by Jonas Saul
“Good. Then buy me something.”
Kierian smiled. “What does little Sarah Roberts want?”
“Don’t ever call me little. I’m smaller than you, but that kind of thing pisses me off.”
“Fair enough. No little.”
“Now you owe me.”
“I owe you?”
“Yeah. I could’ve gone home to change. I had time after my talk with Lyson. But now I’m stuck in this stupid top with my items hanging out. I need a new shirt or a sweater. You’re buying.”
“Who says?”
“I do.” She walked away and headed toward the shopping area. “Don’t they give you a budget? Someone sent you here to get something out of me and paid a lot of money for months of surveillance. Buying a fucking shirt is the least you could do for a girl.”
Kierian and Clint exchanged a smile, then followed Sarah. After fifteen minutes she had a T-shirt that said I Love Toronto on it and a thick sweater to wear over that.
Kierian led the way to the monitors that detailed the flight arrival times. The flight from Detroit was right on time. They went to the gates where everyone from that plane would enter the common area of the airport.
Kierian pulled a member of Airport Security aside and explained that they were waiting for a man to deplane from the Detroit flight. He said they had credible evidence that this man was here to kidnap a youth that he had lured to the airport.
While he arranged backup from airport security and explained how important it was to stay out of sight, Sarah backed away and watched the waiting crowd, searching for a young girl standing alone.
While they waited, she thought about the Angels of Violence and what they said about a debt. If they were after her, how come Vivian hadn’t said anything? Unless this was why she went to the massage parlor, to roust them. Sometimes it was maddening not knowing what Vivian’s intentions were. Most times her blind faith got her through, but this time things seemed more dangerous, more severe. She hated being unarmed and unprepared.
Aaron was a capable fighter who could maim five men in a fight. What would Aaron think if she had told him that she had brought these FBI men with her instead of him? He would be hurt. But everything happened for a reason. Sarah had learned to go with the flow and let it happen. There was something about the way things worked out that Sarah always knew Vivian had read the playbook weeks before and only told Sarah what she needed to hear and when to keep her on point.
When this was done and Sarah was back at the apartment later that night, she figured she and Aaron would have to have the talk. Could their budding relationship last with who she was? Would he understand her enough to let her go so she could learn to love him? Trying to control her would never work. She would rather be single forever than have a man run things for her. Why couldn’t men just be happy to be in a relationship, share things, go to movies, dinner, sex? Yes, wild sex. Why wasn’t that enough? Women weren’t property, most of all a woman like Sarah.
She resolved to make that clear to Aaron later.
The double doors opened and people piled into the airport, pulling luggage behind them. The clock by the arrivals monitor said it was fifteen minutes to six. The Detroit flight had deplaned and people had time to grab their luggage.
At any second the fateful meeting would take place.
Kierian caught her eye. He shrugged. She looked away and studied the crowd even harder, but the only children she saw were with their mother or another adult.
A girl about the age they were looking for stood off the side behind a pillar. She looked shy and confused. A second later a woman walked over and scolded her for standing too far away. She took her hand and guided her back to a stroller where an infant waited.
“We wait for Daddy together,” the mother said, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Sarah looked at Clint. His attention was on the people entering the airport. Kierian was talking to a security guard again, twenty feet back.
Normal activity everywhere. Yet in minutes a meeting was about to take place. A meeting they had to stop.
Sarah decided to do what Clint was doing. Process of elimination. She would study the people entering the airport. All men with someone would be written off as not a potential. For every man that appeared to be alone, she would try to follow his movements for as long as she could without leaving the area.
After another dozen people, a single man came into view. In his forties at least, a backpack slung over his shoulder and walking steady. His hair was greased back and he looked slimy enough to prey on the young and weak. This had to be the guy. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and typed furiously, no doubt texting someone that he had arrived.
She looked away, watched for others and then double checked that the man was gone and not meeting someone. He walked through the sliding doors heading outside toward a taxi, his arm in the air hailing one.
Another man emerged. This one caught Clint’s attention so Sarah focused back on the people still filing through. A good-looking tall man walked out, searched the crowd until his eyes stopped on a woman in her twenties. They called out to each other and she ran at him, jumping into his arms. Sarah longed for Aaron.
More single men exited the doors. Men in suits, men with cell phones, men with oversized luggage. One pulled something big enough to carry golf clubs. Another had a guitar over his shoulder.
