When Dryden moved, maybe a second after she’d spoken to him, it was like nothing she had ever seen before. It was sure as hell nothing she’d trained for.
A friend of hers in college had tried to give her a few boxing tips once. Had shown her how a jab was supposed to be launched, the leading shoulder pointed at the target, the back foot pushing off, the jab coming up directly inward along the opponent’s sightline, because the human brain was slower to react to inward movement than side-to-side movement.
Dryden didn’t throw a jab at her, but he sure as hell moved in along her sightline. Beyond that, she didn’t know what he did. What she knew was that in one instant she had him at gunpoint, and in the next she was being slammed bodily backward into the plywood stack she’d stepped out from behind.
He had one hand around her neck, his fingertips applying just a bit of pressure to her carotid arteries. His other hand was holding her Glock 17—when exactly had he taken it?—with the barrel touching her cheekbone.
Just like that, he had every advantage on her.
Yet he looked scared.
He looked rattled all to hell, for some reason.
His eyes narrowed. He looked like a man trying to work something out in bare seconds. Like some huge piece of bad news had just been dropped in his lap, and he was trying to grasp its implications.
The moment lasted maybe two seconds, and then he seemed to shove all the confusion away and refocus on her.
“When I let go,” he said, “you’re going to run down the stairwell as fast as your body can move. Or else you’re going to die.”
No ambiguity in his voice. Or his physical presence.
“And hang on to the case,” he said.
Marnie found herself nodding, the movement difficult with his hand tight under her jaw.
Then he let go of her, grabbed her by one shoulder, and shoved her toward the stairs leading down.
She got her balance under her and kept moving, taking the steps three and four at a stride.
*
Dryden didn’t count the flights as they descended. There was no reason to. They would make it or they wouldn’t.
He had the woman’s Glock stuffed in his rear waistband now, his hands free to grab for her if she lost her footing.
From a few flights below, he could hear the thunder of the workers’ boots, the metal of the stairwell transmitting the vibration upward in strange harmonics and shudders.
Preview of the coming attraction, Dryden thought.
Coming soon.
Maybe thirty seconds had passed since he and the woman had started down. Hard to tell. He didn’t look at his watch. No reason to do that either.
Flight after flight, they ran. A controlled plummet, palms shoving off against steel uprights as they rounded each landing. Down and down. Every second feeling borrowed.
All at once the boots-on-metal thudding from below them ended, replaced by the flat, dampened slapping sound of sprinting footfalls on concrete. The workers had reached the bottom.
Ahead of Dryden, the woman rounded the final landing and took the last flight in three falling strides, catching up to her center of gravity at the bottom and sprinting across the ground floor. Dryden closed distance and then stayed one pace behind her.
The orange mesh fence loomed just past the edge of the foundation slab. They vaulted it together, and then Dryden grabbed her by the upper arm, steering and propelling her farther.
“The Explorer, up ahead,” he said. “Get in.”
“What are you—”
“Just do it!”
She nodded. She wasn’t even looking back at him. Maybe she assumed he was still pointing the gun.
They covered the distance to the SUV in another five seconds, the woman still holding the hard plastic case. Dryden, still gripping her arm, pushed her toward the driver’s-side door, and she fumbled it open and climbed in. He got in right after her, the two of them briefly tangled up in the space behind the wheel; then she clambered over the center console and dropped herself into the passenger seat.
Dryden shoved the key into the ignition and started the vehicle, then spared half a second to lean forward and crane his neck up at the tower’s bulk. With its base just twenty yards away, the thing loomed over them like a man over an insect.
Dryden threw the Explorer into reverse, turned in his seat, and floored it. In his peripheral vision he saw the woman thrown forward at the dashboard, just getting her hands up in time to keep from banging her head.
“Goddammit,” she said.
Dryden ignored her. He watched out the back window as he reversed, doing 25, veering left and right as cars braked and steered out of his way.
“What are you doing?” the woman yelled.
“We need distance,” Dryden said.
“I already know the bomb is bullshit. I heard you call it in.”
They’d covered a block and a half now, a greater distance than the building’s height. Safe enough. Dryden came to a stop with the vehicle centered in the one-way road, blocking traffic from approaching the building. He put the selector in park and hit his hazard lights.