Afraid of the Dark

by James Grippando

  “They just left the building.”

  “I have them on my computer now,” said Chuck. “You can drop back a little farther out of sight. Stay on the line and I’ll tell you where to go.”

  Jack pushed through the north exit doors, and a gust of cold air welcomed him to the parking lot. Security lights cast a yellowish glow around the loading docks, but most of the lot was dark, which was to Jack’s advantage. Still, he walked on the other side of a long line of refrigeration trucks to make sure he remained out of Shada’s sight. Chuck fed him almost step-by-step instructions past the loading docks to the fenced walkway along Aspen Way, a busy divided highway. It was the early phase of the morning rush hour. Six lanes of commuters, three in each direction, whizzed by at speeds that would have made hopping the iron fence and crossing the road suicidal.

  “They’re on a pedestrian bridge across the highway,” said Chuck.

  Jack looked up at the suspension-style bridge and saw them. It led directly to Poplar Station. “I think they’re getting on the underground,” said Jack. “That will kill your GPS.”

  “My computer says it’s DLR—Docklands Light Railway. I’m pretty sure that’s aboveground. But they might switch over to the underground. Stay with them.”

  A train was pulling into Poplar Station. Shada and the girl made a run for it, and their lead on Jack was at least a hundred yards.

  “I’ll do my best,” he said as he tucked away the phone and sprinted toward the station.

  The Dark was playing mind games. Vince was sure of it.

  Vince was seated on the floor, his hands tied to an old steam radiator. The Dark had just gotten off the phone, and Vince had been able to hear only one side of the conversation—the Dark’s side. The Dark was filling in the other half—the half that Vince refused to believe.

  “Amazing, isn’t it, Paulo? McKenna’s mother begging me for forgiveness.” The Dark stepped closer and grabbed Vince by the jaw. “So where’s your apology? Can I hear you say you’re sorry for what you did to me?”

  Vince still had no idea what injuries the Dark had suffered in the same explosion that had taken his own sight. It took all his strength not to ask, but expressing any desire to know would only have given the Dark more power over him.

  “Nothing to say for yourself, huh?” The Dark was squeezing hard enough to break Vince’s jaw, but Vince took the pain in silence.

  “Fine,” he said, pushing Vince’s head away. “I’ll let your wife apologize—when she spreads her legs for me.”

  Mind games, Vince told himself, but he wasn’t sure how much more he could take. Every word out of the Dark’s mouth, every punch to the jaw or the solar plexus, every crack about Vince’s wife, only served to remind him that the last thing he remembered seeing—really remembered seeing—was McKenna Mays dying in his arms. Vince knew it would all come down to the next few minutes. He needed a plan, and he was glad he had one: six steps at eleven o’clock to the suitcase filled with weapons; three steps, nine o’clock to the Brainport.

  Now, all he needed was a break.

  Jack pulled his black knit cap down to his eyebrows, but he wasn’t sure how much good the lame disguise was doing.

  He’d been the last person to board at the Poplar Station before the doors closed and the train pulled away. His car was nearly full, and he found an open seat about halfway down. Shada and the girl were in the lead car—there were only two—and Shada’s was standing-room only. Ten minutes into the ride, his heart was still pounding, but not from the chase.

  He was almost certain that Shada had spotted him.

  Jack glanced out the window of the speeding train. Chuck had been right: The tracks were aboveground—so far, at least—which meant that Chuck’s GPS was working. Jack’s cell phone worked, too. The stations all along the line were elevated, and with each stop Jack got a postcard view of London in the morning twilight. He was westbound, and based on how the passengers were dressed and what they were reading, Jack’s quick take was that the train was headed toward London’s financial district.

  “Tower Gateway,” the mechanized voice announced.

  Jack leaned into the aisle and peered ahead through the windows in the emergency doors between cars. Shada was moving toward the exit doors. Jack gave Chuck another update.

  “She’s getting off.”

