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King went back to the short hallway and waved Evans into the suite.

Evans joined the three of them at the monitors. He wore his customary navy-blue suit but had the build and balance of a man who was anything but a banker. He had cropped black hair without a tinge of gray despite the wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. The
intensity of those nearly black eyes ensured they would never be lost against the deep-black skin of his face.

King didn't know if Evans was his first name or his last name. He and Blake and MJ didn't know much about Evans. He worked for the Special Operations Group in the CIA. He was based out of the Tacoma–Seattle area. He'd stepped in at a crucial time during Dead Man's Switch, choosing to back King over a high-ranking prison official. And his name was Evans. Only Evans.

Evans flicked his eye downward. He saw Mundie on the floor, the shoelaces that bound Mundie's hands, the belt that bound his feet, and the pillowcase over his face.

King handed Evans a pad of hotel stationery and a pen. It was obvious by now that silence was important.

Evans scrawled some words and pointed at Blake.

All good with data backed up?

Blake nodded.

Evans wrote again.
Scramble the hard drives. We don't have time to take them. But we'll take the iPad.

Blake scooted to the keyboard.

Evans pointed at King, and made a turning motion with his right forefinger and thumb pressed together. Then Evans pointed at Mundie and made the same motion again.

Keys
, King thought.

King held his hands out as if he were holding a steering wheel and motioned as if he were driving.

Evans shook his head and with one hand made a lasso circling motion.

Ah
, King thought.
Helicopter. Who knew that helicopters had keys?

King bent down beside Mundie and gingerly patted the man's front pockets. Mundie flinched. He was blind to the world and hadn't known the touch was coming.

King had a burst of inspiration.

“I'm sure I've already broken a dozen federal laws already,” King said to Mundie. “So why not take what I can? Credit cards should come in handy. Government expense account, right?”

King patted more pockets, pulling everything out that he could.
Breath mints, two sets of keys. One with a Volvo logo, obviously for the vehicle Mundie had taken to the office to start the day. Another set that must be for the helicopter.

“Great,” King said to Mundie. “I know where your office is. Looks like we'll have wheels. Might be a day or two before someone comes looking for you. Cash, credit card, and a fast car. We'll be a thousand miles away by the time you get out of that pillowcase.”

Evans gave King a thumbs-up. Evans understood. They were taking the chopper, but King was trying to buy some time by fooling Mundie into believing otherwise, even if it only bought them an extra ten or fifteen minutes before Mundie called in a missing Volvo and then went to the roof. If they did get far enough away, King knew they'd have to make sure to call the front desk and send someone to the room to rescue Mundie. That way, the worst thing to happen to Mundie was that he'd wet his pants.

King tucked the stolen wallet in his pocket and handed the second set of keys to Evans, who nodded in satisfaction. Evans tapped King on the shoulder and made a “let's roll” signal, and King, Blake, and MJ followed Evans out of the hotel room.

Finally, King thought, he'd get answers.

A muffled
mmmpppph
from the pillowcase stopped them. Evans gave King the go-ahead to look.

King went back to Mundie and leaned over. “You won't yell if I pull the sock.”

Mundie grunted something that sounded like uh-uh.

King reached underneath and yanked the sock.

Mundie let out a gasp as if a cork had been popped from a bottle. He spoke in a low voice from the pillowcase. “Here's one chance for you to make a deal. I know Evans is behind this. Let me go and then help me find Evans. There won't be any consequences for you three.”

Evans glanced at King and then at Blake and then at MJ, knowing they'd have to make a decision.

“Whatever is happening here,” Mundie said, “Evans is conning you. Untie me now, and we'll clear up the misunderstanding and get you back to your parents like this never happened.”

King pointed at the door, a clear indication he was choosing Evans over Mundie. Blake and MJ gave emphatic nods.

“Boys?” Mundie said. “Boys? Answer me. Because if you don't untie me, every law-enforcement officer in the state is going to be looking for you within the hour.”

King waited until the room was clear to pull the pillowcase up again. Mundie glared at him but saw the sock and said nothing.

So King pinched the man's nose, and when Mundie gasped for air, King shoved the sock in again. He left the pillowcase on the floor and ran to catch the others.

CHAPTER 10

In the hallway, unaware of what King had done, Evans said, “Mundie can yell all he wants now. We don't have far to go.” He motioned for them to hurry with him to the far end.

“I put the sock back in his mouth,” King said.

With Blake and MJ right behind him, King expected Evans to keep moving and bolt through the exit door that led to the stairs. Instead, Evans reached the hotel room beside the exit door and stopped. With a smooth motion, he pulled out a room key, opened the door, and pointed the three inside.

King was in first. The suite was identical to the one they'd left behind, but it was a lot neater.

Blake and MJ tumbled in behind him, and then Evans slid the door shut.

King was breathing hard, more from running than from panic. But the panic wasn't far beneath the surface.

“King,” Evans said, extending his hand. “It's about time you joined the team. Good to see you.”

“And you too,” King said, accepting the handshake. He just wished it wasn't in a situation like this.

“All good with the stomach flu?” Evans said.

“Sir?”

“Mack said you had some kind of bug. Kept you in the bathroom a lot. Too bad. We could have used your help earlier.”

King felt a stab of conscience. He'd flat-out lied about that. To his parents. And by extension, to his friends and to Evans. It occurred to him that the lie hurt King more than it did his friends.

“Speaking of all the time you were on the toilet,” MJ said to King, “I left my box of clean underwear in the other room. Mom is going to kill me.”

Despite himself—or maybe because he'd been so stressed and this was a good way to break his tension—King laughed. It felt like his first real laugh in a long time.

