Chapter Six #2
We turned for the main corridor. Got four steps before I heard it. Shoes on tile, moving fast, coming from the ballroom side.
Two men. Walsh's unofficial security. They'd made us.
"Move."
Charlie didn't hesitate. We went left, deeper into the service corridor, away from the main hall. The footsteps behind us accelerated. I grabbed Charlie's arm and pulled her through a set of double doors into the kitchen.
Steam. Noise. Cooks shouting, plates clattering, the roar of commercial ovens.
Staff looked up as we burst through but didn't stop us.
Too busy, too focused, trained to ignore anything that wasn't their station.
A chef yelled in French as Charlie dodged his prep table.
I knocked a cart of glassware sideways behind us.
Not subtle, but it would slow pursuit by a few seconds.
Through the kitchen. Past the dish pit. Charlie moved fast in heels, camera clutched to her chest with one arm, the other hand gathering her dress above her knees. I clocked the exit sign at the far end. Service stairs, leading down. The first pursuer hit the kitchen doors behind us.
I shoved Charlie toward the stairs. "Go. Down."
"What about—"
"Go."
She went. I turned.
The first man came through the kitchen at speed. Big, trained, reaching under his jacket. I didn't wait for him to get there. Closed the distance in three steps, caught his reaching arm, and redirected his momentum into the stainless-steel counter. His head hit the edge and he went down hard.
I was down the stairs before his partner made it through the kitchen.
Charlie was at the bottom, in a basement corridor lined with old stonework and exposed pipes. The speakeasy tunnels. I'd studied the building plans with Cass three days ago. The corridor branched ahead: left toward the old tunnel system, right toward a loading dock exit.
"Loading dock," I said. "Right side. Thirty meters."
The second pursuer hit the stairs above us. Then another sound, from the tunnel branch to our left. Footsteps. Slower. Unsteady.
Walsh stepped into the corridor.
He had a gun. A compact semi-automatic that looked new, recently purchased, barely handled. He was holding it with both hands wrapped too high on the grip, elbows locked, the stance of a man who'd learned to shoot from movies.
He was shaking.
"Stop." His voice cracked on the word. Not commanding. Begging.
Charlie went still beside me. I calculated angles.
Walsh was twelve feet away. The second pursuer was on the stairs behind us, maybe fifteen seconds out.
Walsh's grip was wrong, his stance was wrong, his trigger discipline was nonexistent.
He was more likely to shoot himself than either of us.
But scared men with guns were the most dangerous men in any room, because they didn't follow logic.
I kept my hands visible. Voice low. Flat. "Put the gun down, Walsh."
"Do you have any idea what you've done?" His voice shook as badly as his hands. "Do you know what those photos are going to cost me?"
Charlie stepped forward. I reached for her arm but she was already talking. Calm. Clear.
"I took pictures, Greg. That's all I ever did."
"Those pictures are going to destroy everything I've built. Everything. My career, my family, all of it."
His eyes were wet. His face was gray. A man who'd gambled on violence and lost. He'd spent weeks trying to scare a woman half his size and failed, and now he was standing in a basement with a gun he didn't know how to use because every other option had collapsed.
"You were supposed to be scared," he said. Quieter now. Almost to himself. "You were supposed to stay home."
"I don't scare that easy."
His grip shifted on the gun. Finger twitching toward the trigger.
Three moves.
I stepped left, clearing Charlie from the line of fire.
Closed the distance before Walsh's brain caught up with his eyes.
My left hand stripped the gun, thumb behind the slide, twist, and it was out of his grip before he'd processed the movement.
Right hand caught his wrist, rotated, and put him face-first into the stone wall. My knee pinned him there.
The gun was in my hand, cleared and safed, before Walsh finished gasping.
He crumbled. Didn't fight. Didn't resist. Just sagged against the wall, knees buckling, sobbing. A politician who'd hired thugs and bought a gun and still wasn't ready for what happened when someone pushed back.
Behind me, the second pursuer hit the bottom of the stairs.
