The Heart Heist

by Alyssa Kress

  Gary's hyper-alert brain began to move very quickly. A trusty assignment, outside the walls of the prison? Straight from isolation? This was unusual, to say the least. Bits and pieces he'd been mulling over through the long hours prodded at him now.

  He walked toward Johnson and the door, realizing he was missing one key piece of information. "Say, Johnson," he remarked, in as casual a way as a man could ask such an extremely significant question. "What's the date?"

  "It's Thursday," Johnson answered him. "October 11."

  ~~~

  "It's Sullivan," Kerrin repeated for the tenth time. "Gary. Number 406651." She sighed and adjusted the home office extension more comfortably against her ear. If she ever succeeded in reaching number 406651 he was going to get an earful. The very idea of keeping such vital information from her!

  Keep the girl out of it, she remembered him telling the FBI man. She doesn't know a thing. Well, thanks a lot, Gary. No, she didn't know a thing, except that her town was in grave danger and it was all his fault. The least he could do was come to the phone!

  "You have reached Chino Institute for Men," the recorded message repeated once again, signalling she'd been put on hold ‑‑ again. Kerrin absently looked out the study window, wondering why Gary'd left everything in limbo like this. It wasn't like him ‑‑ or at least, it wasn't like the person she'd thought he was.

  Outside the study window, Victor Bothmann passed by, toting his camera case on his way up to the array. Having shot a bunch of tribal rituals, he was back to the extraterrestrial stuff. Kerrin doubted this documentary would ever get finished. Fortunately, Victor's preoccupation with making tenure had overtaken his desire to figure out who Gary really was. Seeing her at the window, Victor smiled and raised a hand to wave.

  "You have reached Chino Institute for Men," the phone reminded Kerrin. She dug up a smile of her own and waved back at Victor, hoping he didn't decide to stroll over for a chat. She couldn't afford to hang up, surrendering the time she'd already spent on hold with the prison. Fortunately, Victor walked on.

  "You have reached ‑‑ " The recording abruptly cut off as someone finally returned to the phone. "This is the warden," a rough voice announced. "How can I help you?" His tone indicated he'd rather do just about anything than help.

  "Warden, this is Kerrin Horton, perhaps you remember me? I need to speak to Gary Sullivan. This isn't a personal call," she hastened to explain, even as she felt a rush of longing to hear Gary's voice. She'd been so good, resisting the constant urges to contact him, hopeful he'd eventually lift his banishment. Now he had no choice but to talk to her. "This is a matter of vital importance," she told the warden.

  The prison warden didn't answer her for a long moment. Kerrin held her breath, hoping his silence meant he was at least considering her request.

  "I'm afraid speaking to Sullivan won't be possible," the warden told her, speaking with peculiar care.

  "And I'm afraid I have to insist," Kerrin returned, going hot with frustration and fear. "Perhaps you don't recall our last conversation." She'd dredged up some choice threats in that last conversation, when he'd claimed Gary had lost his visiting privileges.

  "I recall the discussion well," the warden assured her. "But I can't bring Sullivan to the phone for you and I have a very good excuse."

  Marty's car accident flashed through Kerrin's mind and a deeper fear than before grabbed hold of her. "What excuse?" she managed to ask.

  "He's escaped."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  One of the disadvantages to stealing a car was that you never knew how much gasoline would be in it until you got it started, and by that time you were committed. Gary had had the bad luck to steal a white Ford with less than a quarter tank of gas. That wasn't going to get him two hundred miles to the Owens Valley.

  While scanning the road for a busy-looking gas station, Gary reflected that things could have been worse. The trusty assignment had been freeway road work and the guards lax. When a curve in the road had hidden him from view, he'd simply walked away into the surrounding brush. The car was waiting for him, as though by request, on the suburban street below the slope of the freeway.

  A gas station with multiple islands and a number of customers looked promising. Gary pulled in behind a man loading the tank of a van full of kids.

  "Just stay in the car, would you Bobby?" the man warned as a tow-headed kid popped his head out the van's side door. "This'll only take a sec, if you'll just hold your horses."

  Gary got out of his car in a leisurely manner, watching as the harried father slipped his credit card out of the pump and into his wallet. He stuffed the wallet into his back pants pocket.

  Although Gary had removed the number from his blue coveralls, he wasn't sure if the clothing looked normal enough to pass. He hoped he appeared no more menacing than a scruffy car mechanic.

  "Sorry to bother you, sir," he addressed the father, coming up to glance at the reading on the pump meter. "But do you have the time?"

  "Sure, sure." Gary's hapless victim lifted his wrist to check the hour. "It's four-thirty."

  Four-thirty. It would be at least another four hours before Gary could reach Freedom. But that should be plenty of time, barring complications ‑‑ little complications such as the fact that he still didn't know who the Holiday Bomber was.

  "Thanks," he told the father, and turned back to his car. Meanwhile, the father climbed into his van, started the ignition, and drove off. Gary watched him go, sighing.

  Then he removed the father's wallet from his own coverall pocket and took out the credit card to insert into the gas pump machine.

  It had taken Gary nearly a full day of hacking at weeds along the roadside to assure himself he had to take this little trip, that he might be the only person alive who could save the town of Freedom. He'd broken his back in the Indian summer sun while the bits and pieces added up and then rotated around and around in his mind.

  Marty hadn't returned any of his phone calls, nor had he arranged the reduction of his sentence. Marty didn't like Gary, but outright deception wasn't like him. Today it had finally registered that Marty might not have been able to return Gary's calls. This chilling thought had shed a dark light on other events. Kerrin had told him the prison had tried to ignore the fact that he hadn't been there for two months. Then, after her visit, he'd been thrown into isolation, out of communication with any living being.

  It sure looked like someone was going to an awful lot of trouble to keep Gary out of the way. Unfortunately, that meant only one thing.

  Gary was important. Too important.

  He accepted the credit card after the machine spit it out. On the yellow receipt that came with it he wrote an apology and that the owner of the card could apply to the bank of Freedom for the amount of the gas bill plus the twenty he thought he'd better take for incidentals. After writing the note, he took the wallet to the sales booth. "Found this," he told the gum-chewing girl behind the counter.

  Getting back into his stolen car, Gary tried to still incoming waves of panic. Marty had talked to him and then gotten into some kind of terrible trouble. Kerrin had talked to him, and Gary could only pray that she, too, hadn't taken some kind of a fall.

  But if she had, there was one FBI agent who was going to be sorry he'd ever been born.