The steady flow of traffic finally decreased. The door opened randomly, an odd person coming through.
Kierian headed toward her.
If this didn’t come together it would mean two things. One, a thirteen-year-old girl would be in serious trouble somewhere and two, the FBI would think her psychic abilities were a hoax.
She could care less what anyone thought. The girl was the priority.
“Now what?” Kierian asked.
“He was here. He had to be. Vivian is never wrong.”
“We watched everyone. No single man met a young girl from that plane. Unless he still has to come out, but I don’t see any young girls standing around here waiting and it’s almost six.”
“I know. Let me think.”
She did a full turn, looking around the area. She stopped on the window to the outside. The sun had dropped. Smoke billowed from idling cars.
Something wasn’t right. Maybe the perp instructed the girl to meet him somewhere else. That had to be it. They were standing at the wrong spot.
Of course. He wouldn’t meet her in a crowd.
She walked toward the window.
“Sarah?” Kierian said, but she ignored him.
At the window she looked both ways, up and down the arrival’s temporary parking.
The man with the backpack slung over his shoulder and the greasy hair from earlier was knelt down by a taxi cab’s open door.
Her eyes widened.
He was talking to a young girl with pretty red hair. The young girl appeared anxious and was shaking her head. From where Sarah was, it appeared the girl was crying.
“Fuck!”
Everything inside Sarah screamed. She had found the perp.
“Got him,” she said to Kierian and started to run.
“Where?” he yelled after her.
“Tell airport security he’s about to get into a cab.”
She dodged a slow-moving couple, landed on the carpet and weaved to the right around a man pushing a cart overloaded with luggage, and then had to slow to let the automatic doors open in time.
“Hurry, dammit!” she yelled at the doors.
Then through another set of doors moving just as slow.
Once through them she turned to the right.
The man and the little girl were gone.
The taxi was already a hundred yards away and slowing for a speed bump.
“Sarah?” Kierian said from behind her.
“In that cab up ahead. The one slowing for a speed bump. Have somebody stop it.”
She ran. As fast as her legs could pump, she ran. Inside, sh
e screamed for that little girl who was about to leave and be gone for good. She looked back once and saw Kierian coming behind her, on his cell phone.
The cab was getting away.
She ran harder knowing she could never catch up with it.
The airport exit was just ahead of the cab. The speed bumps were the only saving grace. People with luggage in a crosswalk stopped the cab, allowing Sarah time to make some ground, but she was already getting winded and the brake lights of the cab turned off as it moved forward again.
Once it turned the corner it would be lost from sight.
There was nothing left to do and Kierian’s car was too far away to give chase.
Unless she stole a car or jumped in a cab herself.
Sirens suddenly lit up the exit area. Three units converged under a green sign that was filled with arrows directing drivers to different highways.
The cab slowed and stopped. Sarah kept running. With one backward glance she saw Kierian and Clint following her at a good pace.
The cab’s driver’s side door opened. Then the back door. The little girl scrambled out and ran over to a policewoman where she was promptly led away. Officers moved in closer.
Sarah was within earshot to hear them order the man out of the backseat of the vehicle. He came out sans backpack, both hands on his head.
Sarah slowed and leaned on a pillar to catch her breath. Kierian came up behind her. Between breaths, he congratulated her.
“Well done, Sarah,” he said. “I believe you now.”
“Believe?”
“Yeah, in you.” He panted for a few breaths. “Not Vivian.”
“Whatever.” She turned from him and watched as the man was placed in the backseat of a cruiser. “That’s not what this was about.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“What about that bomb-sniffing dog and handler thing I told you about? You going to hire one for the end of the week?”
“Yeah, sure. But not here. We can call that sort of thing in.”
Kierian’s phone rang. “Kierian here.”
He paused, listening. “Are you serious?” he said into the phone. Another pause. “Yes, she’s still with us.”
Sarah gave him a look wanting to know who he was talking to.
“Okay, I’ll bring her right over.” He clicked his phone off and dropped it in his pocket.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he said.
“What? Tell us,” she said, looking at Clint who had gotten his breath back.
“The Leap Year Killer fucked up.”
“How?”
“Two of his victims were just discovered in a cage in the basement of an old warehouse off a street called Keele somewhere in northern Toronto.”
“What? How? Who just called you?”
