“Where are you?” he whispered.
Emma stuck her head out of the closet, whispered back, “I still don’t have the suitcase.”
Are you fucking kidding me? Fury rose up in him. “Fuck the damn suitcase. That guy is going to come fucking murder us in five fucking seconds! Now get your fucking ass out here.”
She looked at him, surprised.
Yeah. He’d surprised himself a little.
“Please,” he added.
Then Francis looked down and saw it.
The narrow space between the vanity and the wall near the window was almost exactly the same size and shape as the alligator-skinned suitcase. Francis had been standing over it the whole time. He reached in and grabbed it by the handle, lifted it up to show Emma.
Her mouth fell open. Surprise, relief, gratitude in her eyes.
Francis pulled the suitcase through the window, motioned for Emma to follow. Get your ass out here!
Emma took half a step toward him.
The doorknob rattled, slowly began to turn. Her eyes shifted to the knob and went wide. She stepped back, pressing herself flat against the wall in the space behind the door. Slowly the bedroom door swung open.
Francis whipped back out of sight, back against the bricks to the side of the window. He held the suitcase with a white-knuckled grip, held his breath and listened. He glanced over the side of the fire escape. It was rusty and rickety, and he didn’t trust the railings. It would be a long fall.
A vague sense of movement from within the bedroom, shoes shuffling on carpet. Francis imagined Emma standing stock-still behind the door, holding her breath just like Francis was. He waited, expecting any second to hear Emma scream, to hear a gunshot.
The sounds faded. Silence. Francis counted to sixty. Slowly.
Cautiously, he edged back toward the window, turn his head to peek inside—
A flash of movement, and Francis’s heart lurched, a scream of terror stuck in his throat. Wings flapping. The pigeon cooed as it flew away, landing on the roof of the building across the alley.
A pigeon. Jesus. Francis blew out a relieved burst of breath, turning back to the window—
Two arms shot through the open window and latched on to the suitcase.
“Gimme that fucking thing!” Cavanaugh yelled.
A surge of adrenaline shot through Francis. He put a foot against the windowsill, yanked back with everything he had, but Cavanaugh had a death grip on the suitcase.
“Let go, kid,” Cavanaugh said. “Just leave it and beat it out of here. You don’t want any part of this.”
He was right. That was the thing, Francis realized. This wasn’t his suitcase. None of this was his problem. All he had to do was let go.
He pulled harder.
Through the window’s dirty glass, he saw a figure loom up behind Cavanaugh.
Emma reached past Cavanaugh, grabbed the window, and slammed it down on his forearms. Hard.
Cavanaugh threw his head back, howled like an enraged animal. He let go of the suitcase. He struggled to open the window, but it was stuck again, and he was bent awkwardly, struggled to pull himself free.
Francis tucked the suitcase under one arm and didn’t look back. The fire escape swayed and rattled and creaked alarmingly as he flew down the narrow, rusty stairs. The fire escape ended ten feet short of the ground. Francis jumped. In midair, he remembered his injured knee and twisted to take the brunt of the landing with the other leg. He hit and rolled into a stack of trash bags. Some of the trash bags dislodged and fell on top of him, one leaking something foul smelling down the back of his shirt.
He pushed the bags off him, staggered to his feet, and scanned the trash pile for the suitcase. He had to dig through the garbage, but he found it, snatched it by the handle, and picked a direction to run.
Francis rounded the corner of the building, slammed on the brakes, and backpedaled. He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and then looked back around the corner cautiously.
They must have ditched the car they’d smashed up against the Dumpster and gotten a new one, another black sedan newer and bigger. Francis recognized the bald one behind the wheel.
Cavanaugh and the other one with the mustache emerged from Amanda’s building, Emma walking between them and looking a hell of a lot calmer than Francis would have. Cavanaugh’s right hand was in his jacket pocket, and Francis knew he was grasping that little silver automatic. The one with the mustache had dark circles under his eyes and a piece of metal fastened across his nose with white surgical tape.
They ushered Emma into the back seat of the sedan, and two seconds later, the car eased into the flow of traffic, heading uptown.
That’s it, then, said a little voice inside Francis’s head. Time to go to the police, give them the suitcase, tell them everything.
But another surprise voice piped up and said, Do something, chickenshit.
7
Harrison Gunn stood in the middle of Berringer’s living room and scanned the place one more time, hands in pockets, rocking heel to toe and wondering how the man had even gotten involved. Berringer didn’t add up. The NSA had been chasing the girl for weeks, knew her connection to Middleton, but Berringer had come out of nowhere, a completely new wrinkle to the hunt. An old college boyfriend? A distant relation? The mainframe in DC had done a search and hadn’t come up with anything.
Francis Berringer was a complete nothing. So much so that it made Gunn suspicious.
“We’ve been over everything, sir. Twice,” said the agent in charge of the forensics team. “We failed to turn up anything useful.”
“I’d had higher hopes,” Gunn admitted. “Agent, you don’t think…”
“Sir?”
