CHAPTER 101

MY CELL PHONE STARTED vibrating at 3:45 a.m.

Feeling punchy at all the interrupted sleep, I looked at the phone, saw it was Rawlins. I did not want to wake Bree, so I slid out of bed, hurried to the bathroom, shut the door, and answered.

“I said the Paladin systems were like driving a Ferrari, but I was wrong,” Rawlins said. “They’re more like driving a rocket ship.”

“Okay?” I said and yawned.

“You sound bored.”

“I haven’t really slept in days, Keith. What have you got?”

“Everything,” he said. “Get your laptop, call Mahoney, and get into the secure chat room I’m about to send you the info for.”

“Bree want to hear this?”

“Everyone does.”

Ten minutes later, Bree and I were grumpy but dressed and downstairs in the kitchen with both of our laptops open and drinking coffee. Ned’s face appeared in the secure meeting room Rawlins had arranged for.

“This better be good,” Ned said and suppressed a yawn.

The cybercrimes expert’s face appeared; he looked perturbed. “I heard that, and it is good, Mr. Mahoney. Very good. I’ll share my screen now.”

Our laptops’ screens switched to a series of feeds showing Katrina White at JFK, New York’s Penn Station, Baltimore’s central train station, and then DC’s Union Station, where she retrieved a small gray knapsack and left with it and a roller bag.

Mahoney said, “It’s like she knows the cameras are there and doesn’t care.”

Rawlins said, “Because she thinks the filter’s still in place.”

Bree said, “Where did she go after Union Station?”

More images of the Sparrow appeared. He said, “She crosses Pennsylvania Avenue, walks down Constitution all the way to the Vietnam Memorial around noon, and I lose her in the crowd. But not to worry, I’ve got new filters scanning all active security cameras in a forty-mile radius.”

I was kind of shocked. “You can do that?”

Rawlins said, “Malcomb’s machines and software can, and … hey, now, we just had a partial hit on your Sparrow.”

Mahoney said, “What does that mean?”

“She was wearing a surgical mask, but the AI thinks it’s a better than fifty-fifty chance she’s … nope, a hundred percent now.”

The screen jumped, showed White in an elevator in hospital scrubs. She pulled down a surgical mask and looked right at the camera with a smile.

“Where the hell is that?” Ned demanded.

Rawlins said, “GW Hospital. She just got off on the oncology floor.”

“Oncology!” I said. “She’s going for Justice Mayweather!”