Here, I brought
you a coffee."
Someone aimed a camera toward them and Cade turned to face the cop --
Davies, by his nametag -- as the camera flashed. He kicked the gun that had
fallen into the bushes over by the body and toed it under a fold in the coat.
"Should you be moving the evidence around like that?" asked Davies.
"So tell 'em I kicked it. I just came down here to get your name and badge
number for the record and secure the scene."
Shrugging as he looked around, Cade said, "Now the scene is secure, I have
my info, and you have your coffee. Just stay put until the cops get here."
Davies almost choked on his first sip of coffee.
He glanced down at the body, then stared at Cade as he asked, "But... You
mean you aren't a cop?!"
"Never said I was," said Cade. "I've just been working with them today. See
you later."
As Cade turned to go, the guard said, "Hey, wait. Is there any word about
the blonde? The woman who, uh... who flew off... with the car?"
"I haven't heard anything."
Glancing up at the sky, Davies said, "God, I hope she wasn't still hanging
onto that car when it blew. I was looking right at it, but it was too far up...
Do you think she...?"
"No idea," said Cade. "Later."
With that, he headed back up the steps and into the hotel, where he gave
Davies' info to Avery and refilled his coffee cup, then sat down in a corner of
the cafe with an incident report form to wait for Lieutenant Bain.
Chapter Two
Mandi Steele had landed behind a support column in the drive-through of the
Rivage Hotel, then stepped out to briefly join a group of costumed
conventioneers on their way up the walkway ramp.
As she neared the taxi at the front of the line, she spun the two-foot piece
of pvc tubing she'd found behind the column like a baton. Letting it escape her
grasp in the direction of the taxi gave her a pretext for going through the
motions of pretending to look for it as she studied the car.
The paint was new, but the car wasn't. It was full of luggage and rode so
low that it must have had a ton of extra weight aboard. No normal luggage would
weigh that much.
Mandi pretended to search for her missing baton beneath the taxi's rear. She
discovered that the inner side of the fender was solid, not hollow. A pinch of
the clay-like plastique came away between her fingers and she let it fall under
the car before retrieving the bit of pipe and standing up.
In the rearview mirror, the driver's eyes were focused on her legs. Mandi
saw that he was none other than Ahmed Mussafi, a 'suspected' terrorist whose
face had graced several of the wanted posters she'd studied before she'd left
Las Vegas.
The anonymous tip to Gary's office about a suicide attack had been gospel,
after all. Now; how to neutralize this situation? How to handle the driver, who
likely had some kind of a detonator close at hand?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account