Patrick Lee - Ghost Country

But armed or not, anyone in the room other than Paige would have to be dealt with.

He considered the Remington. Imagined going through the iris with it. It would be bulky and slow to maneuver in the confined space of the corner. It would need to be cycled between shots, and he'd get only five of them. Anyone he hit would be dead all over the place, but if there were multiple targets, and if they did happen to be armed, the limited shot capacity could get him in trouble.

They reached the traffic circle. Crossed it in about twenty seconds. In another twenty they were at the base of the maple that offered access to the second floor. They climbed to the girders and headed across them toward the stairwell.

"Trade with me," Travis said. He held the shotgun out to Bethany. She took it and handed him the SIG-Sauer. It held nine.45 caliber rounds, including the one in the chamber. They wouldn't hit like twelve-gauge slugs, but they would do the job. And he could aim and fire the pistol a hell of a lot faster than a three-foot-long shotgun. Bethany handed him the three spare magazines from her pocket. He put two in his own pocket and kept the other one in his free hand. If need be, he could drop the current magazine out of the pistol and reload it in about a second.

They were on the ninth floor a minute later, moving as fast as caution allowed across the open beams. They came to the concrete pad at the corner. Travis gave it only a second's assessment and then walked onto it. Strong as hell. An intact pad directly above it had blocked at least some of the snow and ice that would've stressed it over the years.

Bethany followed him onto the pad. She shrugged off her backpack, opened it and took out the cylinder. The rest of the shotgun shells-one hundred minus those in the gun and in Travis's pockets-settled into the bottom of the pack.

She set the cylinder on the concrete and used the backpack to prop up the front end. The iris would open just above waist level, two feet in from the corner of the room.

She knelt over the cylinder, ready to switch it on.

Travis stood next to where the beam would project the iris. He gripped the SIG. Took a breath. Looked at Bethany.

"Do it," he said.

She pressed the button.

The iris appeared, and through it Travis saw tinted glass and flowing traffic far below and he ducked through and spun as he stood upright, the SIG coming up and sweeping the room for targets.

The room was empty.

There was one door out of the room. It was closed. There was a narrow strip of glass set into it. Travis crossed the room and looked through it. The corridor stretched away in two directions from the corner. He could see all the way down one stretch, and not far at all down the other. Just a few feet before the angle got in the way.

The corridor was tiled with either stone or ceramic. Travis heard footsteps clicking along on it, approaching from the hidden direction. Distinct clicks, one after the next. Someone alone. Travis turned the doorknob and pulled the door toward himself a quarter inch, just enough to clear the latch from the plate.

He waited. The tile amplified the footsteps and made it hard to judge their distance. He let them get louder than instinct advised, and then he yanked the door open and stepped through, bringing the SIG up to level.

A guy in his forties, short, wiry, came to a stop with the gun's barrel six inches from his face.

Travis gestured for him to stay quiet. The guy nodded. Eyes wide. Travis stepped clear of the door and waved the man through, and a second later they were back in the room with the door closed behind them.

"Shut your eyes," Travis said. "Tight."

The man complied.

Travis grabbed him by the back of the collar and propelled him forward, keeping him off balance. He shoved him to the corner, turned, dragged him downward and pushed him through the iris. His waist caught the bottom of the circle on the way through and he pitched forward, sprawling onto the concrete on the other side.

The man got himself upright, half sitting, and opened his eyes. Bethany had the shotgun on him. Travis was already through the iris behind him, covering him with the SIG.

The guy looked around at the forest and the ruins. His expression went dead slack. Disbelief at its most literal. His brain simply did not accept what his eyes were reporting.

"Wallet," Travis said.

The guy stared at him. Blinked. Took out his wallet.

Travis pointed to the concrete at Bethany's feet. "Toss it."

The guy threw the wallet. It landed, tumbled three feet and stopped.

Travis gestured for the guy to stand up. The man nodded, and when he was halfway through the move, onto his feet but not yet balanced, Travis grabbed the back of his collar again and shoved him forward onto the girder that bound the north edge of the concrete. He pushed him onto it and then past it. The guy's feet stayed on the lip of the beam but his upper body ended up two feet beyond, above nine stories of empty space.

The man's breath caught in his throat. His body went rigid, his fear overwhelming every instinct to struggle. He took tiny breaths, in and out, as if he thought larger ones might imbalance him and send him over.

Travis stood with his own weight tilted inward from the edge to counterbalance the guy. His arm was fully extended. The guy was thirty degrees past his own natural tipping point.

"Where's the woman?" Travis said.

It took the guy a second to answer. "Woman?"

"Don't fuck with me. They brought her in last night, after they hit the motorcade."

Another few seconds passed. The guy cocked his head. He knew the answer. If he didn't, he'd be saying so already. He'd be screaming it.

Travis shifted his weight outward. He did it fast, letting his arm go slack and then snap tight again. The effect was that, for half a second, the guy believed he was falling. He didn't scream-he didn't have the breath for it-but he made a tight whimpering sound.

Then his words came out in a high monotone. "They took her to Mr. Finn's office. Just now. Few minutes ago."

"Where is that?"

"Top floor. Southwest corner."

Travis let go of his collar.

The guy's arms shot outward, spasming, his hands grabbing for anything. But there wasn't anything. He sucked in a gasp and screamed like a high-school girl in a slasher flick and then he was gone, out into the emptiness.

Travis didn't bother to watch him hit. He turned. Saw Bethany standing there, her hand to her mouth, eyes unblinking. The shotgun hung forgotten at her side.

"We didn't ask to be part of this," Travis said. "These people did."

It was all he had.

He held her eyes a moment longer and then he crossed to the cylinder and shut it off. He picked it up and headed for the stairwell, crossing exposed beams. After a few steps he picked up the pace to a run. He glanced behind him and saw Bethany shouldering the backpack, pocketing the dropped wallet, and following. P aige sat waiting for Isaac Finn to arrive. She knew his name only from the brass plate she'd seen on his door when the two large men had carried her through it.

Finn's office was huge. Three times the size of the room they'd kept her in. There was a balcony along its southern expanse looking out on a view that could've been an educational poster of Washington, D.C. The kind of poster with tags and labels for every building that mattered. It was all there, from the White House to the Capitol to the Supreme Court, and a hundred other buildings that channeled power in ways most people would never care to know. Paige wondered how many of those buildings this high-rise outranked. Maybe all of them.

She was sitting on a leather couch. Her wrists and ankles were still zip-tied. The two large men were standing just inside the door, hands folded neatly in front of them. Each had a Beretta holstered under his suit coat-Paige had seen them there when they'd carried her from the other room.