Only the Hunted Run by Neely Tucker Page A

“I’m taking a swing blade to the next dickless wonder who comes within five fucking feet.”
    R.J. sat back down without making eye contact, acting like he was straightening the crease in his khakis.
    Despite the massive police presence, despite the assurances from the nation’s highest levels of lawenforcement, a gunman who was executing people in the Rotunda of the Capitol yesterday was still on the lam as night fell for a second day. Darkness came and a sense of safety, of national security, fell with it.
    His cell buzzed at 9:26. The top of his head nearly fucking blew off. He let go of the keyboard—he’d been clinging to it for so long it felt like a life raft—and fished the cell out of his backpack. “This is Carter and this better be fucking good.”
    â€œSully?” the man’s voice said. “You know one of the things I discovered about paranoia today? That thing assholes say at bars, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t following you’? You know, that, that, that’s actually true.”
    â€œHadn’t occurred to me,” Sully said. “So how you livin’, Mr. Waters?”

TWELVE
    â€œI’M A LITTLE disappointed, tell you the truth,” Waters said down the line, the voice clear and steady. Sounded like a landline, but Sully couldn’t be sure. You got into trouble trying to overinterpret tiny impressions into major facts, and he didn’t want to do that here. He just wanted to keep the guy talking long enough until he gave something away. Possibly gave something away.
    â€œWelcome to America,” Sully said, wedging the phone between his ear and shoulder, keeping both hands on the keyboard, typing furiously.
    â€œI think my people should be saying that to yours.”
    â€œTouché,” Sully said, “but you’re going to have to be more specific. Everybody comes to America, hates it, but never goes home. It’s like a bigger version of Washington.”
    Waters let out a long breath. Like he was a smoker and was blowing out the cloud. “I thought somebody would have caught me by now,” he said. “I mean, how many dickheads do they have looking for me, about eight thousand?”
    â€œI hear you,” Sully said, standing, waving both arms above his head, making a huge X, then making it again, trying to get somebody’s attention, anyone at all. “I thought that was you at the Motel 6 today.”
    A short bark of a laugh.
    â€œSully, look now. If we’re going to talk, and I like talking to you, we’ve got to understand each other better. That hotel is for hookers and gangbangers.”
    No one was looking. It was like he was doing calisthenics and nobody could stand to watch.
    â€œApologies,” Sully said, working to keep his breathing even. “I thought they left the light on for everybody. I figured maybe in reduced circumstances and all, you might, ah, be a lonely man in shirtsleeves, leaning out of a window.”
    In desperation, he picked us his stapler and fired it at R.J., missing the back of the man’s head and his computer screen by inches, but hitting the framed picture of R.J. and Elwood dead center, shattering the glass and sending it clattering against the other tchotchkes in his cubicle. The man came three inches out of his seat, then turned, face going red until he saw Sully pointing his finger like a pistol, then pointed to the phone, then plunked back down, typing at knuckle-busting speed to try to keep up.
    There was a sigh. Waters said, “‘Lonely men in shirtsleeves.’ You spent the afternoon brushing up on your Eliot.”
    â€œWell, sure,” Sully said. “Thought you were trying to tell me something.”
    R.J. was loping across the newsroom to Eddie’s office.
    â€œI was, I mean, I am,” Waters said. Not stuttering, more confident than this morning. Not apologizing about