“You,” Diaz said. “You’re the one I saw outside the park.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dox said. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to properly introduce myself. It’s been a hectic morning. You can call me Dox.”
“Did you kill those people?”
Dox glanced at Labee. She made a left, again checking the rearview, and said nothing.
“I’m just glad you’re safe,” Dox said. “And I hope you’ll believe me when I say, I’d like to keep it that way.”
Labee made another left, then a right into something that was more alley than street, squeezing past a delivery truck on the way. As soon as they were past the truck, she gunned it, throwing Dox back against the seat and making him wonder whether he’d exercised good judgment in leaving his seatbelt unbuckled in case they ran into opposition. She turned the wrong way onto a one-way street, gunned it again, and cut back onto a main thoroughfare. Dox checked the sideview. As far as he could tell, they were clean.
Twenty minutes later, they were sitting on the mats in one of the martial arts academies where Labee taught her women’s self-defense classes. Classes were at night, and for the moment, the place was empty.
“What did Schrader tell you?” Labee said to Diaz. “About the videos.”
Diaz looked at Dox as though uncertain of what to say. That was fine. He felt uncertain about her, too. He wasn’t in the habit of chatting with federal prosecutors right after gunning down a bunch of bad guys in a public park.
“You can trust him,” Labee said. “And not just because you have to.”
There was a long pause. Diaz said, “I tried to scare him. I mean, I did scare him, obviously. I told him that people had tried to kill me, and failed, and that now I was going to be untouchable. Which meant the next move by whoever sent the people in the park would be to silence him. I told him one word from me, and the BOP—” She glanced at Dox. “The Bureau of Prisons would remove all the protection he was getting. No more cameras, no extra guards. He said no one would hurt him, because he has videos of various powerful men having sex with underage girls.”
“Children,” Labee said. “Alondra, I don’t care how they get referred to in statutes, underage girls are children.”
Diaz grimaced. “Bad habit. I don’t say child prostitutes anymore, either. Prostituted children.”
Labee nodded. “What men?”
“He wouldn’t give me that. I got him to say a lot—more than he meant to, I’m sure, because he was scared and trying to please me—but he wouldn’t name names. But I could tell he was worried. I kept pressing him, saying how would they know, and why should they believe him. And he said his lawyer told Hobbs.”
“Uriah Hobbs?” Dox said.
Diaz nodded. “That Hobbs.”
“Well,” Dox said, “that’s not great. I mean, it was bad enough when it was just Rispel and the CIA. But the attorney general runs Justice, and Justice runs the FBI. This is turning into a lot of opposition for our little band of brothers.”
“There’s more,” Diaz said. “Schrader says the videos will be released unless he resets an automated system.”
“Dead-man switch,” Dox said. “Like Larison suspected. Not just the angel of death—smart, too. Did Schrader offer any details? How the system gets reset, or where, or by whom?”
Diaz shook her head. “I tried. All he would say is if I didn’t get him out of jail right away, there would be what he called ‘a shot across the bow.’”
Dox had heard that kind of thing before. “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
Labee looked at him. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”