Cutting Loose

by Westlake, Samantha

  In the darkness, Eastman’s face was a study in shadows, but I still thought I saw him wince. “We used the Institute’s system, since we were concerned about getting a good signal in some of these stone-walled galleries,” he admitted. “It had a backup power source, but it would have been easy for Sawyer to remove or disable it in some way.”

  A moment later, Eastman burst into a run. For a second, I stared after him in surprise, and then took off after him. “Wait!” I called after him. “Where are you going?”

  “Checking the galleries. Don’t follow me! Stay here!”

  “No way,” I told myself, although it came out between panting breaths as I ran after him. Damn, but why had I chosen to wear heels to this? I already felt my toes complaining and my ankles starting to burn!

  I managed to only stay a dozen feet or so behind Eastman, a fact which filled me with no small amount of pride. Thankfully, he came to a stop a few feet into the first gallery, letting me catch up.

  “Why did you stop?” I panted up, trying to pull in a full breath despite the constricting dress. It made me look great, but it was not suited to exercise at all! I hadn’t imagined any running when I picked out the outfit!

  In response, he silently panned his flashlight around the gallery. It landed on blank spots on the walls, a few empty frames leaning against the corners. It did not, however, reveal any paintings of strange houses, or giant apples in tiny rooms.

  “All the Magritte paintings?” I asked.

  “He must have had an accomplice, maybe several, clearing them out during the distraction,” Eastman theorized. “They either worked extremely fast, or he was counting on your mother to make a commotion and distract us.”

  I grimaced as I thought of Constance Melton. “Probably pretty easy to guess, to be honest.”

  “He’s not honest. He never was.” Without warning, Eastman took off running again.

  I cursed as I forced my complaining legs to start moving again. “Now where?” I wheezed between panting breaths, unreasonably angry that he had such long legs and an outfit that let him move so freely.

  “Upstairs. We’ve got all the ground level exits covered, but he has to know that. The Institute doesn’t have any tunnels that could get him far. I’m betting that he’s gone to the upper level.”

  “What, now he’s an acrobat?” We’d reached a new obstacle – stairs. I grabbed the handrail with both hands, trying to both help tug me upwards against gravity and keep myself from tumbling down a flight or two of stairs and breaking my foolish neck.

  “He’s done it before. Got away from a bank heist with a zip line.”

  I tried to imagine Sawyer sailing away on a zip line, but between my burning lungs and my wobbly ankles, I didn’t have any leftover energy to devote to my imagination. “This is crazy,” I managed to get out.

  I heard the footsteps ahead and in front of me stop. Eastman, I imagined, had either given up and seen reason, or had reached the top of the stairs. I discovered which option was correct a second later, when my foot rose up for the next step but came down on empty air. Only my grip on the handrail kept me from falling.

  Even still, I wobbled – and then, suddenly, Eastman’s arms were around me again. This time, he wasn’t hugging me as much as he was pulling me onto the landing, keeping me from falling down and injuring or killing myself. “I thought I told you to stay down with the guests,” he growled in my ear.

  “You can’t tell me what to do! You kissed me!” I protested.

  “What?” His breath splashed against my ear as he hauled me to a safe spot, steadied me. “That’s not making sense!”

  “You don’t make sense! You’re so angry, but you kissed me!”

  Damn this darkness! I desperately wanted to know what sort of expression Eastman had on his face now. After a second of silence, he released me, turned around. The beam of his flashlight landed on a door, which opened smoothly and silently when he touched the handle.

  “Where’s that go?” I asked.

  “Roof,” he hissed back, dropping his voice to a whisper. “It was supposed to be locked.”

  “Now what? Call for backup?”

  “No time.” He clicked off the flashlight, reached back under his jacket to the small of his back. The door was still partly open, and by the moonlight shining in, I could get a sense of what he was doing. His hands emerged with something that I first thought was the flashlight – but it had a different shape and he held it wrong.

  It took a second before the shape clicked in my head. “You have a gun?” I gasped.

