The Chase

by Janet Evanovich

  He made a sharp, tire-squealing left in front of the Air China Shanghai Hotel and zoomed east on Yingbin Road, a wide boulevard lined with stores on the south side and the Shanghai Xintianlu Conference Center park along the north.

  Nick saw a police chopper closing in ahead of him. He was out in the open on a wide boulevard in a bright red car with a huge spoiler on the trunk. They wouldn’t be able to miss him.

  The car that Inspector Zhaoji Li was driving was the last in a line of four police vehicles, sirens wailing, that were speeding south on Konggang First Road after a man he presumed was Nicolas Fox. None of the officers could see the Charger anymore, but Zhaoji wasn’t worried. There was no other car like it in Shanghai. It might as well be on fire. In the meantime, they were following the wake of cars Fox had scattered when he charged through oncoming traffic. Zhaoji was surprised that Fox hadn’t caused a single wreck and wondered whether that was by luck or by design.

  Zhaoji was turning left onto Yingbin Third Road when a report came in from one of the police helicopters converging on the area.

  “The assailant is a mile ahead of you, traveling eastbound on Yingbin Third Road toward the Outer Ring Expressway.”

  The inspector smiled to himself. Whether Fox got on the elevated freeway or continued on the road toward the Shanghai Zoo, he’d be easy to corner now. Zhaoji would soon have the glory of catching an international felon. A promotion was definitely in his future. Perhaps he could afford a new overcoat. Maybe move into a larger apartment, too. The chopper pilot’s voice cut into his brief reverie.

  “We’ve lost him,” the pilot said.

  Zhaoji grabbed the mike with one hand while he steered with the other. “What do you mean you’ve lost him? How is that possible?”

  “The car went under the freeway on Yingbin and didn’t come out the other side. Maybe he crashed underneath the overpass.”

  No, he didn’t crash. Zhaoji knew what Fox was doing. The cunning thief was using the elevated freeway to hide from the choppers. Fox was undoubtedly heading south underneath the Outer Ring Expressway, taking it to where it met the Yan’an Elevated Road, the Huyu Expressway, and the Hu Qing Ping Highway in a massive four-level knot of overpasses, interchanges, and sweeping on- and off-ramps above a wooded median. By hiding under all of that concrete and brush, Fox might escape detection from the air, but not the ground. All Fox had managed to do was box himself in.

  “All ground units, the assailant is below the Hu Qing Ping Highway exchange,” Zhaoji said. “Seal it off. Air units, maintain surveillance of the freeways and surrounding roads for the red car in case he makes a break for it.”

  The Charger blazed through the weedy, trash-strewn no-man’s-land beneath the Outer Ring Expressway. Nick tried to avoid hitting the pillars that supported the freeway while also trying to keep control of the car as it bounced over the uneven ground.

  Nick made an abrupt left, flew over a small embankment, and landed hard in the thick brush of the median that was hidden in the shadows underneath three looping overpasses.

  He got out of the car, ran to the back, and popped the trunk. Kate was curled up inside around the two suitcases. She was dazed and bleeding from a fresh cut on her head.

  “Are you all right?” Nick asked, holding his hand out to her.

  “Peachy.” She swatted his hand away. “How did you ever get a driver’s license?”

  “I never said that I did.” He offered her his hand again. “Come on, we have to make a run for it on foot.”

  “You are, I’m not.” She handed him her cell phone, fake ID, credit cards, and passport. “Close the trunk and go.”

  “I know you’re tired and hurting, but it’s too soon to give up. The game isn’t nearly over, and I’ve got plenty of moves left. There are twenty-four million people in Shanghai. Getting lost among them is going to be easy.”

  “For you it will be, but not for me. I’m bruised and bleeding.”

  “We can work around that.”

  “I’d rather use it to my advantage,” she said.

  Nick cocked an eyebrow and regarded her in a new light. “You have a scheme in mind?”

  “Plan C.”

  “We don’t have a Plan C.”

