by Jade Powers
“Why don’t you take a nap? I’ll get us to the airport, and we’ll figure it out from there.”
For the second time that morning Lauren drove to the airport, her mind whirring. She couldn’t just leave everything behind. Her philodendron needed attention. Not to mention the hundreds of books sitting in her shelves, and the board game she was designing in her spare time. Embroidery hoops and thread that she would pick up again someday. All those bits and pieces that followed a person through life. Somehow they seemed too important to leave behind.
Lucas took her up on the offer of a nap and was fast asleep as she drove. She parked at the Miami airport, wondering how she would be able to afford parking if and when she returned. She put her hand on Lucas’ knee and said, “We’re here.”
Lucas blinked and snuffled, rubbing his eyes. He groaned, “That had to be the shortest nap in the history of man.”
“I’ll call you dolphin boy from now on,” Lauren said.
Lucas shook his head. “Maybe if I were feeling better, you’d make sense.”
“Dolphins only sleep with half their brain. The other half stays awake,” Lauren said.
“Not an exact application, but I suppose it makes better sense now. On the bright side, at least we don’t have any luggage to check in.”
“You consider that the bright side?” Lauren asked. Clearly Lucas felt more comfortable wearing hand-me downs or dirty clothes than Lauren.
“Let’s just say I’m happy to be alive and free, and everything else is a plus.”
They stopped at the counter to pick up their tickets and then proceeded to the security checkpoint. Just run-of-the-mill, metal detector scans. Lauren passed through without setting it off.
Lauren was approached by a police officer from the other side of the gate. He said, “Ma’am, can you follow me, please?”
Lucas said, “Wait!”
Lucas pushed through the scanner, glanced at airport security who waived him through, and asked the officer, “May we see your I.D. please?”
“I don’t want to make this difficult.” From his expression, the cop really meant, Don’t screw with me or you’ll regret it.
Then Lucas turned to the guy looking at the suitcase x-rays. “Hey, do you know this cop? Has he been here before?”
Glancing from officer to Lucas, he shrugged, “Nope, never seen him.”
Lucas took Lauren’s hand, “If we’re under arrest, call another officer in and we’ll go with the both of you. Otherwise, we’re leaving.”
He tugged Lauren away from the security area. Lauren hissed, “Lucas, what are you doing?”
“He’s not a police officer. Look at his shoes. And his belt’s missing half of the gear,” Lucas practically shouted his personal findings on what was wrong with the guy not five feet from where they were walking.
Lauren felt wrong in so many ways. She had grown up pleasing authority figures. The B+ in history had always been a disappointment. Parents, teachers, and later, professors and bosses ran her life. If they were happy, she was happy. At any moment she expected to be put in handcuffs and dragged to the local jail for running from the police.
Before Lucas could pull her away, Lauren looked over her shoulder, tugging back. The fake cop was furious, enraged, but he watched them walk away. He grabbed his walkie and spoke into it. Even if he wasn’t real, he had friends nearby.
She grabbed Lucas’ arm and strode away with him, leaning over. His arm muscles were tight under her grip. In a harsh whisper, she said, “Lucas, he just called for backup.”
Lucas glanced over his shoulder once, and then grabbed Lauren’s hand. “Follow me.”
They ran around the corner, ducking into a large group of teenagers traveling together. The teenagers moved like a school of fish darting this way and that, but ultimately, the teenagers stayed together. They were passing an elevator when Lucas spotted two more men wearing uniforms and another in fatigues. He pulled on Lauren’s hand and ditched the teenagers for the elevator.
Lauren noticed the three men when Lucas did. She said, “What do we do?”
“How much gas do you have in your car?”
“Half a tank.”
“They expected us to show up in line. We got lucky with that cop, but someone in the group will have official documents to pull us off the plane. We get back to the parking lot and drive as far west as we can go. We’ll buy another plane ticket at the next big city.” Lucas hit the button for the ground floor.
