“Motherfucker,” he said aloud.

He glanced around then, and maybe it was all the time he’d spent with the military, but he noticed the solitary road he’d just used to get onto campus.

One way in. One way out.

He pulled into a parking spot then and got out. Stood sentinel for a good minute before exhaling and pulling his long flannel over his jeans.

Am I really doing this? he wondered.

Am I really stepping into this?

And then he put his head down and plunged forward.

37

An explosion came from the roof where Remy was. A huge puff of smoke floating through the frame of my binoculars.

A car alarm went off, and a black cloud covered the rooftop.

Go, Purvis said, and I took off, down four flights of stairs without looking.

Crossing the street, I sped down the sidewalk. One building. A second building. I crossed the busy street without looking and burst in through the front doors of the Midtown Suites.

I moved through the lobby of the hotel, and my heart was in my stomach.

“I need access to your rooftop,” I said to a guy at the front desk, badging him. “Now!”

“Excuse me?” he said.

“Now.” I banged on the counter.

The clerk ran with me over to an elevator. But I could see from the dial that the two cars were both on high floors.

“Stairs,” I demanded, and he pointed me the way.

Up I went, the clerk in tow for the first two flights.

As I headed around the turn at three, I saw Chester Gardner, crumpled in the stairwell corner. His face was as purple as eggplant.

“Chess,” I said.

“The bodyguard.” He pointed up. “I’m sorry. Go.”

I jumped over Chester and raced up to the fifth level. The sixth.

I pushed the door open at the roof and heard the emergency alarm chirp on and off as the fire door closed.

I looked across at the parking garage where I’d left Cecil. Tried to judge where to look from where the aquarium garage was, and then moved right.

As I came around the corner, I could smell the pungent stink of nitroglycerin in the air—mixed in with blood. The smell of a weapon freshly fired.

And I stared at something strange.

The body of Nolan Brauer, except without the top of his body. The man’s head was gone, as was part of his upper chest.

And that’s when I saw Remy.

Her leg was twisted at an odd angle, and her body was covered in blood and guts.

38

I splashed water on my face, and wiped the dirt from it with a cheap hospital paper towel that broke apart in my hands.

It had been four hours since EMTs had ferried my partner down from the roof. Four hours since Wolf had steered Chester and me to Emory University Hospital about a mile away from the hotel, following the ambulance that held Remy.

I walked into the room where my partner was.