Color Blind (36 page)

Yancy’s feet moved anyway.

The alleyway was up to his right, and that was where Zane had disappeared. She’d either gone down the alley or come back into the main crowd.

He walked straight up the center of the road and reached the gap where the alley jutted off right. People everywhere, but the alley was empty. Only puddles and power cords. Good combo.

Yancy’s hooked prosthetic caught something under him, and he tripped. After a few quick steps, he regained his balance and looked down to see what his foot had snagged. His eye line followed the cords from the alley to where he was standing. They were all tagged with tiny labels:
LAKE HARP BAND AMP 2. RAAZZER 3. MC TABLE MIC B.

His chest squeezed painfully when he saw the next cord. Duct-taped down like the rest, tacked in place, it didn’t trail to the side with the others. Instead, it ended abruptly in the middle of the street.

CHARLEY PADGETT MIC
.

Jenna’s brother’s face burst forth in Yancy’s mind. “Oh, no . . .”

Isaac, Sebastian, this whole place. Isaac’s plan wasn’t just about the irony of dead people at an anti–death penalty rally or a high death count and infamy for Sebastian. It was about
Jenna.

“I have a situation here!” he said, jamming the radio button.

He tried again, but he couldn’t hear himself in the other end of his radio. They’d turned him off. Why would they turn him off?
Shit!

Yancy glanced around, hoping to see an agent near him. Fucking plainclothes. He’d have to do it himself.

He squatted next to the end of the cord and pried the duct tape from the ground. The tape came up, and the end of the cord turned out not to be the end of a cord at all.

It appeared to be a hose—with a cap screwed onto the end.

The cops had been looking for abandoned cars and bags, searching
people
for this very thing. Yet here it was, all because he’d
tripped
on it.
All in a day.

Internship in law enforcement didn’t exactly train you for everything, including how to disarm a fucking
bomb
. Christ.

Still, Yancy had opened a champagne bottle or two in his life. Pressure was bad.

What’s the worst that can happen? I have a hand to match my foot?

Slowly, carefully, he unscrewed the cap on the end. It slid away from the hose’s end as easily as the top on a ginger ale. He stared inside the hose for a few seconds, stunned. It was packed with black stuff, tacks.

Yancy was sweating through his shirt now, too hot for comfort.

Someone needed to know about this. Anyone. Jenna. But Jenna and Hank were God-knew-where, and Yancy was crouched in front of a bomb.

Jesus. Jenna!

Then his head swam, thoughts cramming in faster than he could react. If the bomb was here, and it wasn’t the kind you saw in movies with a timer counting down to zero hour, that meant someone had to light the thing. He imagined Wile E. Coyote creeping up to a stick of dynamite with a match.

Yancy’s eyes flew in the direction the cords snaked away from the alley. The stage.

Sebastian might’ve changed his mind. Maybe he
was
meeting Zane.

But maybe he wasn’t.

Yancy bolted toward the stage. He shoved people out of his way, ripping through the crowd in a dead run. It didn’t matter where Jenna was. She was off chasing Zane on the other side of the alley. She was nowhere near this thing.

Charley Padgett
was
.

T
he parking garage was completely quiet as Jenna followed Hank, the Glock issued to her for today trained in the direction they were moving. Zane was nowhere in sight.

“Something’s wrong,” Jenna whispered to Hank. “This isn’t right. No one’s out here. Sebastian’s not.”

“Are you saying Zane led us into a trap?” he asked.

“No. I’m saying maybe Zane isn’t going to lead us to Sebastian, because
he
isn’t leading her to
him
.” This felt off. All the people and the main event were behind them. Isaac would’ve designed this plan to cause the maximum damage and chaos. There was no one in the garage. Nothing would happen here.

Jenna closed her eyes. The rally area glowed orange. Hot. The color of traffic cones and breaking news. The parking garage radiated blue or gray, the color she saw every time she thought about the incident with Charley and Claudia, of Charley’s pale face. Defensiveness. Protectiveness.

“Oh, God,” Jenna said. “He’s saving her. We’re going toward blue.”

“What are you talking about? Blue could mean we’re going
toward
Sebastian, right? You told me his color was blue,” Hank said.

Jenna shook her head. “Not how it works. It’s not Sebastian’s blue. No time to explain! We need to get back to the rally. He sent Zane out here because the main event
is
far away. She’s here so she won’t get hurt. Sebastian’s in
there
, and that’s where he’s going to execute Isaac’s plan.”

She pointed back toward the rally, but she was already taking off toward it. Whatever was about to happen, Zane wasn’t part of it.

•   •   •

S
ebastian lingered at the south corner near the barricade, watching the crowd. Not quite time. Yet something had sparked in the middle of the crowd, and it wasn’t the hose.

People were getting restless somewhere in the back, but he couldn’t see why. They parted like a sea. Could they have found it? No. He was too close. It was almost over! This was
his
moment.

Then a man burst from the crowd, running toward the stage. All eyes were on the sprinting figure. Confusion, chaos.

