The guard blushed. He held up his hand as if to say, Sorry, won’t happen again. He pointed toward the door. “Let’s continue this outside.”
Skylar took one last look around the auditorium before leaving. Where the hell could Eddie have gone?
At that moment, Eddie was being escorted out of the building by another guard, who had been dispatched the moment Eddie had taken a seat in the great hall. The act was strictly forbidden. Upon entering the building, his every movement had been followed through a well-concealed security system, because of the way he had been carrying his backpack. It clearly contained something of weight, and could very well be an explosive device.
The guard had approached Eddie quietly, hoping not to disturb the rehearsal, and asked if he had a guest pass, which would have allowed him to attend the rehearsal. When Eddie replied that he did not know what a guest pass was, the guard asked Eddie to follow him.
As they exited through the nearest doorway at the rear of the hall, Eddie asked if the guard was taking him to get a guest pass. The guard replied no, he was going to get him an exit pass. The statement was not technically a lie, so Eddie didn’t recognize it as such. He said that he had never heard of an exit pass before.
The guard said that exit passes were very special and that only very special people ever got them. Eddie told the man that he lived in Harmony House, which was a special place for special people. With an unsympathetic smirk, the guard said that everything must be right with the universe, and he led Eddie out of the building onto the sidewalk along Seventh Avenue.
When Eddie asked where the exit pass was, the guard said he just gave it to him. Eddie looked confused, because the statement rang true—which in the guard’s mind, it was—but Eddie was also certain that the statement was not true. The man had not given him anything, at least that Eddie was aware of.
He looked even more confused as the man quickly retreated back inside the building and locked the door. Eddie moved to the door, knocking politely. There was no answer. There was no door handle, either. He tried knocking again, but to no avail. Wondering if he might have misplaced his exit pass, he checked his pockets, as well as the ground he stood on, in case he had dropped it. He hadn’t. There was no sign of a pass anywhere.
Eddie looked up from the sidewalk at the city around him, which suddenly seemed very large. And loud. And scary. It only now dawned on him that Skylar was nowhere in sight. He was alone in New York City.
“Skylar?”
CHAPTER 60
Main Lobby, Carnegie Hall, May 27, 5:28 p.m.
Skylar and the security guard had been joined in the lobby by the guard’s superior, the director of Carnegie Hall security. Skylar wasn’t quite screaming at the top of her lungs, but she was close. The security director did his best to maintain his composure. “Ma’am, would you mind lowering your voice?”
“I want help finding my patient!”
“Doctor, if you would stop yelling, we will be glad to assist you.”
She paused to collect herself, and nodded. No more yelling.
The director of security appeared satisfied. “One of my guards just escorted someone who fits your patient’s description out of the building.”
“Why was he escorted out?” Skylar’s concern grew.
“He had gained unauthorized access to the hall during a closed rehearsal.”
Skylar took charge. “Show me where he was escorted out.”
They were joined on the sidewalk by the guard who had led Eddie out of Carnegie Hall. The guard looked repeatedly to his boss, wondering what he had done wrong.
Skylar scanned around them in every direction, but Eddie was nowhere in sight. She turned to the guard who’d led Eddie out. “How long ago was he here?”
The guard shrugged. “About four or five minutes.”
Skylar resumed searching around them, wondering which way he would have gone. She looked for markers—anything that might have attracted Eddie’s attention. There was nothing. Until she saw the trees four blocks away. Central Park. Compared with the rest of New York City, the park was quiet. And trees meant birds. There was no question which way he was headed.
Skylar took off running.
CHAPTER 61
New York Office, Department of Homeland Security, May 27, 5:31 p.m.
Max Garber followed the GPS blip on his screen as it moved through the Lincoln Tunnel heading for New Jersey. Garber was impressed that they could get such a clear signal through forty feet of water that was practically radioactive. The sad fact was the Hudson River was so polluted it had been declared a Superfund site after General Electric was found guilty of having dumped more than one million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls into it over the previous thirty years.
In the fifteen minutes it had taken to get approval from the Homeland higher-ups for tapping Detective Butler McHenry’s phone, Max Garber had brought himself up to speed with the day’s events. He glanced at Agent Raines’s location; he was now moving westbound on Desbrosses Street in his search for the doctor and patient who were believed to be in possession of stolen classified technology. Garber sent Raines a message: Det. heading to NJ. Lincoln Tunnel.
Raines responded immediately: Keep me posted. Want to hear calls.
Garber typed: Done.
CHAPTER 62
Hudson Street, New York City, May 27, 5:34 p.m.
Agent Raines rode shotgun in a blacked-out Suburban, scanning pedestrians when he wasn’t working his phone. There were three other vehicles cruising the area around the Sixth Precinct, and they were soon to be joined by more. The search for Dr. Skylar Drummond and Edward Parks was rapidly becoming an all-out manhunt.
The agent behind the wheel got a message over his radio headset, which he immediately related to Raines. The NYPD had just received word from the head of security at Carnegie Hall that there had been some kind of disturbance involving a doctor and an escaped mental patient.
The Suburban was stuck in gridlock, so the driver screeched a U-turn into the middle of oncoming traffic. New Yorkers didn’t care that the vehicle had bubble lights flashing through the grille or sirens wailing. They only knew that some asshole cut them off, and they were going to express their feelings about the matter. At least a dozen cars started honking.
The Suburban immediately came upon more gridlocked traffic. The driver didn’t hesitate to veer up onto the sidewalk. Within half a block the traffic was moving again; the Suburban hopped off the sidewalk curb and back onto the street, running through red light after red light.
What Agent Raines didn’t realize was that he, too, was being pursued. After Lutz’s brief encounter with Raines in front of the Sixth Precinct, Michael Barnes had instructed his men to place a transmitter in the wheel well of the Homeland vehicle. Barnes knew he didn’t have the manpower to locate Skylar and Eddie before the government agents did. But he had the manpower and know-how to take the doctor and her patient from them once the fugitives were in Homeland’s custody. It was a dangerous game, but it wouldn’t be the first time Barnes had played it. Sometimes, you just needed to show people how many dangerous threats there were out in the big, bad world.
Somebody was using Homeland for their own agenda, so Barnes decided he would, too. He only planned to briefly detain Skylar and Eddie before he and his men would then “rescue” them. Barnes would come off as a hero, the duo humiliated at the sports bar would have the last laugh, and Dr. Fenton would be able to take the credit he deserved for the echo box before riding off into the sunset. After all, the device was the man’s swan song. The grand finale on a long and illustrious career. Barnes wanted his boss to go out on a high note—both because he deserved it, and because the revelation that an unknown faction had temporarily kidnapped his staff doctor and her patient from federal custody would guarantee increased funding for Harmony House security for years to come.
That, and Barnes simply wanted to show whoever these bastards were not to mess with him.
Hirsch and Lutz followed Raines’s blacked-out Suburban from a safe distance of several blocks. They would not make the mistake of moving in too soon; there was no margin for error. They had already suffered one failure. They could not afford another. They would wait until Dr. Drummond, Edward Parks, and the echo box were securely in Homeland’s possession. Then, with sudden swiftness, they would strike with brutal efficiency.