by J. D. Barker
Dobbs glanced back out the window. Both Porsches were still jockeying for the lead. Trooper Winkler had given up all pretenses of stealth; his lights were flashing, and he was right behind both cars. The roadblock was less than a mile ahead. They flew past the last exit, no place else to go.
“Slow down, Michael. No reason to risk getting hurt,” Gimble said.
“I appreciate your concern, Agent Gimble. It’s heartwarming,” Kepler said. “I’m afraid I need to hang up now. I’m gonna need both hands in a minute.”
Vela, who had put the book down at some point during this exchange, cleared his throat and looked out the window at the cars below. “This is Special Agent Omer Vela. I’m a clinical psychologist with the Bureau. I’ve studied your father’s work.”
“Adoptive father.”
“Adoptive father,” Vela agreed. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
Kepler didn’t reply.
Vela glanced at Dobbs, then said, “Who is on the mark?”
The line clicked and went dead, and two things happened.
One of the Porsches sped up, barreling toward the roadblock.
The other Porsche veered hard to the left, dropped off the pavement, and tore through the flat desert toward the lights of the Flying T Truck Stop.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Dobbs
Gimble didn’t miss a beat. The moment one of the black Porsches veered into the desert scrub toward the truck stop, her finger clicked the toggle on her microphone. “Winkler, stay with that one! Stay on him!” She flipped the switch to a third position. “Marshals, target coming in hot from the west. He may attempt to bypass the roadblock; be prepared to evade impact and pursue.”
She turned to Harland. “Stick with the one running for the truck stop.”
Harland nodded and twisted the stick. The helicopter banked hard left, circled around, and steadied with the nose pointing toward the north. He flicked several switches on a panel to his left, and the large floodlight under the chopper burst to life, illuminating the desert beneath them. He nodded at Gimble’s left hand. “That joystick there controls the flood. I’ll get us closer.”
Gimble took the control and maneuvered the light until it landed first on the flashing lights of the state trooper, then on the black car ahead of him. Both were moving fast, far too fast for the slick dirt. Rooster tails shot up behind them, the Porsche spraying the patrol car with mud and water. Winkler’s wipers slapped the mud aside only to be met with more.
“Get us closer!” Gimble ordered. “Can you get out in front of them?”
The chopper dived forward and down. Dobbs’s stomach lurched up into his throat, then settled back at his gut. They spun around 180 degrees in one swift, fluid motion. Gimble trained the large floodlight directly on the Porsche’s windshield.
The tail end of the black car locked up as the driver hammered the brakes. Rather than slowing, the Porsche only slid, regained control, then accelerated again.
A gruff voice came over the helicopter’s radio. “This is U.S. Marshal Tanner. Target approaching our roadblock at ninety miles per hour, still accelerating. Quarter mile out. I’ve got six cars on him—two on either side, two more in back. They’re blocking, forcing him down the center of the road.”
There was an audible click; the voice fell off, then came back a moment later. “Deploying spike strips in five, four, three, two…”
Dobbs looked out the window. He couldn’t see the highway anymore. They couldn’t be more than fifty feet off the ground, flying backward with the nose of the chopper pointing at the black Porsche. The floodlight filled the windshield, obscuring the driver inside.
“We have impact,” Marshal Tanner said. “All four tires shredded. He’s slowing. Sliding, but maintaining control.”
Harland, whose eyes were locked on an eleven-inch monitor, said, “I need to pull up. We’re too low. We’re approaching power lines and other hazards.” He didn’t wait for Gimble to weigh in before tugging back on the stick and adjusting position on his pedals. The chopper shot nearly straight up.
Dobbs glanced at Sammy, fairly certain the color in his face matched the other man’s.
Gimble struggled with the light control. The beam crisscrossed the desert but finally found the car again. “We can’t let him reach that truck stop. Can you set down in front of him?”
“Too dangerous. I’m not risking that.”
The radio squawked: “Vehicle stopped. Driver door opening. Someone getting out, hands first.”
“Is it Kepler?” Gimble said into her microphone.
No response.
“Marshal? Is it Michael Kepler?”
“Negative. Looks like some kid. Late teens at the most.”
The helicopter swooped up and around, came up behind the state trooper. The bright lights of the truck stop filled the horizon. It looked more like a small city than some gas station. Close now. Too close.
“Attempting a PIT maneuver,” Trooper Winkler said from below.
Dobbs watched as the patrol car sped up and tried to get beside the Porsche in hopes of a controlled hit into the other car’s left rear fender. If executed properly, it would cause the Porsche to slide sideways, possibly spin. He wasn’t fast enough, though. The Porsche pulled ahead, and a moment later, they watched helplessly as the black sports car shot from the dirt and scrub onto the pavement at the outer edge of the Flying T Truck Stop, nearly clipping the tail end of an eighteen-wheeler—one of hundreds in this maze of trucks.
Chapter Sixty
Dobbs
Gimble said, “This place is huge. Why is it so busy? It’s the middle of the night.”