  “FBI,” he reminded me. Holding the pistol in both hands, he pulled the door further open with his shoulder and stepped through, out onto the roof.

  A little part of me wondered if I should stay here, but the rest of my brain quickly crushed the idea. I’d come this far, and I wasn’t going to chicken out now!

  “Please, don’t let me get shot,” I murmured, and stepped out onto the roof after Eastman.

  The good news, I discovered quickly, was that the roof was flat, instead of being sloped. There was even a low wall around the edges of the roof, making it very difficult for me to possibly fall off.

  The bad news, however, was that someone had decided to cover the roof with loose pebbles. They crunched underfoot, preventing me from moving with any semblance of silence, and each step made them shift beneath my horrible high heels, threatening to dump me unceremoniously on my butt.

  Eastman stood a few steps away, the gun up and pointed outward. “Hold it right there, Sawyer!” he called.

  My eyes tracked from his weapon over to the edge of the roof. My stomach jumped up to my throat. A dark figure stood on the edge of the roof, up on that low wall! I took a couple shaky steps closer as the moonlight fell on the further man’s face. White teeth glinted in the gray moonlight as Sawyer smiled happily back at us.

  “Ah, my nemesis!” he called back, sounding as cheery as always. “Good of you to finally catch up – I was worried I might catch a cold from standing out here in the wind!”

  “Give it up! I’ve got you! There’s nowhere for you to go!”

  Sawyer shook his head, waggling a finger at the FBI agent. “Come now, Eastman,” he replied, not a hint of concern in his voice. “You don’t think I’d be up here waiting for you if I didn’t have my escape all planned out, would I? Have you ever known me to be that sloppy?”

  “I get closer to catching you every time,” Eastman fired back. “Maybe I’ve already stopped your escape plan, and you’ll zip right down into the arms of a SWAT team.”

  “No way to know until I take the plunge,” Sawyer countered. He looked past Eastman, spotted me. “Ah, and my lovely assistant is here! Alice, no hard feelings about all this?”

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to steal anything?” I demanded, shouting at him as I slowly crossed the sea of treacherous gravel, getting closer to Eastman. “You lied!”

  “I did no such thing! I told you certain words, and you drew your own conclusions. Apologies, but I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret if I confessed everything!”

  “Because it’s wrong!” I tried. “Come on, Sawyer! We’re getting paid already for this gala! You don’t need to throw it all away by stealing the art! You could stop, not have to go on the run!”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t see it that way,” he replied to me. “To me, this is the real point of living, the point where I’m most alive. The rest of my life is just leading up to and planning the next moment I get this rush. You can take the payment for the gala – consider it as your final bonus for a job well done! You were my best assistant I’ve had so far!”

  “They’re not going to pay me – my partner is robbing the place!”

  “Weirdly enough, that’s not forbidden in the contract!” He laughed. “Just goes to show that Rudy could use a good assistant of his own to handle this proofreading! I sense a job opportunity for you!”

  “Enough of this!” Eastman sound
ed a bit frustrated, as if he didn’t like being left out of our conversation. “Come on, Sawyer, I’ve got a gun!”

  “You can’t shoot me!” he countered merrily. “You don’t know where I’ve hidden the paintings!”

  “I’m sure I could figure it out from clues on your corpse!” Eastman took a step forward, but Sawyer raised his hand, shaking a finger at him.

  “Now now, Eastman. Give me a moment to finish saying goodbye to my assistant!” Sawyer turned once again to me. “Don’t let your mother get the best of you, Pom. You’re stronger than her, and you can help your sister to become a better person. Don’t get drawn back in!”

  “I won’t!” I called back to him. Somehow, I’d realized that this might really be goodbye, and I felt a lump rising in my throat. “But Sawyer, please, can you try to be a good person after this?”

  If I didn’t know better, I might have thought that he winced. “Pom, you’re making it hard to gloat over pulling off a successful caper, here.”

  “You did pull it off,” I tried, leaning in harder. “All the paintings are gone, and you did that! Isn’t that the best part, not selling it? From what I can tell, you don’t really care that much about the money!”