  ~~~

  Kerrin lingered over her dinner at the Lone Trail coffee shop. A book lay open on the table in front of her, but she wasn't reading it.

  All right. So they'd figured out that the Holiday Bomber was going to strike Freedom and it was going to happen tomorrow. Beyond that they knew nothing. They didn't know how it was going to happen, or who was going to do it. And the one man who might have been able to help them was nowhere to be found.

  Gary had escaped. Kerrin stared blindly at a page of printed words. So far the man's record wasn't good. He'd left the town in a precarious position last August. He hadn't even told Kerrin about the possibility of the Holiday Bomber hitting the DWP facil
ity. One had to assume that Gary was even now on his way to the border, ignoring the problems he'd left behind.

  A familiar emotion fluttered through her heart and Kerrin tapped the eraser of her pencil against her teeth. Or maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, Gary was on his way here even now. Maybe he would show up in time to stop the disaster. It wasn't likely, but Kerrin had pretended to operate on this principle with Matt and Elaine. Matt she'd left at their house, and Elaine at Gary's house. She'd explained that if Gary did come to town he would try either one of those places first.

  If he did come. It was hard to forget Gary's absolute pessimism. In all likelihood he'd given up on the town and trying to save it. Remembering the man she'd last seen at Chino, Kerrin couldn't imagine him charging to the rescue.

  Absently, Kerrin's eyes came to rest on Victor Bothmann's seated form at the counter. She dearly wished she could have talked to her father, but both he and her mother had been out of town all week at one of their conferences. Calls to their hotel room had so far gone unanswered.

