Part of her agitation came from being in a public place while law enforcement was hunting for her. But a bigger part was having her face all over the TV screen.
Most campaign offices keep a TV set running constantly to monitor the latest news. Since this was a presidential campaign, there were four sets—one on each wall—all tuned to 24-hour cable news networks. And they were all taking advantage of closed captioning to avoid the cacophony of four TVs blaring at once.
Every screen had Alyssa’s face on it. Each photo or video clip came with a tag line like "Person of interest" or "Suspect?" or her favorite, "Professor by day, assassin by night?" The closed captioning showed the anchors saying things like, "Chambers is known to hold a black belt in two martial arts and to be a competitive shooter."
They showed her driver’s license photo, the photo from her personnel file at the university, and publicity shots of her that the university had taken at various events. And of course, there were the clips from interview shows on these very networks.
Really the whole thing was ironic. She had never intended to wind up in the spotlight at all. Far from it. But after she’d supplied little bits of analysis for Matt’s stories here and there, she started getting calls from the rest of the media. Such exposure had made her life awkward and only increased the level of paranoia she felt when meeting new people, though she hid it well.
She chuckled to herself as she realized the dilemma each news host was probably wrestling with. Just a short time ago they had called upon her, even fawned over her, as a respected political analyst. Now they were showing sound bites from some of those same interviews – obviously with a different goal in mind – but the end result was still embarrassment for them. No wonder they appeared to be a bit flustered!
The receptionist saw her looking at the TV and said, "Pretty wild, huh? She was just on that show last week giving some analysis about how we’re the only campaign that has any chance of derailing Rich West. ‘Had,’ I should say. Now they’re saying she killed him."
It took every ounce of Alyssa's willpower to calmly make eye contact with the young woman, smile broadly, and reply, "I know. Mr. Richards does shows with her sometimes. Pretty crazy."
As soon as she possibly could without looking evasive, she turned her face away to look back at the TV screen. Her heart hammered so hard in her chest that she feared for her health.
One screen shifted to another interview with Congressman Vincent. The host explained that Vincent was a senior advisor to the West campaign and asked him again about Lance Reeder.
Vincent gave his best smile.
"People keep asking me that. I don't know the answer. I was in this for Rich. He was a great man – maybe the first truly great man we've had in politics in decades."
Finally, the receptionist’s intercom buzzed, and Chambers was told to go down the hall to the last door on the left. That, she knew, would be a penthouse office. Pausing in the hall to collect herself after the nerve-wracking conversation in the lobby, she was struck by the eerie similarity to the location where she'd been the previous night. In fact, the West headquarters was only a few blocks up K Street.
She walked down the hall. Wheeler was going to answer some questions for her, but they wouldn't be the kind of questions he'd expect from a supposed reporter.
She opened the door to see Wheeler hanging up his cell phone. When they originally met, Alyssa had taken the same precautions she always did with clients. They met at night, and she approached him from behind. Although he had hired her as a thief, Tom Wheeler had never seen her. Of course, he had seen plenty of pictures of her on the news since then. She took a moment to congratulate herself on her disguise – neither the receptionist nor this man had any idea who she was.
"Miss... Cobler, was it? Come on in. You must be new with Ben; he didn't tell me he had a new assistant. Heck of a time to start work, huh? Biggest news story of the new century."
While he was talking, Chambers opened the backpack that was all that remained of her previous life. She drew out her handgun. Its six-inch long barrel was fatter than most pistol barrels because sound suppression – a silencer, to most people – was built directly in. The angular handle held a removable magazine loaded with ten rounds of subsonic .22 caliber ammunition. An eleventh round was already in the chamber.
She pointed it straight at Wheeler's forehead so that the fat barrel almost touched him right between the eyebrows.
"Who did you tell that I would be in West's headquarters last night, Wheeler?"
His eyes went wide, and for a moment Alyssa thought the man might actually pee his pants. Staring at the gun barrel, his eyes were almost crossed. Then he came to his senses a bit, and focused on her face.
"Chambers? Alyssa Chambers?" His voice rose, building to a shout. "Secur..."
"Shut up or die."
"...ity," he finished in a hoarse whisper.
They spent a moment in silence, staring at each other. Finally Wheeler said, "You killed Rich West!"
"Wrong. I didn't kill him, but whoever you told that I would be going in there did kill him. So tell me who, and I'll go deal with them myself."