Gunn had been about to wonder out loud if Berringer was perhaps in the employ of some foreign entity. Russian hackers would pay top dollar. Or the Chinese. If somebody got to the girl before the NSA …
“Never mind, Agent,” Gunn said. “Just letting my mind wander. This Berringer fellow is a sudden unknown factor, and we all know how sudden unknown factors offend my natural sense of tidiness.”
The agent smiled weakly. “Yes, sir.”
“You’re running his prints?”
“We found two sets throughout the apartment,” the agent said. “We’re running them both.”
“Let’s put our sudden, unknown Mr. Berringer on the watch list, shall we?”
“It’s already been done,” the agent said. “If he so much as uses his library card, we’ll know it.”
Gunn looked at the agent with a mild expression of pleasant surprise. “Have you really? Already? Well, good for you, Agent. Good for you.”
* * *
The black Mercedes JetVan raced up the highway toward Sonoma.
When the company had started to grow and the money began rolling in, Middleton had briefly allowed himself to be carted around in a limousine. He’d hated it instantly. First, he had the foolish feeling he was always on his way to some prom. Not that he’d actually gone to his prom. Middleton had not quite come into his own while still in high school.
Secondly, the limousine seemed an absurd waste. Not the cost. Indeed, the JetVan cost five times what the limo did after Middleton paid to have it custom made into a mobile office. A desk, leather seats, multiple monitors all showing CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and various other feeds, all the stock markets from around the world. A mini kitchen and a lounge area. A partition separated passengers from the driver. Satellite connection.
No, it wasn’t that the limousine was so much a waste of money. More like a waste of time. When Middleton began his company in a two-room office above a hardware store, his hours had been spent huddled over a computer in a small room, coding coding coding. With success came meetings and meetings and meetings. Such long, endless, ridiculous, useless meetings. Too many people in this world loved to talk and talk and talk. This meant Middleton logged hundreds of miles a year zigzagging back and forth between meetings. The hours in the back of th
e limo were wasted.
Thus the mobile office in the JetVan. They had become the most productive hours in his day. The miles blurred past, and Middleton ticked items off his to-do list.
Meredith had pointed out that Aaron Middleton was a rich and powerful individual and that the vast majority of those who wanted a meeting with him would gladly make the trip to wherever Middleton happened to be. If the price of admission was to gather around a hot tub while Middleton soaked naked, sipping a piña colada, then so be it. It had been Meredith who’d made him fully realize that the word billionaire meant something.
But really it was too late. Middleton had already fallen in love with the mobile office. He liked the idea of being a moving target—so to speak. And although he understood Meredith had been exaggerating to make a point, the idea of an audience while Middleton soaked naked in a hot tub was unspeakably off-putting.
Winning Meredith over to the JetVan had been as simple as keeping the mini fridge well stocked.
“There’s Pellegrino,” she said, bending to examine the fridge’s contents.
“Do you feel the interview went well?” Middleton asked.
“I do.”
“So do I,” Middleton said. “Let’s celebrate with something stronger. Is there a Michelob Ultra?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I feel like a beer.”
“I’m not sure Michelob Ultra qualifies as beer.” She opened one and handed him the bottle.
She selected a Diet Dr Pepper for herself.
“How is the house coming?”
“Soon,” Meredith said. “They told me soon when I asked this morning.”
Middleton frowned. “They’ve been saying that for a week and a half.”
Meredith shrugged. “Contractors.”
“Is Pete on-site?”
“Probably,” Meredith said.
Middleton sipped beer, pulled his tie loose. “Vid him in, will you?”
“Okay,” she said. “Give me a minute to arrange the secure satellite connection.”
“I wonder what our own satellite would cost.”
She laughed.
“What?”
“You asked me the same thing two weeks ago,” Meredith said.
“I did?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you find out?”
“I did find out,” she said. “And when I told you, you said, ‘Never mind.’”
Oh, yeah. Middleton did have a vague recollection of such a conversation. He seemed to remember a similar conversation about buying an island. And another conversation about buying the San Diego Padres. He made a mental note to give Meredith a raise. What she saved him in outlandish impulse purchases would be well worth it.
A few minutes later, they had Pete on the closest monitor to Middleton’s desk.
“Pete, my man, tell me what I want to hear.”
“We’re definitely in the home stretch, Mr. Middleton.” Pete’s smile was genuine, believable.
Pete Levin didn’t know anything about building a house or landscaping or interior design. Pete was a dapper sight, with his fashionable red-framed glasses and houndstooth check jacket and bow tie and perfectly oiled hipster mustache complete with handlebars. Middleton tried to imagine the man holding a hammer and failed. But Middleton didn’t consider they were simply “building a house.” It was a project far more massive than that, and such an enterprise demanded Pete’s organizational skills. The man ate, slept, and breathed timetables, work flowcharts, budgets, and construction regulations. He was known for his catchphrase: Let’s put a stop to all the grab-ass and make it right and hurry.
“The former Epcot Imagineers were here this morning to oversee the installations they designed,” Pete reported. “The last bit of landscaping is being watered in now. We had to get a waiver from the county because of the watering ban, but we handled it. The bureaucracy has honestly been a nightmare. It would have been simpler to build a space station.”