  “We do now. You said we should trust each other to do what each of us does best. Well, now it’s time for you to be a fugitive and for me to be an FBI agent.”

  Nick could hear sirens closing in and helicopters streaking overhead. They didn’t have much time left.

  “Have you got an explanation for the dead body in the cargo hold and how you ended up in China in the trunk of a stolen car driven by the fugitive you’re supposed to be chasing?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “I’d love to hear it.”

  “I’ll share it with you over drinks in L.A.”

  Nick grabbed her, and kissed her, and closed the trunk on her.

  Nick walked up the embankment to Hu Qing Ping Gong Road, which ran along the west side of the freeway interchange. There were no rickshaws, no pagodas, nothing that screamed he was in Shanghai. The signs on the hotels, freight companies, and restaurants were in Chinese and English, but otherwise this could have passed for any airport neighborhood in any city in the United States.

  On the other side of the street was a Motel 168, one of a large chain of Chinese budget accommodations. It was a drab five-story building with MOTEL168.COM spelled out on the roof in huge letters that could be seen by anyone on the freeway interchange, and certainly by the two police helicopters now circling above it.

  As Nick crossed the busy street, drivers barely made an effort to avoid him. He walked calmly, pretending to check his phone for email, so that he’d look like a fearless expat who had done this a thousand times, not a man running from the police.

  Once he reached the other side, he walked past the taxis parked in front of the Motel 168 and strolled into the lobby just as several police cars streaked by the building, sirens wailing. He went directly to the front desk, where he exchanged some U.S. dollars for Chinese yuan, then went back outside and hailed a taxi that took him to the airport Metro station.

  Six police officers, led by Inspector Zhaoji Li, crept up on the Charger, their guns drawn. They could hear pounding and a muffled voice coming from the trunk. As Zhaoji got closer, he could tell that it was a woman’s voice, and that she was calling for help in English.

  Zhaoji sent four officers into the brush to look for the driver. He holstered his gun and slapped the trunk with the palm of his hand to get the attention of whoever was inside.

  “This is the police,” he said in English. “Be still. We’re going to open the trunk.”

  “Make it fast,” she said.

  Zhaoji noted that she didn’t sound scared. She sounded angry.

  He told the remaining officers to cover him. The officers drew their weapons and stood off to one side as Zhaoji opened the trunk.

  Kate blinked at the sudden light and wiped blood from her lower lip with the back of her hand. She was wedged in beside the two metal cases. Clearly, she had recently been beaten and bandaged. There was blood in her hair, and her shirt and jeans were blood-caked.

  In spite of her bloody appearance, Zhaoji thought she didn’t look like a victim. She was focused and angry.

  “I’m Special Agent Kate O’Hare with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” she said. “Tell me you’ve got him.”

  “Who?”

  “Nicolas Fox. Who else?”

  She tried to get up, but Zhaoji held up his hand in a halting gesture.

  “Stay where you are,” he said to her, and then in Chinese he ordered one of the officers to call an ambulance and to alert the other units that Fox might be on foot. That’s when Zhaoji realized that none of his officers knew what Fox looked like beyond the fact that he was a white male in his early thirties. By the time central command sent photos of Fox to every officer in every patrol car, the thief would be long gone, if he wasn’t already.

  The insp
ector turned back to Kate, and he could see her reading the defeated expression on his face.

  “Damn,” she said. “You’ve lost him.”

  He shrugged. “But we have you.”

  Kate sat on a gurney in a windowless exam room at Shanghai United Family Hospital in Hongqiao. She wore a hospital gown, and her right wrist was handcuffed to the bed rail. She’d been examined and X-rayed by a Chinese doctor with the bedside manner of a mortician. Her wounds had been cleaned and freshly bandaged. The whole time, she’d remained under the stony gaze of two expressionless uniformed police officers she’d christened Rigor and Mortis, who stood now on either side of the exam room door. She hadn’t seen the inspector since the ambulance had taken her away from the freeway median almost two hours ago.