  Kerrin's regard of Victor sharpened in annoyance. Didn't he have anywhere better to go? He was waiting around like a vulture for her father to get back to town. Good Lord, he even had his camera bag at the ready, just in case.

  His camera bag.

  Kerrin's gaze suddenly locked on that camera bag, overflowing with expensive equipment. One of Matt's scrawled notes floated behind her eyes. "Photographs of events sent to the AP wires."

  Her heart picked up speed. Scraps of a conversation with Victor came back to her, something about the failure of modern technology. Another one of Matt's notes appeared before her eyes. "Environmentally controversial projects."

  By now Kerrin's heart was going the speed of a jet engine. Oh my God. It couldn't be! But it had to be someone. At that moment, Victor turned and met her eyes.

  From some remote place of strength she hadn't known she owned, Kerrin dredged up a brilliant smile. A little surprised, Victor smiled back.

  Victor had everything that postal worker from Boise was missing: intelligence, financial resources, and social dogma.

  Dr. Victor Bothmann turned back to his meal. Dr. Victor Bothmann, Kerrin swallowed, a.k.a. Mr. Holiday.

  ~~~

  The lights were off and the house appeared to be deserted. Gary crouched in the brush on the slope above the Horton residence and regarded the place with a frown.

  Where was everybody?

  The immediate answer that came to mind did not appeal to him. It caused a sick, lowering feeling that mingled with helpless rage. If anything had happened to Kerrin...

  First things first. Gary became one with the shadows and slipped down to the house. It was the work of a moment to jimmy Kerrin's bedroom window. Soon he was inside. He stood there for a moment, holding his breath, listening.

  Nothing.

  Damn!

  In the darkness Gary glided over to Kerrin's dresser drawer, the top one, and opened it up. The thought of carrying a gun made him woozy, but he was up against someone who'd be carrying a lot more firepower than Kerrin's little revolver.

  There was no gun in her dresser.

  Double damn!

  It occurred to him that Kerrin might not be the only one in the family who kept a firearm in her room. Matt, for example, probably had one too. He opened the door out into the hall, holding his breath, listening. He tried not to think about the implications of Kerrin's missing gun, tried not to remember his own lecture to her about the possibility that any intruder would turn the gun against her. He didn't have time to panic.

  Gary opened the door to Matt's room and immediately saw the silhouette against the curtainless window. The rifle was pointed directly at his chest.

  The two remained a motionless moment in utter silence, though Gary's heart beat like a tomahawk in his chest.

  "If you're going to shoot me, Matt," he finally managed to say, "better turn on the light. I don't want you making a mess of the job."

  "Gary?" To Gary's unutterable relief, the muzzle of the thing rotated from the region of his chest toward the ceiling. "My God, Gary, we thought you were on your way to Mexico. No, don't turn on the light."

  "It's nice to know you have such a high opinion of my character," Gary rasped, and then asked the question that was burning a hole in his gut. "Where the hell's your sister?"

  "I believe she's in town, with some lame idea she's going to be able to stop Mr. Holiday." Matt's voice let the other man know exactly what he thought of this proceeding. "Left me stuck up here...to wait for you actually." In the dim light from the open window, Gary could see Matt shoot him a considering look. "And you actually came."

  Gary found himself sitting on the edge of Matt's bed. His legs didn't feel so strong suddenly. "You know about Mr. Holiday?"

  "Elaine, Kerrin, and I figured it out," Matt proudly informed him. "No thanks to you."

  "You're very welcome," Gary muttered. "I don't suppose you figured out just who he was."

  Matt widened his eyes. "We were kind of hoping you knew."

  "Great." Gary pinched the bridge of his nose. "Kerrin took her gun, which fills me with all kinds of good cheer. I don't suppose there's another one in the house."

  "Sure," Matt assured him. "We have a few."

  Nice, bloodthirsty family. Gary sighed. "I only need one. Something small and accurate."

  "I believe I've got just the ticket." Matt prepared to wheel out of the room. "What are we going to do now?"

  "Not 'we,' kiddo. Me. You're staying here, safe and far away from the aqueduct."

  Matt narrowed his eyes at him. "All right then, what are you going to do?" There was a load of accusation in the boy's voice. Gary could tell Matt thought he was a fuck-up, that he didn't trust him to take care of the problem. It was a big problem, but that wasn't why Matt didn't trust him. He didn't trust him because of the way he'd already screwed things up.

  Since Gary knew that Matt was at least half right, he gave him an honest answer. "First off, I'm going to find your lunatic sister, and then I'm going to catch this sucker. I may not know who he is, but I do know exactly where he's going to be."

  Matt's hands stilled on the wheels of his chair. "And where is that?"

  Well hell, the more the merrier. It was too late, Gary saw, to protect anybody. And besides, he needed that gun.

