“Harry!” Perez aimed at Middleton’s head. “I’m not telling you again!”

Their eyes met. Perez pulled the trigger.

Click.

Middleton pulled a handful of bullets from his pocket. He displayed them. When pretending to take just three or four bullets from the clip in the diner, he’d taken them all—and the one in the chamber too.

His eyes bored into the younger man’s. “That text message I got earlier? It wasn’t from Nora and Lespasse. It was from Charley. ‘Green Lantern.’ It’s our code for an emergency. And she text-messaged me who I was in danger from. You, Jack. I knew you’d lead me to Faust. So I text-messaged Lespasse and Nora and told them to follow me from the diner.”

Middleton leapt forward and slammed his fist into Perez’s jaw, then easily twisted the automatic away. He dropped a round into the chamber, locked the slide, aimed at his son-in-law.

“Harry, you don’t understand. I was just faking. Playing along to find out who was involved. I’m a patriot.”

“No. You’re a traitor who was willing to murder a hundred thousand citizens . . . ” His eyelids lowered. “A hundred thousand and one.”

“One?”

“My grandchild. Charley told me what you did. How could you do something like that? How?”

Perez’s shoulders slumped. He looked down and gave up all pretense of lying. “A baby didn’t fit my new lifestyle.”

“And Charley didn’t either, did she? So after losing the baby, my daughter was, what? Going to kill herself in despair?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Middleton grabbed him by the collar, forced the trembling man on his knees, touched his forehead with the muzzle. He felt the pressure closing on his index finger.

This man killed your grandchild, was going to kill your daughter. We’re in the middle of a takedown, he attacked you . . .

Nobody’ll care if you take him out.

Now, do it! Before anybody comes in.

Perez squinted, sealing his miserable eyes. “Please, Harry. Please.”

Green shirt, green shirt, green shirt . . .

Middleton lowered the gun. He shoved Perez to his belly on the floor. The door burst open. A dozen soldiers and men in FBI jackets filed into the room. The agents cuffed Perez as a bio-weapon containment unit, looking like astronauts in their protective gear, headed straight to the gas tanks and equipment on the worktable, sweeping them with sensors. After a few minutes one of them announced, “Nothing’s been mixed yet. There’s no danger.”

A grizzled man in a uniform with major’s stripes strode into the room. Major Stanley Jenkins’s face was grim.

Oh, no . . . Middleton deduced what the man had just learned.

“Colonel, sorry. He got away.”

Middleton sighed.

Well, at least they’d secured the nerve gas. The city was safe.