CHAPTER 104

brEE SAW US AND waved us over to the nurses’ station where Elena Walters had pulled up footage of the hall from less than fifteen minutes before.

“It’s her,” Bree said. “She comes from the waiting room, and you get a better look at her face. But this is what you want to see.”

Walters hit Play. Katrina White, knapsack on, back to the camera, walked to Officers Kenerson and Hodgson, leaned toward them, then reached out, extending the hose from the pack. The camera shook, then steadied; the two guards slumped in their chairs and the Sparrow went into Justice Mayweather’s room.

The hospital room went totally dark a moment later. The Sparrow left the room, mask still on, walking back toward the nurses’ station, the hose and the strange little device at the end of it dangling from the pack harness. She swung around Nurse Walters and headed toward the waiting room and the elevators.

Then the security guard from the front desk came up to us with an iPad and showed us a video of White leaving the hospital and heading west on foot at almost the same time we’d arrived, which put her a good twenty minutes ahead of us.

Mahoney got a call, listened, then said, “Form a second perimeter at fifteen blocks and again at eighteen blocks, including the bridges out of the District. If she’s on foot, she’s probably still carrying the knapsack. If she’s in a vehicle, it’s probably with her. Consider whatever the hell is in it to be lethal. I repeat, lethal. But I want her captured, not killed. Do you understand me? Captured.” He hung up and looked at us. “Now we have to get lucky and spot her before she gets away.”

I said, “Unless she’s not looking to get away.”

“How’s that?” Mahoney said.

“I’m trying to think like M. As long as she’s at large, you have to figure he’ll want to keep her going. How was it he put it back in the mine, Bree?”

“Maximum impact,” Bree said, nodding.

“So, you think she has another target?” Ned said.

“That’s my bet,” I said.

“Mine too,” Bree said. “It’s like you said, Alex, one opening on the court gives Winter power but two openings allows her to change the course of history.”

Mahoney checked his watch. “Twenty-three past four now, and—”

“Mr. Mahoney?”

Dr. Foley had come up behind us.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But there is something about the symptoms the officers exhibited. It makes me think of Havana syndrome—you know, where all our diplomats there got sick all of a sudden? Dizzy. Slurred speech and blurred vision. Nausea. Fainting spells. And that reminded me I recently saw a patient exhibiting very similar symptoms. I hadn’t put it all together before.”

I said, “Who was the patient?”

She looked anxious and upset. “Justice Blevins. I was the first doctor to see her after she collapsed in her office.”