“Done. You’re a millionaire now. Congrats. Now go in.”

“Fine. Give me a second to think,” Ruiz said.

“We’re out of those, Ruiz. Get in there and kill them.”

56

Stick sat at his desk and Ruby sat on the couch, but Gannon kept pacing.

It was blazingly bright and steamy hot in the old government building office, and as he paced, Gannon began to sweat. He wiped at his brow, wondering if he should take his coat off. But he didn’t take it off. He didn’t know what the hell to do.

As he paced, the police radio in the corner behind Stick’s desk gave out a manic triple beep.

“Crowd control issue at location,” cried a fired-up cop at the scene.

“Clear the air,” said the female Hispanic dispatcher. “Sector units on the way.”

There was a radio break and another cop said, “Where are those buses? We got likelies, four of ’em.”

Gannon could still smell the cordite on his hands as he bit at a fingernail.

“En route, en route,” said the dispatcher. “Less than a block. To clarify, are the shooting victims police? Over.”

There was a beep followed by a screech of feedback.

“We’re waiting on that, Central,” said the cop.

Boy, are we ever, Gannon thought, wiping at his sweating face with his hand.

“They’re feds,” Stick said grimly as he got off his cell phone. “My guy on scene just pulled their IDs.”

Gannon finally sat down on Stick’s couch beside Ruby. He bent over and cupped his hands over his face for a moment then sat back, folding his arms.

“FBI?” Gannon said.

“Two were Department of Energy. One was DEA and one was ATF,” Stick said with a hushed tone of awe.

Just as he said this, Gannon glanced over at Ruby on the couch as she started to double over with a greenish look on her face.

He lunged and grabbed Stick’s wastepaper basket and whisked it under her just as she began to retch. He knelt down beside her, deftly keeping her hair out of the stream of it.

Can you blame her? Gannon thought, shaking his head.

He was feeling pretty damn sick about the situation himself.

“What the hell, Mick? Feds? Four feds? Four dead feds?” Stick said, folding his arms nervously.

“No,” Gannon said, turning toward him. “Aren’t you listening? They’re not feds. Or they’re dirty feds. Hell, screw it. I don’t give a shit who they work for. These folks, whoever they are, just blew a reporter’s fricking head off, an innocent American citizen’s head off, back at that hotel.

“They shot the room to pieces, man. It was a miracle we got out. Then they drew down on me on the street not five minutes ago, Stick. No ‘freeze.’ No ‘you’re under arrest.’ Just up comes an Escalade and out pops an assassin with a machine gun. I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s a lot of machine guns for one evening!”