Forty feet. Manus didn’t seem to be watching them particularly closely. But Dox could feel his attention. Could feel the way Larison’s danger vibe was pinging his radar.
They kept moving. Dox disgorged all the facts he had learned about the park. Larison responded with uh-huhs and reallys and you don’t says.
At thirty feet out, there was a ripple in Manus’s energy. It was nearly invisible, and maybe it even was invisible, but Dox knew what it meant. It was like a Doppler shift, the change in frequency you could sense when a man went from asking himself a question, to being an instant away from answering it.
And not answering in a good way.
The original plan had been for Dox and Larison to get close—but not too close—and then to politely introduce themselves. Hello there, Mr. Manus, you don’t know us, but we’re here to tell you the thing with Alondra Diaz is a setup and the people who hired you want you dead. What can we tell you, you just can’t trust management these days, it’s unfortunate but that’s the state of our modern world. Would you care to join us for a cup of delicious Seattle coffee so we can put our heads together and maybe find a way to watch each other’s backs?
But he could tell now that ship had sailed. He should have known the effect Larison’s presence would have on a potentially delicate situation. Should have realized that in telling himself Larison could provide a useful distraction, he’d been rationalizing. He hadn’t wanted to bother John. But for all his lethality, there was a stillness to John that had a way of reassuring people. And as he watched Manus looming closer and closer, he would have happily paid good money for a way to keep the man calm, and mentally kicked himself for not having one.
Well, he could do the after-action report later. Hopefully.
Fifteen feet. Manus was no longer pretending not to notice them. He was watching intently, his eyes leaving their faces, where he could read whatever was available in their expressions, and settling on their torsos, which would give him a peripheral-vision view of hands and therefore an early warning of a reach for weapons. Probably the only thing that had kept him from taking action already was the incongruity of Dox and Larison holding hands, and maybe of Dox’s banter.
But that would last only for another second, if that.
Manus’s hands were empty, which was good. And while he was wearing a backpack, that wouldn’t offer ready access to a weapon. But Dox could see the clip of a folding knife in the man’s front pocket. And who knew what he might have behind his back, or under his rain parka.
Ten feet. Dox could feel Larison beginning to tense up, seeing where this was going, determined to stay ahead of the action-reaction curve. Shit.
“Pardon me,” Dox called out, improvising. “I wonder if you could advise on the location of the world-famous Seattle Space Needle?”
Ordinarily, giving a person’s brain one additional thing to process could buy you a precious extra second. But it was like Manus didn’t even hear him. The man’s eyes never left their torsos. And even as the words were leaving Dox’s mouth, Manus’s left hand was coming forward, his body blading off, his right hand dropping to the clip of that folding knife in his front pocket—
Everything slowed down. The sound of the rain faded out. Dox felt Larison letting go of his hand and breaking right, saw the umbrella dropping to the ground. He didn’t have to look to know Larison was clearing leather. The miracle was that he hadn’t done so already.
Manus had taken hold of the folder. It was coming out of his pocket now. And coming. And coming. God almighty, what the hell kind of knife was this?
In his peripheral vision, Dox could see Larison bringing around the Glock.
Without thinking, Dox dropped the selfie stick—judging from the size of this guy, getting hit with it would probably have done no more than make him mad—and rushed in. “Don’t shoot him!” he yelled.