The Constantine Conspiracy (26 page)

“Obstacles?”

“None worth mentioning so far. Security will tighten tonight, more as we get closer to zero hour. But they’ll focus on the usual angles—the outer perimeter, the air space, rooftops, personal belongings carried in. We’re way ahead of them, something never attempted. They’ll never get a sniff.”

“Don’t you just love surprises?”

The man chuckled and Nolan shut off his phone as he pulled to the curb and shut down his vehicle. If his plans succeeded, the Council owed him the Succession. He knew it, Augustine knew it, and soon enough everyone else would know it too.

Word of Gerald Grimes’s death reached Shannon as she stood with a tube of toothpaste in her hand in a grocery store aisle about a mile from her hotel. Gerald’s mother called with the tragic news, her sobs making it tough to get much information other than the fact that Gerald was shot on Thursday at lunch and died in his sleep on Saturday after sending her out for something to eat.

“I tried to call him Thursday, yesterday too,” Shannon said, guilt cutting away at her. “He sent me a text, some information he found.”

“That’s how I . . . how I got your number, out of . . . his phone. I’m trying to reach all his friends. He sure liked you,” Mrs. Grimes sobbed.

Shannon’s guilt shifted to suspicion. “The medical examiner needs to do an autopsy,” she said. “Make sure, okay?”

Mrs. Grimes cried even harder and Shannon’s guilt boiled back up. She’d caused Gerald’s death, her request for help. She thought of Rick but pushed away her worries. Had to put him on the back burner for now, she decided.

“I’m coming to Montana,” Shannon told Mrs. Grimes. “Gerald meant a lot to me.”

“That’s so nice. I know Gerald would have appreciated that.”

“Give me your address.”

Mrs. Grimes sobbed it out and Shannon assured her of her prayers, then said goodbye and hung up.

Putting aside the toothpaste, she exited the store and stepped into a light but steady rain, her phone already to her ear making flight reservations for a take-off barely three hours away. She reached her hotel in less than five minutes and thought of Rick again as she threw a rain jacket over her shoulders and ran through the rain to her room. She almost called him but resisted the temptation. She’d told him the truth; now he had to figure out what to do with it.

After reaching her room, she wiped water off her face, gathered her belongings, threw her bag over her shoulder, and headed for the door. Just before she turned the knob, her room phone rang. She pivoted back, unsure whether to answer. So far as she could remember, no one knew her location, much less the number to the room. The phone rang again and Shannon took a step toward it. Maybe the hotel manager needed her for something. She took another step and lifted the phone from its cradle.

Sitting in his SUV down the street from Bridge’s hotel, Charbeau held his cell to his ear and listened as her phone rang for the second time. Raindrops pattered onto the SUV’s roof and a note of sadness chilled him as he pictured Bridge, an attractive woman with an admirable set of skills, about to breathe her last. He didn’t like the notion of hurting her, but what choice did he have? She had stuck her neck into the line of fire so she had to pay the price. Even his momma, rest her soul, would have recognized that.

Bridge said hello.

“Ms. Shannon Bridge?”

“This is she.”

“Too bad about your friend Gerald Grimes.”

“Who is this?”

“You love Jesus, don’t you, Ms. Bridge?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then get ready to meet him.”

Shannon gripped the phone so hard her knuckles turned white. “You drove the motorcycle.”

“You’re one sharp lady.”

Shannon’s cell phone buzzed, breaking her concentration. She grabbed it from her purse and checked the number. Rick!

“Tell me your name!” she demanded of the caller on the room phone.

The man said nothing and Shannon’s cell buzzed again. “I’ll find you,” she growled. “Count on that.”

She slammed the phone into its cradle and rushed toward the door as she hit her cell phone answer button. The explosion detonated as she opened the door, the blast pushing out from the phone toward the windows on one side and the hallway to the stairs on the other. Shannon’s body ricocheted outward, banged against the wall on the other side of the hall, and crumpled to the floor as shattered tile, wood, carpet and cloth from her room sprayed down over her. She felt heat and tried to rise off the floor as the fire burned around her but couldn’t lift the rubble off her chest and legs. She felt her phone still in her fingers, so she lifted it to her face.

“Rick.”

“Shannon? You okay?”

“The Marriott, Fountain Street . . .” Her voice faded, her eyes closed, and her cell phone fell from her hand as she tried to breathe under the smoking rubble that covered her from head to toe.