  ~~~

  All of the multiple illnesses Kerrin had foreseen for her future assaulted her at once as she clung to the shadows, following Victor Bothmann. Her chest was in the rages of a heart attack. Her intestines were strangulated and her stomach was bleeding with an ulcer. She would have been fine, though, if she only could have managed to catch her breath, but she seemed to have a virulent case of emphysema.

  The town was starting to shut down for the night as Victor headed up the street toward the eucalyptus grove. He'd gone up to his room at the WawaNeemah hotel to dump his camera case and Kerrin had hoped against hope that he would stay there, that he wasn't really Mr. Holiday. Or better yet, that he was the mad bomber, but had decided to abandon his project. Unfortunately for that theory, he'd emerged from the hotel a few minutes later and directed his steps straight toward the DWP plant.

  Making his nightly rounds, Ray Connors, the policeman, greeted Victor with a mock salute. "Taking your evening constitutional, doctor?"

  "As always," Kerrin heard Victor calmly reply.

  So, he'd set up a routine. No one would take it amiss that he was strolling up the street in this direction on the evening before the big blast. Kerrin quickly hid in the alcove of the bank's door as Ray went past. There was no point trying to enlist the policeman's help. Ray Connors wasn't the sort of man who could do anything about a Mr. Holiday.

  There was only one man Kerrin knew who could handle this situation, and since he wasn't here she was going to have to take care of things by herself. Damn him! Damn him all to hell, that stinking skunk.

  Victor disappeared into the darkness of the eucalyptus grove and Kerrin hesitated. What i
f he'd sensed her stalking him and was awaiting her in there? But she had no hope of stopping Victor from setting that bomb if she didn't follow him.

  As it turned out, Kerrin's fearful indecisiveness was for naught. Before she could move a step closer to the grove, a strong arm went around her neck, pinning her against a hard and unyielding body. Another hand went over her mouth, stifling the scream that tried to get out.

  "For crying out loud, Kerrin, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

  Kerrin closed her eyes and nearly fainted with relief. She'd know that low rasping voice anywhere. Gary. The skunk had come back after all. He'd escaped prison to come here, to save them! Then her eyelids fluttered open. But he wasn't saving anybody. Bothmann was getting away.

  "Ouch!" A sharp and accurate jab of her elbow effected the result Kerrin wanted as Gary let go of her mouth.

  "Hurry, we've got to follow him!" Ineffectively, she tried to extricate herself from Gary's imprisoning embrace.

  "Follow who?" Gary wanted to know.

  "Mr. Holiday, who else?" And she'd once thought this man brilliant?

  But Gary only regarded the eucalyptus grove with plain distaste. "In there? If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not."

  "This isn't a question of what you'd rather do. For Christ's sake, Gary, would you let me go? He's getting away!"

  Gary held her fiercely struggling body with apparent ease. "I'd just as soon give him a little head start."

  "We can't do that," Kerrin panted out desperately. "I don't know where he's going."

  "Ah," Gary announced, finally letting her go, "but I do."

  She turned around, breathless and amazed. "You do?"

  Gary was wearing his prison coveralls, but the place where his inmate number should have been was just a pale rectangle. Even in the darkness she could see his teeth flash in a grin. "It's nice to see you, too, sweetheart."

  "Gary, we don't have time for pleasantries." Kerrin stepped back with widened eyes as Gary reached for her. There was a gleam in his eyes she remembered well.