  “Did you see The French Connection?”

  Of course Jack had, and he didn’t want to be the idiot left standing on the platform as Shada jumped back on the train and waved good-bye to him. “Got it covered,” said Jack.

  “The train goes into a tunnel after Tower Gateway,” said Chuck. “All Shada has to do is ride through to the next station, and she’s in the underground. You’re the only set of eyes we have if that happens. Keep me on the cell as long as you have service. I want to hear from you in real time while the situation’s fluid.”

  “Understood.”

  The train stopped, the doors opened, and Jack moved with about six other people toward the exit. He let them get off first, and by the time he stepped onto the platform, Shada was heading for the stairs.

  “She’s definitely getting off,” Jack said into his phone.

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I’m following her down the platform now.”

  “It’s almost like she’s trying to do us a favor by getting off before the tracking chip becomes ineffective.”

  “Maybe she is,” said Jack. “This station is less than a five-minute walk from my hotel. She couldn’t have picked an area of London that I’m more familiar with.”

  “Then why did she remove the battery to kill the spyware on her cell phone?”

  Jack didn’t have an answer. He just kept walking with the morning-rush-hour crowd.

  Tower Gateway is an elevated station, and Jack waited for her to ride the escalator all the way down to street level before he started down the adjacent stairway. She walked quickly, leading the girl with one hand and clutching the backpack with the other. They were out on the street faster than Jack had expected, and he had to leap down the stairway two and three steps at a time to keep from losing them. A group of lost Americans surrounded him on the sidewalk.

  “Dude, which way is the Tower of England?”

  Jack blew right past them—presumably they meant London, and if they were any closer, the old walls might have fallen on their heads—and he spotted Shada across the street. He followed her for another block beyond an old railway overpass.

  “She just ducked into a breakfast shop,” said Jack. He was in a zebra crossing at one of those typical London intersections where pedestrians could be killed from no fewer than seven different directions.

  “One heck of a time to stop for a muffin,” Chuck said.

  Jack continued up Minories, weaving his way through pedestrians as he struggled to see beyond the big green lettering on the restaurant window. The charcoal sky was ebbing toward a lighter shade of gray. The end of eighteen hours without sunlight was near, and any additional light was helpful.

  “It doesn’t look like she’s ordering food. She’s definitely buying something, though.”

  A bus stopped in front of him, blocking Jack’s view.

  “Buying what?” asked Chuck.

  Jack hurried beyond the bus, and the few steps forward gave him a clear line of sight into the restaurant. “She’s buying aluminum foil, I think. A whole roll of it.”

  “And paying whatever price the clerk names, no doubt—and it’s still a bargain, when you consider that the payoff is a quarter million pounds.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Wrapping her backpack in all that foil will shut down the GPS. That bitch is stealing the ransom!”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Tower Hill Tube Station is about a hundred yards from you. If she gets underground, she can go just about anywhere, and if the money is wrapped in foil, I’ll have no way of knowing where she pops up.”

  J
ack’s grip on the phone tightened. “I’m asking you a question: What do you want me to do?”

  “Grab her!”

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Shada tucked the roll of foil in her backpack, careful not to let the salesclerk see all that cash inside.

  “We have cellophane wrap as well,” the clerk said as he stuffed the fifty-pound note into his pocket.

  “Next time,” Shada said. The chances were exactly one in five hundred that she’d just solved her microchip problem, but the foil would shore up those odds. She’d wrap the remaining 499 notes once they were underground. “Let’s go,” she said, and the girl followed her to the door.

  “By the way,” asked Shada, “what should I call you?”

  “Call me what he calls me: McKenna.”

  Shada stopped cold. Had it not been for Jack Swyteck, Shada might never have found out about the teenage girl in the cellar. It had been a sickening realization this morning that the girl in the cellar was the same girl she’d met on the Internet and unwittingly brought into Habib’s web. Hearing now that he called her “McKenna” was more than sickening. It was Shada’s worst fear realized.