  She looked over at Rigor and Mortis. “Could one of you run out and get me a hamburger or something? I’m starving.” Neither officer said a word. “I’ll settle for anything. Fried rice. An eggroll. A bag of Doritos. Whatever you can get from the cafeteria.” The men remained expressionless. She lifted her right arm and rattled the handcuff chain. “I’m locked to the bed, and my ass is hanging out of this gown. I’m not going to escape if one of you goes to get me some food.” Neither man budged or gave any indication he’d even heard her. Maybe they didn’t speak English.

  The door opened and Zhaoji came in. His hair was wet, and his overcoat was soaked. The drizzle had apparently turned into a downpour. There was some mud on his shoes and the cuffs of his pants.

  “How are you feeling?” Zhaoji asked. His English was good, though his Chinese accent was heavy.

  “Hungry. Tired. Pissed off.”

  The inspector said something in Chinese to Rigor, who nodded and left the room. Zhaoji faced Kate. “The doctor says you’ve been slashed with a knife and that you’ve suffered numerous blows to your torso, resulting in substantial bruising, and you possibly have a concussion.”

  Kate jangled her handcuff against the rail again. “Why am I being treated like a criminal?”

  Zhaoji took his wet coat off and draped it over the back of a chair. He wore a white shirt, black tie, and an off-the-rack gray suit that was beginning to fray at the cuffs from years of use. “A woman was killed on Stanley Fu’s plane, and an international fugitive is loose in our city.”

  “I had nothing to do with any of that.”

  “You were on the same plane.”

  “So were Fu, his crew, and his guests. Are they in handcuffs, too?”

  “You have no passport or identification of any kind.”

  “Because they were taken away from me. I told you who I am. I’m FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare. Send my picture and my prints to the U.S. consulate. They’ll confirm it.”

  He shrugged. “You stowed away on a private jet and entered this country illegally.”

  “I was beaten and abducted.”

  “You fled from the plane in a car with Nicolas Fox.”

  “Against my will. I was locked in the trunk.”

  “You were found in the possession of suitcases containing a counterfeit bronze rooster and sophisticated safecracking equipment.”

  “It all belongs to Fox, and if you’re smart, you’ll stop wasting valuable time and uncuff me so I can help you catch him before he disappears.”

  Zhaoji didn’t appear to be in a hurry. He took a leather notebook out of his back pocket, dragged a stool in front of the gurney, and sat down. The deeply creased notebook was curved from being constantly pressed against his butt. All the male cops that she knew had notebooks shaped like that. He pulled a pen from his breast pocket, held it poised over a page, and looked at her with his bloodshot eyes. “Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?”

  “I chased Nicolas Fox for years. I finally caught him and put him behind bars, but he escaped from custody on his way to trial. I’ve been searching for him ever since. Three days ago I got a tip that he was going to steal the bronze rooster, so I went to D.C. to try to catch him in the act.”

  “Without telling your superiors? Without any backup?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ve obviously talked to the FBI and you know who I am. So why am I still handcuffed?”

  “They say you are supposed to be in Los Angeles and that they don’t know why you’re here. They say you’ve gone rogue.”

  It was no surprise to her that Bolton had thrown her under the bus, but at least now they knew that she and Nick had pulled off the switch. Nick’s cover was safe. He was a fugitive before and still was. But their covert operation was still at risk. Bolton probably had his intestines tied in knots worrying about whether she’d be able to walk away from this without being exposed as Fox’s accomplice. It all rode on how this interview with Zhaoji turned out.

  “They’re pencil-pushing bureaucrats,” Kate said. “I’m sure it’s the same here.”

  He shrugged again.

  She knew it was his way of being noncommittal and keeping her talking. She was glad to play along.

  “I knew the tip wasn’t strong enough to get them to approve a trip to D.C.,” Kate said, “so I went on my own. My bosses call it going rogue, I call it showing some initiative. It’s the only way you’re going to catch a man like Nicolas Fox.”