“I understand the logic and I’m with you on this, but I have to say, I hate that plan.”
“Which part?”
“I just drove all the way across the country for this job, and now you’re telling me we’re driving some more.”
“We need distance. I’m not saying we have to drive the whole way. We can fly out of somewhere else.”
“Or drive south to the Keys and find a cozy bed and breakfast to hide for a week or so.”
It was a fantasy. Neither Lauren nor Lucas had the kind of wealth that would allow for an extended stay. The elevator dinged and the door opened. Two burly men in military uniform stood outside the elevator. Lauren froze.
Lucas stepped out. In the penultimate of non sequiturs, he said, “Grandma doesn’t have to know, Sis.”
One of the brutes said, “You’re not fooling anyone. We know you’re the pair Kendall’s after.”
Lauren looked up at the speaker. He was a giant, maybe seven feet tall, and his girth rivaled a gorilla. She sighed, “Why can’t I just collect unemployment like everyone else?”
Chapter 13
LUCAS STRETCHED HIS neck, popping it. He was going for tough, but figured he probably looked as powerful as the computer nerd he was. There were plenty of people moving through the airport. It wasn’t like they were alone. Lucas said, “Going to be hard collecting us with all these folks milling about.”
“I’m not collecting anybody. Just watching. It’s a shame your flight was delayed.”
That was news to Lucas. He said, “So what are you going to do?”
“Walk in the direction you walk. Turn in the direction you turn. My orders are to follow you. I’d suggest you stay in the airport until the officials can collect you.”
“I suppose your orders included a lengthy discussion about what you’re allowed to do with us once we leave the airport?” Lauren asked. Her eyes darted from baggage claim to the street to the little girl in a blue skirt dancing in circles and hopping on one foot while her parents wearily waited for their luggage to release.
“Well, you...”
Lauren hoped that Lucas was fast on his feet. Before the guy could finish his sentence, she sprinted across the open space between the elevator and the door, dodging people like a marathon runner. Her purse dragged her speed down a bit, but she hit the door at stride, feeling an instant blast of warm air. Lucas sprinted in a different direction. As she pushed through the door, Lauren heard the noise of his escape.
With no idea how to meet back up with Lucas, Lauren moved forward, using people as moveable hiding places. More than one person gave her a look and stepped away from her. Maybe she did look crazy. She was hunted with no idea where the predator might be. Every tall man with sunglasses looked like a threat, even if they were in Bermuda shorts and Birkenstocks.
Lauren moved with a crowd across the crosswalk toward the parking garage. She remained safely tucked into the middle of the group. It was a great way to hide, but a terrible way to hunt down a boyfriend who decided on a different strategy of escape. She wouldn’t even start to worry about Lucas until she found her car.
The stakes were too high.
A woman just in front of her wore a floral scarf around her head. The scarf perfectly matched Lauren’s blouse. Pulling her last twenty out of her pocket, Lauren skip ran the few steps so they were walking side-by-side. She said, “I’ll give you twenty dollars for your scarf?”
It could have been worth five or five hundred. Lauren had no idea. Only that she need
ed some way to hide her face.
Turning away from Lauren, the woman said, “No.” and bent her head away with a clear signal for Lauren to leave her alone.
Lauren could see two men in the parking lot wearing officer blues. Kendall spent a fortune to grab her before she could take that plane. She knew without a doubt that if she didn’t make good her escape, the next article about her in the paper would be an obituary.
Before approaching her car, Lauren would need to hide. Eventually the goon squad would give up. It was just a matter of outlasting them. This is the part where I wish I were street-smart, Lauren thought while she ducked behind a huge van. The worst part of this whole hide and seek game was how badly the numbers were stacked against them. Someone might be watching her even while she dithered about what to do.
Lauren tried the door to the van. Locked. But then this was Miami. Every car in the parking lot would be locked. Lauren used the tall concrete walls and the cars to make her away toward the corner of the parking lot level.