  That made him pause. I’d managed to advance to stand next to Eastman, now, wobbling on the unsteady pebbles covering the roof. I thought the FBI agent might be holding his breath, hoping that my last, desperate gambit worked.

  “The apartment is paid up through the end of the month,” Sawyer said, after a minute’s pause. “My ride, unfortunately, I’ll need, so you may have to deal with your own transportation. You’ll need to get around to finally fixing that hunk of junk you call a car that’s sitting in my extra parking space.” He let out a loud sigh. “I hate being the good person, but I suppose I can prove to you that I’m not a total degenerate and have a noble side. Just this once, though – don’t expect it on the regular!”

  “Come on, Sawyer, don’t steal it!” I begged, although I felt my hope that this would work starting to drain away.

  He laughed. “See you when I see you, Pom. Now, enjoy your gift – catch!”

  He tossed something at me, something that flew high in the air and caught the moonlight from reflective facets. It arced in front of Eastman, and he groaned as I stepped forward to try and catch the object, blocking his aim at Sawyer. I reached out, just barely managing to snag the tumbling object, and felt it clink into my hand. I looked down at a key fob, along with half a dozen keys.

  I looked back up – and Sawyer was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  * * *

  I stared at the spot on the roof where, just a heartbeat earlier, Darren Sawyer had stood. “What happened?” I got out.

  Eastman put it together before me. “He jumped,” he cursed, running forward to the edge of the roof.

  I dashed forward as well. Down below, I saw someone gliding away, looking strangely like an oversized plastic bag. “What is that? How?”

  “Parachute of some sort. Must have been specially planned to deploy instantly, since we’re so low.” Eastman stood next to me, pointing out the man dangling from a wing of fabric as he zoomed away. Sawyer pulled on the ropes to turn the parachute and slid between two buildings. Just before he vanished around the corner, I could have sworn that he glanced back at us and gave us one last jaunty wave goodbye.

  “Wow. That is…” I let my voice die away as I looked over at Eastman.

  He sighed, shook his head, then looked over at me. “Go ahead and say it.”

  “That is the coolest thing I think I’ve ever seen,” I finished.

  He nodded. “That’s one of the worst parts of chasing after Darren Sawyer. Not only does he keep on getting away, but he always seems to do it with so much effortless style. Really makes me feel like a useless idiot next to him, especially when I have to go report to my bosses the next day.”

  “Aww.” I smiled, reached up to slip an arm over one of his broad shoulders. “I don’t think you’re a useless idiot.”

  “No?” He turned his body a little towards me, but seemed loath to look away from the view, as if he was hoping that Sawyer would come gliding back into the Institute again.

  “Not if that kiss you gave me is any indication of your romance skills. That had definite promise.”

  Finally, he looked at me, and his frown softened. “You better swear to me right now that you had nothing to do with this,” he warned me, even as his lips pulled upward and he set the gun on the balcony, moving both his hands to my waist. “If I find out that I kissed one of Sawyer’s accomplices, I’ll feel like even more of a dope.”

  I lifted one hand, two fingers up like a scout. “I solemnly swear that I had nothing to do with this crime,” I recited.

  “Or any other crime, right?”

  I paused. “What’s the rule on speeding tickets?”

  Instead of answering, he kissed me. Again. It was even better a second time, the warmth of his lips and body contrasting against the chill in the night air.

  “Wow,” I breathed when our lips separated. “And I didn’t even get to suggest that you might need to strip search me.”

  He leaned in, his lips brushing against my ear and making me draw in a sharp breath. “Later,” he whispered, and that single word made all the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up in anticipation.

  Before I could suggest that we had a bit of privacy up here on this roof, I heard an electronic buzz. Eastman started, and then straightened up, raising one finger to his ear. “Yeah, I’m here,” he said, his tone suddenly more businesslike. “He jumped off the roof. Tell me that we had someone spot him go sailing away.” He paused, and I saw his shoulders tighten. “Are you kidding me? How did no one notice a big parachute flying overhead and not figure that it might be significant!?”

