Читать книгу Black Friday - Alex Kava, Alex Kava - Страница 20

Mall of America

Asante had missed his opportunity. He hated loose ends.

He watched the young woman escape his reach and wedge herself even further inside a mob that pressed tight against each other as they swarmed to get out the mall exit closest to them. Asante didn’t recognize the young man who waved at her. It wasn’t Dixon Lee.

Here on the first floor, cops in uniform with rifles yelled at people to get their hands up. The cops wore Kevlar vests and blue jeans, their badges in plain view, strapped to their arms or thighs. They tried to cut a path through a swarm of shoppers at the side entrance for firefighters and paramedics to enter.

Real paramedics.

Asante resisted the urge to pluck off his own cap and stuffit into the duffel bag. Instead he left it on, parroting the cops, telling people to get out of his way. Only Asante headed the opposite direction. He hurried for the back service exit for a second time in the last hour, walking quickly, not rushing, shouldering past one throng of people and cutting through another. The service exit wasn’t marked so no one crowded toward it. He slipped out the heavy door. The alarm that he had dismantled earlier remained silent though it wouldn’t have mattered now with the chorus of alarms and whistles and screams.