A quick self-inventory did Lauren little good. Purse. Yes. She could rent a car if Kendall’s security squad insisted on hunkering down around her car, which they would...if they didn’t already set the damn thing to blow up. But the rental agency would surely have a central computer. And that would be compromised.
Her priority was to reconnect with Lucas. He couldn’t very well meet her near the car with so many people milling about. In the meantime, she needed to hide. The bathroom was a great hiding place and the door lockable. The only problem was that great hiding places were also death traps.
Lauren wanted the capacity to run, preferably with at least three directions available. She wore tennis shoes, so as far as fleeing preparedness, she was there. The roof of the parking garage would be Kendall’s base of operations. Lauren wasn’t one hundred percent but her gut told her that as primo as the roof might be as a perch with which to view the comings and goings of Kendall’s goons, that it was probably already overrun with those same goons.
People didn’t help in Miami. It wasn’t like the rural areas around Spokane. If Lauren went up to a random stranger out in the middle of nowhere in eastern Washington and said someone was following her, as improbable as the scenario would be, she’d get a ride to the nearest phone booth and spare change to make the call. Here, where the situation was likely, she’d get stony faces and fear.
She peeked around the tail of a Ford Escort to place the two officers. What she saw chilled her. Three members of SWAT in full uniform jogged into the parking lot and were even now speaking to the officers and then back into their radio. She was so dead.
Lauren needed a distraction, knowing full well that Kendall’s soldiers were trained. They wouldn’t leave their post. Only the men assigned to roam and flush out the quarry would react. The rest would stay put and watch. She needed another vehicle.
With each passing minute, Lauren felt increasingly tense. Her mouth felt dry and her shirt was soaked with sweat. She moved from car to car, terrified that at any moment she would make a wrong turn, show her face to one of the SWAT members and find herself hogtied in the trunk of a car with a destination to the middle of the swamp. It wouldn’t be hard to disappear someone in this part of the world. And Lauren was certain that was the plan.
Wiping sweat from her forehead, Lauren heard the clip clip of a pair of high heels. Feeling desperate, she dug through her purse for a comb. It had a sharp point. Lauren felt terrible for what she was about to do. The woman turned in front of the next car over.
Lauren scurried around the car, as quickly and as quietly as she could go while the woman hit the unlock button on her car. It beeped twice. Lauren sidled up to the woman and put the end of her comb against the woman’s neck. “I don’t want to hurt you. Keep quiet and give me the keys.”
The woman quivered a little and then dropped the keys in Lauren’s left hand. Her right hand still held the comb. “Please don’t kill me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you. Pop the trunk.” Lauren ordered in her deepest voice. She shook with the strain of what she was doing. Her whole mind was screaming that she was committing a felony, that she was a bad person, that if she had any decency at all, she’d let this poor woman go home.
She was making another person a victim to save herself. Lauren ignored her wee little angel voice, squashing it with fear. Someone once said that fear was a great motivator. It was also one of the worst motivators and a perpetuator of terrible things. Even while she buried her conscience, Lauren acknowledged how wrong her actions were at the moment.
The woman popped the trunk. Lauren gripped the woman’s left shoulder with her left hand and kept the comb firmly against her neck. God, if this lady found out what she was using, Lauren would be in the SWAT team’s handcuffs before she could shout “Mayday.”
“Get in the trunk. I’ll return your car in ten minutes. Don’t be afraid. I swear to you I will give your car back.” Lauren half lifted, half pushed the now-crying woman into the trunk. She was going to hell for this. It was the kind of thing serial killers and crazy people did.
Lauren shut the trunk on the crying woman. She grabbed the keys and started the ignition. Her hands shook as she backed up the car, and she couldn’t get the car to corner quite the way it should. She had to move forward and back a few times, and each time she felt certain that a bullet would pass through the windshield and kill her.
