Collision

Pilgrim checked his watch. Listened for either the approach of the next guard or the return of the one he’d heard. They held true to their schedule, once a minute, give or take ten seconds.

Those ten seconds might be life or death to him.

He surveyed the empty lot. A trailer sat on one side, near the middle of the lot. A forklift squatted next to it like a stout guard. He took a lockpick from his pocket and had the trailer open in five seconds. No alarm sounded.

The office was cluttered. He spotted the keys to the forklift hanging on a hook by a desk.

He listened for the clockwork steps of the guard, and as they passed he ran to the forklift, lurched it into life, aimed it at the sweet spot in the fence that bordered the hotel lot. Stopped it short and killed the engine. The music festival drowned out the noise he’d made. He checked his watch; ten seconds to spare.

Twenty seconds later he heard the guard pass.

Pilgrim clambered onto the forklift’s roof, lying flat on his stomach. He peered over the fence, which was now about two feet higher than the minilift’s roof. He saw the guard walking away from him.

Four feet separated the two fences. He powered himself over the gap.

Just enough and his feet cleared the wire of the hotel fence. He slammed into the ground and sprinted for the closest door, which stood in a shaded alcove.

He tried the door. Unlocked.

He opened the door, gun ready. He stepped into a service hallway, lit only with the faint gleam of fluorescent lights dangling in a straight row from the ceiling.

He closed the door. He listened to the silence. No sound of an alarm.

He tested doorknobs. The third door opened into a stairwell’s ghostly light. Halfway up the concrete stairs, he heard the footfall behind him. He spun, and one of the suits, thick-necked, stood in the hallway, leveling a gun at him. “Freeze!”

Pilgrim thought: I’m not going to be taken down by a rental cop. “May I raise my hands?”

“Lock fingers together, palms up. Off the stairs, to the ground.” The rental cop didn’t sound like a rental. A bite of authority lay in his tone.

Pilgrim stepped off the stairs. “Where is Teach?”

“On the ground. On your knees. Last warning. Then I shoot.”

Definitely not a rental cop. Pilgrim started to kneel. He bent his knee until he had the right amount of leverage, and then barreled hard into the man, gunning his head straight into the guy’s stomach as they slammed into the concrete wall.

The guy was solid muscle. He hammered Pilgrim’s chin using a short, sharp blow derived from Muay Thai, a martial art. Pilgrim was surprised, and he ducked the second punch, slammed a fist into the man’s temple, once, twice, and then caught him in the back of the head with a pistol butt. The guy staggered, for one moment, all that Pilgrim needed. The man collapsed, and Pilgrim whipped him again with the pistol butt to keep him down. But when he saw the guy’s ear, cupping an earpiece, he knew that the other guard would hear and respond. He frisked the guy for a second gun. He found only flat plastic in the guard’s pocket. An ID card: Hector Global Security.

He dropped the card on the unconscious man’s chest.

Wait for the second guard to respond or go? He pressed his back against the wall, flicked off the light.

Ten seconds later the door flew open and the second guard bolted into the hallway. Pilgrim launched a kick at the back of the man’s head.

9

The lights flickered to life, and after the coffinlike darkness Ben blinked hard against the harsh dazzle. He’d sat in the darkness, perfectly still, trying to steel himself against what might come next.

“Nice to have quiet and time to think.” Kidwell shut the door behind him.

“Sitting in the dark didn’t make me smarter.”

“Didn’t it? I thought you might be ready to talk about Emily.”

Ben felt a slow rage fill him. He said nothing. Ten seconds. Thirty seconds.

Kidwell didn’t blink. “You got a real ugly streak inside you. I see it now.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“It’s just fascinating”-he pointed his fingers into little guns-“to me that, you know, your wife was shot to death two years ago, case never solved, and today your business card’s in a sniper’s pocket. Because I don’t believe in coincidence.”

Ben stared at the floor.

“Is that why you kept mewling for a lawyer, Forsberg? You didn’t want to talk about the way your wife died? Surely you weren’t stupid enough to think we wouldn’t make the connection.”

Ben stood up from the chair.

“Sit your ass down.” Kidwell snapped fingers, pointed at the chair.

The finger snap pushed him in a way that the threats had not. “Shut your mouth,” Ben said. “You don’t talk about Emily.”

“I see the nerve remains raw.”

“I’m done here. My wife was killed in a random shooting, the police exonerated me. You haven’t arrested me and I’m not saying another word to you. I’m leaving and I’m going to hire a lawyer and I’m going to sue you personally so that your bank account’s emptier than your brain.”