Twenty seconds had passed since the last shot.
“If we get away,” Marnie said, “would they have learned that a few hours ago? Would that make them send extra people to compensate?”
“They’ll have seen police records and news articles showing someone died out here,” Whitcomb said. “If those documents don’t say anything about us … then no, the Group won’t have known about us until right now.”
Whitcomb dropped his eye to the narrow gap again. Stared once more into the open channel.
“We can’t leave without the machine,” he said. “If they get it, the whole game’s lost.”
He took a deep breath, then another. His body language made it clear what he intended to do.
“Don’t be stupid,” Dryden said.
Whitcomb’s eyes stayed locked on the plastic case. “It’s only thirty feet. Sixty there and back.”
“You won’t make it fifteen.”
“I might. He’s sighting on the vehicle right now, waiting for someone to run for it.”
“Takes about a second for a sniper to retarget,” Dryden said. “Maybe less.”
“I’ll be moving the whole time.”
“Yeah, straight toward him and then straight away. That’s an easy lead.”
“We need the machine. There’s no choice.”
“Whitcomb—”
“After the first shot, you should go for the vehicle. Move it to cover while he’s distracted with me.” Whitcomb managed a smile. “Or maybe he’ll shoot you, and I’ll survive. It’s all good.”
The man turned and met Dryden’s gaze across the space between them. He took another deep breath.
“Now or never,” Whitcomb said.
And ran.
Dryden watched the moment unfold in awful clarity. Saw it in a kind of precision that wasn’t quite slow motion but might as well have been. Whitcomb was ten feet from cover when the zip of another bullet passed through the channel. Dryden saw the man flinch and draw to his right—which meant the sound must have passed just to his left—without breaking stride as he sprinted.
Then Dryden forgot about him and turned his focus on the Explorer, and broke from cover himself.
Behind him, Marnie was suddenly screaming.
He couldn’t process the sound.
The world had scaled down to the strip of space between himself and the open door of the vehicle, fifteen feet away. His thinking had scaled down to the sequence of moves he needed to make. Simple actions in linear order. Planting each foot, pistoning with his legs, tilting his upper body forward, hurling himself at the Explorer.
The window in the open door burst right in front of him, close enough to shower his face with crumbs of tempered glass.
He rounded the door, didn’t bother shutting it, crammed his body behind the wheel, ducked and turned the ignition the rest of the way forward. Heard the baseball game momentarily cut out. Heard the engine rev and catch and roar. Heard the passenger-side window explode. Felt another shower of glass bits. He reached up and worked the selector, already jamming his foot on the gas. Beneath him, the vehicle lurched forward like a living thing. Its momentum slammed the door shut beside him, and a second later the shadow of the tall scrap pile slid over everything.
Dryden braked.
Sat upright.
The Explorer was behind cover and running smoothly. No damage to anything except the two windows.
He looked down at himself. No injury. Nothing.
He sat there for five seconds, letting his pulse stabilize, letting his thoughts become words again. He took a breath and released it. It came out sounding like a laugh. Maybe it was. He had drawn the fire off Whitcomb after all. He’d have to give the guy some shit for that.
He opened the door and stood, and saw Marnie sitting ten feet away.
She was holding on to Whitcomb, who’d been shot through the neck.
*
Dryden ran to them and dropped to a knee.
Whitcomb had the plastic case in his hands—he even had the binder full of e-mails.
His blood was all over both things. It was coming out of the bullet wound in pulses. The carotid artery on the right side of his neck had been ripped open.
“They don’t know you,” Whitcomb said. His voice was high and reedy; his windpipe had taken part of the hit.
Marnie had an arm around his shoulder, and one of his hands in her own.
“Don’t try to talk,” she said, though she had to know it was pointless; Whitcomb would be gone in another minute. Two at best.
The man shook his head, his eyes hardening. Whatever he was saying, it mattered to him.
“They don’t know you,” he said again. “The Group. Don’t know your names. Don’t let them find out.”
Dryden nodded, if only to make the guy feel better in these last moments. Whitcomb’s words made sense, but they were also obvious. Maybe it was some simple thought Whitcomb’s brain had fixed on, as he faded.