  She stepped away from the door, found a spot at the counter facing the window, and hit REDIAL on the girl’s cell. Habib answered, and Shada talked fast.

  “I have the foil,” she said. “We’re a stone’s throw from the Tower Hill Station. Tell me where to get off the train.”

  “First stop on the District Line. Aldgate East. About three minutes.”

  Shada was about to answer, then stopped. Through the plate-glass window, she could see all the way across the street. A streetlight enhanced the light of dawn, and the man standing at the bus stop looked just like the guy on the train wearing the black cap. Shada tightened her stare, and even from this distance, it made him look away nervously. There was no doubt in her mind.

  That’s Swyteck.

  “It might take me a little longer than three minutes.”

  She tucked away the phone and grabbed the girl by the elbow. “Let’s go,” she said as they moved quickly toward the other exit.

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  She saw me,” Jack said into his phone.

  “Then go now!” Chuck shouted.

  Jack put away the cell as he darted across the street, making the American mistake of checking left instead of right. Two cars slammed on their brakes, and Jack narrowly missed mention in tomorrow’s paper under the headline “Death by Mini Cooper.” Shada and the girl flew out of the restaurant and ran in the opposite direction, headed down a side street. Shada covered the city block in no time, but the girl seemed to be struggling to keep up.

  Damn, that woman can run.

  “Shada, stop!” he shouted. It felt like the fiasco at Carpenter’s Arms all over again, only this time he knew the area—he was glad he’d studied his map—and he knew that she was headed for the Tower Hill Tube Station.

  Shada was in full stride, and as they made a hard left down another street, Jack could hear her yelling at the girl to keep up. Then the girl went down in the shadows beneath the overpass. Shada kept going. The girl had fallen, and Shada just left her.

  Or did Shada push her down?

  The girl was still on the sidewalk, holding her ankle, when Jack caught up with her.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Leave me alone!” she shouted. She got up slowly, then nearly fell over again when she put weight on that ankle.

  Jack glanced ahead, beyond the darkness of the overpass. Shada was out of sight, long gone—with the cash. Jack hated to think what might happen to Vince without the ransom, but he couldn’t let a teenage girl go back to the Dark.

  “Let me help you.”

  “No!”

  She was panic-stricken, and Jack tried his most soothing voice. “You’re safe now. Stay with me.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  Jack looked around for help and saw that they were right in front of a place called Pitcher & Piano, which, to a jet-lagged attorney from Miami, sounded like a law firm. “I’m going to take you inside here and call the police.”

  “No!”

  “You’ve been brainwashed by—”

  Her punch to his chest took Jack’s breath away. “I’m not brainwashed,” she shouted, “and I can’t call the police!”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “If I’m not back with the money in ten minutes, he’ll kill me!”

  “He has to find you to kill you!”

  “No, he doesn’t!” she shouted.

  “Just let me—”

  Her scream was deafening—long and shrill, like the cry of a mortally wounded animal, and the fact that they were beneath an overpass made it even louder. A man came running out of Pitcher & Piano—it was a bar, not a law firm—and grabbed Jack.

  “Let go of her!” the man shouted.

  “I’m trying to help her.”

  “I said, Let go!”

  He took a swing at Jack, but Jack deflected it. Jack managed to keep a tight grip on the girl’s coat, but she only encouraged her Good Samaritan.

  “Help! Get him away from me!”

  The man was smaller than Jack, but the girl’s plea gave him added strength. He pulled Jack to the ground, and the girl broke free. The two men rolled on the sidewalk, and the speed with which the girl ran away—right through the pain in her ankle—left no doubt that her life was on the line. Hers and Vince’s. Jack pushed the man aside, jumped up from the sidewalk, and chased after the girl.

  “Stop!”