The woman kept a sunhat in the passenger seat. Lauren quickly wrapped her hair up and shoved the sunhat over her hair and low on her face. She couldn’t hide much about herself, but at least she wouldn’t be as obvious. She turned her face away from the group of men near the elevator as she turned on her signal to leave the parking garage.
Lauren realized that she should have been the one in the trunk. Two men stood at the end of the exit, watching as each car passed. She couldn’t trust anyone but Lucas. What the hell was she thinking kidnapping a woman and stealing her car? Lauren turned right to drive out of the parking garage. Pulling a five out of her purse, she paid the attendant. When she spoke, she did so in broken English, again deepening her voice. Hearing her heavy accent, the soldiers stepped back, allowing her car out.
She drove out of the airport and picked up the freeway. Her guilt over kidnapping some poor lady was added to a huge heap of remorse for abandoning Lucas. Somewhere in that parking garage, he was suffering the same fate as Lauren. It was too hot for someone to stay in the trunk, so Lauren took the first exit off the freeway and found a quiet street. She wrapped the cord on her purse, holding it like a clutch. Taking the woman’s hat, she pulled it over her eyes, grateful for the extra concealment. Maybe the woman in the trunk wouldn’t recognize her.
The trunk popped up easily and the woman said, “Please don’t kill me. I’ll give you anything I have.”
Lauren hurt herself in hurting this woman. She knew that for years to come, she would think again and again about this moment and know her own capacity for evil. She held out her hand. In the deepest voice she could possible use, she said, “Take my hand.”
The woman grabbed her hand, but yanked back with the other and came up swinging. Lauren couldn’t blame her and was frankly impressed by the woman’s presence of mind. The world moved in slow motion while Lauren ducked the punch, simultaneously releasing her other hand. Jumping back, Lauren tossed the keys onto the ground.
“I’m sorry. Really, I am,” Lauren said. She turned and sprinted down the street, her body soaked and smelling ripe in the Miami heat. Bad enough she was running for her life, but if and when they caught her, she was going to smell like a football player with his shoes off.
As she fled down the street, Lauren wondered at the strange turn her life had taken. This was the second time in so many months that she had found herself to be a fugitive. Granted, this time she deserved to be arrested, but still, it was just too Twilight Zone to be real.
A plane flew overhead, and Lauren realized she was still fairly close to the airport. That
made sense. She was too frightened that the lady whose car she had stolen...borrowed...would expire in the trunk to drive far. The day couldn’t get much worse.
Lauren stopped when she reached the five-lane road. At least there was a sidewalk. She walked until she found a donut shop with a phone booth outside. She needed change.
She stopped in and ordered a cup of coffee and three honey-glazed chocolate donuts. “Can I have the change in quarters, please?” Lauren asked.
While the server made the coffee, Lauren used the restroom to wash up, wetting towels and washing her face and underarms. At least she wouldn’t smell while she tried to come up with a plan. Her first step would be to call Sven. If anything happened to Lucas, that was on her. She shouldn’t have left him to fend for himself alone.
She settled in, munching her donuts since she was hungry. Three cop cars flew by. Guess the kidnapping has been called in. Lauren thought about it in the third person, as if the whole debacle was removed from her personal experience. She sipped the hot coffee and took a deep breath, slowly releasing it. Her nerves were finally starting to settle.
Lauren considered her next move. She downed the next donut like a starving woman. Lauren wanted to do the same with her coffee, but it was too hot. She wrapped the third donut in six napkins and tucked it in her purse. Lauren wasn’t typically a food hoarder, but somewhere between eating that first donut and the second, her mind had unlocked itself from the spiraling guilt and decided that she needed to do something constructive.
Pushing up from the table, Lauren pulled her purse over her shoulder and grabbed her coffee. Lauren found Sven’s many numbers in her address books. She dumped a few quarters in the phone and punched in the most likely numbers. He answered at the first ring.
“I’m in trouble,” Lauren said. She didn’t believe in messing around.
“I know. They grounded the plane you were on. Where are you?”