Play Nice (24 page)

“Where would you do it?”

He breathed in deeply, exhaled through his nose. “Okay. I’d do it somewhere public. A large crowd to get lost in.”

“I’m sure the senator makes plenty of public appearances.”

“Outside,” he added. “Harder to keep security tight.”

Some of the tension was disappearing from his face. This he knew how to do. Plan the perfect hit. This was his comfort zone.

Anna nodded. “Okay, a large, outdoor, public gathering.” She paused. “Can I see your phone?”

“Why?” he asked, even as he slid it from his pocket and handed it to her.

“Chances are he’s got a campaign website, and, if he does, his schedule may be posted.”

Anna googled the senator’s name. As she’d hoped, an official website came up as the first hit. After clicking through, she easily found a page marked “Appearances” that did, in fact, list the senator’s upcoming schedule. She scrolled through the list, quickly dismissing the private fundraising dinners, the expensive golf tournament, and a visit to a children’s hospital. Instead, she homed in on a rally scheduled in Golden Gate Park for the following day.

“You think this could be it?” Anna asked, reading the entry off to Dade.

“Short notice. Not a lot of time to plan.”

“I have a feeling he’s been planning this for a while,” she answered. “I was a wildcard in the equation, but I’d bet he’s got every other detail worked out to a tee.”

He always does.

Dade shrugged. “I’d say it’s perfect as far as access and easy getaway go. If it were me? That’s where I’d hit him.”

Anna nodded. Her, too.

“So we have a pretty educated guess as to when and where. I think it’s enough to warn his security staff.”

Dade took a deep breath, looked in his rearview for the tenth time in as many minutes. He was antsy, she could tell. Clearly not used to be being on this end of the hunting ground. Being the hunter was a much more comfortable position than being the prey.

“Fine. Do you have a number?”

Anna clicked through to another page, pulling up the phone number and address of the Braxton campaign headquarters in Sacramento. She quickly typed the digits into Dade’s phone, waiting as it rang on the other end.

Three rings in, she was greeted by an automated voice giving her a menu of options. Unfortunately, “warning of death threat” wasn’t one of them. She hit
ZERO TO
talk to an operator and was immediately greeted with a Musak rendition of AC/DC’s “Back in Black.”

She waited five minutes, listening to the song repeat twice, then hung up.

“Well?” Dade asked.

“No one answered.”

He shrugged. “So?”

She took a deep breath. An anonymous tip was one thing, but what she was about to propose was taking it a whole leap further. “Look, if we’re going to do this, we might as well do it right.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I think we should talk to the senator in person.”

Dade narrowed his eyes at her, trying to read her thoughts behind the words.

She put on her best poker face, willing emotion out of her expression. She needed his compliance to pull this off.

“Why?” he asked again.

“I think he’ll take us more seriously. He needs to know we’re not fooling around, that this is a real threat.”

Dade didn’t respond.

“And I think we have a better chance of speaking with him directly. Or at least his head of security. Someone in charge. On the phone, it’s easy to pass us off to some junior staffer who could give a shit, you know?”

Dade let out a deep breath. Then finally nodded. “Fine. We’ll go to Sacramento.”

CHAPTER 17

While California is the most populous state in the country, that population exists mostly in two major areas: San Francisco and Los Angeles. The rest of the state consists of miles of orchards, farmland, and vineyards, dotted with small rural communities. Including the state’s capital, Sacramento.

By California standards, Sacramento is a small city set smack in the middle of agricultural land, away from most of the real business conducted in the state. It consists of a few city blocks of high-rises downtown, the capitol, and a small patch of suburbia. Over half the people living in Sacramento work in the government, the other half servicing those who do.

The hour-and-a-half drive between San Francisco and Sacramento was filled with fields of tomato farms, apricot trees, and wineries. Anna watched them all pass as she leaned her head against the cool window, wondering what it would be like to live in one of those sleepy farm communities. She’d never done the small-town thing before, afraid of being where there were too few people and too many questions. Blending into an anonymous city was much easier.

But maybe a change of pace would be nice when this was all over. Maybe a slower way of life would suit her. For so long she had lived day to day, ready to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice. But somehow, knowing that her worst case scenario had already found her, she felt more … secure. Odd that was the word that came to mind when she was riding with a man who’d been contracted to kill her, on the run from an assassin for hire, rushing to stop an assassination that she’d been asked to perpetrate. It was not a situation that she had any control over or any sort of assurances about the outcome.

Yet she felt more secure than she had in her apartment every night, locking the doors, arming the alarm systems, sleeping with one eye open next to her watchdog, just waiting for the day when the unknown would shatter life as she knew it.

She was now facing the unknown head-on. Taking something into her own hands.

She planned to end this. To make sure that Petrovich not only never contacted her again but never trained another young recruit to kill for his gains again. It was a wrong she wanted to right for more reasons than one, not the least of which was saving her own skin. She would not let the threat of Petrovich control her life anymore. She was not the daughter he never had, his pupil, his puppet. She controlled her life now. She had a plan.

And it all hinged on Braxton.

*   *   *

Dade knew nothing about Jonathan Braxton. He was one of hundreds of faceless politicians that thought they were the epitomy of importance but really never got much done in the bureaucracy that was designed, in Dade’s opinion, to stop any sort of progress at all. Dade had long ago given up following politics. Swap one party for the other, one name for the next, honestly nothing much ever changed in government. The only thing that ever changed was the degree of nastiness in their campaign commercials. He admitted getting a kick out of those sometimes.

