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Hands grabbed my wrists, stopping my slide just long enough for me to wake up and grab on. I found I was dangling from my arms, the rest of me hanging in space. I looked up and saw Tanya stretched out along the top of the TV, her hands on my wrists. “Don’t look down!” she told me.
But I did. I looked down on a green football field and a blue-and-red figure getting smaller and smaller below me. I closed my eyes as he hit the ground. Maravic was finally gone.
I heaved myself up onto the top of the TV screen and lay there panting, my face inches from Tanya’s.
She looked behind me, at the crazy jump I’d made. Her eyes were shining, even though she was smiling. “I thought—” she croaked, “I thought you were too scared?”
“I was,” I panted. “I was just more scared of losing you.”
And then I kissed her.
EPILOGUE
Colton
We lay there for a long time while, far below us, thousands of tiny dots scurried around. First the stadium got quieter and quieter as the last of the audience evacuated. Then it started to fill up with people: dark blue dots who must be police officers, black dots who must be FBI and Secret Service agents and then bright yellow dots pushing everyone else out: hazmat personnel telling everyone else to stay the hell away until they were sure the nerve gas was safe.
I looked for too long and suddenly remembered why the people looked like dots. My head started to swim and I put my head down on the top of the TV. The bad news was, I was very high up. The worse news was, there was no way down except up the ladder Maravic had been heading for. I breathed slow and deep and finally worked up enough courage to go for it. “You go first,” I told Tanya.
Tanya shook her head. “You should go first. What if you freeze and I need to encourage you? I can poke you in the ass if I’m behind you.”
“Trust me,” I groaned. “I’ve thought this through.”
She looked at me doubtfully, but got up and moved carefully towards the ladder, graceful and sure-footed as ever. When she’d got herself onto the ladder and started up, I gingerly crawled forward, eyes locked on the narrow top of the TV, pretending nothing else existed. I reached the ladder and slithered up it like a snake. And there, right in front of me, was Tanya’s gorgeous, heart-shaped ass. I couldn’t think of anything that would distract me better and I didn’t take my eyes off it for a second as we climbed. When we finally pushed through the hatch and emerged onto the roof of the stadium, I pulled Tanya hard against me and kissed her like I’d just stumbled over the finish line of a marathon. It was funny: we were still standing on a rooftop, hundreds of feet above the ground, but after what we’d been through, it seemed like nothing.
Back on the ground, we met up with JD and the others and there were relieved hugs all round. A paramedic dressed the cut on Tanya’s arm. She’d also strained her shoulder when Maravic threw her, but both would heal in time.
The police, local FBI and Secret Service all had questions and we started trying to answer them. But then a convoy of black SUVs rolled up and Steward jumped out, demanding we all be arrested. “These people conspired with a known Russian agent to orchestrate this whole thing,” he told anyone who’d listen. “They were working with Maravic. Get cuffs on them, I’m taking all of them to a secure site for interrogation.”
The head of the Texas FBI office opened his mouth to argue—
“It’s a national security matter!” Steward snapped.
The FBI guy chewed his lip and looked at us apologetically. Then he brought out a pair of handcuffs.
JD and I exchanged worried glances. Steward was still CIA and all he had to do was say the magic words national security and even the FBI had to fall into line. With Maravic dead, it was mostly Steward’s word against ours. Shit. He was going to spirit us off somewhere and then kill us and say we were shot while trying to escape.
Then another black SUV rolled up behind him, and a familiar figure in a suit climbed out. She marched up behind Steward and tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to look.
It’s hard to describe the look of pure thunder on Roberta’s face. The chief of the CIA’s Special Activities Division has always struck me as a calm person. I’ve never seen her lose her temper. But when she wakes up from a coma to discover that her underling put her there? That he did it so that he could murder the President? That he was going to kill tens of thousands of Americans, people her agency is sworn to protect?
