to, and get them over to 147 Condor. Have you got that? They need to go in carefully. Keats will know why, but if you can’t get him, I need to be there, or I need to talk to someone myself—”
“You’re not even authorized to be on this floor,” the first guard said. “Go back to your quarters. As soon as we have contact, we’ll let you know—”
“Are you even listening to me?” I yelled at him.
“Miss, you need to calm down.”
“Let me go to the fifth floor and find someone myself,” I said. “You can escort me, if you need to.”
I reached for the elevator button, but he wasn’t having it and stepped in my way.
“Please don’t make me remove you from this area,” he said. “We’re on it, okay? Now turn around and go. I’m not going to ask again.”
I felt like I was in a nightmare within a nightmare. They were only following protocol, but that wasn’t good enough. And I couldn’t waste any more time spinning my wheels with them.
So I made a decision. I went back upstairs, down the hall, and quietly into my apartment.
I could hear the shower running as I grabbed my bike and turned to leave. But then I stopped. I pulled a small paring knife out of the kitchen drawer and sheathed it in the laces of my sneakers, just in case. It was a gut move, not a rational one. But who the hell knew what might happen?
Wheeling my bike into the hall, I turned right instead of left this time. I went straight for the fire exit and used my front tire to break through the crash bar. A second later, I was humping that bike down seven flights as fast as I could, while the high-pitched wail of an alarm echoed up and down the stairwell behind me.
When I reached the ground floor, there was only one way out. I hit another crash bar with my tire and burst onto the sidewalk, like some kind of escaped convict.
I jumped on my bike, hopped the curb down to the street, pointed myself east, and started pedaling like hell.
CHAPTER 80
IN BOSTON, ANYTHING under three miles is faster on a bike than it is by car. For me, anyway. If I reached Condor Street first, I wouldn’t go rushing in like some kind of action hero, but at least I could keep whoever showed up from doing the same thing.
With any luck, I could still keep Eve alive.
I kept my eyes up for traffic and ground the pedals as fast as I could. What I needed was another phone. And when I saw the business-suited gentleman standing just off the curb with his nose buried in his screen, I made a split-second decision.
“Hey!”
I’d grabbed it out of his hand and was halfway through the next intersection before he even spotted me.
If this didn’t work, and maybe even if it did, I was going to end up in jail. Meanwhile, I should have stopped riding long enough to call this in, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. No stopping now. No turning back. No nothing. I kept on pedaling as I checked the road ahead, looked down long enough to dial 911 for the second time in three days, and kept heading east.
“Nine one one. What is your emergency?”
“My name is Angela Hoot and I’m with the FBI,” I shouted into the phone. I was shooting up the narrow space between the slow-moving traffic on my left and the sidewalk on my right, just hoping nobody threw open a car door without looking. “I need emergency responders to 147 Condor Street immediately. Tell them to call Agent William Keats at the FBI for instruction. They have to proceed with extreme caution. Do you understand?”
“I’ll do what I can, ma’am,” she said. “Please hold.”
But I couldn’t even do that. My quickest route was through the Callahan Tunnel, which doesn’t allow bikes, much less have a bike lane. I needed both hands for this, and it was coming up fast. The dispatcher was going to have to get this done without any more input from me, I thought, and shoved the phone back into my pocket.
I hung a right onto New Chardon Street, then right again, down toward the tunnel entrance. It was like a cattle chute at this point. The tunnel itself was a mile long, which meant three minutes at the speed I was going, and I’d already lost