“What about the passcode?” Larison said. “Are there other copies? Or just the one stenciled inside that mask?”
“Backups,” Grimble said. “Backups, backups, backups.”
Larison shrugged. Diaz had the chilling sense that Rain and Larison had been flirting with the necessity or desirability of killing Grimble so no one else could use him to access the system. He was lucky he had architected the system the way he had. Or that he was clever enough to lie.
“How long will it take?” Rain said.
Maya shrugged. “Ten minutes. Less, if Constantine helps me.”
Diaz had turned down the volume on her earpiece so she didn’t have to hear the conversation in Grimble’s office in stereo. But suddenly she heard a loud rasping, like feedback from a microphone that’s been mishandled or dropped.
“This is Lisa Rispel,” came a loud voice. “And the lovely woman who a moment ago had this mic attached to her lapel now has the muzzle of a gun pressed to her head.”
chapter
seventy-four
MANUS
Manus and Delilah had identified a route off the property that would avoid the main entrance and the approach from Manzanita. It was level ground, with adequate space between trees, and marked off only by a wooden fence supported by posts eight feet apart. Manus tested the strength of the fence by leaning against it. It wasn’t much. Hit it hard between the posts with the truck, and they would blast right through. The Porsche could follow. They might surprise a few people by driving across the adjacent properties, but they would be gone before anyone could process it. And if anyone’s security cameras picked up a license plate, it wouldn’t matter. Kanezaki had supplied fakes. The man was more than competent with logistics.
He straightened and turned. And saw Delilah, a man’s fist entangled in her hair, the muzzle of a gun pressed against her head. And five other men fanned out, all with suppressed pistols pointing at him. Too many to have any chance of taking out before they dropped him. And even if he could have gotten to cover, it wouldn’t have helped Delilah.
A woman stepped forward, early fifties, hair back, jeans and a dark fleece. Rispel.
She gave Manus a cool smile. “Hello, Marvin. I’m only here for the videos. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.”
It was a weird echo of what Larison had said to him in Freeway Park just a few days earlier, which now felt like months ago. The difference was, when Larison said it, Manus had somehow known it was true.
How had they made it past the cameras Maya was monitoring? They must have found a way to hack the system and loop in previous footage. Probably they had been planning to do something like that with Grimble’s guards and had wound up doing it to Maya and the team, instead. And whether by luck or skill, they had approached from the southeast, where the trees would conceal them from Dox.
Delilah held Manus’s gaze. He couldn’t read her expression. One of the men removed her Glock. Rispel pulled out Delilah’s earpiece and ripped off her lapel mic. Two of the men approached Manus from his flanks and took the HK machine pistol and the Espada. One of them checked Manus’s ears and lapel. A moment later, Rispel said, “Of course he doesn’t have any commo gear. He’s deaf.”
Rispel held Delilah’s earpiece to her own ear and the mic under her mouth. “This is Lisa Rispel,” she said. “And the lovely woman who a moment ago had this mic attached to her lapel now has the muzzle of a gun pressed to her head. I want you to come out, slowly, one by one, each with your hands up. None of this is personal. All I want is the videos and then we can go our separate ways.”
chapter
seventy-five
RAIN
There was an adrenaline dump, but no fear. Instead, what Rain felt were bulkheads, long disused but apparently still well oiled, sliding into place, shutting off his feelings, leaving only a cold clarity.