77. SARA

Stupid, stupid, stupid! How could I have fallen for something like that?

Pearce’s arm is around my neck now, the barrel of the .45 pointed at my temple. He’s suddenly remarkably calm, though, which might work in my favor.

“Don’t do something you can’t turn back from,” Johnston warns. “You can still get out of this with your life.”

“You think I haven’t figured out who you are?” he says with odd detachment. “I go with you and suddenly my obituary is running in Forbes. The Empire Group’s head honcho, dead of a heart attack at age forty-five. A cautionary tale about working too hard.”

“Let her go,” Chance growls, hands up in a surrender gesture. “You need a hostage, take me. I’m the one you hate, not her.”

“Actually, I pretty much hate you both equally,” he says mildly. “And she’s a lot weaker than you, so I’ll stick with the current arrangement, thanks.”

I’ll show you weak, you little bastard…

Frey takes a couple of tentative steps toward us. Pearce responds by pulling back the hammer of the pistol with his thumb.

Chance looks me in the eye. We both know that proves Pearce knows nothing about the weapon. Cocking the hammer doesn’t make it easier to fire; they just do it in movies for dramatic effect.

A .45 is a dangerous cannon in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. One slip and my head could end up erased completely.

“All right,” says Johnston. “You’re running the show now. You tell me where it goes from here.”

“I want a helicopter on the roof,” says Pearce. “It will take us to Empire’s private jet at O’Hare, and that will take me to the Maldives.”

“Where there’s no extradition treaty with the US,” Chance finishes for him.

“I can be rich anywhere,” he says. “Doesn’t have to be on American soil. And after seeing what passes for the ‘good guys’ here, I’m quite happy to leave it behind.”

My heart rate is still surprisingly even, despite the situation. I’m able to think rationally, just like Chance is always preaching. An idea comes to me.

“Speaking of leaving things behind, what do you think Tony Arturo is going to think of you taking off and leaving him hanging out to dry for Dacosta’s murder?”

That should get him off balance.

“Perhaps you should shut up about things you don’t understand,” he says, but there’s an edge to his voice now. I struck a nerve – he’s scared of Arturo.

Johnston ends a call on his phone. “We can’t get a helicopter here for an hour,” he says. “It’s logistically impossible.”

“That’s not good enough,” says Pearce. I wince as he digs the barrel of the .45 into my temple.

“I can have one here in ten minutes,” Chance says. “The Atlas chopper. I’ll fly it to the airport myself once it gets here. You have the love of my life as a hostage, so you know I’ll cooperate.”

“Don’t do it, Chance,” he says. “I don’t want to risk you both. Let the Atlas pilot fly them…”

“No,” says Pearce. “Mr. Talbot is right. He’s exactly who I want as the pilot.”

Chance looks at Johnston, who shrugs. “It’s as good a plan as any I can come up with.”

Chance gets on the phone with Atlas as Pearce talks to his own pilot, telling him to get the flight plan filed. Johnston is on his phone telling someone to contact O’Hare and tell them to green light the flight plan and clear a helipad for the Pave Hawk.

Me, I’m just standing here with a gun to my head.

A few minutes later and the logistics are taken care of. Now we just have to wait.

“I’m curious,” Pearce says, still strangely calm after his outbursts earlier. “What really did happen with Atlas’s expansion? Where did the money actually come from?”

“Terrorists,” Chance says simply. “Sully and I came across a terror cell in Mosul that was meeting with a financier from Jordan. He brought cash, we killed them all and took it.”

Pearce blinks. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all,” says Johnston. “It was a brilliant plan, and the perfect use for the money. Taking something that could have caused so much death and destruction and using it to help save lives.”

“You act like you knew it all along,” Pearce scowls.

“We did,” says Johnston. “We’ve been keeping an eye on our investment ever since.”

“Wait a minute,” says Chance. “How did you do that? And how did you find out about the money in the first place?”

Johnston looks at Tre. “You want to tell them, or should I?”

I look at Chance just as he looks at me. We both look at Tre, our mouths hanging open.

“What?” Tre says. “You didn’t honestly think I’d let you and Sully do that without reporting it, do you? That’s the kind of secret that gets people killed, Chance. Once I explained it to… well, not these two specifically, but people like them, they agreed to give us some rope. See if we hung ourselves with it.”

“And you didn’t,” says Johnston. “But it’s obviously in everyone’s best interests to keep that quiet, so Tre got in touch with us as soon as Empire made their offer to buy.”

I can hear Pearce’s mouth opening and closing beside me, even though I can’t see it.

“That’s fucking insane,” he says. “You know that, right?”

I try to keep the conversation going so that Pearce can’t gather his wits.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “What would you have done if everyone had decided to sell and Empire took over?”

“We would have approached the new owners,” says Johnston. “Luckily, that didn’t happen, and we didn’t have to deal with Mr. Arturo. That would have been unpleasant to say the least. That’s another one we owe Mr. Talbot and Mr. Carter.”

“Oh yes, they’re patriots!” Pearce snaps. “Real American heroes, with their lies and secrets! But I’m the villain in all this! It boggles the mind.”

I can feel the shakiness in his gun arm. He’s getting tired. That’s not good – tired people make mistakes.

Chance’s phone buzzes. “The Pave Hawk is here. Danny Taylor is flying it. I’ll take over once he lands.”

“Then let’s move,” says Pearce, shoving me forward. “I don’t have time to waste.”

“How do you plan to explain the gun to everyone in the Empire office that we walk past?” I ask.

“I won’t have to,” he says, stabbing at a panel on the wall of his office. A few moments later, what appears to be a bookshelf swings open.

“A private elevator?” I say as he shuffles me inside and waits for Chance to join us.

“Why bother working so hard to make money if you don’t set yourself above your fellow man?”

Tre gives us an intense look as the doors begin to slide shut.

“Good luck,” he says.

The doors close and Chance’s hand grips mine as the elevator begins its slow climb to the roof.