“We should call the bomb squad,” I said.
She shoved me off.
“No. By the time they suit up, mobilize, find my apartment, and decide the safest way to defuse the bomb, Spence will be dead. It’s either me,” she said, “or you and me. Are you in or out?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She jumped into the driver’s seat and started the car.
“In!” I yelled, throwing myself into the passenger side as she peeled out and blasted through the red light on Lexington, light bars flashing, siren screaming.
“We should call for backup,” I said.
“Not until we get there and we can assess the situation,” she said, swinging onto Fifth. “We can’t take a chance on having some gung ho rookie showing up and deciding to play hero.”
“You think it’s any better to send a gung ho wife to play hero?”
“Dammit, Zach, I’ve got twenty-eight minutes,” she said. “I know where Spence is and how to get there, and I don’t have time to brief a backup unit and get them up to speed.”
Kylie made a hard right onto Central Park South, the ritzy stretch of 59th Street that runs from Grand Army Plaza at Fifth Avenue to Columbus Circle at Eighth. The street was lined with dozens of horse-drawn hansom cabs waiting to take willing tourists on a twenty-minute trot through the park for fifty bucks plus tip. Kylie leaned on the siren, then hopped the double yellow line into the eastbound lane, where there was a lot less traffic.
“We went through a list of every possible target,” she said. “How did we not think of Spence?”
“We were looking for the big cinematic finale,” I said. “But Benoit just turned this around into a vendetta. You killed his girlfriend.”
“Right,” she said. She turned left onto Seventh Avenue, skidded into the fire lane, and floored the Caprice. “So if Spence dies, it’s my fault.”
My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. “It’s Cates,” I said. “McGrath must have told her we took off on a Two-one-seven.”
“Don’t pick it up,” Kylie said.
“Are you out of your mind?” I said. “She’s our boss.”
“Yes, right now I am totally out of my mind, and if we tell our boss what we’re doing, she might pull the plug. Zach, I know that Spence doesn’t mean much to you, but if you care about me, please, please, please don’t answer the phone.”
If I cared about her? Had I ever stopped caring? And now all that emotional baggage was threatening to drag down the only other thing I cared about. My career.
The phone rang a second time.
Cates’s caller ID flashed on the screen. Below that were two buttons. One green, one red: accept, decline.
They may just as well have said: lose, lose.
I will probably regret this for the rest of my life, I thought.
I pressed one of the buttons.
Chapter 71
EXT. 17TH STREET PIER, NEW YORK CITY—DAY
The Chameleon makes his final costume change and drives his rented Zipcar to the South Street Pier. His crew is waiting for him. Six men, three women, each dressed in the same uniform he is wearing—black pants, white shirt, white dinner jacket, and electric blue bow tie. He’s been working with them for three months now, and they are happy to see him.
“ARMANDO,” ONE OF the women called out to him as he jogged across the parking lot. “I was worried about you. You almost missed the boat.”
It was Adrienne Gomez-Bower, the pretty one with the curly jet-black hair, and the blatantly obvious crush on him. He doubted if she’d even look twice at Gabriel Benoit, but she totally had the hots for Armando Savoy, the brown-skinned, intense young actor, born in Buenos Aires, raised in Marseilles, and trying to make it big in New York.
“Adrienne, ma chérie,” he said as he leaned toward her and gave her the traditional French faire la bise, a kiss on each cheek. “Sorry I’m late. I had a callback for the new Mamet play. It’s down to me and two other guys.”
“Oh my God, Armando—a David Mamet play?” she said. “How awesome would that be? I swear, if you get the part, I will be front row center on opening night, even if I have to sell my body to pay for the tickets.”
Another time and he would have enjoyed kicking up the sexual tension a few more notches. Lexi wouldn’t mind. She knew it was all part of his act. But now with her gone, coming on to Adrienne felt too much like cheating.
“Anyway, boss,” he said. “Sorry I’m late.”
Adrienne was the crew chief, and she smiled. “I’ll let it slide,” she said. “But next time I may have to come down hard on you.”