from his sides, staring at the end of the sharp drawing pencil sticking from the spreading stain under his right arm.
CHAPTER 23
DENNIS COOKE WAS glad to see hotel security come running, both because the terror was over and because he was a lot more comfortable holding a brush than Plevin’s nickel-plated semiautomatic pistol, which Mapes had given him after retrieving his own from the ground. Not that it was needed to guard their prisoner. Todd Plevin, held upright only by the wall of the hotel, breathed in sobbing gasps, one hand stalled halfway to the pencil protruding from his armpit, afraid to leave it where it was and just as afraid to pull it out.
It was Anne who addressed the guards first, summarizing what had happened in short, clipped sentences without going into background detail. When the police arrived ten minutes later, Mapes and Cooke told them the rest, each assigned his own officer for separate interrogation. Another interviewed the three Cougars. It amused Cooke to see them answering questions with their hands cupped over their mouths, as if that would staunch the odor of underage drinking.
A young man in uniform dropped the flash drive Mapes had given him into a Ziploc bag and put it in his pocket.
A policewoman trained in emergency medical services removed the pencil from Plevin’s arm, tore away his shirtsleeve, and applied disinfectant and gauze while her partner read him his rights. Cooke knew a little something of what was going through the multimillionaire’s mind while that was going on.
After a patrol car took him away in cuffs, Mapes, Anne, and Cooke repeated their names for the remaining officers, gave them their addresses, and agreed not to leave the area until further notice.
And then suddenly they were alone in the parking lot.
Anne Plevin stood close. Cooke was struck for the first time by how small she was. There was a lot of powder in that little charge of dynamite.
Mapes smiled at him. “That gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘quick draw.’”
“I can’t take all the credit. It was my best pencil. You’re lucky to get a really good one in a whole box. Anyway I wouldn’t have done it if I’d had time to think.”
Anne smiled up at him. “The excuse made by every hero.”
“He wasn’t alone,” Mapes told her. “You stepped between me and the gun.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m sorry again to you both. I couldn’t see any other way to handle it. ‘Back channel,’ they call it in Washington. ‘Thirty days’ suspension without pay,’ they’ll call it in the Sacramento office. But I’ll get you that ride to Topeka.”
“Don’t bother.” Cooke took the hand. “Let ’em sell the car at a police auction. I’ll keep my own rust bucket and be glad to be driving something that won’t remind me of this trip.” He looked at Anne. “The bad part, anyway.”
She smiled up at him inscrutably, as always. He wondered if Leonardo da Vinci had faced the same challenge in his Mona Lisa, and if he was ever satisfied he’d captured it.
“Think you can hold out here for a couple of days?” Mapes said. “I have things to work out with the police here before I go on to Chicago and start the extradition process—if Uncle Sam doesn’t hand the case to someone else. I can give you a lift home then, no matter what the decision.”
Anne said, “Let me. I need to clear my things out of the house before the board of directors takes possession. Legally it belongs to Aspectus—Todd’s idea, to get around taxes.”
“As long as you’re twisting my arm.” Cooke’s ears grew warm, that old familiar sensation.
Mapes shook both their hands and went back to his car.
Walking around to the hotel’s front entrance, Cooke’s hand brushed Anne’s; she didn’t shrink away. He started to speak, swallowed, said, “Should we get adjoining rooms or share one? I don’t know about you, but I have to start thinking about a budget.”
She stopped, looked up at him. “I’m afraid Vernon wouldn’t approve of either.”
He stared down at her. “Vernon?”
She nodded. “How do you think he knew it was my car Todd had him install that homing device in? He’d ridden in it often enough.”
He stepped away. Their hands were no longer touching. Maybe they never had been. He’d only imagined it.
“So that was his name. Vernon. Plevin never said.”
She met his gaze. Her eyes were no longer brushed silver. They were allover ice.
