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Patrick pulled himself up over the top rung and grabbed his pistol. Liu took one last look at him, and Patrick braced himself for the explosion of gunfire, but there was no sound at all. Liu turned and faced the deep gorge in the hillside behind the building.
And then he jumped.
Patrick ran to the roof’s edge. The gorge behind the building cut even deeper into the hillside than he’d thought—so deep that the warehouse roof was actually above the moving cables that ran the gondolas. Another hundred feet below the cable, at the very deepest point of the rocky ravine, beneath the glowing lights of a passing gondola, Patrick caught a glimpse of a red dress. His heart ached, and he could barely believe his eyes. Slowly, his gaze shifted to the gondola that had just passed below the roofline, and he saw the most sickening sight.
Atop the car, riding to the safety of the next gondola platform, was a cold-blooded killer who deserved to die.
Chapter 66
Kate rode with Diego in the back of the ambulance to the emergency room.
Imbanaco Grupo Quirónsalud clinic was ten minutes away from Siloé, so the hospital’s surgical staff and seventeen operating rooms were no strangers to gunshot wounds. Enrique was coming out of surgery as Diego was going in. Kate called her father from the hospital waiting room. She told him that she and Patrick were safe, that Peel was dead, and that Enrique was on the mend. He had just one thing to say.
“I want you on the first flight out of Cali.”
“I’m already booked. It leaves at eight a.m.”
“That’s not soon enough. I’ll hire a private jet.”
“Dad, it’s almost eleven o’clock here.”
“I can have you out of there by midnight.”
Kate hesitated. “I can’t leave yet. Patrick is still at the morgue. He wants to say a proper goodbye to Olga.”
“Fine. Then he can stay. You’re coming home.”
“Said the father to his eleven-year-old daughter.”
“I just want you safe,” he said.
“I risked my life to come here and get Patrick. I’m not leaving without him.”
“This is getting silly. All this for a prostitute?”
Kate swallowed her anger, but not entirely. “She was a victim of sex trafficking. A victim ofyourex–business partner. So I’m going to hang up now, Dad, and try to forget what you just said. I’m flying home tomorrow with Patrick, after he says goodbye to Olga.”
“I’m sorry, Kate.”
“Good night,” she said, and the call ended.
A text message came a few minutes later. Patrick had left the morgue and purchased a prepaid cellphone so that Kate could reach him. Diego was just about to come out of surgery, but with the general anesthesia, both he and Enrique would probably sleep through the night. Kate was exhausted and had yet to check out of her hotel. She texted Patrick back to let him know that Enrique’s adjoining room was available, if he wanted to catch some sleep before their flight in the morning. He swung by the hospital via Uber, and they shared a ride to the hotel.
“I’m so sorry about Olga,” said Kate.
He was casting an empty gaze out the car window. “Thanks.”
Kate wanted to say more, but she remembered all too well how she felt after seeing her mother at the morgue. She decided to let him bring it up, but he didn’t. At least not directly.
“Have you figured out what Project Naïveté Two is?” he asked.
“I know it includes a scraping tool to collect personal information.”
“Not just information. It collects virtually every form of human expression, verbal or nonverbal, and translates it into code. The code is personalized to every technology user and becomes a personal sentiment library. The goal is to have a personal sentiment library for every person under the age of thirty who uses technology.”
“For what?” she asked.
“Somewhere in those libraries is the future CEO of Buck. The future chief justice of the Supreme Court. The future president of the United States. And on and on.”