“We’re backing off,” Bob said.
Lucas looked at the time. “Three minutes of seven. He’s got to be inside if he plans to be there right at seven. Watch for his face, you have the description. But try to stay out of sight, and don’t make another approach until after seven.”
“Hope it’s not some bullshit scam,” Rae said, her voice sounding scratchy through the phone’s speaker.
“It’d be weird, if it was. That woman knew me, knew Deese, knew we were here, and how to get ahold of me,” Lucas said. “It’s gotta be something.”
—
BOB AND RAEwent to a side hall that led down to a Nordstrom’s. There were several circles of easy chairs in the hall, and they could slump down in a couple of chairs and still see into the Chipotle’s. A woman sitting in the same circle asked Bob, “What’s going on?”
“Waiting for somebody,” Rae said.
The woman looked at Bob, then back to Rae, got her shopping bag and walked away.
Lucas and Tremanty joined them a minute later, sliding down into the seats of two other chairs, so low that nothing was sticking up but their eyes beneath the bills of their caps. Lucas said, “Six fifty-nine.”
Thirty seconds passed, and then Bob muttered, “Hold it, hold it. On the left, the wall in front of the Apple Store, walking toward us, a guy with a beard.”
“That’s him,” Rae said.
“Let him get inside and then wait for a minute,” Lucas said, quietly. “Let’s see who else shows up.”
Deese went inside the Chipotle’s and instead of getting in the food line stepped behind the front window and sat on a toadstool-like chair. A few seconds later, Tremanty said, “Holy shit, here we go...”
They all looked the other way, toward the opposite end of the mall, and Lucas said, “Santos. See him?”
“I see his hat,” Rae said. “Never actually seen his face.”
And Bob said, “Oh no. No!”
Lucas looked back to where Bob was looking and saw Harvey and two other men jogging down the center of the mall. They looked exactly like cops and not like anybody else in the mall. Lucas said to Bob, “Go! Go!”
Bob and Rae started across the mall, weaving fast through the crowd, toward the Chipotle’s. They were halfway there when a man shouted down from the second level, “Deese! Deese! Cops! Cops! Cops!”
—
DEESE HAD TAKENa window seat in the restaurant, next to a crowded table of jocko-looking guys eating plates of black beans and rice and doing high fives every ten seconds and calling each other bro.
When Cole screamed his warning, Deese exploded off the seat. A gun appeared in his right hand, and Bob shouted, “Deese! Stop!” and the jocks all went to the floor. A heartbeat later, Deese shot a woman out in the mall’s center corridor, who went down, and then shot a man, and Rae screamed, “Stop!” and Lucas and Tremanty ran toward them, Lucas glancing sideways as he did and saw Santos, frozen, in the corridor.
Rae and Bob both had their guns out, but there was a virtual wall of humanity on the far side of Deese, as he, running, turned to his left. He would be running past Tremanty and Lucas and they both drew their weapons and moved to block him, but Deese saw Tremanty and snapped off a shot and Tremanty and Lucas both juked, and Deese deliberately shot the woman right in front of Tremanty, her blood spraying from the side of her head onto Tremanty’s face.
Lucas still couldn’t take a shot without a crowd in the background, and the mall had erupted into chaos by then, with shoppers and children running in all directions, screaming. The Vegas cops were thirty yards away in the wrong direction, so they couldn’t stop Deese. A short man ran directly into Lucas’s chest, sending Lucas staggering backwards, trying to keep his balance, as Deese went by fifteen feet away, past a Johnny Rockets. ThenDeese saw Santos and he shot at him, missing. Santos reeled away, and Deese closed in on him, shot him in the back, then kept going.
Lucas ran after Deese after he shot Santos, but a woman toppled in front of Lucas and he tripped and went down. He scrambled back to his feet and saw Tremanty, with his hand pressed to the shot woman’s face, looking wildly at him. Lucas ran after Deese again. He collided with another man, bounced off.
He could still see Deese, who turned and fired a shot at Lucas. There was another man closer to Deese who pulled a gun from his pocket and shot at Deese, who stumbled but continued on, and, looking over his shoulder, saw Lucas coming after him. The shooter looked at Lucas, who shouted, “No!” but the man shot at him, and somebody screamed behind Lucas, and he shouted, “Police! Police!”
The man held his gun upright, and then Bob was there, in his vest that said “U.S. Marshal,” and he slapped the man in the face with his own weapon and the man went down. Rae sprinted past Lucas to where they’d last seen Deese, disappearing down a hallway to the left, and when they got there... Deese was gone.
“Where? Where’d he go?” Rae shouted.
They looked down the empty hallway, which ended with an exit door leading to the parking structure. They ran that way, past a short utility hallway to the left, and outside to the structure.
Where nothing was moving.
“Hiding between cars?” Rae said.