Charlie was ready. I heard the crack of metal on bone. A serving tray she'd grabbed from the kitchen, swung hard into the man's face. He staggered. She hit him again. He went down.
She stood over him, breathing hard, tray dented, hair wild, press credentials swinging from her neck.
"Charlie—"
"I'm fine." She was already raising her camera. Shot Walsh against the wall. Shot the downed security. Shot the gun on the floor. Evidence. Every frame.
"Cass. Corridor B, basement level. Walsh is down. Armed when we got here, disarmed now. Two of his people neutralized. We need cleanup."
"Backup's moving. Two minutes."
I kept Walsh pinned until I heard Heartline boots on the stairs. Cass came down first, sharp suit, sharp eyes, assessing the scene in one sweep. Two operatives behind him secured Walsh's people. Someone was already on the phone with federal contacts.
Walsh didn't speak again. Didn't look up. Just stayed crumpled on the floor while his career collapsed around him.
THEY GAVE US A SUITE upstairs while the building locked down.
The Gilded Hart's management was in damage control.
Heartline's people were thorough. Federal agents would be here within the hour, and June had the evidence packaged and ready to hand over.
Walsh, Morello, and the two security men were being held separately in conference rooms on the second floor.
The ball continued below, most guests unaware that anything had happened beyond a brief commotion near the kitchen.
The suite was still. Heavy curtains, thick carpet, the muffled sound of music drifting up through the floor. Charlie sat on the edge of the bed with her camera in her lap, scrolling through the photos. I leaned against the wall by the window, running the debrief in my head.
My knuckles ached. I hadn't noticed during the fight. Standard. The adrenaline metabolized slowly, leaving me hyper-aware of small things: the hum of the heating system, the distant clink of glasses from the ballroom, the steady click of Charlie's camera as she reviewed each shot.
Seven days. Threats, break-ins, shredded photographs, a car that tried to kill her, and a politician with a gun he couldn't hold straight. Done.
"The Walsh-Morello photos are clean," she said.
"Both sets. Six months apart, same handoff.
June can match them to the federal timeline.
" She paused on a frame, zoomed in, nodded.
"And the ones from the basement. Walsh holding the gun, his security on the floor.
That's witness intimidation, assault, and about six other charges June can stack. "
"Good."
"Good? I just handed the feds a career-ending corruption case and you're giving me 'good'?"
"Very good."
She laughed. Short, startled, a week's worth of tension breaking loose at once. She set the camera aside and looked at me.
The adrenaline was fading and what replaced it wasn't the post-crisis crash I'd seen on the couch three nights ago. It was steadier than that. Calmer. Her eyes were bright, her breathing even, and she was looking at me the way she had since she'd stopped pretending.
"I love you," she said. "Which is extremely inconvenient and I blame you entirely."
My chest did something I wasn't going to examine in detail.
"Inconvenient," I said.
"The worst." She stood up. Crossed the room to where I stood by the window. "You disarmed a man in three moves and I hit someone with a serving tray and now I'm standing in a hotel suite telling a man I've known for seven days that I love him. My life is absurd."
"Charlie."
"I'm serious. I love you. I love that you slept on my terrible couch and held me when I fell apart and refused to let me use you to hide from being scared.
I love that you pushed a linen cart and posed as my date and never once tried to stop me from doing my job.
And I really love that you just took a gun away from a man like it was nothing, because that was extremely attractive and I need you to know that. "
"Charlie."
She stopped.
I reached for her. Pulled her in close, one hand on the back of her neck, the other at her waist. She came easily. "I love you. Every reckless, stubborn, brilliant part." I pressed my forehead against hers. "The cameras. The wigs. The serving tray. I'm not going anywhere."
She kissed me. Slow and deliberate. The kiss of someone who'd made a decision and wasn't taking it back.
When she pulled away, she was smiling. Real. Open. The version of Charlie I'd only seen when she forgot to guard it.
"I'm not running," she said.
"I know."
The job was done. I could hand the file to Cass, debrief, walk away clean. I'd done it a hundred times.
I kept my arms around her.
Seven days. I'd lasted seven days before I lost a fight I'd stopped wanting to win.