“You had to kill him, Mike?”

“Yes, I did, but he still had time to press the button on his phone.”

Savich watched Nicholas rise and take her arms in his hands. “Listen to me, you did what you had to do and you did it in the right order. I’m very proud of you.” He paused, then, “Thank you for helping me, Mike.”

Carrie came out of the hospital room. “Hey, guys, look what I found sewn in the cuff of Spenser’s trousers.” She held up two gold coins. “Are these his undetectable bombs, the ones that blew up Bayway?”

“Yes,” Mike said, staring at those harmless-looking gold coins, so small, so innocent-looking. “Hold them gently, Carrie.”

“You can bet your sweet patoot on that,” Carrie said.

Savich cleared both Nicholas and Mike through, saying quietly, “You and Nicholas need to get on out of here, let the crime scene unit come in and do their jobs. Go to the Hoover Building. Sherlock will meet you and take you to the command center with all the cameras on Yorktown. Questions later.”

Nicholas nodded. “We have no idea what’s going to happen, but if what Vanessa said is correct and Spenser did have the opportunity to plant bombs on-site, we’ve got to find them. We can’t let anyone else get hurt.”

“Already done,” Savich said, and ushered them onto the elevator. “They have two bomb units there searching, but they’ve been coming up dry. Since the bombs are meant to be undetectable, they’ve evacuated everyone anyway.”

Before they parted company Mike handed her gun over, procedure, watched an agent slip it into an evidence bag, and wanted to cry. At least she had a small snub-nosed Glock in an ankle holster in her motorcycle boot. It would do.

Savich gripped Nicholas’s shoulder. “You did great, both of you,” he said, and headed back into the fray.

Nicholas felt a bolt of pleasure at Savich’s words, then shook his head. No time to bask. He turned back to Mike, saw myriad feelings play across her face. He didn’t blame her.

“Let’s get out of here, Agent Caine. I think we both could use a nice cup of hot tea.”

She didn’t know where it came from, but she laughed. She let him take her hand.

“If you’re a good girl, I might even add a dollop of whiskey.”

She felt the depression begin to lift. “You know, that might be a good idea.”

“And maybe that’ll make you want to talk.”

“Not a chance.”

•   •   •

They stopped at a coffee shop near the State Department and got the tea, but alas, no whiskey, plus bagels hot and ready to be smeared thick with cream cheese. She hadn’t realized she was hungry, but when she took that first bite, her taste buds started a stampede.

When she finished, she sat back, laced her fingers over her stomach, and looked over at Nicholas.

“Better, Agent Caine?”

“Much. You did good, Nicholas, really good. I mean, you saved the president’s freaking life, not to mention all those people on the plane. Plus the captain’s wife will now make you dinner.”

He wanted to tell her without her quick thinking, calling the vice president, hooking him up with the pilot, he couldn’t have saved them, but knew she’d only shrug, dismiss it. He said only, “You know what I think? You should frame the vice president’s card.”

That was good, she thought, but it didn’t quite lift the cloud of doom. “About Spenser, Nicholas, I really wished I hadn’t had to kill him.”

Nicholas shrugged. “I don’t think he ever planned to walk away from the hospital. He knew it was the end of the line. Blowing up the president’s plane? Killing the leader he saw as giving in to terrorists? I’ll bet Damari didn’t have to do too much convincing.” He shrugged again, took another sip of his tea. “I don’t guess we’ll ever know.”

He was right, or close enough. “And now we have to wonder if that other countdown on his phone means he’s going to blow up Yorktown.”

“Not a doubt in my mind, unfortunately.” Someone had turned up the volume on the television and they both watched the breaking news about a shooting at George Washington University Hospital. The anchor said, “No details, and the hospital is no longer on lockdown, we’ll have more news on this during the noon broadcast.”

Mike said, “Everything boils down to a news bite.” She raised her face, and he saw pain there and regret and hated it. “He was fast, so fast. When he pressed the button I thought we were all dead, boom, gone up in smoke. All I could think was I failed, I failed everyone. And I thought about my mom, and my dad, and how upset they would be at me getting myself killed because I wasn’t fast enough.” She leaned forward, balanced her chin on her hands. “I made the wrong decision, Nicholas. I shouldn’t ever have let him press the button on that phone.”

He wanted to tell her she’d stopped a killer, saved innumerable lives, but knew she’d kiss that off, as the Americans said. He said only, “So tell me, what did you do wrong exactly?”

Instead, she surprised him. “I’d like you to meet my folks sometime, Nicholas. You’d like them. You’ll start panting when you meet my mom, the Gorgeous Rebecca.”

This was interesting. “Yes,” he said, never looking away from her. “I’d like to meet them.”

“Spenser is dead and we still don’t know where Damari is or what he’s planning. My folks come to New York regularly. Maybe we can all have dinner. No, no, lunch would be better.”

He laughed. “We can discuss it.”

“All right, yes, we can talk about my parents, and lunch, that’d be okay.”

“Time to pack away all the second-guessing, Agent Caine. You made exactly the right call, and I would have done the same if I’d been in your position. Don’t forget, he made it past me, too. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. And no one is.”

She waved that away, as he expected she would.

“I wonder if the president will invite you to the White House, give you the keys to the Lincoln Bedroom? But I’ve heard the bed is really short, too short for you.”

He glanced at his Breitling. “Seventy minutes until the speech at Yorktown was supposed to happen. No doubt in my mind there’ll be an explosion and we’ll be treated to another display of the bomb’s power.”

“And still it won’t be over.” Mike banged her fist on the table. “Where is Damari?”

73

KING TO E1

Hoover Building

Sherlock met them in the lobby, hugged them both. “Andy Tate’s body was found an hour ago in a motel in Lorton, Virginia. He was shot through the forehead. There were some electronics lying around, but no laptops, no phones. Only Spenser and Tate went into the room, so it wasn’t Damari, unless he was wearing Potter’s invisibility cloak.”

“Yes,” Nicholas said. “Matthew Spenser, no doubt.”

Mike frowned. “Why did he kill Tate? He was one of his core group, his right hand—the computer guy who implemented the cyber-attack.”

Sherlock said, “Dillon believes Spenser had simply gone over the edge at that point. His only focus became killing Vanessa and blowing up the president. He knew he was going to die, accepted it.

“Dillon just called me, told me to tell you he’d spoken to both Carl Grace and Vanessa, told them what had happened. He wanted to assure you that Vanessa was going to be okay, and she sends her thanks for helping wrap things up, glad what she recorded for Spenser worked. But like the rest of us, she’s terrified Damari got Matthew’s coin to Iran.

“Still—you saved the president of the United States, and that makes everything, for the moment, at least, okay. I’ve already heard from at least six agents that you guys were amazing. Nicholas, what does it feel like to have the president of the United States owe you big-time?” And she laughed, punched him in the arm. “My advice is to call the IRS, make a deal. I bet those dual taxes are crippling. Now follow me, guys, not much time now until Yorktown. And no one wants to guess what will happen.”