Costa made a beeline to her when Packard dismissed his officers. “You have something?”

She showed the picture to Costa. “He was at the hotel bar,” she said. “When I was having drinks with Brian Saturday night.”

“You sure?”

Of course she was sure. “We’d been there about twenty minutes. He came into the bar and ordered a beer. I didn’t think much of it, but when you work undercover, you have to know every face you see. Shit.”

“What else?” said Matt.

“Brian left alone and I went up to the war room. This bastard could have gotten to him then.”

“It would have broken his pattern, but I agree—that was bold, coming into the hotel where every FBI agent is staying.”

“Fuck the pattern. He nearly killed a kid this morning. The kid is nine years old, just walking to the bus stop, and he gets mowed down by that psycho.”

“We need to get this out far and wide, along with the DMV photo. Good work.”

“Is Ryder an agent?”

“Analyst.”

“Can he carry? Is he protected? Hamilton could have a room in the hotel for all we know. Ryder’s at the hotel by himself most of the day.”

“I told him to be alert, and he has a sidearm. He was in the military for three years. He can protect himself. But I’ll call again—we need the feeds from the hotel not only on Saturday, but all week.”

“Any update on the kid?” she asked.

Matt’s face softened, just a bit. She didn’t want to read too much into it, she didn’t want to be coddled. She wanted information.

“The hospital knows to contact us, and Harris will follow up. We know he’s stable right now, and awake, and that’s good.”

“The bastard didn’t think twice about running into those kids. He’s not going to care about collateral damage, not anymore. We took his prize off the table. Does your shrink know what he’s going to do next?”

“My gut? He’ll do anything he has to in order to get to Maddox. And that means he’ll have to engage us, because Brian Maddox is not leaving this police station until we have Glen Hamilton in custody. I’m going to make damn sure that every cop in the Spokane Valley is prepared.”

44

Liberty Lake
9:30 a.m.

PJ Richmond turned five last month and he really, really wanted to go to school with his sisters. But he had to wait until August 24 to start. He had the date circled and starred on his calendar because he wasn’t a baby. Sheila was a baby. She wasn’t even one and she couldn’t walk and the only words she knew were no and mama and dada and cookie.

PJ was proud of the fact that he taught his baby sister how to say cookie. It was a very important word. Cookies were PJ’s favorite food and he loved helping his grandma bake them when she came over to babysit. It was the only good part of not going to school.