Джеймс Паттерсон - Target - Alex Cross

The crowd hooted and howled back its approval.

“We hear you,” Bronson said. “We see ya, and we feel ya too!”

The fans erupted again.

Over their clapping, Bronson said, “I am Sydney Bronson, chief visionary officer at Victorious! And I’d like to introduce my partner and our chief geek, the man who takes my ideas and makes them come alive, Austin Crowley!”

Crowley came somewhat reluctantly to the mike. His eyes swept the crowd, hesitated, then pushed on. He looked like he was suffering from stage fright as he said, “Well, do they make you happy? Our games?”

The crowd cheered. He gained confidence, threw his fist overhead, and roared, “Will Victorious rule the gaming world?”

The fans went wild.

“All right!” Bronson said, coming back to the mike and throwing his arm around his partner. “Austin and I welcome you to the Victorious world championships, the richest e-sports event on the planet, an event that is only going to get bigger and richer in the years to come!”

The men gave each other high-fives and then shouted in unison, “We declare these games open!”

Crowley threw both hands over his head, and Bronson pumped his fist and crowed, “First bouts start in five minutes!”

They waved and walked offstage.

Fans started to push toward the various rings.

I was about to suggest to Ned that we take a walk around when, across the sea of people moving in all directions away from the stage, I saw a woman dressed as Celes Chere gazing back at me. She had a green lanyard around her neck and a green badge that identified her as a contestant.

Pretty face, short, spiky blond hair, shiny white coat, and pale skin. She looked away, put on cat’s-eye sunglasses, and merged with the fans heading toward rings one and two. I stared after her, seeing the structure of her cheekbones, jaw, and nose in profile before the crowd blocked my view.

“Alex,” Mahoney said. “Let’s—”

I started pushing into the crowd, calling over my shoulder, “I think I just saw Varjan!”

The current in the river of fans was moving against us, and we didn’t want to pull our badges and set off a panic. It was slow getting through, but we finally reached the left side of the stage and entered into a flow of people moving in the direction I had seen her.

“There she is,” Mahoney said.

I stopped to see him pointing at a woman about thirty yards away, also dressed as Celes Chere. But she had thirty pounds on the woman I’d just seen.

“Not her,” I said, catching sight of another Celes Chere, but she was too tall. In frustration I looked at Stapleton, who’d followed us. “Can we get up on the stage?”

He hesitated, and then nodded. “You’re sure it was her?”

“Not one hundred percent, no,” I said, climbing the stairs.

On the stage, I pivoted to scan the crowds on the north side of rings one and two. Mahoney climbed up beside me.

I spotted a third Celes Chere with her back to us, and then two more, and then six or seven others just entering the venue in a pack.

“They’re everywhere!” Mahoney said.

“We’ll have to check every one.”

A voice behind us said, “Who are these guys, Phil?”

Mahoney and I turned to find the founders of Victorious looking at us. We pulled out our credentials and introduced ourselves. They were alarmed when Stapleton said we were searching for an assassin and bomber.

“In here?” said Bronson, the one who’d left Harvard. “Why would he come here?”

“She,” Mahoney said. “And we don’t know. Maybe she’s a fan of your games.”

I said, “She was wearing a contestant’s badge.”

Crowley, the one who’d dropped out of MIT, had a mild stammer. “What d-does she look like?”

“She’s dressed as Celes Chere.”

Bronson laughed. “Good luck finding her. There’ll be two hundred of them in here by the time we get to the semifinals.”

Crowley studied me. “Do we need to clear this hall? Sweep the place?”

“We can’t do that,” Bronson said. “We’re not doing that. It’s all we’d need to—”

Over the crowd noise, the first explosion was muffled. The second was louder but nothing like the bomb that had torn apart the motel room the day before.

Still, gray and brown smoke boiled and billowed from the northeast corner of the space. People there began to scream and run toward the exits.

That set off a stampede. The smoke rolled forward and swallowed the crowd, which turned hysterical. Fire alarms went off. The sprinkler system was triggered.

That set off more hysteria, and people began to slip and fall as they scrambled toward the doors.

Stapleton grabbed Bronson and Crowley. “Until we know what’s going on, we need to get you both out of here, now!”

The video-game creators looked frightened but nodded.

Bronson said, “You don’t think this assassin woman did this, do you?”

Peering through the mist and the smoke at the knots of fans fleeing the building, I said, “There’s not a bit of doubt in my mind she did it. The question is why.”

At one A.M. mountain time on Friday, February 5, Dana Potter parked his truck out of sight on a spur into BLM land off a desolate road in rural El Paso County, West Texas, hard by the New Mexico border.

“Check your phone,” he said as he put on an ultralight communication unit with a jaw microphone.

“It’s off for a reason,” Mary said.

“Let’s triple-check.”

His wife looked irritated but did as he asked while he got out into the cold air and retrieved their packs from the back of the pickup.

“Nothing, no service,” she said. “Dark hole.”

“Thank you.”

“You sure that thing’s going to work on sat phones?”

“Supposed to shut down a mile around,” he said, hoisting his pack onto his shoulders. “We’ll see.”

Mary looked uncertain as she put her pack on, put her boot in the stirrup, and then climbed onto her horse. She sighed.

“What’s the matter?” Potter said once he was in his own saddle.

“I was just thinking of what could go wrong.”

“I plan on seeing my boy day after tomorrow, tell him his life is saved.”

She gazed at him and nodded slowly and then sharply. “Me too.”

“Happy to hear,” Potter said.

They each tugged down infrared glasses that lit up the scrub and the low mesa before them. They kicked their horses and moved in silence and at a steady pace as they cut cross-country along the same route they’d used before.

At two-twenty, one hour and eleven minutes after they’d started out, they reached the arroyo, retrieved the still green paloverde boughs, and, as before, set them in a pile on the opposite bank of the sandy dry riverbed. They tied up the horses well upriver.

It was still pitch-dark, a moonless night, and the stars shone brilliantly when the two crested the hill above the agricultural fields and the ranch.

Potter felt a steady breeze hitting the back of his neck.

“Wait,” he said. “Wrong wind.”

They stood there, calmly waiting, for five, maybe six minutes before dogs barked in the distance.

Wordlessly, they backed down the side of the mesa and removed their packs. They each found an Ozonics device about the size of a thick paperback. The Ozonics was a miniature ozone generator that would destroy their scent; not even dogs would be able to detect them.

They turned the machines on, dressed warmer, and assembled their rifles. With their packs up on their shoulders again and carrying the weapons and the ozone machines, they climbed back up the hill and stood there waiting, listening.