“That was Lyson. Apparently a worker from another business across the street had gotten suspicious about weird activity and went in to investigate. He had to be seen by medics as well.”
They started walking back to their car.
“Why? Did he surprise the killer?”
“No. A colleague of his saw him enter the building. He followed him in to see what he was doing. Scared him so bad he fainted and banged his head hard.”
Clint chimed in. “So the hero got hurt?”
“Exactly,” Kierian said. “You’re familiar with that, aren’t you, Sarah?”
She didn’t reply.
They entered the sliding doors to go back to the car through the airport where it was warmer.
Sarah looked over her shoulder, a sudden movement by a ledge in the parking area across the street catching her eye. She looked away and kept walking. Just before they past another window, she snapped her head sideways and looked at the same spot.
She was sure she saw the face of the AOV member from the coffee shop before he ducked down out of sight.
Chapter 24
Sarah sat in the backseat of the Impala as it warmed up while Kierian and Clint dealt with airport security. After ten minutes with the car’s heater on full, she was about to lean into the front seat to turn the heater down when both doors opened and the FBI men jumped in simultaneously.
Kierian spun around in his seat to address Sarah. “The girl called home to talk to her mother. When her mother got on the phone, she apologized for lying and said she wanted to go home. The perp had said he was nineteen and rich. He has a long list of priors.” Kierian turned back around and patted Clint on the shoulder. “We did good, guys.”
“I’m not a guy,” Sarah said. “And we didn’t do anything. We almost lost him. That was too close.”
As Kierian drove away from the airport, Sarah wondered if she should tell them what she saw.
Would the Angels of Violence attack two FBI agents to get to me?
Something told her they would.
She turned to see if they were being followed. The back window had frosted over, the defroster still working to clear it.
“Sarah, you all right?” Kierian asked.
“Yeah.”
“What’s got your interest behind us?”
She decided it was better they knew. “Thought I saw those AOV guys.”
“Really? Here? You think they’re following us?”
“They said they had a debt to settle.”
“They aren’t going to collect while you’re with us,” Kierian assured her.
“Are you sure about that?” Sarah asked. “Because what you said in the coffee shop …”
“You’re with us. We’re trained agents. Anybody tries anything, we’ll arrest them. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“I wasn’t looking for reassurance. They’re here. I’m sure I saw one of them watching us. Just thought you should know.”
Kierian smiled at her in the mirror.
Asshole.
She dropped down in the seat, tired after a long day of adrenaline and exhausting talks. At least she was wearing a sweater now. She had left the skimpy top in the bathroom garbage at the airport.
They drove past the assembled police cars, swung up on a high ramp and followed it to the 427 heading south toward the downtown area. She didn’t look out the back window again because Kierian was using his rearview mirror enough for the both of them.
She almost fell asleep before they turned off the Gardiner Expressway for Yonge Street.
“I need a coffee when we get out,” she said, happy this day was almost over.
Kierian parked two blocks farther from the police station than before, the coffee shop they had talked in earlier a block away on her left.
They got out and met on the sidewalk.
“Clint, you want a coffee, too?” Kierian asked.
He nodded. Sarah wondered why he didn’t talk much. Was he intimidated in front of women?
They passed an alley. Sarah’s hand numbed.
“Guys. Stop.”
“What?” Kierian turned back. “Something wrong?”
Her arm went numb. “Got something to write with?”
Kierian touched his pockets. Clint did the same. “I have a pen but my pad is in the car.”
Her other hand numbed. “Oh shit. I think you had better run.”
“Why?” Kierian stepped closer. “You’re pale, Sarah. What’s happening?”
“This isn’t a message to write something. Vivian is warning me that danger …” She looked over her shoulder. Then down the alley. Nothing moved.
The numbness left instantly. She flexed her fingers. “She’s trying to tell me something—” The numbing struck with a suddenness she had never felt before. She could barely open her mouth to scream, paralyzed by the sudden control of her muscles.
Then her voice worked. “Ruunnn!”
Both men stepped back at her outburst but didn’t move.
Then Kierian looked past Sarah and had his sidearm out in under a second. Clint did the same.
“FBI. Step back,” Kierian ordered. “Final warning.”
The numbness left her limbs.
She turned to see what the FBI men were looking at.
Four AOV members with facial tattoos were ten feet behind Sarah. In the alley, four more materialized. When she looked back at Kierian and Clint, there were six behind them.