Boy Nobody (24 page)

A terror attack. That’s how Sam’s mother really died.

“We suffered quietly,” the mayor says. “We mourned quietly. It seemed like the right choice at the time. But I’m afraid it was too much to ask of Sam. She changed after that.”

You changed, too
, I think.

The mayor is working for someone now, passing secrets through his blog. Maybe he’s motivated by vengeance. Maybe other reasons.

The motivation doesn’t matter. Only the facts do.

All the questions, all the risks, and I’m back to where I started.

The mayor. My original assignment.

My time is up.

I’ve decided. I will kill the mayor, and I will deal with the consequences after.

I will deal with Mother.

I let the pen slide into my hand. I turn the cap to weaponize it.

A text chimes on my phone.

I glance at it.

It’s Howard with another 911.

I hesitate.

“Do you need a moment?” the mayor says.

I stare at the 911 message.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Do what you need to do, and then I want to talk about how we can help Sam.”

I walk to the other side of the room, through the path of the cameras. Twice now through the path.

I keep eyes on the mayor as I dial Howard. He answers, his voice high and tense.

“Another photo just went up on the mayor’s blog,” Howard says.

“That’s impossible,” I say.

“Thirty seconds ago.”

I cover my mouth and whisper into the phone.

“I’m with the mayor. He couldn’t have posted anything.”

“It’s not a document this time. There’s a picture embedded in the photo.”

“A picture of what, Howard?”

“Of you. On the street at night.”

The picture Sam took of me.

I turn to the mayor.

“Who posts to your blog?” I say.

“That’s a strange question,” he says.

“It’s important, sir.”

“I write the posts. But Sam’s in charge of the blog. She takes care of everything for me.”

The leaked documents on the blog. They’re not coming from the mayor.

They’re coming from Sam.

I turn my back and press the phone to my lips. “Close everything down, Howard. Cover your tracks.”

I shut off the phone, return the pen to safe mode.

“We have to find Sam,” I say to the mayor. “It’s an emergency.”

Suddenly an explosion rumbles through the mansion, shaking the floor under our feet. The power goes out, accompanied by shouts from the ballroom.

The doors burst open, and the mayor’s security detail rushes in with guns drawn.

“Freeze!” It’s the Pro from the mayor’s apartment. He’s looking straight at me.

The other security people run at the mayor, surrounding him.

“What’s happening?” the mayor says.

“There’s an emergency. We have to go. Now,” one of them says.

They start to hustle the mayor out of the room. The Pro’s got a Glock trained on my chest. The big one, forty-five cal. Thirteen rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber.

I may not use guns, but I respect them. Especially when they’re pointed at me.

I don’t move.

“Get the mayor out of here,” the Pro says to the security team.

He keeps the gun on me.

The mayor stops in midstride. He’s nearly knocked over by his own security men.

“That’s Ben!” he shouts over the urgings of his security men. “He’s with me.”

The Pro blinks twice, deciding what to do.

I project surprise. I project fear.

Anything that might keep him from pulling the trigger.

The Pro makes his choice. He lowers his pistol.

Then he rushes toward me, grabs me by the arm, and groups me with the mayor, bringing me inside the safety of the security cordon.

“Let’s move!” the Pro shouts, and his team hustles us out of the room.

The emergency lights flicker red as we move in a group through the smoke-filled halls of Gracie. There is confusion all around us, various security teams struggling to bring order to chaos as they evacuate the guests.

“Where is my daughter?” the mayor says.

“Working on finding her, sir,” the Pro says. “In the meantime we’re taking you and the prime minister to the safe room.”

He shouts at the security detail, and they lead us deeper into the mansion, down a passageway to a secure staircase. The Pro types in a code, the door opens, and he guides us down the stairs and into a basement hallway.

I’m moving with the security team, letting them carry me along, but I’m thinking about the mayor’s blog and the emergency-response protocols that were revealed there. Somebody knows every move we’re making. Not just us. The prime minister as well.

Two key players. But which one is the target?

Loud voices speaking Hebrew in front of us.

We turn the corner and two Israeli agents are shouting into radios. They are down at the end of the hall, barely distinguishable in the red haze.

“Friendlies!” the Pro shouts. “We have the mayor with us.”

The Israelis wave to us, signaling that the hallway is clear.

The mayor and I are shepherded forward, surrounded by the security team.

“Where is the prime minister?” an Israeli asks the Pro.

“I haven’t seen him,” the Pro says.

“Be careful,” the Israeli says. “We don’t know what’s happening here.”

The men nod to one another, and the Pro urges our group forward.

We head down the hall until we approach another corner. There’s a subtle shift in the lighting, a momentary shadow caused by someone passing in front of a distant light source.

The security people don’t see it, but I do.

They rush forward, and I pretend to stumble. There’s a domino effect as our group slows down around me. The Pro quickly scoops me up and gets me back on my feet.

It doesn’t take more than a second. Just enough to slow our forward momentum so we don’t run around the corner.

Into what’s waiting.

Two men with ski masks wearing new nylon jackets like the Gap guys on the subway.

But the ski masks have pistols.

They turn toward us. The mayor is in front of me, blocking the shot. The masked men take aim, but they don’t fire.

They don’t want to hit the mayor.

I shift to the left, and their weapons follow me.

Our security guys do not hesitate. They open fire, instantly mowing the two men down.

The Pro glances at me. He senses something is off, but he’s not sure what it is.

I can see he wants to ask me, but how is he going to interrogate a frightened kid in the middle of a firefight?

“Keep moving!” he says to the group.

“Stay close, Ben,” the mayor says.

Suddenly a secondary explosion rocks the building. The sound is distant and muffled, originating somewhere below us.

The explosions are coming from the basement. That’s where I need to be.