31

R
ick heard sirens as he swerved around the last corner leading to Atlanta Memorial Hospital, and he jammed his foot into the accelerator of the BMW he drove. An ambulance rushed toward the emergency room from the opposite direction and a police car slammed to a stop just as he did in the parking lot outside the emergency entrance. An SUV filled with four bodyguards trailed him, an arrangement insisted upon by Pops before he left for New York. Multiple cars and SUVs followed the bodyguards, the media on the chase as Rick left his house.

Out of his car, Rick bounded toward the ambulance, but an EMT pushed him away, so he turned and followed the police inside, three bodyguards behind him to stop the media while one parked the car. Scores of medical personnel rushed at the body on the gurney hauled out of the ambulance, none of them noticing Rick as he watched. A sheet covered the body and Rick saw blood on the face of the person lying there. A police officer joined his bodyguards blocking the media, and the throng halted before they reached the hospital door but continued to shout their questions and snap their photos.

“Shannon!” Rick called, rushing toward her.

A nurse faced him, a hand up, while other personnel rolled Shannon up a ramp and through thick double doors into the hospital. “Who are you?” asked the nurse, a middle-aged black woman.

Rick fumbled for a second, then regained his composure. “I called her just before the explosion, we were talking on the phone.”

“You a boyfriend?”

Rick nodded without thinking, anything to stay close to Shannon.

“Follow me,” the nurse said.

They moved through the double doors and the nurse stopped. “Waiting room is over there,” she pointed to a door ten feet away. “Go get a seat. I’ll bring you up to date soon as things settle some.”

“Is she okay?”

The nurse indicated the waiting room again, then noted the bodyguards, now four in number, who had trailed them inside. Her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute, you’re Rick Carson, right?”

Rick shrugged and the nurse shook her head. “What are you mixed up in now?” she asked.

“It’s a long story. Just give me a status on the lady on the gurney soon as you know something. Can you please do that for me?”

The nurse stepped closer. “I’m Beth Cotter, honey,” she said, holding up a nametag wrapped around her neck by a blue rope. “You feeling okay?” she indicated the wrap on his shoulder, the sling holding his arm.

“I’m good, fine.”

“Okay, then. Go on to the waiting room and sit a few minutes, I’ll come out when I can to talk to you and her father.”

“Her father?”

“Yeah, he’s already in the waiting room.”

“Okay.” Rick ordered his guards to wait outside, then headed to the waiting room, his heart thumping. Maybe he’d finally learn something about Shannon—where she’d grown up, how she’d ended up in the Order, what made her tick. Another question crossed his mind. How did Shannon’s father beat him to the hospital? Did he live in Atlanta? If not, what was he doing here?

More confused by the minute, Rick suspected that the answers to his questions would surprise him almost as much as Shannon’s fantasies about the Conspiracy had.

Short-cropped, steel gray hair covered the head of the man who greeted Rick in the waiting room. He stood as Rick entered and extended a hand that Rick quickly took and shook.

“Doug Bridge,” the man said, “Shannon’s dad.”

“Rick Carson,” he said. “Shannon’s friend. You married to Mabel?”

“Shannon tell you that?”

“No, I just assumed.”

“Shannon will let you do that—say nothing and let you assume a lot of things.”

“She is a mystery. So Mabel isn’t her mom?”

“Shannon’s mom . . . she died a few years back.”

Rick started to ask how but decided to hold it for the time being. Mr. Bridge stepped back and Rick studied him— late fifties, lean and angular, like a long-distance runner, a natural tan, sharp blue eyes—similar in a lot of ways to Shannon.

“How’d you get here so fast?” Mr. Bridge asked, his eyes searching Rick’s.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“You go first.”

“I was on the phone with her when the explosion went off. She managed to tell me the name of her hotel, last thing she said. I knew this was the closest hospital, got dressed, and rushed here.”

“How bad you hurt?” He pointed to Rick’s shoulder.

“I’m fine. Some pain, but they’ve got good drugs for that, right? No permanent damage.”

Mr. Bridge pointed Rick to a chair and took the one opposite his. He leaned over, his forearms on his knees. “I flew into Atlanta yesterday, business to attend with Shannon.”

“Mind if I ask what kind of business?”

Mr. Bridge rubbed a hand across his mouth, then settled it on his knee again. “How much did Shannon tell you about what she does? Why she followed you to Atlanta?”

Rick glanced over his shoulder, then around the room, but saw no one nearby except two of his guards placed near the door. “I hesitate to say,” he began softly. “Not sure . . . you know . . . do you have some identification? I’m a touch paranoid these days, you understand.”

“Sure, no problem.” Bridge pulled out his wallet, flipped out a driver’s license, and handed it to Rick who studied it a few seconds, then handed it back, his fears satisfied.