says quietly into his collar, speaking to the SWAT sniper on the roof to the south of the building, “do you have a visual?”
“Negative. Blinds are pulled.”
“East, a visual?”
“Negative, Books. Blinds are pulled on this side too.”
His heart races. He reaches his hand out for the door. Nods to the other agents, who gather behind him. Turns the knob. It isn’t locked.
He pushes the door open, rushes in, weapon up—
A woman in a hospital bed is struggling to sit up; a glass has shattered on the floor next to the nightstand. Her head is wrapped in a bandanna; her skin is pale, her eyes sunken. She looks frail, and her movements are shaky. The rest of the room’s empty. The other agents confirm the bathroom is unoccupied.
“FBI, ma’am,” says Books. “Mary Ann Stoddard?”
“Yes. I…heard you. I was…sleeping.”
“Where is he, ma’am?”
She squints at him. “Are you Agent…Bookman? Books?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The woman’s head falls back against the pillow.
“Agent Bookman,” she says, “do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
125
TOM MILLER and I climb the stairs to the conference room on the second floor. We enter the room, which is the same as yesterday, with the nice table and AV equipment surrounded by drop cloths, roller pans, and paint cans, partially painted walls, and the pack of water bottles, minus one bottle I took yesterday. The heat here is just as oppressive as it was yesterday, the sunlight blazing through the windows.
“Okay, this shouldn’t take long,” says Tom. “This machine, I know how to use.”
He pops in the DVD and waits for everything to boot up.
I pull out my phone. This is the one part of the building where I can get some reception.
My phone is lit up with voice-mail messages from Rabbit—one from twenty-eight minutes ago, one from twenty-one minutes ago, one from twelve minutes ago.
All while I was downstairs, unable to receive them.
The TV screen comes to life and starts playing the DVD, showing the alley outside Books’s store in grainy black-and-white.
I access my voice mail and lift the phone to my ear as the image of Sergeant Petty ambling down the alley with the duffel bag over his shoulder appears on the screen.
“Emmy, we just got the prints back,” I hear Rabbit say, her voice higher-pitched than usual, urgent.
“My God, I’ve seen that guy,” says Tom, pointing at the TV screen. Rabbit’s voice, in my ear, keeps going, rapid-fire.
“…real name is Todd Crisman. He was in Special Forces, later recruited by the CIA. You know how these people talk, but I could read between the lines. He was an assassin. He did special-ops assassinations around the world.”
A fire erupts in my chest and cascades down my arms and legs. My phone slips from my hand and falls to the drop cloth at my feet. I can’t breathe. I try to draw in oxygen but can’t.
No, please, no, not now—
The fire runs through me as the room starts to spin, everything at an angle, the pounding of my heart throbbing in my ears—
“Emmy, that’s him, that’s the—are you okay?”
I stagger back, grab the radiator for support as my legs threaten to give out.
“Hey, what’s happening? Are you having a heart attack?”
“No. No,” I whisper breathlessly, shaking my head furiously.
“A panic attack?”
He reaches for me, but with my free hand, I swat him away.
He draws back, startled, alarmed, his head cocked. He looks down at the phone at my feet and then back at me as I struggle for air, any tiny bit of oxygen.
Tom picks up the phone and pushes a button, putting the voice mail on speakerphone, then starts the message again. We listen together to Bonita Sexton’s urgent voice.
“Emmy, we just got the prints back. From your water bottle, I mean. It somehow ended up in Michelle’s evidence bag. His name isn’t Tom Miller. His real name is Todd Crisman. He was in Special Forces, later recruited by the CIA. You know how these people talk, but I could read between the lines. He was an assassin. He did special-ops assassinations around the world. His mother was a prostitute who would stay in homeless shelters and SROs. She was murdered, apparently, by two homeless men when Tom was twelve. He’s our guy. It’s Tom Miller. His psych profile says that he—”
Tom punches off my phone and holds it at his side. “Well, Emmy, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in myself.” He looks over at the pack of bottles on the floor. “When you asked for a bottle