“Uh-huh.” Middleton nodded along, sipping beer.
Pete went on about various permit problems and labor disputes that had been handled with his usual cool proficiency. Middleton’s attention drifted, his eyes going to Meredith.
She’d kicked off her shoes and had propped her feet up on the chair across from her. Middleton had noticed before that she almost never wore stockings or hose. Her legs were smooth, feet slender, toes pink and pedicured and perfect. The red toenail polish matched her fingernails.
He tore his eyes away from her, face blushing and warm. Aaron Middleton had never been a people person. He’d found women especially difficult, like some alien species, but he knew enough not to jeopardize a good employer-employee relationship by forcing the issue. There was almost nobody in his life he trusted the way he trusted Meredith Vines. If he made his feelings known, and Meredith found it a violation, would she leave? Demand some outrageous sexual harassment settlement? He couldn’t risk it. He needed her.
He’d needed a woman once before, and she’d betrayed him. Her actions threatened him even now, threatened everything he’d built. He felt that sudden anger well up within him, that involuntary clenching of his fists. He didn’t like it when the anger suddenly surfaced. He prided himself on always maintaining control, but it was a lie. So many times he was barely keeping it together. This thing with his wife was pushing all his buttons. It wasn’t fair. That one person could take everything away seemed a grotesque injustice.
I won’t let you take away the one thing I love. I won’t let you.
Meredith sipped Dr Pepper through a bendy straw and read a copy of Forbes. A strand of hair had come loose, and she idly tucked it back behind an ear. Middleton could watch her forever.
“Sir?”
Middleton jerked his attention back to the monitor. “Sorry, Pete. You were saying?”
“They are still bringing all the computer and security systems online,” Pete said. “They’re calling it the most advanced, fully automated single-family residence in the world. Modern Living called again about a photo layout. The editor seemed pretty eager about it.”
“Never mind Modern Living,” Middleton said. “When can I move in?”
“The trucks with the furnishings and other household items are here,” Pete said. “They’re waiting for the inspectors to give the final—”
“Incentivize the inspectors to hurry.” Pete was a good man. He’d know what that meant. “Grease the wheels, Pete. Tell the movers to furnish the bedroom and the kitchen if there’s too much to do it all. They can do the rest tomorrow. I want to sleep in my own house tonight.”
“Yes, sir,” Pete said. “The movers are union. I presume it’s okay to—”
“Double time. Triple. I don’t care,” Middleton said.
“I’ll get it done.”
“Thank you, Pete.”
Middleton killed the connection. He glanced back at Meredith.
She didn’t look up from her magazine, but her mouth spread into an amused grin. The woman had respect for him, but nothing like fear. He loved that about her.
“You don’t approve?” he asked.
A very slight shrug. “You’re the boss.”
8
Francis watched the sedan pull away and figured that was it. She was gone.
So what can you do, dumbass? Nothing, that’s what. Go to the police. Tell them the whole story. They can help her. It’s out of your hands.
Everything he told himself made sense. Everything he told himself made him feel sick in his stomach with failure.
And then the sedan stopped at a red light. A long, agonizing second passed as Francis felt his brain making a bad, bad decision. Nothing he could think of would talk his brain out of it.
He turned his head, looked back down the street. A taxi was coming. He ran to the curb, flagged it down. It pulled up and let him in.
The cabbie turned around and looked at him. “Where you going?”
Francis pointed ahead and said something he
’d secretly wanted to say all his adult life. “Follow that car.”
The cabbie looked at him.
Francis looked back.
The cabbie was a beefy guy in his midfifties, big potato nose, saddlebags under his eyes. Wide ears like fleshy barn doors. He probably had a name like Sal or Vinnie. Francis glanced at the cabbie’s license. Brad. Close enough.
“Let me tell you something, mister,” the cabbie said.
Shit.
“I been a cabbie in this fucking city for twenty-eight fucking years. You hear me?”
Ohhhhhh, shit.
“And finally—today—finally somebody asks me to follow that car.”
What?
“You just made my fucking day, buddy.” Brad put the car into gear just as the light turned green. “Let’s get after him.”
They pulled into traffic and caught up with the sedan, two cars in between them. The traffic flowed easily around them. Francis wondered where Cavanaugh could be taking the girl. What Francis might do when he caught up to them was another serious question for which no obvious answer presented itself.
He clearly hadn’t thought this through, but if he had, he probably wouldn’t have been sitting there in the back of a taxi.
The cabbie’s eyes met Francis’s in the rearview mirror. “So what is it? You a cop? We after some asshole?”
“I’m not a cop,” Francis said.
The cabbie’s eyes again in the mirror. “No, I guess not. You don’t look the type. No offense.”
“None taken.” The sedan changed lanes ahead. “Don’t lose them.”
“‘Don’t lose them,’ he says. Teach your grandmother how to suck eggs?”
Francis had no idea what he’d meant by that.
The cabbie switched lanes to a chorus of blaring horns.
“So what is it?” Brad asked.
“What’s what?”
“What’s the deal? Who we chasing?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” Francis said.
“Give me the Reader’s Digest version.”
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