Harland stayed with the car, following from an altitude of about five hundred feet. “This is one of the largest truck stops in the country. Every truck heading east or west makes it a point to stop, and the tourists do too. Twelve restaurants, showers, motels, a dozen or so stores.”
“What are those tents?”
“Flea market and a small circus.”
“Christ.”
“He’s going to kill somebody,” Dobbs said.
The Porsche flew through the trucks, slid as it turned hard left through the parking lot, then accelerated again.
“Winkler, look out!” Gimble shouted into her microphone.
An eighteen-wheeler coasted past a stop sign directly into Winkler’s path. The back wheels of the patrol car locked up, filling the air with black smoke and steam. He came to a stop several feet in front of the trailer. Without hesitation, he threw the car into reverse, only to find another truck blocking his path from the other direction.
“I’ve lost visual,” Winkler said.
The black Porsche crossed another intersection and disappeared beneath a large roof covering the fuel pumps. As Harland circled in a broad arc, Dobbs counted six pumps per row, twelve rows in total. Seventy-two pumps. A steady stream of cars entered and exited, but the Porsche didn’t come out. “Every car and truck from the interstate must be down there,” he muttered.
Marshal Tanner came over their headphones. “The kid driving the second Porsche is named Raymond Hine. He said some guy gave him a thousand dollars to get that car to Albuquerque in seven hours. He ID’d Kepler from a photo lineup. The car is stolen. Belongs to a plastic surgeon from Vegas.”
“Understood,” Gimble replied. “I need you to reposition your men immediately. I don’t want a single vehicle leaving this truck stop.”
His vehicle’s light bar flashing, Winkler pulled under the canopy three lanes to the left of where Kepler entered. Red and blue light pooled out from the sides.
“Agent, that’s not just a truck stop. There’s a small airport in the back. Bus terminals too. Your warrant covers the I-40 corridor eastbound only. At any given time, you’ve got a thousand trucks down there. We lock down the Flying T, we affect interstate commerce; that means lawsuits by suppliers. You need an updated warrant for that.”
From the window, Dobbs counted two lanes of incoming tr
affic and two more exiting, and that was just for I-40. A smaller highway butted up against the west end of this place with vehicles coming and going that way too, and there was some kind of service road on the far end that looked like it went to the airstrip in the northwest corner of the plaza.
“Nothing else gets in, nothing leaves, understood?”
“I can’t do that, Agent. Not on your authority.”
“Shit.” Gimble fumed. She flicked the switch on her microphone again. “Garrison, I need—”
Garrison came back before she finished the sentence. “I heard. We’re on it, but we’re still two minutes out.”
Gimble looked out of her window at the gas pumps below them. People were racing out from under the canopy. “Winkler, do you see him? What’s going on?”
“Kepler’s on foot—pulled the fire alarm. I’m going after him.”
“Look,” Sammy said, pointing out the window.
People were streaming out of the motels, the restaurants, and the shops, flooding the walkways and parking lots.
“They’re all heading to their cars or trucks,” Dobbs said, watching the swelling crowds through the rain.
Sammy opened his MacBook, logged into emergency services. “Someone phoned in a bomb threat. Fire alarms are going off everywhere, not just at the gas pumps—twelve of them, thirteen, fourteen. Every building is lighting up.”
“Set down somewhere now,” Gimble ordered Harland.
Chapter Sixty-One
Dobbs
They landed in a grassy area about a hundred yards from the pumps. Rain was still coming down in sheets.
No sign of Kepler.
His Porsche was parked at pump 19, the driver’s-side door left open, keys in the ignition. No sign of Trooper Winkler either. His patrol car was parked behind the empty Porsche, lights flashing.
Dobbs pointed toward the interstate. “We need to lock this place down before he gets out. If we stop the first vehicle in each lane, everyone else will be stuck behind them.”
“You get eastbound, I’ll get west,” Gimble said, taking off at a run.
Dobbs sprinted across the muddy field. He pushed until his leg muscles burned. Icy rain stung his face. Cars, trucks, RVs, and tractor trailers were all lined up in the exit lane, slowly feeding back onto the highway. He pulled his badge out as he ran and held it out toward the vehicles. A pudgy little kid with freckles sitting in a station wagon stared at Dobbs as he bolted past, the kid’s face pressed to steamed glass.
At least six eighteen-wheelers got back on the highway before Dobbs neared the front of the line. One driver looked down, saw the badge, and quickly turned away, pretending he hadn’t seen him. He shot out onto the highway. When the next one tried to rush past him, Dobbs stepped out in front of the large truck. The wheels locked, screamed in protest, as the semi lurched to a stop.
The driver leaned out his window. “You crazy shit!”
A white panel van peeled away from the row of cars, pulled onto the shoulder, and accelerated. Dobbs stepped out in front of that one too, but it didn’t slow down. “Stop!”
The van swerved.
Dobbs dived to the side.
