Beck and Pierce both let out a huge sigh of relief.
Beck stashed the vest behind the front seats, as far away as he could manage. Again, it wouldn’t make a difference. But it made him feel better.
Small comforts. Like a kid hiding under a blanket to get away from the monsters. Even psychiatrists aren’t immune from that kind of thinking, Beck realized.
He began to put his jacket and the raincoat back on. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do next, but it would probably be smart if people outside the limo thought he was still wired to explode.
But he wasn’t paying attention to Pierce. He turned his head for a moment, and heard the clunk of the limo’s door opening.
He’d forgotten they were no longer cuffed together. She was trying to get away.
She was his only shield. Without her in the car, Morrison or Howard would be happy to activate the bomb.
Beck couldn’t let that happen.
Pierce was almost out the door when he grabbed her. He got a handful of her suit jacket. His fingers slipped. He snagged her foot. She kicked him, losing one of her expensive shoes.
But she tripped and fell.
Beck scrambled after her. She kicked him again, in the face. It hurt.
They were both wedged in the car door when he got his arm around her throat again. He hauled her to her feet and put the gun at her head once more. She elbowed him viciously in the ribs once, but he managed to hold on.
When he looked up, once again, he was facing a firing squad. And this time, they had reinforcements.
It seemed like an entire army battalion had surrounded the limo while he was inside.
Beck looked around wildly. He saw the same federal agent who’d spoken to him before. She’d apparently taken charge of the whole situation. Again, she looked at him from behind a gun.
“Let her go!” she screamed.
Beck shook his head. He needed the truth to come out.
“I want to talk!” he shouted. “To the president!”
The agent scowled back at him.
“That’s going to take a little time. She’s on her way to a secure location now because of this little stunt you pulled.”
Good, Beck thought. Maybe that will keep her safe from Damocles. But he had to get the whole truth out. That was the only way to make sure this ended.
Then he realized he was speaking live to an audience of millions. He looked at the cameras, just beyond the police barriers.
He could tell the whole world what was really happening right here and right now.
“I want to talk to her on the phone!” Beck shouted. “She needs to know that Senator Pierce and Damocles—”
That’s when Pierce began shrieking at the top of her lungs, drowning him out.
“Oh, God, oh, God, don’t let him kill me, please! You have to do something!” She kept screaming as loud as she could.
Beck tried to bellow to be heard above her, but it was no use.
No one could hear a thing he said.
Beck wanted to scream in frustration. He knew he was much more vulnerable. Any second, a sniper could shoot him.
He was out in the open now.
An easy target.
Chapter 47
Morrison turned on his laser sight. Ordinarily he never needed the damned thing, but this would be a tricky shot even for him.
He looked over the edge of the roof at the back of Beck’s head.
He’d found the entrance to the roof and got here as quickly as he could, once he’d heard over the radio that Beck demanded a limo.
Now he was half-hidden by the air-conditioning unit, his rifle propped on the roof’s edge, trying to get a clear angle on Beck without also killing his boss. With all the chaos down on the street, no one was even looking up at the roof.
Beck kept bobbing in and out of his line of sight, however.
It would help a lot if Pierce would just stop screaming, too. Morrison understood that it was meant to keep anyone from hearing Beck. But it was giving him a migraine.
He tried to focus down the barrel. Pierce kept screaming. Beck kept moving. And there were a half-dozen other armed men and women who might open fire at any moment.
He reached for his phone in his jacket pocket. All it would take was the tap of a few numbers on the screen. Then the bomb would go off.
The problem was, that would kill Pierce, too. And he was pretty sure that would mean the end of