Chapter 89: Detained
The situation had shifted again.
Mouser had the room. He had a weapon. And he had the specific confidence of someone who had just recalculated and decided he still had options.
Simon stood where he was and looked at him calmly.
"Sorry," Simon said. "Plans change. This one's mine now."
"He has a gun," Chuck said quietly, from beside Simon, both hands raised. "Just observing."
"Has your cover held?" Simon said, not looking away from Mouser.
"He knows I was at Stanford with Bryce," Chuck said. "He thinks I know where Bryce is. He doesn't know the other thing."
"Good." Simon raised his voice slightly. "Here's my recommendation. Outside right now there are twenty-three infantry, sixteen snipers, seven heavy machine guns, and four demolitions specialists. You have four rounds in that cylinder. I'd run the math on that."
Chuck stared at him.
Morgan, from a position behind a display unit, also stared at him, with the expression of a man recognizing something.
Mouser's composure flickered — not much, but enough. Simon watched it happen. The claim was implausible, but the specific certainty Simon delivered it with was difficult to dismiss entirely. Mouser's eyes moved to the front windows.
Just for a moment.
Simon drew.
The safety came off during the draw. He had the weapon up and the sight picture before Mouser's eyes had fully returned from the windows.
He fired once.
The round caught Mouser's right arm. Not center mass — deliberate placement, enough to drop the weapon, not enough to be a fatality.
Mouser's gun hit the floor.
He reached for it.
The wall to his left came in.
Three shaped charges on the blast shutter — small, directed, precisely enough placed to open a man-sized gap in the security door without collapsing the surrounding structure. The sound in the enclosed space was significant.
SWAT came through in a stack — black tactical gear, rifles and submachine guns, the controlled urgency of a unit that had been staged and ready and was now executing.
"POLICE. HANDS."
Simon dropped his weapon, discarded his earpiece, and raised both hands above his head.
"You. Down. Face down."
He went to his knees, then to the floor, hands laced behind his head. He'd been here before — not often, but enough times to know the protocol and know that fighting it created problems and complying with it didn't.
He felt zip ties go on his wrists.
He let it happen.
The room was cleared in four minutes. Ned was still restrained on the floor. Mouser was being treated by a paramedic who had come in with the second wave. The civilians were being directed toward the front entrance by officers who had the patient efficiency of people managing a large group that was frightened but functional.
Everyone was released.
Everyone except Simon.
"Hey." Meg pushed through two officers to get to him. "What are you doing? He saved everyone in here."
"Ma'am, step back."
"He stopped the man with the gun. Why are you arresting him?"
"Standard procedure," a sergeant said, moving to intercept her. "He discharged a firearm in a public space. We need to ask him some questions. If everything checks out, he'll be released."
Veronica caught Meg's arm from behind. "Don't," she said. "Not here. Not like this."
Meg turned. Her expression was the one Simon had learned to recognize as the outer edge of her composure.
"We get him a lawyer," Veronica said. "Now. That's the move."
Meg looked at Simon, who had been raised from the floor and was being walked toward the entrance.
He met her eye. Gave her the nod that meant I'm okay, do the thing.
She pulled out her phone.
Burbank PD processed him efficiently — fingerprints, blood draw, photographs, property inventory. Simon had been through versions of this before and understood the machinery of it. He cooperated with everything, said nothing beyond what was asked, and was placed in a single-occupancy holding cell to wait.
Without his phone and without the earpiece, he had no visibility on what Casey was doing on the outside. He had no way to know whether Mouser had been transferred yet, whether the Fulcrum connection was being managed, or whether the explanation for his own presence in the situation was being handled.
He sat on the bench in the cell and waited.
The wait was forty minutes.
A uniform came to his door. "On your feet."
Simon followed him down the corridor, through the processing area, and out to the station's rear entrance.
A black sedan was parked there. Two people in FBI credentials standing beside it — one male, one female.
"Agent John Casey, FBI," the male one said, accepting the property bag from the Burbank officer. "We'll take it from here."
The Burbank officer handed Simon over with the mild relief of someone transferring a complication to someone else's jurisdiction.
Casey put Simon in the back seat. Sarah got in the front.
The car pulled out of the lot.
"These are too tight," Simon said. "My wrists."
Sarah produced a handcuff key from the glove compartment and tossed it back to him.
Simon freed himself, rubbed his wrists, and looked at the city moving past the windows.
"This going to cause problems?" he said.
"Relax," Casey said. "Local PD and the Bureau don't share jurisdiction. Your file is in our system and their access is limited. By the time they notice the handoff is irregular, the whole thing will be closed."
"Mouser and Ned?" Simon said.
"NSA custody," Sarah said. "Which means the local investigation into the Buy More incident gets quietly handed upstairs and local PD stops asking questions."
"Good." Simon looked out the window. "Give me my phone."
Sarah passed it back.
He had four missed calls from Meg and two from Veronica.
He dialed Meg.
She picked up on the first ring.
"Simon. Where are you? We went to the station and they told us the FBI took you."
"I'm fine," Simon said. "They needed a statement. It's being handled. I'll be back for dinner."
"You promise."
"I promise."
A pause. "You're not hurt?"
"Not even slightly."
Another pause, shorter. "Good. Because you still owe me an explanation. And if you're late for dinner I will consider that a hostile act."
The line went quiet.
Simon looked at the phone in his hand.
"Gentlemen," he said, to the front seat. "I have a problem."
"Shocker," Casey said.
"The explanation she wants," Simon said. "I can't give her most of it. Which means whatever I give her, she'll know it's incomplete. And Meg is not the kind of person who accepts incomplete."
Sarah glanced back. "Tell her as much of the truth as you can."
"That's your advice?"
"It's what works," Sarah said. "In my experience."
Casey said nothing, which Simon took as disagreement without objection.
Simon put the phone back in his pocket and watched the city go by.
Dinner was going to be a complicated meal.
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