“Seriously?” King said to MJ. “You're more worried about your mom than the senior CIA agent we just assaulted?”

“Yeah.” MJ was indignant. “I'm not an idiot.”

Blake nodded. “I'm with MJ. You don't want his mom mad at you.”

“Besides,” MJ said, “Evans has us covered.”

MJ looked at Evans. “Right?”

“Right,” Evans said. He moved to an open suitcase on the floor and came up with a pair of socks and tossed them at King. “Just what you needed.”

King smiled and pulled off his other sock so he could wear a matching pair. He laced up his shoes.

“You've got more for us than a pair of extra socks,” MJ said to Evans.

“In about a half hour, we'll be on a helicopter and safely away from here,” Evans said. “It's all good.”

“Sure,” King said. He felt his throat tighten. The action was over, and that gave him time to think about panic. “It's all good…as soon as you explain what's happening.”

Evans said, “I've got a few rooms booked under different names and credit cards at this hotel. Just for an event like this. Mundie can't do a room-to-room search.

“See?” MJ said. “And we've got the keys to Mundie's helicopter.”

“That's not what I meant,” King said. “What's going on? Why do
you have the other room and the monitor and a drone and a whole SWAT team taking down the guy in the mobile home?”

“Repeat that,” Evans said, going very still.

“Just as Mundie and I got into the other room,” King said, “a SWAT team captured a guy.”

“No,” Evans said softly. “Impossible. Mundie knew about that?”

Blake said, “We thought you'd ordered the SWAT team.”

Evans didn't reply. He just sucked in air through his nostrils with a deep intake of frustration.

“But we have the getaway helicopter,” MJ said. “Right?”

“Which we won't take,” Evans said. “I'm sure one of Mundie's guys is up on the roof waiting for him—or for us. I just wanted the keys so he wouldn't be able to take it himself. Anything to slow him down is okay.”

“And the other guys on his team…” King said, although he could guess. “They'll be at different locations in the hotel, watching the exits?”

Sooner or later, King needed to ask exactly why Mundie and his men were after Evans.

Evans shook his head to the negative. “More than likely they'll be in the office with all the monitors for the hotel surveillance system. He probably had one guy there the entire time.”

Now it was King's turn to draw in a sharp breath. “Then he saw us running from room 1010 to here.”

Evans smiled and pointed to Blake.

“Evans brought me a password or two,” Blake said. “Spoiled my fun. I prefer hacking into a system. He made it too easy to get into the hotel system. The tenth-floor hallway monitor is running a continuous two-hour loop.”

King still didn't feel safe. “So if a guy was monitoring it, he would have noticed he didn't see the rest of the team in the hallway when they came looking for Mundie.

“Kinger,” MJ said. “Told you, Evans has our back. We had a drill just in case something like this happened.”

Which told King that Evans knew something bad was a possibility. And that raised more questions for King, questions he couldn't seem to be able to ask.

Blake filled in for MJ. “I had it all set up ahead of time. Two quick commands just before pulling the plug in room 1010, and the loop went into play.”

King walked to the window and back, trying to calm himself. He gave Evans a direct look. “What's going on?”

“Later,” Evans said. “You're going to have to trust me on this. I thought, worst-case scenario, we could wait in this room for a while until everything was clear. But if a SWAT team apprehended Murphy, that changes everything. We need to get out there as soon as possible.”

“Out where?” King said.

“When we get on the interstate,” Evans said. “I'll have plenty of time to explain. But for now, you guys need to suit up.”

Evans motioned for them to follow him to the bedroom off the main suite.

Laid out on the bed were four rubberized firefighter uniforms with helmets and boots and oxygen tanks.

“Cool,” MJ said. “We
are
going to start a fire.”

“Not quite,” Evans said. “We're going to pull the alarm and toss smoke bombs down the stairwell. Once the fire trucks arrive, we'll join the confusion and get outside. I can arrange for another chopper to pick us up at the harbor.”

Evans took another deep breath. “This is not an easy decision. It's going to scare a lot of people at the hotel and make life very inconvenient for them for the next few hours. But the stakes are too high…it has to be done.”

CHAPTER 11

“Sir,” the man behind the rental-car counter said to Evans, “your driver's license doesn't match the name on the credit card.”

The man had slicked-back, thinning hair. He was slightly taller than Evans and much older. His voice carried clearly to King, who sat on a shiny red vinyl couch in the corner with MJ on one side and Blake on the other. King guessed that Evans was trying to use Mundie's government-issued Visa card for the rental.

With King beside him on the couch, MJ wasn't paying attention to the situation at the counter. “We could have kept the fire in control,” he said.

“Huh?” Blake said.

“In the hotel room,” MJ said. “My plan wasn't to burn down the entire room—just get enough of a fire going to draw some firemen in to rescue us.”

King tried to concentrate on what was happening at the counter. Getting a car was crucial. Each second that passed was a second closer to Mundie following up on his threat to have every law enforcement officer in the state looking for them.

Escaping in the confusion of the smoke bomb was easy. Evans
had another chopper at the waterfront. Before letting them aboard the chopper, Evans had ordered them all to shut off their cell phones so they couldn't be tracked by GPS signals. After a short flight, Evans had put the chopper down at the Tacoma Narrows Airport, making the helicopter ride almost full circle for King. Directly south and west from the airport was Fox Island, in Puget Sound, and on the other side was McNeil Island. It had been a crazy couple of hours, King thought. In that time, King had lifted off from the road in front of his house, swooped into downtown Seattle, assaulted a CIA agent, and gone on the run nearly all the way back home with a second CIA agent. From where they were now, it was only a couple miles across the water to his home on the island.