  Rigor came back with a bowl of white rice and a set of chopsticks, which he offered to Kate. She nodded her thanks and took it, though she would have preferred a cheeseburger.

  “If you believed the rooster was at risk,” Zhaoji said, “why didn’t you alert anyone at the Smithsonian, or in Stanley Fu’s company, or in the Chinese government?”

  “Because if I did that,” Kate said, “they would have reacted by increasing their security or changing their plans in some way, which would have scared Fox off and blown my opportunity to get him. By the time I got to D.C, the rooster had already been delivered to the cargo hold of Fu’s jet and nothing unusual happened during the trip. So I assumed that Fox hadn’t stolen the rooster yet, which meant that he had to make his move while the plane was on the tarmac at Dulles, or while it was in midair, or once it landed in Shanghai. It was obviously going to be in the air.”

  Zhaoji looked confused. “Why?”

  “Because airports are high-security locations these days. He’d need manpower and weapons to pull off the theft at one of the airports, and that just isn’t his style. But midair he wouldn’t have to worry about security, and he’d have hours alone with the safe to crack the combination. Plus it was a ballsy play, pure Nick Fox. All I had to figure out was how he was going to do it.”

  “You make it sound easy. Seems to me it would be the hardest part.”

  “Not if you’ve been chasing Fox as long as I have,” Kate said, finishing her rice. “I looked into Fu’s activities while he was in D.C. and discovered that he’d purchased the Charger and intended to take it on his plane. If I was a thief, I’d hide in the Charger and sneak onto the plane. So the night before Fu was supposed to leave D.C., I went out to the car dealer in Bethesda, slipped inside the building, and caught Nick Fox turning the backseat of the Charger into a secret compartment.”

  Zhaoji had been taking notes as she spoke, but now he stopped and met her eye. “You’re an FBI agent and an ex–Navy commando. You could probably kill all three of us right now with those chopsticks. Do you really expect me to believe that Fox disarmed you, beat you up, and locked you in the trunk of the car?”

  Kate set her chopsticks down in the empty bowl, and Mortis quickly snatched the bowl from her. Okay, she thought, now I know two things. The inspector is a lot smarter and more informed than he lets on, and the stone-faced guards clearly understand English.

  “I got the drop on Fox,” she said. “But what I didn’t know was that he had an accomplice, a highly trained BlackRhino operative with a switchblade. She came out of nowhere and took me by surprise. We had a fight. She won. Next thing I knew, I woke up in the trunk of the car in the cargo hold of Fu’s airplane.”

  “Why didn’t she kill you?”

 
“Fox must have stopped her.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he isn’t a killer.”

  “But Alexis Poulet was,” Zhaoji said. “Before she joined BlackRhino, she was a spy and assassin for DCRI, the French intelligence service.”

  “That’s irrelevant. Fox doesn’t kill people. His con, his rules, that’s how he rolls.”

  Zhaoji took his cell phone out of his inside jacket pocket, tapped a few keys, then turned the screen toward Kate so she could see the picture of the dead BlackRhino operative stuffed into the jetboat storage compartment. “Then who did this?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “I was locked in the trunk. I was given a couple bottles of water, but beyond that I have no idea what went down. I heard some arguing, raised voices, but I don’t know what was said. I had no idea the woman was killed. Like I said, it’s not Fox’s style. Maybe someone else is involved.”

  “Was Fox the one who dressed your wounds?”

  “I assume so. When I woke up, I was already bandaged.”

  “It’s one thing not to kill you, it’s another to treat your injuries while he’s in the middle of a heist.”

  She shrugged. Two could play that game.

  He cocked his head and looked at her as if seeing her in a new light. “He cares about you.”

  “Fox only cares about himself and his image. He wanted me alive and well to do what I’m doing right now, telling his side of the story.”

  “Perhaps.”

  The inspector’s face betrayed nothing. She couldn’t tell if he believed her or not, if she’d be sent home or to prison. Zhaoji stood up, slipped the notebook back into his pocket, and walked out, leaving her handcuffed and alone with Rigor and Mortis once again.