There were so many things he wanted to tell Cleo. So many different ways he could try to argue some sense into her. Trying to watch over her right now was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. You could see what was happening, watch the train coming off the rails, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.
He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. Directly in front of him sat a red motorcycle, both of the rider’s booted feet flat on the ground. Cleo’s Jeep sat in front of the motorcycle, waiting for the traffic to clear up. Through Cleo’s rear window, Graves watched her work her hair into a ponytail, check it in the mirror, then pull it out again and redo it.
Her movements were sharp and frustrated. They matched his mood.
There was only one way to break through this particular logjam. He put on his earpiece and picked up his phone. But then he hesitated.
Would she listen to him, if he told her how worried he was? Probably not. It might just push her further away. He’d known her long enough to know that she resented being told to trust the system instead of her instincts. Her instincts could be flat wrong, but she’d never admit it.
Right now, she was headed straight into a fiasco. Her career, her reputation, her life—all of it hung in the balance. All of it depended on what move she made next. But she didn’t give a damn about anything except getting Andres and rescuing this dysfunctional high school sweetheart of hers.
Graves figured she’d thank him eventually, after all the smoke cleared. But to save her in the meantime, he had to make her face a few unpleasant facts. She might balk a little bit, but in the long run it was the right thing to do.
So that meant he’d have to convince her to see things his way. He took a deep breath and dialed her number. This wasn’t going to be easy.
As it rang, he watched her glance down at the seat beside her and then up at him in the rearview mirror. Their eyes met for a brief instant, and then she went back to looking dead ahead. The phone rang again, then a third time. She didn’t make any move to answer.
It went to voicemail.
He hung up, cutting off the recording of her voice, and dialed again. “Come on,” Graves whispered to himself. “Don’t do this. You’re better than this.”
With a toss of her head, Cleo finally grabbed the phone and put it to her ear. “What.”
“Cleo, look, I’m sorry about barging in back there.” He watched her for any reaction, but all he could see was the back of her head. “With everything that’s going on, I know you don’t appreciate me keeping tabs on you right now.”
“You can keep tabs all you want, Graves. Just stop telling me to go home, watch TV, and wait for Snyder to make nice again.”
“Is that what this is about? Because I’ll walk into Snyder’s office right now and get down on one knee. I will beg her to take you back. I’ll even bring her flowers.”
Cleo sniffed. “Yeah, right.” A moment later, she added, “You think that would do anything?”
“It’s worth a shot.”
“She’s probably allergic.”
“Probably.” Graves smiled. “But I am on your side. I just want you to know that.”
“Yeah, I know that.” She sighed. “Just give me a little space.”
“Sure, sure,” he said. “So you want to share what you’ve got so far?”
“See, that’s it, Graves. Stop with the micromanaging.”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“Then stop making it so hard for me to get the answers I need.”
He took a deliberate pause. “Nobody’s questioning your abilities. I’m just taking the position that you’re too close to all of this to have any perspective. You can’t argue with that.”
She made an exasperated sound. “Apparently not with you.”
“Can you agree with me on this one thing?” he said. “Just maybe you’re not the most level-headed about Ash’s situation. Let’s face it, he looks guilty as hell. The evidence all points to him. He’s the trigger man, and the only one who doesn’t see that is you.”
“Ash would never murder anyone,” she said, matter of fact. “He’s a hustler, not a killer. You don’t know a damn thing about him, Graves.”
“Really. Because we have a dead body killed with a silenced nine-millimeter pistol. We have bullets from the same gun taken out of the tires of an FBI vehicle. And who was the last person seen firing that pistol? Your Ash. You saw him shoot those tires.”
“That doesn’t mean he killed anybody.”
“Why are you defending him like this?
“Why do you think, Graves?” she said. “Somebody has to.”
“You sure it’s not a little bit more personal than that?”
“Of course it’s personal. Are you saying I would cover up a crime for him?” Her voice rose. “Is that what you’re implying?”