What he was not getting a kick out of currently, though, was sitting in Braxton’s campaign headquarters in a hard plastic chair waiting for someone named “Prescott” to see them.

The woman at the wooden reception desk had politely gone through a list of twenty questions when they’d come in, trying to drag out of them if they were big contributors or no-name protestors. Dade had given her precious little to work with other than he was in possession of information related to Braxton’s security that was of the utmost importance. She told him that this Prescott would be with them shortly to discuss his issues. Only Prescott clearly didn’t have the same definition of “utmost” that Dade did. They’d been waiting for half an hour. And his patience was wearing thin.

He shifted in his seat, idly flipping the pages of a
Time
magazine from the table in front of him, surveying Braxton’s war room. Cheap wooden tables were filled with laptops and college students whose youth made them believe they were making a difference in the world by helping this guy win a nomination. Posters graced the walls, everywhere photoshopped images of Senator Braxton smiling back at them, showing him as the perfect not-too-old, not-too-young, not-too-good-looking but not-too-plain-looking candidate. Folding chairs mingled with hand-me-down office furniture, giving the place a grassroots feel that said they couldn’t afford real furniture despite the fact that Dade was certain the senator was spending millions on television commercials.

Not for the first time, Dade questioned what he was doing here.

He had enough problems of his own, he certainly didn’t need to take the senator’s on. Besides, even if they were able to warn the senator away from appearing tomorrow in the park, what’s to say Petrovich wouldn’t try again? Another time, a new location. There were too many unknowns and not enough concrete details.

And, to be honest, he only had Anya’s word that Petrovich was planning to target the senator at all. For all he knew she might well be working for him, might have accepted the contract after all, and this was just a way to get close to her new target.

He looked over at her now, trying to gauge the thoughts behind her expression. She watched the activity in the room, her eyes resting maybe a little longer on each intern than Dade’s. She was interested in what they were doing, watching their lips as they spoke, trying, he guessed, to make out conversations. If it was because she was calculating her next move or because she was truly interested in the senator, he couldn’t say.

It was a nice idea that she cared about the senator’s well-being. Bad girl gone straight. Killer turned savior. But he wasn’t sure he bought it completely. Warning the senator about the hit was a singularly selfless act. People on the run for their lives weren’t usually known for being selfless. He wondered at her real motives for being here.

Her eyes flicked to his. She’d felt him watching her. Not much escaped her notice, that he’d learned.

“How much longer you think they’ll keep us waiting?” he asked, trying to cover the fact that he’d been staring at her.

She shrugged. “He’s a busy man.”

Dade nodded. “So am I.”

She shot him a look, but didn’t answer, instead picking up a magazine at random from the table in front of them, flipping to a page near the front, staring at the type but no more reading it than Dade had been reading his.

They sat in silence another ten minutes before a man finally emerged from one of the back offices and strode purposefully toward them. He was dressed in charcoal grey suit with a classic white shirt and paisley tie beneath. His blond hair was slicked back from his forehead in a stylish manner straight out of some men’s magazine. Way too polished to be the just-one-of-the-people Braxton.

“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” the man said as he approached, extending his hand first to Anya, then Dade. “David Prescott.”

Dade shook the man’s hand. His grip was firm and quick … polite, confident, impersonal.

“Anna Smith,” Anya offered. “And this is Nick Dade.”

“We were hoping to speak with the senator,” Dade said.

“I’m sorry, but Senator Braxton isn’t available at the moment. Out campaigning hard. You know how that goes,” he finished, flashing a smile at Anya.

“And you are?” Dade asked the man.

“I’m the senator’s chief executive consultant.”

“Which means what?”

The man smiled. “It means I make sure Mr. Braxton wins the nomination.”

“We should speak to someone in security,” Anya said. “We have some information.”

Prescott nodded. “That’s what our receptionist told me. Please, come into my office. We can talk there.” He turned, leading them back down the small hallway at the back of the room he’d originally emerged from.

“Senator Braxton must have a lot of supporters,” Anya observed, gesturing to the row of closed office doors lining the hallway.

Prescott nodded. “He does.”

“Are all these offices filled with consultants such as yourself?”

“There are several people working on the senator’s campaign staff off and on,” he answered noncommittally, opening the last door on the left and gesturing Anya and Dade into his office.

It was small, with a large window facing south. As modestly furnished as the workroom, it held a small desk, and a pair of chairs facing the window. Bookshelves lined the walls, and a computer sat open on the desk’s surface.

Prescott gestured to the chairs. “Please, sit.”

They did, and Prescott took a seat behind the desk before asking, “So, what can I do for you?”

“We have information that makes us nervous for Senator Braxton’s welfare at tomorrow’s rally,” Anya said.

Prescott raised an eyebrow. “What kind of information?”

“We believe there may be an attempt on his life.”

If Prescott believed them, he showed no signs of distress, wearing just the same slightly interested look that Dade had a feeling the guy wore whether he was listening to opera or watching porn. It was classic politician-face. Smug, pleasant, never telling.

“May I ask what leads you to believe this?”

“No,” Dade broke in. “You may not.”

Dade was happy to see Prescott’s smile falter for a second before pasting itself back on his face.

“I see. Where did you get this information?”

Instead of answering, Anya said, “What kind of security do you have planned for tomorrow?”