  She flagged a taxi to the curb. Jack was still a hundred feet away, but the thought of the girl getting away in a taxi made him kick into a higher gear. He had his cell phone in hand and was trying to dial the police, but that was impossible while running at full speed. He closed the gap quickly—that ankle was really bothering her—and she was almost within reach when the man from Pitcher & Piano tackled him from behind. Momentum carried them all the way to the taxi, and Jack reached for the girl’s ankle as she yanked the car door open. The man knocked Jack’s arm aside, and the girl jumped into the taxi.

  “No!” Jack shouted, but the door was swinging shut, and the girl would soon be on her way to God only knew where. Jack was still on the ground, the man was on top of him, and he couldn’t stop the door from closing. In a split-second decision, Jack tossed his cell phone onto the floor in the back of the cab.

  The door slammed shut, and the cab pulled away.

  “Sorry, pal,” Jack said as he swung at the man’s jaw. The blow stunned the poor fellow, and it was enough to discourage him from giving chase as Jack hurried down the street in pursuit of the girl’s taxi. He dug the cell phone from Reza out of his coat pocket as he ran, stopped for a second to dial Chuck, and took off running again.

  “You have spyware on my cell, right?” said Jack.

  “Well . . .”

  “It’s okay, Reza told me as much this morning!”

  The black taxi was well ahead of him, but in the light of dawn it was still in sight. Jack talked fast as he raced down the sidewalk. “I tossed my phone into the back of the cab.”

  “What cab?”

  “I lost Shada, but the girl’s in a taxi with my cell phone. Follow that GPS signal and she’ll lead you right to the Dark.”

  “Where are you?”

  Jack stopped to catch his breath. He could smell the River Thames. “Tower of England,” he said, parroting that numbskull at the DLR Station. The lack of sleep was catching up with him, and he knew that chasing a moving vehicle on foot just wasn’t going to work.

  “I’ll grab a cab,” he said. “I want you to call the police and tell them exactly where that GPS signal is headed.”

  “Will do,” said Chuck.

  Jack spotted a taxi approaching from the opposite direction. He jumped out into the street, and the cab screeched to a halt to avoid hitting him. The driver rolled down the window, primed to give Jack a good tongue-lashing, but Jack’s mouth was already runn
ing as he opened the rear door on the driver’s side.

  “I need to follow that cab about fifty meters ahead of—”

  Jack stopped himself, having gotten a better look at the driver. It was the same cabbie from the Tower Hotel who just yesterday—it seemed much longer—had helped Jack tail Vince’s cab to the Carpenter’s Arms.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” said Jack, still holding the door open.

  “Again? This is getting a bit strange, mate,” the driver said, and the rear door slammed shut with the force of the taxi pulling away.

  “Damn it!”

  Up ahead, the traffic light changed, and Jack saw the girl’s taxi pull away. Hopefully Chuck was tracking it, but GPS wasn’t exactly golden in one of the most tunneled cities in the world. Jack had to keep up. Several cars flew by, ignoring Jack’s attempts to flag one down. Jack dug a handful of bills from his wallet and waved them at a boy on a bicycle.

  “I’ll give you two hundred pounds for your bike!”

  The kid stopped. “Are you joking?”

  “No joke. Here, take it.”

  The boy got off his bike, smiling as he grabbed the money. “Ta very much.”

  Jack pedaled off in pursuit of the taxi, hoping like hell for a major traffic jam ahead.

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Behind the gray blanket of winter clouds, the sun was starting to rise over London. The Dark removed his nighttime sunglasses and put on a darker pair. Then he reached for his cell phone. It was the middle of the night in Washington, but he dialed the number anyway, knowing that Littleton would be awake and take his call.

  “This is your final update,” said the Dark.

  “Tell me,” said Littleton.

  He was standing across the street from the exit to the Aldgate East Tube Station. Morning rush hour was at full throttle, and he had to move around to keep from being jostled by commuters.

  “For what it’s worth, I spoke with Shada. She admitted that she copied files from my computer. But she swears she didn’t give them to anyone.”