Stirred

April 1, 1:50 P.M.

He’d buy the security guys cars for this. Hell, he’d buy them each a—

Siders reached around his black jeans, pulled out a gun of his own, and shot each of the guards several times in the chest.

They dropped to the floor.

It had all happened in the blink of an eye.

“Twenty seconds, Peter.”

Roe felt the spring breeze coming through the broken glass, and it felt like utter hopelessness.

Like finality.

He stared at the face-page of the patent for an emergency egress lighting system he’d shepherded through the USPTO.

At least I made a small difference in the world, he thought.

His heart was racing—

“Fifteen seconds.”

—but he fought through the fear and took in a deep shot of oxygen.

“Ten seconds.”

He’d lived a calculated life built upon the accumulation of wealth, but he’d loved it, and he’d lived it the only way he knew how, and he wasn’t going out that window—

“Five…four…”

—with any—

“Three…two…”

—regrets—

“One.”

—but one. He’d never learned the names of those two guards who’d died trying to save him. So he turned his head, staring hard at their cooling bodies, and memorized the names on their tags.

Wilson and Roberts.

Thanks for trying, guys.

“Peter Roe, it is one fifty-one P.M. Godspeed.”

Roe felt a jag of glass cut into his back as he went over the lip.

There was a blink of excruciating brightness as he caught a face-full of sunlight, and then his stomach lifted, Dearborn Street rushing up to greet him, twelve floors streaking past in a blast of wind and sun and glimmers of reflected light, and the people on the sidewalk oblivious to what was falling toward them, in particular a street preacher holding a fat, black Bible and shouting that the day of judgment was at hand to every pedestrian who passed by.

April 1, 1:51 P.M.

“Uh oh,” McGlade said as we rocketed toward the construction.

The workers were digging up the asphalt, and an entire fifteen-foot slab that should have been on the street was no longer there, a rocky ditch in its place.

McGlade punched the horn—

—and accelerated.

“Harry! Holy—”

The Tesla hit the edge of the hole, but rather than go in headfirst and cartwheel in a spectacular spi

“—sheeeeeet!”

—landing safely on the other side of the hole, kissing the street so gently it felt like the wheels had never left the ground.

“Cool,” McGlade said. “They oughta put that in the sales video.”

“Jack? Jack, where are you?” Herb’s voice.

I looked at my iPhone, realized Herb had picked up.

“We’re close,” I said, as McGlade wove through a pair of El supports, brought two tires up onto the curb, and then pulled away just before a fire hydrant ripped his car, and us, in half.

“Shots fired on the twelfth floor,” Herb said. “Cops almost on the scene. Wait for backup, Jack. What am I saying? Don’t you dare go inside. We’re cordoning off the building. He’s not going to get out. So don’t do anything stupid.”

McGlade jammed his foot into the brakes, skidding onto Adams, heading west.

Traffic was at a standstill, but he powered up onto the sidewalk, horn blaring, and took it all the way to Dearborn, bringing the machine to a screeching stop outside the entrance to the Marquette Building.

“Houston, the eagle has landed,” he said.

A black-and-white was already on scene, the officer standing out in the middle of Dearborn, trying to reroute traffic.

I pushed the door open and hauled myself up out of the seat, my hand in my purse, already fingering my Colt Detective Special. I didn’t know for certain that Herb had put out the word that I’d be here. It was a hot scene, and I didn’t want some beat cop thinking I was just some civilian commando with a gun. Good way to get shot.

Two more cruisers with sirens wailing came tearing around Adams behind us.

“McGlade, go watch that entrance, and don’t let any black-haired male out of the building.”

“I won’t let anyone out. But don’t you go in there, or I’ll kick your ass.”

As he ran toward the main entrance I headed over to the police cruisers.

One of the officers had joined in to help direct traffic away from Dearborn, and the other, a young cop who looked barely out of high school, was just climbing out of the nearest car.

When he saw me, he said, “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to go stand over on that sidewalk. We have a dangerous situation here.” He pointed at the building across from the Marquette.

I held up my hand. “My name is Jack Daniels, out of the two-six. Heard of me?”

His brow furrowed, skeptical. “You mean Lieutenant Daniels?” He looked at my belly, dubious.

“You were called here on a one eighty-seven in progress, correct?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“The suspect is a white male with long black hair. Armed. He’s still in the building, and he’s killing a man.”

“I need to call this in.”

He reached up to his shoulder mike.

I said, “You have to shut this building down and get some men inside, right now, Officer. No one in or out unless your career goals involve riding a Segway writing parking tickets.”

My tone must have hit home, because the next words into his microphone were, “Car one-three-five-six, take the rear entrance. No one gets in or out. Suspect is a white male with long black hair. Proceed with caution, he is armed.”

And then the cavalry arrived.

A Chevy Caprice roared up behind the two squad cars, and Herb burst out from behind the steering wheel as fast as I’d ever seen him move.

We started walking toward the building.

It sounded like several districts coming at once, a rash of sirens echoing between the skyscrapers, the cranky horn of a fire truck blaring several blocks away.

“You’ve gotta lock it down, Herb,” I said.

“It’s happening, Jack. I’ve got units securing the Adams, Marble, and Clark Street entrances.”

“I want everyone fu

The Special Response Team was our version of SWAT.

“On their way, but you have to…” Herb looked over my shoulder and said, “Oh, hell.”

A crowd of a dozen or so horrified onlookers had gathered around a brick planter up ahead.

Already, I could see the pool of blood.

Herb had his badge hanging around his neck, and he rattled it as we approached.

“Everyone back! No one leaves until we talk to you!”

We stopped several feet away from the carnage.

I said, “Shit, he hit a pedestrian.”

There were two bodies. The first, a suited man—Roe—lay facedown and sprawled in a bed of crushed flower bulbs that had just begun to sprout. He looked like a giant plate of lasagna in a vague man-shape. The poor soul he’d hit was a wreck of bent appendages, and his head had been crushed in against the brick. A thick Bible was open next to him, the pages flipping in the breeze.

Sidewalk traffic had been effectively shut down, so the only onlookers were those who’d been here when it happened.