I rushed forward. I’m pretty good with locks, but since there was no doorknob left, when I stuck my knife blade in to try to jimmy the latch, it didn’t help. I would’ve tried kicking it open, but the hinges were on our side of the door. However, the hinges for the door in the interview room were on the outside, so I could get out through there.

The lawyer was on his hands and knees reaching for the guns. He came up with my SIG, which he handed to me. Hastily, I returned to the interview room, positioned myself in front of the door, and kicked, planting my heel firmly beside the doorknob. The door was reinforced and it took three kicks before it flew open.

As I burst into the hallway, I called to DeYoung, “Have Cyber wipe those phones so he can’t access them!”

Mannie was a human battering ram, and I found one agent unconscious in the hallway and another groaning on the floor near where the hall ended in a T.

“Where’d he go?” I said. “Which way?”

He pointed left.

I darted in that direction, evaluating the layout of the building with respect to the route Mannie had chosen. It made sense if he was heading for the parking garage. How does he know where to go? Did he study the schematics of this building? Has he been in here before?

I hadn’t gone far before the lockdown alarm went off, and I knew we were talking about a total shutdown of exterior doors. If Mannie was still in this building—and based on the amount of ground he would’ve needed to cover to get out, I guessed that he was—we should be good.

My next thought went to my stepdaughter. I didn’t know her well enough to guess how she would respond to the alarms, but I didn’t want her to be afraid. However, I had no phone to call her, and the lobby wasn’t close by. I figured we had enough agents to sweep through the parking garage looking for Mannie. I wanted to make sure nothing happened to her.

A security team of three agents came sprinting up to me.

“Check the garage,” I said. “Every car, every trunk. And no one leaves or enters the front gate.” I turned to the lead agent. “Let me have your phone.”

“But I—”

“Now.”

He unlocked the screen and handed it over. Tessa normally didn’t answer phone calls—just texts. So I sent her a text to stay where she was in the lobby and not to worry about the alarms, that she was safe.

When I returned to the agent who’d told me where Mannie had headed, I asked him what his name was.

“Jason Thurman.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“He got my phone and my wallet.”

“He—wait. What? Your wallet?”