“I’m not trying to question your integrity, Cleo.”
“Oh, that’s a relief. Because for a minute there, I thought you were actually trying to help me get to the truth.”
“Well, that is ironic, coming from you. You’d do anything to prove Ash is innocent.” The moment he said those words, he wished he could take them back. He winced. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No, no, you’re right,” she said, her voice ominously cool. “I will go to any lengths to get to the truth. And I believe Ash is innocent.”
“Why?” The question hung in the air between them so long that he worried she’d hung up on him.
Finally, she answered. “Because when he found a million-dollar gold statue in the trunk of his car, the first thing he said was, ‘We have to find my brother.’” Cleo paused, and Graves could hear the anguish in her voice. “He didn’t say, ‘Hey, I’m filthy stinking rich,’ or ‘Hey, let’s split the money and get out of town.’ He didn’t care about that. He cared about making sure Mauricio was safe.”
“And by ‘safe’ that includes turning him into a fugitive from federal authorities?”
“You don’t get him, Graves.”
“Cleo, he’s a con artist. He fleeces people all the time. Believe it or not, he’s fooling you.”
“Ash is a good guy who made some mistakes. Some bad mistakes. But he’s doing everything he can to fix them.”
Graves shook his head. This was ridiculous. “If he wants to make things right, he could turn himself in. Because if he doesn’t, I’m going to find him. And when I arrest him, when I put the cuffs on him good and tight, it’s going to feel wonderful. And do you know why?”
“Illuminate me.”
“Because he’s a criminal. He’s no good. He’s one of them, Cleo. The other team. The people we work hard to get off the streets to keep the world safe for decent, law-abiding people who don’t go around making ‘mistakes’ involving Colombian drug lords, automatic weapons, and a million dollars of counterfeit money.”
“Are you done?” Cleo asked, sounding tired.
“No, I am not done. I am not going to walk away, Cleo, and let you go down with the ship. This is going to end badly for Ash. And I’m here to make sure his mess doesn’t blow up all over you.” Something caught his eye in the mirror. About a block behind him, a black Trans Am rocketed around a corner and swerved into the wrong lane, dodging oncoming traffic.
A second later, a white-striped red Ford Torino skidded after it, leaving a trail of smoke from its tires. The Torino dodged around the same cars, their brake lights flashing red, and closed in on the Trans Am’s tail.
Graves blinked. It couldn’t be. Not without a film crew. It was like the seventies were coming to life in his rearview mirror, in all their awful glory.
But the cars were real, as impossible as that was. He watched them weave through traffic. “Cleo. We have a problem.”
“You’re right.” Cleo’s voice was thick with emotion. “Listen, Graves, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now.”
“No, Cleo, look—”
“Just listen to me for one second, because I have t
o say this. We can’t work together anymore, you and I.”
Graves watched the car chase rocket toward him in the mirror. He stared, unable to really make sense of it.
“Just say something,” Cleo said.
He shook himself. “Look, Cleo. Turn around in your seat and look.”
The Trans Am made a hard turn and whipped out of sight. The Torino slid around the corner after it, its wide rear end leaning hard, and vanished.
“Fine.” Cleo rolled down her window and stuck her head outside. Her eyes were red with unshed tears and her lips moved slightly out of sync with the phone. “What am I looking for?”
Graves blinked. The cars were gone. “Cleo? You’re not going to believe this.”
Chapter Thirty
Nowhere
Cars flashed by on Ash’s left. The guardrail was a blur on his right. Up ahead, the Trans Am accelerated, its sleek black shape shrinking in his vision. Ash put his foot down and the Torino picked up speed.
DMT kept looking back over his shoulder, trading glances with Prez. He held the shotgun at an angle, pointed out the window, like he wasn’t sure where to put it. The open window blew in the ripe smell of his sweat.
