Just the one site.
“I want to bring in Aaron Spencer again,” Anderson said. “You’ve got something new?”
“Anderson, yeah, I’ve just gotten the latest revised numbers from USGS. They’re mostly dialing it in at this point, but they’re now saying the magnitude was 6.1, the depth was very shallow, only about nine miles, and the epicenter was close to the city, striking just minutes before noon today.”
Dryden looked at his watch.
11:54.
“Again,” Anderson said, “not a massive quake, not a great deal of shaking, but enough to trigger the accident that brought that high-rise down.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
He could run.
He could just run for it, right now.
The stairwell was right there, thirty feet away.
Twenty-two flights, two to three seconds each, he could be out of the building in about one minute.
One minute, out of six remaining, at most. A one-in-six chance of surviving. Russian roulette odds, even if he hauled ass immediately.
He clicked the case shut and ran, but not for the stairs. He ran to the stack of granite slabs with the jackets and hard hats and cell phones on it.
He set down the plastic case and grabbed the nearest of the phones. He switched it on and hit the phone icon and punched 9-1-1.
*
Marnie moved slowly, keeping low among the stacks of Sheetrock and the industrial tools. She stuck her head up and saw that she was just twenty feet from Dryden. He was facing the other way, holding a phone to his ear.
A moment earlier she’d heard him listening to what sounded like a radio with bad reception. She hadn’t caught any of the transmission—some kind of news clip, she thought, but she’d been too far away then to tell.
Over the short distance to where Dryden now stood, Marnie heard the phone call connect. Heard the other party answer: a rapid little burst of syllables through the earpiece, rehearsed and automatic.
Into the phone Dryden said, “I just parked a panel truck full of high explosives at the corner of Second and Palm.” He spoke clearly but kept his voice low, inaudible to the men talking and laughing on the rooftop above. “Second and Palm,” Dryden said again. “Right by that big tower they’re building.”
On the last word he hung up and tossed the phone onto some guy’s jacket, and in the same movement he scooped up a yellow hard hat and ran for the stairs, putting the hat on as he went.
*
Dryden hit the first tread and vaulted upward, taking the steps three at a time, running, forcing himself to hyperventilate, making it look and sound like he’d just sprinted up the full height of the stairwell.
He burst into sunlight atop the structure and started yelling even as he took in the men sitting there.
“Everyone listen!” he shouted. “I have an evacuation order from the police!”
*
Marnie crossed to the stack of granite slabs where Dryden had left the hard plastic case. There was static coming from inside it—the radio with the bad reception.
One level up, she could hear him yelling at the work crew, talking about a bomb threat, telling them to vacate the site. He made it sound like the real deal. Marnie heard one of the men start to ask a question, but the guy cut himself off after the first word.
The reason was obvious.
From far away over the city, a police siren had begun wailing. An instant later a second one started up, and then a third. Coming in from all over, converging toward the building. From the rooftop, it had to be a damn convincing visual.
In the next second Marnie heard the scraping and thudding of men on the roof getting to their feet and running.
*
Dryden stood atop the stairs and waved them down ahead of him, his eyes automatically doing a head count as they passed.
Twelve men exactly, one of who had to be the crane operator; the cab atop the mast was empty now.
The report had described twelve dead, nine injured. The nine must have been bystanders in the street.
As the last of the men went by, Dryden swept his gaze over the roof for any possible straggler.
No one there.
He threw aside the hard hat and ran full-out down the steps, one flight behind the workers. He reached the twenty-second floor, turned toward the granite slabs where he’d left the machine in its case—
And stopped.
A woman had just stepped out from behind a stack of plywood, ten feet away.
She had the plastic case in one hand, and a pistol in the other—leveled at his chest. She looked shaken but held the weapon steady enough.
“Keep your hands out,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Marnie thought of her training at Quantico, with regard to holding a subject at gunpoint by yourself. You stayed out of the subject’s reach—that much was obvious. You allowed no ambiguity into your voice or your physical presence. Above all—