"You’re the woman I hired to…" he stopped, suddenly unwilling to say it aloud.
"That’s right. But I am not the woman who killed Rich West. I suspect you told someone that I was going in there, and I suspect that someone killed him."
"Can it, Chambers! You can try convincing the jury you didn't kill him, but you can't convince me. I know for a fact that you were there. At least talk to me honestly."
"I am. Try thinking about it for a moment. What possible reason could I have for coming here if I killed him? The FBI already knows about me, so it's not like I could stop you from giving them any information about me by coming here to kill you. No, if I were the assassin, I would already be sitting on a Caribbean beach sipping something with a plastic sword in it. We both know that. So tell me who you told, so I can go beat the truth out of them."
"You're crazy."
"You keep saying words, but not the ones I want to hear. That's an unwise position to take with someone pointing a gun at your head. Who did you tell?"
"I didn't tell anyone, OK? No one!"
"One more chance, then you die."
Chambers made a show of tightening her grip on the trigger. It was enough.
"A reporter! This reporter called! He said he'd heard we hired a private investigator and was asking about it for a story! I didn't tell him anything! I hung up on him! But he knew somehow. It wasn't me. Please, it wasn't me who told him!"
"Now we're getting somewhere. What was his name?"
"Matt Barr."
The bottom dropped out of Alyssa’s stomach. The emotional shock was so great that her gun-hand wavered.
Wheeler's intercom picked that moment to go off.
"Tom, some men from the FBI are here to see you. I tried to tell them you were with someone at the moment, but they're on their way back."
Alyssa and Wheeler stared at each other in horror. She recovered first and immediately began seeking a way out.
Tom tried to put his poker face back on and said, "OK, now you're caught, right? So no sense adding a second murder to make your case worse. You can't kill me now."
She paid no attention. Instead, she quickly ran through her options. Yes, whoever could tell the FBI her name could also point them at Wheeler as someone likely involved with her. Any of her previous clients could identify the senior staff of an opposing campaign as likely to be involved if Chambers was involved.
All of which meant the FBI would treat Wheeler as a possible suspect. Which would mean they'd be here with a full team of agents for an arrest of this magnitude.
In other words, think what she might of her own abilities, even she could not hope to fight her way out through the front door.
But she didn't even know if the Hicks campaign headquarters had a back door. And if it did, the FBI was probably guarding it anyway.
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So the only way out was...
She said a quick word of thanks for the pretentiousness of politics - it meant Wheeler had a corner penthouse office.
Out the front windows there was nothing but a nearly-hundred-foot drop to the pavement below.
But out the side window she could see the roof of the next building over. It appeared to be not far below where she was currently standing.
She shoved Tom out of the way and began firing her pistol at the window.
Wheeler shouted when she pushed him. The metallic racking back and forth of the slide on her silenced semi-auto was the only sound from the gun. But as the repeated impacts of small-caliber rounds cracked the glass, the room became very noisy. When he realized she was firing an actual real-life handgun in his office, Wheeler's eyes went wide, and he gave out a high-pitched scream.
Alyssa didn't care. She kicked off her high heels and ran toward the cracked glass.
She heard someone throw open the door behind her - heard the doorknob hit the wall too hard.
"Mr. Whee... what the... Freeze!"
Whoever was speaking was too late. Alyssa leapt out the window.
She felt shards of broken glass as she flew but she barely cared. So much adrenaline coursed through her body, she didn't even feel the pain.
The fall was a bit farther than she had expected—she'd been deceived by perspective—and she landed harder than she planned.
The part of Alyssa that still remembered her days as a gymnast winced at the ugly landing.
She was off-balance when she hit but made up for it by pitching forward and letting herself roll through a somersault. The gravel on the roof hurt her back, but she came up running for the far side.
Behind her she heard someone yell, "Federal agents! Freeze!" She ignored the order and kept running. On her left she heard a “zing” and saw a small cloud of dust rise.
They were shooting at her.
Frantically, she began random, zigzagging turns as she ran, hoping to make it harder for the shooter to get a clean shot at her. Little fountains of gravel and dust rose in front of her, behind her, and to both sides, but each time she swerved just right to avoid getting hit.
Alyssa caught sight of the service entrance to the roof and turned that way, only to see the little puffs of debris that indicated gunfire drawing ever closer. It was too obvious - they'd been waiting for her to turn that way.