“Cop cars back there again,” Prez said. “Three, this time. Maybe four.”
Ash glanced up to look in the rearview mirror, but it wasn’t there. There was only a little nub of metal stuck on the windshield. He ignored the nagging feeling in his stomach that told him they were all going to die. “Don’t worry. We’ll get out of this.”
The Torino floated oddly over the bumps and gravel of the freeway’s shoulder, as if it wasn’t in complete contact with the ground. The reflected noise from the cars he accelerated past kept rising until it became a steady roar.
DMT faced front, filling the wide seat. “How fast we going?”
“I don’t know.” Ash didn’t dare take his eyes off the road now. He didn’t blink. He focused on the rear end of the Trans Am ahead and the slate-gray blur of pavement that separated them.
He put his foot all the way to the floor. The engine wound up. The Trans Am grew larger again as he closed the distance.
“When we get a little closer,” Ash said over the noise, “take out a tire.”
“The hell with that,” Prez said. “This speed, we do that, everybody dies.”
Ash gripped the steering wheel so tightly his fingers tingled.
The Trans Am’s brake lights lit up red and it swerved left into a sudden gap in traffic. Ash followed a second behind it, feeling the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He dodged between cars as if they were standing still.
Andres slalomed through the traffic ahead. Ash followed, knowing he was being suckered but unable to do anything about it.
“Heads up!” DMT shouted.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ash saw a Jeep roar down an entrance ramp at an insane speed, streaking between two trucks to end up between him and the Trans Am.
He swung around and passed it, fighting to keep ahead of the Jeep as it tried to cut him off. He glanced over as he passed by, catching a glimpse of the dark-haired driver.
It was Cleo. She yelled to him, but he couldn’t make out the words.
Up ahead, Andres was trapped in the left lane behind a leather-clad guy on a Harley, with a bus on his right and a wide grass median on his left.
This was it, Ash thought. He accelerated, closing in fast. He realized a moment too late that Andres was setting a trap.
As Ash closed in, the Trans Am lunged ahead, side-swiping the motorcycle. The Harley went down in a spray of sparks, tossing the rider across the asphalt and down onto the median. The Trans Am shot away down the highway.
The wreckage of the motorcycle spun into the path of the bus, blowing out its front tire. As the bus lurched sideways, the crumpled motorcycle tumbled end over end toward Ash.
He braked hard and the Torino’s wheels locked up, sending them skidding. The shriek of tortured rubber filled the air. Panic blasted through Ash, paralyzing him. The twisted wreck of the motorcycle seemed to freeze in the air just in front of him, defying gravity.
He fought the steering wheel. Felt the big car shift around him, too slowly. Watched the bus shudder across the freeway in front of him, blotting out the sun. Then the Torino’s tires bit into the road and hurled them off into the grass. The horizon streaked past the windshield, dizzying. Prez let out a hair-curling whoop.
The uneven ground beneath the Torino banged and bucked, and their speed dropped. They passed the bus as it lumbered to a stop, and Ash wrestled the car back onto the road again.
For a brief instant, he started to relax. They were back on the road again, safe.
Then Cleo’s Jeep skidded out of control, hurtling straight toward him.
The bone-jarring impact jolted through the Torino, yanking Ash against the seat belt, sending the car skidding sideways. Cleo’s Jeep spun away, its front end mashed in, its windshield shattered. It glanced off the concrete center divider where the grass median ended and slid back into the center of the freeway. It came to rest ahead of the Torino, facing the wrong way, salting the asphalt with broken glass.
Ash pumped the brakes and stopped the Torino dead in the middle of the freeway. The Trans Am was long gone, taking Mauricio with it.
A smear of red inside the Jeep’s broken windshield glowed in the sunlight.
“Cleo,” he breathed. He fought to unbuckle the seat belt, his hands shaking. “Cleo!”
*
Shattering pain radiated through Cleo’s body, but it lasted only a second. Then everything overloaded and snapped to black. She floated, numb, every part of her slack and weightless.
