An Encounter in Atlanta | Page 9

in the
street was cradling the camera and leading a small herd of people through the dense
throng of conventioneers, heading toward the front doors of the hotel.
Spurred to action for yet-unclear reasons, Cade glanced around for a way through the
crowd by the elevators, but he realized that backtracking to the stairs near the con suite
would cost him too much time. He looked over the rail at the lobby below.
The fountain below the balcony was the only area clear of people. Swinging his legs over
the balcony rail and letting himself dangle at the bottom of the rail, Cade dropped perhaps
seven feet into six inches of water.
Amid cries of "Jesus!" and "Holy shit!", he clambered out of the fountain and bored
through the crowd after the knight and his entourage, nearing them just before they'd
reached the sidewalk at the end of the hotel's carport.
"You! The knight!" yelled Cade.
The knight and most of his group stopped immediately. They saw Cade, soaked to the
knees, running toward them.
One woman shrieked, "He's got a gun!" and pointed when she saw Cade's shoulder

holster, but someone else laughed and said, "So do all the stormtroopers, Sandy. I don't
know who he's supposed to be from what movie, though."
Cade hauled out his wallet and flashed his Atlanta PD Auxiliary Services ID as he came
to a halt and said, "I'm not a character from a movie. The gun's real."
Turning to the knight, he said, "You were taking pictures in the street before the
explosion. Did you get any closeups of the blonde who took the car?"
"Hey, man!" said the knight, "What I got in this camera's worth some money! I've already
called World News Net..."
"Yeah, fine," interrupted Cade. "WNN can wait. I need to see what you've got in that
camera."
Someone said, "Then you can catch the six o'clock news, just like everybody else, man.
This isn't evidence, it's news."
Glancing at him, Cade said, "She grabbed a taxi and took off with it. I'm calling that
grand theft auto. That makes this camera evidence, so you can show me what's in it or
you can spend the weekend in jail."
A guy behind the knight whined, "That's bullshit, man! She saved the goddamned hotel
and everybody in it. They're saying she was killed in the explosion and nowyou're saying
you're gonna call her acar thief?! "
"Only if your friend, here, doesn't cooperate."
The knight stood tall and said, "This is a four hundred dollar digital camera. I can't give
you a tape and there's no way in hell you're getting this camera."
Sighing, Cade said, "Look, I don't want your camera and I don't want to arrest anybody."
Leaning close, he growled, "I just want to see the damned pictures. It's been over half an
hour since the blast, so I figure you've either made a copy on a computer or you're selling
the only copy, which would make you one truly stupid fuck. Which is it?"
The knight stiffened briefly at that, but he realized that he could either cooperate or spend
his DragonCon weekend in a jail cell.
"Yeah. I made a copy on my laptop," he said. "In case the news guys ripped us off."
"They won't," said Cade. "That's not how they work. You'll sell them a copy and make
me a copy on my laptop and nobody will go to jail. Good enough?"
"You won't try to sell your copy?"
Raising his right hand, Cade said, "I swear I won't sell them or put them up for the public
on the internet. Now decide -- and I meanright now -- whether you're going to make me a

copy or make me arrest you."
The woman asked, "Jeremy, how are you going to make another copy on his computer?
You have to have the camera software installed on the laptop."
"No sweat," said Cade. "I have a null cable. We'll hook the lappies up and send the pics
to my box."
And so it was. Cade accompanied Jeremy and his little group to the WNN offices, who --
after seeing the camera's contents on the tiny flip-out screen -- sent someone to buy a
camera like Jeremy's in order to get the software needed to transfer and remove the
pictures from the camera.
The news honcho coughed up several thousand dollars when Jeremy swore there were no
other copies -- a lie he'd have told anyway to keep his own copies -- and the group
returned to the hotel.
Half an hour later, Cade had a copy of all the pictures. He sat at the desk in his
fourth-floor room and studied each picture in turn as he cleaned his Glock and replaced
the rounds he'd