The crowds had cleared, clustered around the latest spectacle, leaving the road open to the exit.
He started the engine. Pulled forward so quietly he could hear the crunching of gravel under the tires.
One of the cops gave him a look, but Morrison just flipped his credentials and his badge out the window, and the cop moved on. More important things than a Secret Service agent moving a car out of the way.
He hit the road. It was empty. All traffic was blocked coming into the university. But not going out.
Morrison started grinning. He could barely believe it. He was not only going to get away, he was going to do it in style.
Maybe he wouldn’t get paid, but at least he wasn’t going to die in prison. That would have to be enough.
There was just one last thing.
He needed to cover his tracks completely. He needed one last big distraction.
And if there was any chance that Beck or his girlfriend was going to live—well, Morrison needed to take care of that, too.
He took out his phone. He entered the code for the vest, and paused before he hit the Send button.
Morrison wondered, for a moment, if he’d hear the explosion.
He hit Send.
He heard a beep from the seat right behind him.
And then nothing else, ever again.
SIX MONTHS LATER
Chapter 52
Beck opened his eyes.
The room was dark. He didn’t bother to check the clock. He’d been waking at 3:00 a.m. for a month now. Sometimes he would look at the ceiling until his alarm went off.
But usually, he got out of bed, like he did now. He’d been on his back long enough in the hospital, after the surgery to remove the bullet that struck him in the upper chest when Morrison shot him.
Either Morrison was a lousy shot, or Beck slipping into unconsciousness and falling backward the moment the trigger was pulled had caused Morrison to miss. He certainly would have been aiming at his head.
Beck had been arrested in the ICU. He woke up to find that someone had put another pair of handcuffs on him, locking him to the bed.
Eventually, however, the police sorted it out. He was hailed as a national hero. Or an assassin who’d gotten away with it, depending on which cable news channel you watched.
Beck looked out the window of his new condo. Bulletproof glass. One of the upgrades he’d installed when they moved.
The information on Kevin Scott’s laptop had led to the first indictments within a couple of weeks, and now, the fallout was still coming down all over Washington, DC. At first, it seemed as if the damage would be contained to just Pierce and Morrison—whatever they’d managed to scrape off the sidewalk—and Howard, and a few of their fellow conspirators. Damocles issued a statement that blamed everything on a small number of rogue employees, and then the board and executives hid behind their lawyers.
But it’s never a good idea to take a shot at the president and miss. Damocles was now the subject of no less than five congressional inquiries, not to mention the FBI investigation, the Department of Defense probe, and the ongoing housecleaning in the Secret Service. All the company’s contracts had been suspended. There were new arrests almost daily. High-ranking officials were cutting deals.
President Martin was grateful, at least. She’d arranged for Beck to be bumped to the head of the line of an FDA trial for a new cancer-fighting treatment. It used genetically altered cells to target inoperable tumors.
It seemed to be working. His cancer, miraculously, was in remission. His fingers no longer went numb. He was hitting the gym every day to rebuild muscle that had atrophied during his recovery. He had an MRI every week, and his tumor just kept shrinking.
It looked like he was going to live.
At least until he testified.
The first trial, of the former Secret Service agent Howard—he’d been captured before he boarded a flight to Rio—began in a few weeks. Then Beck would appear before a joint House–Senate commission. And he would also go on TV, and tell his story as many times as it took.
He was putting a target on his head again.
Beck heard something behind him, and turned to see Susan sitting up, the sheet pulled around her waist.
“Come back to bed,” she said. “You can’t keep brooding about it.”
She always seemed to know what he was thinking. It made sense. She’d been his shrink, after all.