She drifted.
A dim red light filtered through the gloom, darker red than any sunset. It didn’t frighten her, but it left her uneasy. Something waited for her, out there, though she couldn’t see anything.
Voices muttered around her. Snatches of conversations she couldn’t quite remember. Some recent, some long ago. A jumble of office small talk, raucous party laughter, late-night secrets whispered into the phone.
She smelled fresh-baked cinnamon rolls, new-mown grass, the smoke of her parents’ wood stove. She felt the bracing shock of a snowball fight, the jittery glee of prom night, the unceremonious pride of buying her first condo.
Her life cascaded down around her in sensations and sounds, but she couldn’t open her eyes to see anything. She was powerless to visualize her life, make any kind of sense out of it. She had the urgent desire to organize things, put them in place and tidy up.
Her life was a riddle that she had to sort out, needed to understand. She reached toward the sounds, but nothing was there. Just that endless red mist.
The harder she strained to remember things, the more elusive they got. The voices faded to a dim murmur. The smells and sensations softened to cottony nothing.
Thin silver lines radiated out around her, glittering like stars. She stared at their cold beauty, hungering to understand what she was seeing. And then she knew.
It was a spider web. Vast, limitless, encircling her like a night sky.
She couldn’t see the spider, but she knew it was out there. Impossibly huge. Waiting for her in the red darkness.
The spider had her life trapped in its web, wrapped up so that she couldn’t see it. The spider stretched over everything, through everything, stealing it away from her so that she could never have it back. Never live her life, as long as its web ensnared her. The spider had won.
She raged against it. Screamed out her wordless anger.
She wanted her life back. She wouldn’t let the spider take it.
Not now. Not ever.
*
Ash left the Torino running and sprinted across the pavement. Bits of broken glass crunched under his feet. Behind him, horns blared as traffic came to a dead stop.
His heart felt like it had been wrenched from his chest. He wanted to deny what he was seeing with his own eyes, but he couldn’t.
Steam hissed out from the edges of her Jeep’s crushed hood. The windshield was a white spider web of cracks, centered over the steering wheel. Cleo lay slumped over the airbag, sinking deeper into it as it went flat.
Ash stood frozen, staring at Cleo’s limp body. He couldn’t breathe. Sirens grew in the distance.
Hands shaking, Ash opened the car door. She didn’t move. He brushed the dark hair back from her face. “Cleo?”
A darkening bruise stretched across her forehead, already swelling. But she was breathing.
A dam broke inside Ash. He sagged against the doorframe, his breath raw. He was afraid to move her, afraid to injure her further.
How could he have done this? To her?
He measured his whole life, on some unspoken level, by how she would feel about him. Only now that he could lose her did he realize how deeply she had always been a part of him. Without her, there would be an aching hole inside that could never be filled.
He needed her. She saved him from the worst of himself, inspired him to become something better. Without her, he would be lost.
The Torino edged up behind him, engine rumbling. DMT had slid across into the driver’s seat. He and Prez stared out the window with a mixture of worry and cold remove.
“Time to go,” Prez said. “Men in blue goin’ to be here, seconds flat.”
Ash shook his head.
“Forget her, man. She’s a Fed.”
DMT gave Prez a look, but said nothing.
Ash just shook his head no.
Prez nodded once. “D. Get us out of here.”
“But, Boss—”
Prez reached up and slapped DMT on the back of the head. “Fool. Drive!”
DMT hunched in the seat. The Torino accelerated down the freeway, leaving Ash alone with Cleo.
He couldn’t look away from her delicate form, even as sirens wailed nearby and stopped. Voices shouted. Radios crackled.
This was all his fault. Chasing after Andres. Getting her involved. Finding the spider in the first place. He’d done all of this. It should have been him in there, broken. He would give anything to take her place.
The Spider Thief Page 18