  He listened to the static answer but didn’t look satisfied. “Looks like he managed to get away,” he growled to me. “Again.”

  I patted him on the arm. “But you got so close this time. I’m sure that, next time, you’ll find him. I’ll help.”

  “You’ll help?” He looked down at me, and for one horrible moment, I feared that he’d laugh, or put me down. He’d tell me that I was worthless, that I didn’t stop Sawyer from pulling off this heist and maybe even contributed to it happening with the diversion of my mother. He’d walk away, despite that kiss, and I’d be all on my own once again.

  Be strong, Alice! I pulled my spine straighter and nodded, trying to meet Eastman’s eyes in the moonlight.

  A dozen frantic heartbeats later, he nodded. “Good,” he said, and my heart sang as it leapt higher in my chest, shedding the fear I hadn’t realized was weighing it down. “Any idea what those are for?”

  He pointed down at my hand, and I looked at the keys that Sawyer had thrown to me before jumping off. “I thought they were a distraction, so he could get away,” I said.

  “Yes, but there might be another reason. Do you recognize any of them?”

  I held them up to the moonlight, flipping through the different objects on the key ring. “This is the key to his apartment, and this fob gets in through the security gate.”

  “So it’s just the keys to his apartment,” Eastman said, sounding a bit dejected.

  “Yes – but wait, there’s another set of keys on here.” I flipped to those, and he peered a little closer.

  “Those are just car keys,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, but he said that he couldn’t give me his car. And besides, these aren’t to his car – he drives a BMW, and these look like they’re for something else.”

  “Can I see?” I handed them over, and Eastman lifted the car key up to the moonlight. “Ford,” he said after a second, his finger once again rising to his ear. “Look for a Ford vehicle somewhere nearby. Don’t open it until we get there – it might have a booby trap of some sort.”

  He handed the keys back to me. “Let’s go downstairs and figure out the damage,” he sighed.

 
; I winced. “Actually, maybe you could help me? I’m kind of afraid that, after all the excitement and running, my legs feel like they’re going to give out.”

  Eastman took a half step back, gave me an appraising up-and-down that, in my current tight dress, I wasn’t sure if it was totally appropriate. “What’s that about?” I asked.

  “Guessing your weight,” he answered. And then, as I opened my mouth to protest loudly the idea that he should take any shots at that number, he stepped forward and swept me up in his arms!

  The complaints turned into a squawk as I clutched wildly at his neck, but he held me surely and securely as he carried me back over to the stairs leading off the roof. I took off my heels and, gingerly, descended down the stairs (making excellent use of the handrail, just like a geriatric grandmother).

  By the time we reached the main floor, the rest of the FBI squad in Eastman’s ear had new information to report. “There’s a Ford van about three blocks away,” he said. “It’s within range of where Sawyer could have landed with his parachute.”

  “Three blocks? Can we get a ride?”

  He rolled his eyes at me. Somehow, the expression made him appear even cuter.

  “Piggyback?” I tried next.

  “You really think that it looks good for me, an FBI agent, to be running around a crime scene with a woman riding on my back?”

  I tried my best pout on him. It was about as effective as a squirt gun against a wildfire. “Maybe I can find a wheelchair somewhere,” he offered.

  We finally averted disaster when I remembered that, in my change of clothes that I’d been wearing for most of the day, I had packed a pair of flats. Eastman stood nearby, appearing patient except for the annoying tapping of his foot, as I dug them out and slipped them on. “Much better,” I declared. “Let’s go break into that van!”

  “Not happening. Like I said, we don’t know if there are booby traps. That’s the reason we’re waiting on the keys.”

  “Let’s go gently unlock that van!”

  Sure enough, the van was about three blocks away. I also noticed, when we stepped out of the Institute, that about three dozen cops seemed to have materialized on the front lawn. Police cars were parked everywhere, adding their flashing lights to the chaos of the scene, and blocks of police officers were talking with the remaining members of the upper crust as they left the Institute.