“You think he’s going to stop coming after you? You know as well as I do that he’ll be more motivated now than ever.”
Again I said nothing.
“Damn it, John, let me help you.”
I was in a box and I couldn’t see a way out of it. “Goddamn it. How?”
“I’ll come to you. Put you in the trunk of my car and drive you out of the city.”
“The trunk? There are four of us. What kind of car do you have?”
“Honda.”
“What model?”
There was a pause. “Civic.”
I looked over at the collective mass of Larison, Treven, and Dox. “No way,” I said.
“You’d be amazed what you can fit into a tight space with a little Crisco,” Dox offered, apparently having intuited what we were talking about.
“You have a better idea?” Kanezaki said.
“We’re talking about eight hundred, maybe nine hundred pounds. You couldn’t get us all in there with a chainsaw and a blender. And even if you could, the back of the car would be riding suspiciously low.”
“I’ll borrow my sister’s minivan. You can all hunker down. As long as no one stops me, no one will see you. It’s built to hold seven, the shocks won’t even be noticeably compressed.”
That sounded more promising. “When can you be here?”
“Where are you?”
If it had been anyone but Kanezaki, I would have been suspicious of a setup. But I trusted him as much as I did anyone other than Dox. Plus, I had no choice.
“Capital Hilton,” I said.
“She lives in Chevy Chase. It’s not that far, but we’re getting into rush hour now.”
“Can you have her meet you someplace in between and swap cars there?”
“That’s a good idea. I’ll be there in an hour. Maybe less. If there’s a problem, I can’t reach her or she’s out with her kids somewhere, or whatever, I’ll call you.”
“Leave a message on the secure site. My phone will be out of commission.”
“Right, okay.”
“We’ll meet you in the lowest level of the parking garage. Away from the elevators.”
“Got it. See you soon.”
I clicked off and disabled and pocketed the phone. Larison, Treven, and Dox had moved out from between the beds and away from each other. Everyone’s arms were loose and their hands open. They looked liked gunslingers in a western a half-second away from drawing.
“What the fuck is going on?” Treven said.
I didn’t like the accusatory tone I heard in the question, and reminded myself to be extra calm in my response. Four armed, dangerous, and suddenly distrustful men in a small room…if things got out of hand, it was going to be very bad.
“You were right,” I said, looking at Larison. “Horton set us up. Shorrock has been replaced by one of Horton’s guys, and Finch is about to be replaced by Horton himself. The government just issued some kind of all-points terror alert saying the four of us killed both of them with cyanide. We were just put on the presidents’ kill list. And they know we’re in D.C.”
“Horton and that damn cyanide,” Dox said. “So that was just supposed to incriminate us and sound scary to the public, too?”
I nodded. “Yeah. And the hell of it is, I never even used it. And no one else…”
I stopped, realizing I’d missed something obvious. Dangerously obvious.
Treven’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
I didn’t answer. I realized there were three people who thought I’d used cyanide on Shorrock: not just Horton, but also Larison and Treven. Either one of them, or both, could have mistakenly told Horton that I’d used the cyanide. That would have given him additional confidence to order the faked toxicology reports. He would have believed there really would be evidence of cyanide if anyone examined the corpses more thoroughly.
“Then how did you do Shorrock?” Larison said. “The way you did Finch?”
I was struck that despite the tension in the room, he could remain so detached and professionally curious.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. But if Larison and Treven were working for Horton, they wouldn’t be on that terror alert, right? Unless the idea were to make it look like we were all in the same boat, when in fact…
Treven tensed. In my peripheral vision, I saw Dox spot it, too.
There was a blur of movement, and an instant later all four of us had our guns out. Treven and I were pointing at each other. Dox was aiming at Treven. Larison had the muzzle of his angled toward the floor, but his head and eyes tracked from Treven to Dox to me and back again.
“You think I had something to do with this?” Treven said. “I’m as fucked as you are.”
I saw his hands were as steady as mine. “Put your gun down if you want to get unfucked,” I said.
Treven said nothing.
Larison’s head kept tracking. He looked like a rattlesnake trying to make up his mind about in which direction to strike.
I thought we had maybe two more seconds before the tension boiled over. I couldn’t figure out a way to stop it.
Suddenly, Dox brought the muzzle of his Wilson Combat up to his own neck. “Hold it,” he said. “The next man makes a move, the nigger gets it.”
I blinked and thought, What the fuck?
“Drop it,” he said. “Or I swear, I’ll blow this nigger’s head all over this town!”
He looked from one of us to the other, his eyes wide in faux lunacy.
Larison started to grin, then guffawed. “All right,” he said. “You win. You win.” He eased his pistol into the back of his waistband and held up his hands.