Inside Out

76

Richmond, Virginia

At 7:50 P.M., Hawk's van sat with its rear bumper twenty feet from the hotel's front doors. He checked his Glock and the four magazines in two holders on his belt. His partner had been parked across the street from the hotel since seven-thirty, his shape visible through the windshield of his high-performance Taurus SHO, which had a steel plate in the trunk angled to deflect bullets away from the cabin.

When the cab pulled up in front of the Grand, right behind the van, Hawk tightened his vest and watched through the rearview. After the tattooed boy sprang from the cab and sprinted inside, Hawk opened the van's door. As he stepped into the street, his long coat was whipped by a sudden gust of wind. He pulled a dark ball cap from the pocket of his coat and put it on.

He put the closed badge case in his left hand so the first thing Sean Devlin would see would be the familiar glint of a gold star set in a circle.

He nodded to his partner, who then stepped from the SHO and leaned against the front fender holding a semiautomatic twelve-gauge shotgun underneath his trench coat. Through the glass doors he saw the marble-faced counter across the lobby and the old man standing behind it. After crossing the lobby, Sean Devlin would come into view from his right. He would grab her and bring her outside, where he and his partner would whisk her away.