Morrison got in on the driver’s side and used the button there to roll up Beck’s window. He looked at Beck across the backseat. “Now do as you’re told: shut up.”
Beck sat and stewed. This was really going to happen. He shook his head. Well, at least I get to cross being arrested off the bucket list. He wondered what would happen to his afternoon patients. He had no secretary who could call them to cancel. They would just show up at his office, and they’d wait. Some of them wouldn’t handle it very well if he wasn’t there.
It made Beck angrier. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
Howard got into the front passenger seat, and then, without a word, Morrison started the engine and drove away from the scene.
At first, Beck didn’t pay attention to where they were going. He was too busy trying to think of an attorney he could call. He had a couple of acquaintances who were lawyers, but they did mostly lobbying and corporate work.…
Then Beck saw that they’d crossed the river and were headed into Southeast DC. Morrison turned off the main avenue and began going down side streets, deeper and deeper into some of the worst neighborhoods in the capital.
“Where are we going?” Beck asked.
Howard and Morrison ignored him. Morrison was driving too fast. He ran yellow lights and cut off other drivers. Both he and Howard sat in the same grim silence, eyes fixed ahead.
There was no partition between Beck and the two agents. He knew they could hear him.
“Where are we going?” Beck asked again, louder.
“We’re taking you in for questioning,” Morrison said, sounding bored.
“Then why are we driving away from H Street?” Beck asked. H Street was where the Secret Service’s headquarters was located.
“Branch office,” Howard said, still not looking at him.
The civilized part of Beck’s mind told him that this could all be normal. That he should be polite, and wait to call a lawyer, and this whole mess would get straightened out. That was the part of him that had been a good boy his whole life, the part that told him, like his mother always did, to sit up straight and behave.
But there was another part of his brain talking to him as well—the part that seemed to have woken up since he was diagnosed with cancer. It was like some survival instinct had kicked in since finding out he was going to die.
And this part of his brain screamed at him that something was very wrong here.
Beck looked out the window. The streets were uglier. These were places Beck had only seen in the background on the TV news, usually with a reporter describing the latest gang killing or drug deal gone wrong.
“Where is this branch office?” Beck asked.
Morrison looked back at him in the rearview.
“Just relax, Doc. We’ll be there before you know it.”
And Beck suddenly knew he was in serious trouble.
Memory is a tricky thing, Beck knew. Stress affects the brain and interferes with the transfer of images from short-term to long-term memory. And then, sometimes, those same memories can return in an instant.
At that moment, Beck remembered the color of the gunman’s eyes.
Because he was looking right into them again.
Chapter 6
Beck was handcuffed and trapped in the car with Kevin Scott’s killers.
He had no idea what to do.
He tried desperately to think. He looked out the window again. They seemed to be driving into the very worst section of town—probably so that when Beck’s body turned up, it wouldn’t be considered unusual. Maybe they’d say he was here to buy drugs. Or maybe they’d say he was shot trying to escape.
Beck knew Kevin Scott had been hiding something. But now he knew it was something worth killing for.
And these two federal agents—if they were federal agents at all—wanted to find out if Beck knew it, too.
Beck tried to measure his own pulse. His doctors had told him stress was bad for his condition. His body was working hard enough to regulate itself with the interference of his brain tumor. He could suffer dizzy spells or weakness or seizures if he pushed himself too hard, they’d told him.
And there was also the chance that he was suffering a paranoid delusion. It happened with his condition. People stopped thinking normally as the tumor increased pressure and swelling in sections of the brain. Was it possible that he was just imagining the danger he was in?