Nightrise

breathing. Jamie knew that something terrible had happened. She was holding her phone as if she were trying to crush it. About ten seconds went past. At last she spoke.
    'You go to hell, you bastard," she whispered.

    She ended the call. Then she turned off the phone. Finally, she threw it onto the backseat as if it had bitten her.
    "What did he want?" Jamie asked.
    "He offered to swap Danny for you," Alicia said.
    Jamie didn't know what to say. He knew what she must be thinking. He didn't have any need to read her mind.
    But when she turned to him again, she was smiling even though her eyes were bleak. "He's told me what I wanted to know," she said. "Nightrise has Danny. Before, it was a suspicion. Now it's a fact. And that means I know what to do."
    She slammed the car into gear and once again they drove off. Jamie looked back. The sun was still shining. The office of the Nightrise Corporation looked no different from any of the others that surrounded it as they joined the freeway, leaving it far behind.
    NINE
    Friends in High Places
    The police had thrown a tight security ring all around the Carlton Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, just south of Beverly Hills. It seemed to Jamie that Los Angeles had no real center. It sprawled carelessly from district to district…but if the city had a wallet, it would surely keep it here. Jamie had never seen so many expensive shops and boutiques standing shoulder to shoulder, the windows dripping with watches and jewelry and five-thousand-dollar suits.
    The Carlton was an old-fashioned building, fifteen stories high and stretching an entire block. As Alicia and Jamie drove into the front courtyard, a dozen valets in matching, gray waistcoats hurried forward to help them out of the car and then to park it below. But even the valets were outnumbered by the Secret Service personnel, who had their own uniform: black suits, white shirts, sunglasses, and earpieces. To Jamie they looked almost ridiculous, like something out of a cartoon. But perhaps that was the idea.
    They were advertising the fact that the hotel was protected.
    Senator John Trelawny was staying here for twenty-four hours before he gave his speech at the L.A.
    Convention Center and he had taken over the entire twelfth floor for the night. There were just five months until the general election and his campaign team numbered almost a hundred people, including media advisors, political consultants, speechwriters, pollsters, personal aides, and more security men.
    All of them had rooms, and for one night all the elevators to the twelfth floor had been blocked. To visit the senator, guests would need to show ID and then receive a passkey—* provided by the Secret Service. Callers were accompanied all the way. If they didn't have an invitation, they didn't get in.

    "Will he see us?" Jamie asked as he and Alicia followed a winding corridor into the hotel.
    Alicia nodded. "I just have to let him know we're here…"
    They entered a cavernous lobby with a huge chandelier hanging over a round, polished table. Jamie found himself staring, openmouthed, at the wealth on display. There was too much of everything. Too many electric candle lights, too many vases of flowers — at least ten of them — on the table, too many antique clocks and mirrors and display cases packed with handbags, scarves, and shoes. And too many people. There was a concierge desk and a reception desk and porters and guests everywhere. Rush hour for the rich, Jamie thought. He had never been anywhere like this.
    Alicia stopped and looked around, searching for someone she knew. A few moments later, she found him. "There!" she exclaimed, and moved forward.
    There was a man standing next to a table close to the elevators. He was dressed in the same dark suit and white shirt as the other security men but he had a brightly colored tie as if to announce that he wasn't actually one of them. Even so, there was a telltale wire curling behind his ear and he was obviously doing the same job, scanning the lobby with suspicious eyes. He was at least six and a half feet tall with blond, close-cropped hair, blue eyes that were constantly on the move, and the body of a weight lifter.
    His shoulders were huge. Either he was ex-army or a retired basketball player…or both.
    The man saw Alicia and recognized her before she was nearer than ten paces.
    "Alicia!" He greeted her by name, but he seemed more surprised than pleased to see her.
    "How are you, Warren?"
    "I'm good." He