The hall goes black as the explosion knocks out the red emergency lighting. The Pro leads our group forward, the pace slowed to a crawl because of the smoke and darkness.

I use the confusion to slip away from the mayor. He’s in good hands with the Pro, and he’ll be safer without me around.

I double back down the hallway to the bodies of the masked men sprawled on the ground.

I check the first one. He’s dead.

The second one groans. He’s all but gone, bleeding from half a dozen critical wounds.

I roll him over, pull up his mask.

He coughs blood, his eyes distant. His lips are moving.

I lean down and put my ear near his face.

He’s praying. In Hebrew.

These are Israelis—that’s what I think now. But they are not
the Israeli security team with the prime minister. They are a different team, men who are working with the Presence.

I’m starting to put this together. It’s the Presence who has been reading the blog, the Presence who needed the security plans to Gracie. It’s he and his men who have been following me.

I have a good idea who he is. And where I might find him.

I follow the thickening smoke toward the basement.

I’ve found the staging area for the attack, but there are no people here. I check surrounding doors, looking for the point of entry into Gracie, but I don’t find anything.

It could mean I missed it, or it could mean they were let in by someone with access.

Someone like Sam.

The Presence is close now. I can sense him. I use the darkness and smoke to make my way through the basement hallway. I creep forward until I hear voices up ahead, arguing.

I peek into the room. A custodial office and changing area.

Men in shiny nylon jackets, all of them in masks, all of them speaking Hebrew.

The Presence is here.

He’s standing across the room wearing a mask, but I recognize his posture immediately.

He shouts at the other men, and they nod the way soldiers do when they’re taking orders.

Suddenly the men race out of the room. I slam my body back against the wall. They turn as they come out, running away from me without looking back.

Only the Presence is left inside.

I step into the room.

The Presence freezes. He stands still, watching me. The fabric around his mouth moves. Is it a smile?

“Your friends are gone,” I say.

“And you are alone,” he says in heavily accented English.

There’s a gun in his waistband. He reaches for it.

I’m too far away to jump him, and I don’t have a weapon of my own.

My best bet is to wait for the shot. If I move at the moment he pulls the trigger, it will reduce his effectiveness. How much will depend on how well trained he is.

He lifts his pistol, extending it toward me—

“Gideon,” I say.

He hesitates for a moment.

“You know me?” he says.

“I’ve seen your photo,” I say. “In Sam’s bedroom.”

The muscles in his jaw tense through the mask.

“And I’ve seen yours,” he says. “Sam sent it to me. So I could kill you.”

He pulls off his mask.

I see his face up close for the first time. Curly hair, dark eyes, and a beard.

I saw him in the Apple Store the first day, again in the subway the other night.

The Presence.

Now I understand why he looked familiar to me.

The Presence is Gideon.

He’s older now and he has a beard. That’s why I couldn’t immediately connect him to the soldier in the photos with Sam. Only his eyes are the same, cold and dead, the eyes of a soldier.

“You are the famous Ben,” he says.

He puts the pistol down on the table next to him.

“This will be for my men who you killed,” he says.

“Not for Sam?”

“Sam can take care of herself,” he says.

And he leaps at me.

He is shockingly fast, crossing the room in two large hops and attacking with vicious, well-aimed punches to my chest and head.

I knock the first few away, take the last in the chest. Hard.

He backs up, snorting, excited by the fight.

“I saw you in the Apple Store,” I say. “You’ve been after me from the very beginning.”

“I’ve been after you since Sam called me.”

“How did she know?”

“A strange man appears in her class days before a mission. That wouldn’t set off alarm bells for you?”

“It would. But I’m trained to see things like that.”

“So is Sam. By me.”

He shouts and comes fast with a series of kicks. Again, he’s on top of me before I can adjust. I manage to knock the first kick away with my forearm, but the second catches me on the side and sends me flying into the wall.

He fights emotionally, each attack a highly focused wave of anger and violence.

I’m not familiar with this style. Training and emotion tend to cancel each other out. I’ve fought disciplined men, their moves calculated and deadly. I’ve fought emotional ones who rush in and try to overwhelm.

I know how to handle both kinds.

But this is something else.

I need to keep him talking, distract him long enough to get my bearings.

“You recruited Sam in Israel after her mother’s death,” I say.

“It was not so difficult. A girl whose mother was killed in a bombing attack. A girl as emotional as Sam. And so very useful because of her father.”

Without warning he comes again. He rushes directly toward me, jinking away at the last second, running halfway up the wall and using it to propel him sideways in a flying kick that sends me crashing through a table.

“She thinks you love her,” I say.

“I do love her,” he says.

I turn just in time to see him swinging a table leg down at my head like a club.

Boom.
He misses by an inch.

“You used her,” I say.

Boom.
I jerk at the last second and he misses again.

“And what did you do to her?” he says.

Boom.
A third time.

I’ve had enough. I torque backward, spring off my hands, and
kick him in the chest with both legs. He goes flying into a metal locker.

“So you do know how to fight,” he says.

We rush each other, meeting in the center of the room. I attack high and low at the same time, testing for weaknesses in his defense. No matter how well trained, most people will favor one side or another, one zone more than the next. If I can find his weak point—

A hand closes around my neck.

Gideon. He’s somehow reached through my attack and grasped me by the throat.

“You’re thinking when you should be fighting,” he says. “That is a problem.”

“I don’t need a lesson from you.”

I clench the muscles in my neck, fighting the pincer grip.

“A final lesson,” he says.

The grip tightens, cutting off the blood flow to my brain.

I have seconds before losing consciousness—

“Gideon!” Sam shouts.

His grip loosens for a millisecond, and I thrash out at him, an open palm to the chin followed by an elbow that connects to his nose with an ugly crunch. He goes sprawling across the room, nearly crashing into Sam.