Chapter 33
The marksman swore when he realized the embassy car had caught up with him as he turned onto 16th Street. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked her. She should have stayed on White House grounds; raised the alarm. She didn’t have a weapon beyond a paring knife, yet she’d come after him anyway?
Well, he’d made a study of her over the last few months—that very first morning he’d seen how she lost her temper and her script when surprised.
The fingers on his shooting hand were bleeding from the marks of her teeth, and his leg was a roar of pain. He’d strapped it tight with his tie, stanching the blood for now, but she’d stabbed him deep: if he hadn’t been limping too badly to run, he’d have easily beat her to his Packard and been gone into the night before she could follow. Rage was beating through him in unsteady pulses as he blew through a stoplight past Dupont Circle and saw the embassy car blow through the light, too.
You cocked it up, he told himself brutally. He’d ignored his own rules about keeping his distance; he’d underestimated her from the start and let it make him careless. And now the chance at Roosevelt was gone, and he hated to miss a mark. He caught himself wondering if she was the same way. He didn’t think they had much else in common—he shot people for hire; she shot people because they’d invaded her home, and he was well aware of the difference there—but he would have bet every diamond in his pocket and around her throat that she hated to fail as much as he did.
He was the one who’d failed tonight. He’d never be the man who killed a president. Instead, he was the man running away from a woman armed with a paring knife.
He almost wished she had a gun. He’d never gone up against someone with skills like his own before.
“Not rolling your eyes at me now, are you?” he said aloud.
The car behind ghosted along in silence. No horn-blaring, no trying to force him off the road. Just following as the marksman blasted down 16th Street. This late at night, the Washington streets were clear enough to drive fast and smooth. The marksman looked at his fuel gauge. A full tank; he could make for the city limits and lose her on the highways.
But what was the fun in that?
He made a sudden, vengeful turn onto Decatur Street, knowing exactly where he was going.
“STOP HERE,” I told Alexei, gripping one of the now-loaded Colt pistols in my lap. I was still loading the other, but it slithered off my lap and under the seat in a cascade of loose bullets as Alexei stamped too hard on the brakes. He’d seen what I’d seen: the Packard ahead, abandoned at the side of Colorado Avenue, driver’s door open.
“Where did he go?” Alexei gripped the wheel, white-faced. He was still imagining his future, if it got out that he’d aided a would-be presidential assassin, however unwittingly. I didn’t know if he was envisioning an American electric chair or a Soviet bullet, but I doubted he liked either prospect. “Why would—”
“He wants to lose me in the woods.” Rock Creek Park loomed on the other side of the street, a dark wall of trees. I’d walked here before, with Alexei—the day I’d bought the yellow satin dress I was wearing now. I wondered if the man we were tailing had been tailing us, back then. If he’d picked this place for a reason: because he and I both knew it. I cursed, fumbling under the seat for the fallen pistol.
“Maybe he just ditched the car and doubled back into the city between buildings,” Alexei was muttering, staring at the Packard.
“He’s in the woods.” Because it was what I would have done. And he hoped I’d follow. We will meet again.
I abandoned scrambling for the second pistol, swept up as many of the loose bullets as I could, and got out of the car.
“Mila—” Alexei began.
“Go back to the White House and tell the ambassador everything,” I said. “Raise the alarm. If I come out of these trees, that man is dead. If I don’t, I’m dead and they can pick up his trail from my body. Either way, the President is safe and you get to be the hero who carried the warning.” And I slammed the door and began walking toward the trees.