The Eden Prophecy

CHAPTER 21

As the video presentation wound down, Hawker found himself needing space to think. He moved from the window and began examining the service passages of the hotel. He could still hear the spa music in the ballroom, although the voice-over had been replaced by a dozen individual speakers and models who were milling around in the crowd, talking in person to the wealthy men and women.

He paid attention to it only sporadically. Instead he studied the back halls of the hotel and the unmarked doors that led to prep rooms, kitchens, and fire escapes. If trouble came, it would be one of these areas that proved to be the weak link in the chain. At the same time, these back-of-the-house areas would allow the greatest chance to escape and evade it; but first, one had to know one’s way around.

He came out of a staging room filled with audiovisual equipment and moved down the hall to an unmarked stairwell. It led up to the heliport that lay above them and down as a type of fire escape.

Down the hall a door to the right was locked; to the left he found a dead end. He turned back and saw two people walking toward him: Sonia and the gray-haired man.

They exchanged glances.

“I’ve got this,” he heard Sonia say.

“Are you sure?” the man asked.

“Yes.”

He kissed her on the cheek and took the stairwell up to the heliport.

“Can I help you find something?” she said to Hawker, sounding very official.

That was a hell of a question. She came closer, moving forward with confidence.

“What makes you think I’m looking for something?” he asked.

She slowed, glancing up the stairs. The sound of footsteps climbing was still audible.

“You were always looking for something when I knew you.”

She didn’t sound so official anymore.

Up close she was even more beautiful than she had been from a distance. Her soulful hazel eyes, her smooth, tan skin glowing against the white hue of the cocktail dress.

“Maybe we all were,” he said.

“Searching for answers together?”

“Better than searching alone,” he added.

As she spoke he noticed a different look in her eyes, a weary sadness she’d hidden behind the smiles and the salesman’s confidence. Truthfully he wondered how she maintained it at all, considering what was going on.

“Did my father send you?” she asked.

The question struck Hawker oddly. Obviously Ranga had tried to contact him, but the way Sonia asked the question, she sounded more upset or aggravated than concerned. The reason hit him suddenly: No wonder she was able to star at this reception, no wonder she was able to hold it together — she didn’t know that her father was gone.

“When did you last speak with him?” he asked.

“Six months ago,” she said. “We had a tenth falling-out. Or maybe an eleventh. This one appears to have stuck.”

If they’d fallen out months ago, he wondered, then how could her data trial match the number of his most recent work? He kept that to himself. She was lying. There could be many reasons for that, the easiest of which was she didn’t know what Hawker was doing here, but if he cornered her now, she would just cover up the lie with another lie.

“Why?” Hawker asked. “What’s been going on?”

She looked away as if deciding where to start. “My father is still a refugee,” she began. “He refuses to—”

Hawker raised a hand, stopping her. He wanted to hear every word, but something was wrong. He glanced up the stairwell. He should have felt a draft when Gray Hair opened the door to the roof. But he hadn’t felt it yet.

He took Sonia by the elbow and moved down the hall.

As a flood of different emotions washed over him, Hawker tried to remain cool. He had to remind himself that the woman in front of him was not the young girl he’d protected years ago. That somehow she was mixed up in what was going on.

“How much do you know about the people your father was working with?”

“Not much. He was always secretive.”

“What caused your falling-out?”

“Life,” she said. “Changes. I couldn’t live his way anymore.”

“I mean specifically.”

“I’m on the board at Paradox,” she said defensively. “Obviously he’s no longer any part of this company, just a name on the founders list.”

“So he was jealous?”

“No,” she said. “He was worried.”

“About what?”

“About what we’re doing,” she said, growing aggravated. “Why are you asking me these things?”

“Something bad has happened,” Hawker said.

Her expression changed, worry replacing the aggravation. She shrank back, beginning to shake. “Please tell me he’s okay,” she said. “Please, Hawker. Please tell me he sent you to find me and talk me into coming back.”

Tears were welling up in her eyes.

“I …”

A group of people turned down the hall, two men and one woman, carrying drinks. They spoke loudly and asked about the restroom.

Sonia got it together and pointed to the doorway just before the stairwell. The guests moved off.

“Where is he?” she asked. “Tell me where he is.”

“I’m sorry,” Hawker said. “I couldn’t reach him in time.”

Her knees buckled at the sound of his words and Hawker had to grab her by the arms to keep her from falling.

She looked up, the tears overflowing her eyes.

“Why?” she asked. “How?”

“Somebody he was working for killed him,” Hawker said. “He got a message to me asking for help.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked, pleading as if it could be changed now. “Why didn’t you save him?”

“I tried.”

She wouldn’t look at him. She began to pull away. He held on to her.

“I need to know who he was working with,” he said. “It’s important.”

She pulled out of his grasp, holding her hands up as if she could ward him off. “Get away from me.”

The moment was hellish to Hawker, every trigger of guilt and anger and vengeance, all being hammered repeatedly and at the same time.

“Sonia,” he said sharply, trying to get her attention, “you could be in danger. I need to know what you know.”

He wanted to whisk her up in his arms and carry her away from there. To take her somewhere safe, where men like those who’d killed her father could not hope to stray. But there was something larger at stake and Hawker knew he had to hold back.

She didn’t run. She just stared, a hand on the wall to steady herself.

As he waited for her, a commotion down the hallway caught his ear. Glaring down the hallway looking for the source of the noise, Hawker caught sight of a body tumbling down the stairwell from the upper level.

Gray Hair.

He hit the bottom landing, clutching his throat and bleeding profusely.

Before she could see it, Hawker pushed Sonia back into an alcove.

One of the bathroom seekers ran to assist Gray Hair, not realizing what had happened.

“What the hell …”

The words barely escaped his mouth before a cascade of gunfire rained down from the stairs above.

Too late.

Hawker grabbed Sonia and pulled her into the storeroom with his hand over her mouth. He led her to a table, and they crouched down.

“What’s going on?”

“Quiet.”

“But—”

He silenced her with a glance and they waited. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the lights on the eighty-first floor went out and the sound of machine-gun fire thundered down the darkened hallway.