Time to go.

•   •   •

T
hadius Grogan sat inside the cop car at the east side barricade near the stage. The officer who normally drove the car was safely tied and gagged in his home, knocked out with a couple Xanax that Thadius’s doctor had prescribed for him once upon a time. Having the cop out of the way for the afternoon was the kind of anti-anxiety Thadius enjoyed most.

Inside the car, a picture of Thadius issued for the manhunt stared back at him. All the cops had one. But they assumed if you had Officer Brenniman’s badge, uniform, cell phone, and car, you must be Officer Brenniman. This was exactly why cops didn’t get things done.

Thadius scanned the crowd again, but so far, nothing. Not a big deal. He would see him. Obsession was a powerful, magnetic thing. Only so much you could plan something like this. Fate had allowed Thadius to come this far. He’d spot Sebastian Waters, even in a crowd this big.

The crowd stirred, though. A man split off the side and ran past Thadius’s vehicle. The guy’s face was wrought with panic.

Thadius’s head snapped away from the running man, the cops moving toward him. The crowd skittered like bugs from a rotten log. They gushed out from the center, steady lines of traffic forming in all directions that led away from the stage.

Which made the single person slinking from the barricade corner directly
into
the fray light up like a neon sign.

Him.

The kid was younger than Thadius had expected. Chubby-cheeked, almost like he hadn’t lost all his baby fat. Dusty bangs in his eyes.

Thadius looked to Sebastian’s hands. He imagined those fingers on Emily’s neck, his body twice the size of hers forcing her to the ground.

Somehow it seemed fitting that in this moment, Thadius would have witnesses by the hundreds. Just like the execution planned for this evening inside that prison; a brutal crime deserved a brutal answer. It didn’t matter who you killed—as long as you were right.

Thadius opened the cruiser’s door.

•   •   •

C
harley Padgett stood by the stage with his guitar, and Yancy practically bowled him over.

Jenna’s brother tripped backward with the blow, dazed. Charley reared back to hit him, then noticed who Yancy was. “Dude, what
is
this?”

“Charley . . .” Yancy gasped. “Jenna. Bomb. You. We have to move!”

“Hold it right there!” a cop yelled from behind him.

Yancy wheeled around to see three guns trained on him. “You’ve got this all wrong!”

Then all hell broke loose.

•   •   •

J
enna’s feet pelted the asphalt as fast as she could make them move. Had to get back! Almost to the alley opening. Ten more feet.

BOOM.

J
enna burst out of the alleyway in time to see what looked like a giant fiery snake whip through the air. People ran, screamed. Something near the front of the block was on fire. The stage?

Yancy!

“Here, here, here!” Jenna yelled as people passed her, running down the block.

She wound her arms as if she were a little league coach sending kids to home plate. The alley was the fastest way out, and the safest. Now on the ground, the flaming cord tore a path through the middle of the crowd. Running from it was a gamble. Breaking off was the best chance.

As the crowd rushed by her into the quickly cramming alley, Jenna looked hard at every male who went by. Sebastian had lit his bomb. Surely
that
wasn’t how he’d expected his precious bomb to blow. If he was still alive, he might be here somewhere. She was giving him a route to safety, damn it!

No helping it. Had to get as many people out of that vacuum as she could.

The bomb squad had been standing by, but even they didn’t seem to know what to do about the bizarre beast thrashing its way down the street. A fire truck toward the barricade at the second block eased its way through throngs of opposing traffic. The basket went up over the crowd, and the fireman directed his CO
₂
extinguisher toward the flame. The fire had to look electrical to them, but Jenna was sure it wasn’t. Highly combustible, yes. Electrical, no. That tiny extinguisher would do nothing against this large a fire.

Lights flashed at the prison, and a foghorn blared to signal a lockdown.

If God existed, Yancy would be somewhere in the crowd moving into the alley past her. She looked toward the ground, hoping to spot a metal foot.

What she saw made her heart sink.

Charley.

Jenna ran toward the lashing, semi-failed bomb and the massive pillar of flames that was the stage.

•   •   •

T
hadius approached the man who’d killed Emily, who’d taken his life away from him. The blast had knocked Sebastian Waters off his feet, and he sat in a heap between the fiery stage and the hose bomb. All around Thadius, people cried, helped each other. Some were bleeding, others lay on the ground, unmoving.

His daughter’s killer’s face was slashed up the side, and his shirt torn down the sleeve, revealing the bloody mess that was his arm. The man looked around him at the horror he’d created. Guy was clearly in shock.

He didn’t see Thadius coming.

Thadius lifted Sebastian by his collar to his feet, backed him up. “Do you know who I am?”

Sebastian’s eyes widened, took in Thadius’s face. He didn’t answer. His mouth hung open, slack like a stroke patient’s.

Emily. Narelle. Emily.

Behind Sebastian, the stage fire roared and crackled, lighting up the face of the devil Thadius had hunted for so long. This man didn’t deserve a chance to explain.

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

Thadius threw him into the flames.