She turned back and dashed for the far side of the roof.
The problem was, she couldn't see anything past the edge of the roof.
There was nothing for it but to run and hope.
Just as she heard the thud of someone else jumping down from Wheeler's office to join her on the roof, she reached the parapet.
The next building was one story down.
She was more prepared for the distance of the jump this time. She landed on her feet and took off immediately, glad to be at least temporarily out of the line of fire. Besides, the distance between her and Wheeler's office was growing too great for accurate pistol shots. And to make matters even better, she could see that she had three buildings of roughly equal height in a row here. That gave her some time to figure out what she was going to do when she reached the end of the block.
That was the positive side of her current personal ledger.
On the negative side, a helicopter flew into view off to her left.
The sound of gunfire was much more audible this time, even over the roar of the chopper's rotors. There was a man in the open passenger compartment of the chopper, firing warning shots in front of her with an assault rifle. The vehicle was obviously equipped with a microphone and loudspeaker because she heard, "This is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Throw down your weapon and put your hands in the air!"
She kept zigzagging harder and faster, now left, now right, dodging shots from the chopper.
Then, the helicopter moved. As its rotors kicked up a spray of small stones, the aircraft swept around and ended up directly in front of her, less than fifty feet away.
With the chopper broadside ahead of her, she could see the FBI agent in full raid gear kneeling in the open door, pointing an M-4 carbine at her. The loudspeaker blared again.
"There's no escape. We have you surrounded. Put your hands in the air. This is your last chance to surrender."
The chopper's move had happened so fast she hadn't had time to react; she was still sprinting forward – right at the helicopter. Her run carried her closer as the loudspeaker ordered her to freeze.
Instead of freezing, she dove and rolled, a manoeuver that carried her right under the copter. Alyssa experienced the surreal sight of seeing the "FBI" logo painted on the bottom, right in front of her face. Then she rolled out the other side.
She jumped, grabbed the skid, and hauled herself up. Just as the shooter made the switch over to her side, she climbed into the open cabin. Long experience with helicopters had prepared her for the tiny quarters. They were always very small vehicles, even the luxury ones. And in this case, very close to the target was exactly where she wanted to be.
Before he could bring his weapon to bear, she delivered a right cross to the jaw. She followed that up with a kick that sent him tumbling out the open door.
At the last minute, she grabbed the M-4 out of his hands, then watched him fall with a thud to the rooftop only a few feet below them.
She swung the rifle forward and sized up the two people flying the craft. The pilot, to Alyssa’s delight, was female. So she pointed the M-4 at the co-pilot's head.
"Out! Now!" She screamed at the top of her lungs to be heard over the engine noises.
The man turned around to stare at her in shock, eyes crossing over the barrel of the weapon. He wasn't moving, so Alyssa put a bullet through the windscreen to drive her point home.
Without further ado, the co-pilot undid his straps, threw open his door and jumped down to the roof.
The pilot was in the process of doing likewise when Alyssa shouted, "Not you! Sit down and get this thing out of here if you want to live."
The pilot looked at her, stared at the carbine, and then pulled back on the cyclic stick to gain altitude.
"Your helmet! Take it off!" She yelled. Then, holding the rifle in her right hand and cupping it under her elbow, she mimed taking the helmet off with her left to make sure she got the point.
"It's got a mic in it. I need it to talk to air traffic control!" she shouted back.
"Exactly! Take it off now or I blow you away!"
It was a bluff. She really didn't want to shoot an FBI agent. From Alyssa’s perspective, that would be the worst possible scenario. Committing murder on the way to proving herself innocent of murder would not exactly work out. But from the pilot’s perspective, her own demise was eminently believable. First of all, there was the matter of the barrel pointed at her head. Second, she thought that this person invading her aircraft had already murdered the man who most likely would have been the next President; for someone who had done that, killing a lowly FBI agent would not be a big deal.
She took the helmet off and, getting the drift when Chambers did no more than wave the barrel of the M-4 at the co-pilot's still-open door, she threw it out of the chopper.
"Head east," she shouted. "Straight and level, nothing fancy, put the autopilot on and talk to me."
She watched very carefully as the pilot complied, noting the location of the autopilot switch when she activated it.
"Oh, and one more thing," Alyssa added as the pilot turned back to look at her.
"I need you to strip. Down to your skivvies."