cracked a lopsided grin. “That bastard really packed a wallop.”
“We’ve got to get back to the elevator,” Annika said, finishing her cleanup.
It wasn’t until he started to move painfully up the stairs that he saw that Annika was limping and turned back to her. “What the hell hap—”
The man Annika had kneed in the groin hurled himself at them. His right hand was filled with an evil-looking switchblade that glinted as it shot out toward Annika’s spine. Shoving her roughly aside, Jack felt the blade penetrate his coat, the razor-sharp edge of the blade slicing open a wound in his side. Grasping the man’s knife wrist, he pulled him in toward him and smashed his forearm into the man’s nose. The man’s head shook and he gave an animal snort as blood spattered him, but he managed to get the heel of his hand under Jack’s chin, pushing his head up and back. That was when Annika grabbed the gun out of Jack’s hand and beat a tattoo with the butt on the man’s head. She kept at it, her teeth clamped tight in a fury of blood rage, even after his eyes had rolled up in his head. Jack had to pull her away and turn her to face him so that she slowly refocused.
He wrenched the switchblade from the near-dead man’s fist, and together he and Annika sprinted down the fourth-floor hallway.
* * *
A S THEY had agreed during their last class of the day, Alli and Vera met outside the northwest wall of Fearington. Under cover of the gathering darkness, they made their way for about a mile across fields and stands of deciduous trees to the back road where the iron-colored Infiniti sedan sat waiting for them, its engine purring softly.
Vera climbed into the front passenger’s seat and Alli got in back.
“Any trouble losing your chaperone?” Caro said from behind the wheel.
“None at all,” Alli said. “He wasn’t expecting it, but next time won’t be easy. He’s a clever cookie.”
“If this works out right,” Caro said, putting the Infiniti in gear, “there won’t have to be a next time.”
She drove at a sedate pace until the road merged with the highway, and then she put on speed. Alli intuited Caro had no desire to be pulled over by a cop. She hadn’t wanted anything to do with Dick Bridges, which was perfectly understandable, given her father’s long reach and his enduring efforts to find her. Now that the two of them were in the same city, Caro had to increase her vigilance to keep herself from flying under his extensive radar.
As they sped north, Alli sat back, catching Caro’s reflection in the rearview mirror. She had not gotten over the shock of her cousin’s sudden appearance from out of nowhere. Caro had remained such a mythic figure in her imagination that adjusting to the real flesh-and-blood person was going to take some getting used to. She kept catching herself thinking of Caro as her uncle had described her. She hated herself for that. Henry Holt Carson had proved himself to be a liar, a chiseler, and, worse, power-hungry. With his younger brother as president, he’d had an unbeatable chip to play. Now he had to deal with Edward Carson’s successor, the prickly Arlen Crawford. In a way inexplicable to her, her uncle had managed to forge what seemed to be an alliance with the president. Was he advisor to Crawford as well as being a highly visible lobbyist for the items on the president’s foreign and domestic agendas? Jack might know, but Alli didn’t.
Alli missed Jack, as she always did when he was far away. She understood her attachment to him in the abstract, but the fact was their relationship was so complex—surrogate father, mentor, friend, and ally—that she had trouble parsing both the depth and the breadth of her feelings for him. When, as now, he was overseas without her, she was terrified he would die in some awful foreign country, that the next time she would see him was in a coffin flown into Dulles on Secretary Paull’s official aircraft.
On the
“We’ve got to get back to the elevator,” Annika said, finishing her cleanup.
It wasn’t until he started to move painfully up the stairs that he saw that Annika was limping and turned back to her. “What the hell hap—”
The man Annika had kneed in the groin hurled himself at them. His right hand was filled with an evil-looking switchblade that glinted as it shot out toward Annika’s spine. Shoving her roughly aside, Jack felt the blade penetrate his coat, the razor-sharp edge of the blade slicing open a wound in his side. Grasping the man’s knife wrist, he pulled him in toward him and smashed his forearm into the man’s nose. The man’s head shook and he gave an animal snort as blood spattered him, but he managed to get the heel of his hand under Jack’s chin, pushing his head up and back. That was when Annika grabbed the gun out of Jack’s hand and beat a tattoo with the butt on the man’s head. She kept at it, her teeth clamped tight in a fury of blood rage, even after his eyes had rolled up in his head. Jack had to pull her away and turn her to face him so that she slowly refocused.
He wrenched the switchblade from the near-dead man’s fist, and together he and Annika sprinted down the fourth-floor hallway.
* * *
A S THEY had agreed during their last class of the day, Alli and Vera met outside the northwest wall of Fearington. Under cover of the gathering darkness, they made their way for about a mile across fields and stands of deciduous trees to the back road where the iron-colored Infiniti sedan sat waiting for them, its engine purring softly.
Vera climbed into the front passenger’s seat and Alli got in back.
“Any trouble losing your chaperone?” Caro said from behind the wheel.
“None at all,” Alli said. “He wasn’t expecting it, but next time won’t be easy. He’s a clever cookie.”
“If this works out right,” Caro said, putting the Infiniti in gear, “there won’t have to be a next time.”
She drove at a sedate pace until the road merged with the highway, and then she put on speed. Alli intuited Caro had no desire to be pulled over by a cop. She hadn’t wanted anything to do with Dick Bridges, which was perfectly understandable, given her father’s long reach and his enduring efforts to find her. Now that the two of them were in the same city, Caro had to increase her vigilance to keep herself from flying under his extensive radar.
As they sped north, Alli sat back, catching Caro’s reflection in the rearview mirror. She had not gotten over the shock of her cousin’s sudden appearance from out of nowhere. Caro had remained such a mythic figure in her imagination that adjusting to the real flesh-and-blood person was going to take some getting used to. She kept catching herself thinking of Caro as her uncle had described her. She hated herself for that. Henry Holt Carson had proved himself to be a liar, a chiseler, and, worse, power-hungry. With his younger brother as president, he’d had an unbeatable chip to play. Now he had to deal with Edward Carson’s successor, the prickly Arlen Crawford. In a way inexplicable to her, her uncle had managed to forge what seemed to be an alliance with the president. Was he advisor to Crawford as well as being a highly visible lobbyist for the items on the president’s foreign and domestic agendas? Jack might know, but Alli didn’t.
Alli missed Jack, as she always did when he was far away. She understood her attachment to him in the abstract, but the fact was their relationship was so complex—surrogate father, mentor, friend, and ally—that she had trouble parsing both the depth and the breadth of her feelings for him. When, as now, he was overseas without her, she was terrified he would die in some awful foreign country, that the next time she would see him was in a coffin flown into Dulles on Secretary Paull’s official aircraft.
On the
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