A blur of white rushed past him and got back on I-40.
He fumbled with his phone, dialed Marshal Tanner. When the man picked up, he shouted, “White van, eastbound, just got back on the interstate!”
“On it,” Tanner replied.
The driver of the semi hit his horn, three loud blasts.
In the muddy bank on the side of the road, Dobbs shook his head and held his badge up in the air.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Dr. Rose
Doorbell.
Dr. Rose Fitzgerald rolled onto her side and glanced at the clock on the nightstand—four thirty in the morning.
She had fallen asleep atop the covers, still in her clothes. She hadn’t brushed her teeth. Megan’s cell phone and her own were the only items on Barton’s side of the bed.
Closing her eyes, she reached over and ran her hand over the sheets, imagined the warmth of him there, the sound of his soft snore. She tugged his voice from her mind, the memory already trying to fade away. She remembered the smile on his face as he held up his degree all those years ago, his eyes somehow finding hers in the crowd as he crossed the stage. “I’ll change the world, Rose,” he had told her that night at dinner—Café Moulin, their favorite French restaurant. Then he’d dropped to one knee and held up the small box that had so obviously been burning a hole in his pocket. “Change it with me?”
The doorbell again, then three quick knocks.
Rose’s eyes snapped open.
Megan had a key, and if the little slut came home tonight, she wouldn’t announce herself. She would scuttle in through the back door, as she always did, and sneak off to her room.
She wasn’t coming back.
Not tonight.
Maybe not ever.
Rose knew that, and the thought sent a shiver through her tired body.
Another knock, louder than the last.
Rose left her bed, made her way downstairs to the front door, peered through the peephole.
A man in a suit. A woman beside him.
“Are you aware of the hour?” Rose said through the door.
“Ma’am, we’re with the FBI. We need to speak with Megan Fitzgerald.”
Rose reached for the dead bolt, then thought better of it; her fingers rested on the cold metal. “My husband recently passed—”
“So sorry to hear that.”
Rose cleared her throat and repeated, “My husband recently passed, and I’m not comfortable opening this door in the middle of the night.”
“Would you like to see our identification?”
“Identification can be faked.”
“I assure you, it’s not.”
“I’m sure you’re quite confident in that, but I have no reason to take your word for it,” Rose said. “Why do you need to see Megan?”
“Ma’am, you are aware of the incident that took place in Los Angeles regarding your son, Michael?”
“Adopted son. Estranged now.”
“But you’ve seen the news?”
Rose had seen the news. She’d watched the coverage for nearly forty minutes before she could stomach no more. Barton’s mess, left for her to clean up. Barton and Patchen.
The man continued. “We have reason to believe your daughter has been in contact with Michael. If she is aware of his current whereabouts and conceals that information, she could be charged with a crime. We’re here to give her the opportunity to tell us what she knows.”
“She’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
“Out with friends, I imagine. She’s a grown woman. It’s not my place to keep tabs on her.”
Through the peephole, Rose watched the woman lean over and whisper something to the man.
“May we come in?” he said.
“Do you have a warrant?”
“We can get one.”
“I suggest you do that.”
The woman whispered again.
The man nodded. “Dr. Fitzgerald, are you aware of the whereabouts of Michael Kepler Fitzgerald?”
Rose didn’t respond; she only watched them through the peephole. She didn’t move; she made not a sound.
Seven minutes passed before they left.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Written Statement,
Megan Fitzgerald
People were running.
There were at least four car accidents as everyone attempted to leave the Flying T at the same time, law enforcement be damned. The movement was feral, instinctive.
Perfect.
I pulled another fire alarm, this one just inside the door of the McDonald’s. I ran to the Arby’s next door, pulled that one too. Then the one in the Dunkin’ Donuts. Other alarms went off, probably because of the bomb threat I’d phoned in a few minutes ago. People poured out of the motels carrying suitcases, their children in to
w.
I found Michael sitting on the curb outside a small shop selling souvenirs and custom truck accessories. People ran past him, stepped over him, went around him. His head was buried in his hands.
“Michael!”
He didn’t look up. He didn’t acknowledge me at all.
I ran into the shop, pulled the fire alarm, and came back out.
I knelt beside him. “Michael, we need to go,” I shouted in his ear, my hand in his hair.
When he finally raised his head and looked at me, there was nothing but confusion in his eyes. He looked so lost. “Megan?”
He was drugged. Out of it.
I pulled him to his feet, grabbed his bag. “We don’t have much time,” I said.
I had parked my rented Toyota SUV near the far edge of the parking lot to avoid the swelling traffic, but that meant it was farther away than I would have liked. More distance to cover increased our odds of getting caught.
“I’m here,” Michael said in a slow drawl. “Right where you told me.”
I nodded, planted a kiss on his cheek. “Come on.”
I dragged him in the direction of my car, pushing through the crowd.
His pupils were dilated. Drool dripped from the corner of his mouth. He’d taken something. Something bad.
Chapter Sixty-Four