Alpha

Chapter Thirty-six

At first, he’s just running, he doesn’t even know where he’s going. Painted park characters flash past him on the walls, and his legs keep pumping, and he turns, turns again, until he realizes he’s coming up on Agent Rose’s Safe House, the entrance to the Speakeasy. He pushes through the door, stumbling, knocks over one of the tables, nearly trips himself against first one chair, then another. Makes it to the stairs and stops, leaning against the rail fixed to the wall. The MP5K is still in his hand, and he pops the magazine reflexively, replaces it with the last of his fresh ones.

He should have just surrendered then and there, Gabriel thinks. He should have just given up when Penny Starr saved his life, just as he should have given up when he heard what Dana was saying to him.

Everything he had, he realizes, is now gone.

His phone is ringing.

His hand shaking, he pulls it from his pocket, puts it to his ear.

“Arm the bomb,” the Uzbek says.

Gabriel’s pulse is beating so hard he feels his temples throb.

“Vladimir told me everything, Matias. It was his job to tell me everything. I can get you out. You need to arm the bomb.”

“You can get me out?”

“We put you in,” the Uzbek says. “Of course we can get you out. Out of the park and out of the country and out of this pretend life you’ve been living. But you must do your part, and you must do it quickly. I am watching the news, and they have heard the gunshots, they are coming. You are almost out of time.”

“How?” Gabriel swallows. “How will you get me out?”

“Helicopter.”

He closes his eyes. A helicopter.

“Put the device in position, arm it, and we will lift you out. It will be…” the Uzbek pauses, then continues. “Eight minutes. You have exactly eight minutes. Can you do it?”

Gabriel looks back down the stairs, to the bar, the open door leading back into the tunnel. To where Vladimir, who would have killed him, is lying without his brains. To where he repaid Penny Starr’s rescue with murder. To where Dana has been abandoned, and with her, this life he has deluded himself into believing is his own.

To where Jonathan Bell is surely coming for him.

“I can do it,” he says to the Uzbek. “Eight minutes.”

“I will see you soon, then. Good luck.”

Gabriel closes the phone, then tosses it away in a fury. He pushes open the door, steps out into the early evening of the park. He knows-he knows-the Uzbek is lying to him. There is no helicopter, there is no escape, there is no return to the old life.

But he doesn’t care.

His life has ended here in WilsonVille, and his only hope for a new one is in choosing to believe the lies. In choosing to believe that somehow, some way, if he does as ordered, the helicopter will come.

If he does that, he can believe he will live.

If that means killing WilsonVille, so be it.