Out Of The Dark Quotes
"A Washington Nationals baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes to thwart the security cameras."
"The soda tasted like what it was, sugar soaked in corn syrup, and he wondered why people willingly put this type of fuel through their system."
"He knew which visual triggers to avoid; he wasn’t sweating and was careful to make no nervous movements."
"He set his hands on the bars of the eight-foot-high gates. The trees of the South Lawn formed a funnel leading to the White House."
"Strategically positioned steel bollards dotted the perimeter."
"If a drone or a superhuman pilot managed to steer through the gauntlet of early warning mechanisms, an air defense system loaded with FIM-92 Stinger missiles was hard-mounted to the White House itself."
"Evan tilted the zoom lens up to the roof above the Truman Balcony. A designated marksman with a Stoner SR-16 rifle held a permanent position providing overwatch for the south lawn."
"It wouldn’t merely be tough to reach the White House. It would be impossible."
"Not even the air itself. Electronic noses at all entrances detected the faintest signature of airborne pathogens, dangerous gases, or any other ill wind blowing no good."
"The interior hid not just countless panic buttons, alarms, and safe rooms but also multiple emergency escape routes."
"Evan had kept the vast resources he had accrued as a black operator and the skills embedded in his muscle memory."
"Now he was the Nowhere Man, lending his services to the truly desperate, to people who had nowhere else to turn."
"But he’d also kept the bearings of his moral compass that had, despite the blood he’d spilled across six continents, stubbornly refused to be shattered."
"The presidential limo coasted up level with Evan, and for a split second he stared from the sea of faces at the tinted window behind which Bennett drifted in a cocoon of safety and comfort."
"She reminded his face to relax as he watched it go."
"The fact that he’d been largely successful at appeasing the population was testament to his sheer force of will."
"He settled into the butter-smooth leather of the presidential limo now and scanned the urban-development report he was due to weigh in on at this afternoon’s cabinet meeting."
"The agent’s hand lowered from the radio earpiece. Bennett waited for him to say, 'Mr. President. We’re deviating course. There’s been an identified threat.'"
"Naomi Templeton took note of the bench from a good distance out and decided to accelerate until she passed it."
"It was faux idyllic here, which made it easy to disregard the countless TVs blaring too loud from countless windows in the industrial block of a building set behind the strip of artificial turf."
"She sensed Amanaki’s eyes lift from behind the counter. The nurse, with her empathic gaze and lilting Tongan accent, seemed preternaturally aware of subtle emotional shifts, a human tuning fork."
"The facility’s name, Sunrise Villa, always struck her as optimistic and perversely cruel."
"So enormous was the hall of warehoused humans that it took Holt a full ninety seconds to traverse its length."
"He crossed to the counter, retrieved the clothes he’d last seen 1,779 days ago, and dressed."
"Once you unleashed hell, it was goddamned hard getting it back on the leash again."
"Trevon had a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s, 'cuz you always showed up with something—that was a rule—but it was confusing because it wasn’t chuck, it was "Shiraz" which was almost like that girl’s name from PE back in high school."
"He shoved his thick glasses up his nose and headed up the walkway and saw that the front door had been left open, and that was weird because Mama wasn’t raised in a barn."
"We don’t cry and we don’t feel sorry for ourself."
"That’s okay, Mama. Don’t be scared. You’re in heaven."
"Do you know what both plates have in common? The Presidential Seal."
"If you think I won’t find out, think again. You don’t do what I do over four decades without building connections everywhere. I will know."
"The fact that I walked out of a federal penitentiary showed me the importance of what we’re about to discuss."
"Mia, are we celebrating a half day off school, or the successful conclusion of a particularly important case of mine?"
"Even if I don’t fit in, I’m still special. I still matter."
"Because who you surround yourself with makes up part of who you are."
"But it’s gotta wait. There’s something I need to take care of first."
"Mama bought me Cat-Cat. I’m responsible to him and he’s responsible to me."
"We don’t cry and we don’t feel sorry for ourselves."
"Wanna try? Let’s see what those legs can do."
"Everything that happened, every last thing, is on them. You did nothing wrong."
"I’m putting the president’s schedule in motion."
"I want to issue a complaint about Russell Gadds’s business practices."
"The questions surrounding Wetzel’s death could be deflected, yes, but Bennett was already taking incoming fire from enough fronts that his presidency was nearing a crisis point."
"It’s not like I’ve forgiven you or anything."
"I have the sense that another stopwatch had begun, another clock counting down the days and minutes."
"I’m tired of waiting for you to come after me."
"Until recently Bennett had felt like the king of all he surveyed."
"The world flowered in order to be picked by the daring. It was a privilege, yes. And the entitlement of the mighty."
"The heat of the gravy wafted up to him, heavy with the scent of organ meat. For the first time he could remember, he’d lost focus."
"Time waited on him, acquiesced to his desires, bowed before him. Not vice versa."
"If you can’t get me seventeen blocks safely, we both deserve to die."
"Atlas carries the world on his shoulders. And I used to think about how miserable he must be. You know how the Greeks love suffering. But then I realized—he’s not suffering. He’s fortunate to shoulder a responsibility of that magnitude. It’s enough weight to make him useful, to give him self-respect. If he put down his load, he’d be meaningless."
"There are no good guys. There are no bad guys. There’s only what needs to be done."
"It’s not every day that you’re nearly assassinated."
"If he put down his load, he’d be meaningless."
"The person who called you the other night. Was it a woman?"
"But maybe, just maybe, he might have seen himself clear to a normal life. A life where he wasn’t hunted by the most powerful man on the planet."
"What if we’re too damaged? For anything real? Ever think about that?"
"I know why I do this job. At least I used to. Why do you do yours?"
"You go in the side entrance. I’ll go in the front. Luis, take the other side. We’ll corner whoever’s in there."
"It’s eroding your fine-motor precision, even your perception."
"When you have a daughter, you don’t care about what’s possible."
"Sometimes you have to go with a full-frontal assault."