The Inner Circle - Brad Meltzer [53]
With a tug at his own neck, the doctor unsnapped the red, white, and blue barber’s apron and hopped out of the chair in such a rush, he didn’t even stop to check his haircut in the mirror. “You’re a magician, Laurent. See you soon!”
But as Palmiotti was paying the cashier, Laurent looked over and noticed the hardcover book with the bright red writing—A Problem from Hell—that was still sitting on the shelf below the mirror.
Palmiotti was at the cashier. There was still time to return it to him.
Instead, Laurent opened the drawer that held his spare scissors, slid the book inside, and didn’t say a word.
As usual.
29
You’re anxious,” Nico says to Clementine as he leads her past me and heads for the door that’ll take them outside. Clementine nearly falls over when she sees me, but to her credit, she doesn’t stop. Just shoots me a look to say, What’re you doing here?
I turn back to the glass guard booth, pretending to sign in.
If I remember my history—and I always remember my history—when Nico took his shots at the President, he said it was because of some supposed ancient plan that the Founding Fathers and the Freemasons had hatched to take over the world.
Exactly.
He’s crazy enough. He doesn’t need to be more crazy by me confronting or riling him.
“There’s no need to be nervous,” Nico continues, reading Clementine’s discomfort.
He shoves open the front door and steps out into the cold. As the door slams behind them, it’s like a thunderclap in the silent room.
“Th-That was—You let him walk out the door!”
“… and he’ll walk right back in after his visitor leaves,” says the guard behind the glass. “Our goal is curing them, not punishing them. Nico earned his ground privileges just like anyone else.”
“But he’s—”
“He’s been incident-free for years now—moved out of maximum security and into medium. Besides, this isn’t a prison—it’s a hospital. A hospital that’s there to help him, not punish him. You gotta let a man walk outside,” she explains. “And even so, we got guards—and a fence that’s too high to hop. We see him. Every day, he does custodial work in the RMB Building, then feeds the cats there. By the way, Beecher, they still got that copy of the Magna Carta at the Archives? That stuff is cool.”
“Yeah… of course,” I say as I try to walk as casually as possible to the door.
The guard says something else, but I’m already outside, searching left and right, scanning the main road that runs across the property. In the distance, there’s a guard walking the perimeter of the black metal gates that surround the hospital’s snow-covered grounds. Ahead and down to the right, the concrete walkway looks like a squiggle from a black magic marker that slices through the snow. The plowed path is lined with trees and holds so many benches, it’s clearly for strolling patients.
Nico’s at least four steps in front of her, his left arm flat at his side, his right clutching a brown paper supermarket bag. He walks like Clementine used to: fearlessly forward as he follows the thin pedestrian path. Behind him, whatever confidence Clementine had—the woman who plowed just as fearlessly into the President’s SCIF—that Clementine is once again gone. From the stutter in her steps… the way she hesitates, not sure whether she really wants to keep up… I don’t care how far people come in life—or how much you prepare for this moment. You see your father, and you’re instantly a child again.
As they step out onto the pathway, I stick by the entryway of the building, making sure there’s at least half a football field between us. But as I take my first step out and my foot crunches against some thick chunks of snow salt, I swear on my life, Nico flinches.
He never turns. He doesn’t glance over his shoulder to investigate. But I remember the news footage—how he has hearing and eyesight more acute than the rest of us. That’s why the military first recruited him for sniper school.
I stop midstep.
Nico keeps going, marching his purposeful march, clutching