Read Triple Threat for Free Online

off track.”
    But she wasn’t. Dance had another strategy. She was comfortable with the information she had—tourist area, near the water, a paid-for event, Christmas related, a few other facts—and with what O’Neil found, she hoped they could narrow down areas to evacuate. Now she was hoping to convince him to confess by playing up the idea raised earlier. That by averting the attack he’d still score some good publicity but wouldn’t have to go to jail forever or die by lethal injection. Even if she lost the Twenty Questions game, which seemed likely, she was getting him to think about the people he was close to, friends and family he could still spend time with—if he stopped the attack.
    “And family—do your siblings approve?”
    “Question eighteen. Don’t have any. I’m an only child. You only got two questions left, Kathryn. Spend ‘em wisely.”
    Dance hardly heard the last sentences. She was stunned.
    Oh, no…
    His behavior when he’d made the comment about not having siblings—a bald lie—was identical to that of the baseline.
    During the entire game he’d been lying.
    Their eyes met. “Tripped up there, didn’t I?” He laughed hard. “We’re off the grid so much, didn’t think you knew about my family. Shoulda been more careful.”
    “Everything you just told me was a lie.”
    “Thin air. Whole cloth. Pick your cliché, Ms. Firecracker. Had to run the clock. There’s nothing on God’s green earth going to save those people.”
    She understood now what a waste of time this had been. Wayne Keplar was probably incapable of being kinesically analyzed. The Ten Commandments Principle didn’t apply in his case. Keplar felt no more stress lying than he did telling the truth. Like serial killers and schizophrenics, political extremists often feel they are doing what’s right, even if those acts are criminal or reprehensible to others. They’re convinced of their own moral rectitude.
    “Look at it from my perspective. Sure, we would’ve gotten
some
press if I’d confessed. But you know reporters—they’d get tired of the story after a couple days. Two hundred dead folk? Hell, we’ll be on CNN for weeks. You can’t
buy
publicity like that.”
    Dance pushed back from the table and, without a word, stepped outside.
    # # #
    Michael O’Neil sprinted past ghosts.
    The Monterey area is a place where apparitions from the past are ever present.
    The Ohlone Native Americans, the Spanish, the railroad barons, the commercial fisherman… all gone.
    And the soldiers, too, who’d inhabited Fort Ord and the other military facilities that once dotted the Monterey Peninsula and defined the economy and the culture.
    Gasping and sweating despite the chill and mist, O’Neil jogged past the remnants of barracks and classrooms and training facilities, some intact, some sagging, some collapsed.
    Past vehicle pool parking lots, supply huts, rifle ranges, parade grounds.
    Past signs that featured faded skulls and crossed bones and pink explosions.
    UXO…
    The suspect wove through the area desperately and the chase was exhausting. The land had been bulldozed flat in the 1930s and forties for the construction of the base but the dunes had reclaimed much of the landscape, rippled mounds of blond sand, some of them four stories high.
    The perp made his way through these valleys in a panicked run, falling often, as did O’Neil because of the dicey traction—and the fast turns and stop-and-go sprinting when what looked like a potential explosives stash loomed.
    O’Neil debated about parking a slug in the man’s leg, though that’s technically a no-no. Besides, O’Neil couldn’t afford to miss and kill him.
    The suspect chugged along, gasping, red-faced, the deadly backpack over his shoulder bouncing.
    Finally, O’Neil heard the thud thud thud of rotors moving in.
    He reflected that a chopper was the only smart way to pursue somebody through an area like this, even if it wasn’t technically a minefield.