Thrill Kill (Matt Sinclair #2) - Brian Thiem Page 0,95

of his hat. His unbuttoned raincoat flapped in the wind, and a gust flipped his tie over his shoulder. Halfway across the parking lot, Sinclair stopped and looked back at the stairway from where they came. He thought he saw movement, but couldn’t be sure with the rain and wind. There was no one there now.

“Why don’t you wait here,” he said to Braddock. “Watch my back and keep an eye on the car ramps and the far stairway. I’ll check out the car.”

She nodded. He walked toward the lone car. The wind whipped his coat open, and the driving rain soaked the front of his shirt and pants. He ignored it. He walked around the far side of the Ford sedan and peered into the windows. The car was empty. He walked around the rear of the vehicle and spotted a black backpack on the top step of the stairwell.

A memory from Iraq flashed in his mind. Riding shotgun in the middle Humvee of a three-truck convoy. Up ahead, alongside the road, he spotted a military rucksack—one of the old ones, OD green in color. He grabbed the radio mic and yelled for the lead vehicle to punch it and for his driver and the rear vehicle to reverse. Seconds later, the rucksack exploded with all three trucks just barely outside the kill zone.

Sinclair turned. Braddock was watching him. Beyond her, at the top of the other stairwell, stood the man who had been smoking the cigarette outside Peet’s. He pulled out a cell phone and held it in front of his face.

Sinclair pointed at him and yelled to Braddock, “Run!”

Sinclair crouched and sprinted toward Braddock. She turned and ran toward the man. Sinclair ran as fast as he could, the leather soles of his shoes slipping with each step on the rain-slick concrete.

The explosion sounded in his ears at the same time the blast wave hit him. The air around him moved. Instead of shoving him forward, as he thought it should, it felt like it picked him up and pulled him, as a rogue wave does to a surfer just before erupting over him and smashing him into the ocean floor.

Chapter 35

At six o’clock, Sinclair and Braddock walked up the same concrete stairs they had ascended three hours earlier. Sinclair grimaced with each step and limped slightly from where the doctors at ACH ER had dug a piece of concrete out of his right hamstring and closed the wound with five sutures and surgical superglue. The rest of his body felt like it had just gone ten rounds with a heavyweight champ. His thick raincoat protected most of his body after he went airborne and landed on the asphalt, where he slid, tumbled, and rolled for another twenty feet. Still, he ended up with road rash on his left hip where the surface of the parking deck tore through his wool pants, as well as oozing abrasions on his left arm and chin.

A canvas canopy the size of a small circus tent covered the far end of the parking lot where the device had exploded. Maloney waved at Sinclair as soon as he stepped under a smaller canopy that had been set up as a break area for the scores of officers and agents from a variety of local, state, and federal agencies. “I thought I told you at the hospital to go home when they released you,” Maloney said.

“I figured it was a suggestion,” Sinclair replied.

Maloney shook his head and sighed. “I take it the MRI found your brain wasn’t too badly rattled.”

Sinclair turned his head to the left, since the ringing in his right ear drowned out all but the loudest sounds. “No more than normal.”

“What about you, Cathy?” Maloney asked Braddock.

“I was a lot farther away, so the blast didn’t even knock me down.” She was almost yelling even though Maloney was only a few feet away. “Other than a slight headache from the noise, I’m good, but the bomber got away.”

“You stayed with your partner,” Maloney said. “That’s the right decision.”

Sinclair poured himself a cup of coffee and pulled a cigar from his pocket, bit off the end, and pulled out his Zippo. Immediately, a man in an FBI windbreaker rushed from the other side of the tent, yelling, “You can’t smoke here! This is a crime scene.”

Maloney turned toward the man and held up his hand like a stop sign. “This is Matt Sinclair, the man who was nearly blown up. Correct