She kept poking at him. “I heard about the other attacks. If you were so brilliant, why wait a year between? That’s why the teams hunting you think someone else is probably the top dog,” she lied, hoping he’d be more incensed over elite teams discounting him. “Makes sense that they believe the big guy is letting you be the front man. An important man would not get his hands dirty, would he?” She gripped the metal bar she leaned against. The squeal of gears begging to be lubricated was lost in the louder whistling wind at each level.
That storm was building fast.
Maybe a tornado would come up and ruin his plans.
She looked around as if interested in half-constructed buildings. “We can talk about something else. I just thought if you were the true genius behind all this, you’d want to tell someone.” She brought her attention back to him. “Or don’t you know all the details?”
“You are digging for information.”
“Why not? You don’t plan to let me live.”
“You are correct.”
“I thought offering to take Phoebe’s place would earn me at least a good story about what will happen once I’m dead.”
“You want a story?” He crossed his arms while still holding his finger over the death threat.
She’d pricked his temper. Would he say more?
“Here’s your story, little girl. My people in law enforcement uniforms will clear an area around the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia with a bomb scare. A boom truck will drive in and a body already hooked up will be lifted above the ground. The driver and my men will leave so citizens can sneak in to start taking pictures. I’ll have a live feed going that will be released afterward. Ninety seconds later ... boom! This plan allows all those stupid creatures who go rushing around gawking to be killed as well. People are sheep. I am cleaning out bad genes of idiots. If you tell them someone is dying in the street, they all pull out their phones and rush forward to take a photo. None will have the survival instinct to realize their lives are threatened as well.”
His eyes lit with excitement over being a master manipulator.
A true sociopath.
“That’s nice of you,” she commented in a complimentary tone.
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Only killing a few people around the body.”
“You are yet another simpleminded plebian,” he muttered. “This event is so much greater.”
Would he finish before this elevator made it to the top? She assumed that’s where a megalomaniac would want to be.
Letting out a long sigh, she said, “All I’m hearing is a dead guy hung by a crane hook and an explosion. I’ve heard about more creative attacks in the Middle East.”
“That’s because your mind is incapable of thinking on a grand scale.”
Opening her arms wide with her palms up, she said, “I’m ready to be impressed.”
“That doesn’t matter to me.”
“At least finish the story.”
He sounded bored. “The body hanging from the crane hook will have my face and stature. The abdomen will be carved with VV.”
She startled at that. “What do you mean VV?”
“I was born Viraaz Vicha.”
“Viraaz sounds Arabic,” she said, thinking out loud.
He ignored her, too invested in laughing at everyone hunting him. “I find it amusing that those investigating the first attack thought the carving was a W. I should have thought of that in the beginning. They made it even easier to shield my identity once I adopted the moniker. I grew up here, earning my natural American speech honestly, but I was not born in this country.”
That was the only thing this man had done honestly. She wished Sam could hear all of this.
Then she realized what this senator was doing. “You’re faking your death.”
