by Tom Barber
‘Shit,’ he whispered.
‘The brothers?’ Kat asked.
‘It must’ve been.’ So they got out of Ohio too, he thought, and shot their way through another roadblock it sounded like, which would now put a stranglehold on every road and waterway in this region. The sons of bitches had killed more cops and another two members of the public. Nicky thought again of how he’d used Brooks and Billy to get out of Gatlin for his own ends and the weight on his conscience increased.
But he couldn’t focus on that right now; time was quickly running out for making a decision about what to do next. As they headed into a borough called North East, Nicky saw signs leading to I-90 and the NY State border. They were getting almost too close to turn back, with all the roadblocks and waiting armed officers and sniffer dogs.
He took an exit onto a quieter road, needing a moment to regroup and think, and after a relatively short distance he and Kat found themselves in more rural surroundings. His fake ID had gotten him out of Virginia when he’d first escaped from Gatlin, and it had been accepted by the liquor store clerk in Erie so it had passed two tests, but with no registration, no keys in the ignition, Kat still very weak and clearly injured, a bag of money in the car, and both their descriptions now out there? They didn’t have the remotest chance in hell of getting over in the stolen Jeep.
Trying to come up with a solution, and requiring more time to consider their options without having to dodge cop cars and roadblocks, Nicky continued down the road and reached a small parking lot beside a lookout spot. He stopped and put the car in Park, the engine still running. There was another vehicle parked about six or seven spaces over and a man who had to be the driver was eating something out of a foil wrapper as he sat on a bench looking out at the water, apparently admiring the view. A guy just enjoying a quite Sunday lunch.
Nicky closed his eyes; he didn’t want to ruin another innocent person’s day and scare the hell out of them, but this was desperation time. Sorry for this, man, he thought, before getting out of the stolen Jeep and approaching the stranger, who looked over and was about to nod a greeting until he saw Nicky pulling a revolver from his pocket.
THIRTY SEVEN
The guy’s lunch dropped forgotten to the ground the moment he saw the handgun. He looked to be about ten years older than the two fugitives and of average height, although slightly thicker-set than Nicky; he was wearing spectacles, light blue jeans and a tucked-in casual shirt. ‘Don’t do that, keep your hands down,’ Nicky said quickly when the man started to raise them. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
‘B-barry,’ he stammered, slowly lowering his hands as Nicky did a quick doublecheck to make sure there was no-one else around. ‘My name’s Barry.’
‘You alone?’ Nicky asked. Barry nodded quickly. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Eating…eating my lunch.’
‘I see that; I meant in the area.’
‘I work for a pet food company. I’m driving to a conference starting tomorrow. In…in Syracuse.’
‘Give me your ID and cell phone,’ Nicky told the man. ‘Quick.’ The man pulled his wallet from his jeans, extracted his driving license with shaking hands and passed it over. Nicky saw his full name was Barrington Marsh. ‘And the cell. Unlock the screen first.’
The man did as he was ordered and handed it over. Nicky immediately removed the PIN from the phone in the settings, then snapped a photo of the ID before passing the license back. The siren of an emergency vehicle echoed through the trees, coming up from the interstate; a reminder that time was trickling away relentlessly through the sandglass.
The window of opportunity to get out of here was closing, fast.
‘I’m gonna text a photo of your license to a friend,’ Nicky told the frightened salesman. ‘He’s the president of a motorcycle club with chapters all over the country. He doesn’t hear from me in an hour, you’ll be getting a visit from them. But you help us out, I’ll call him once this is done and it’ll be like you and me never met. Understand?’
The man stared at him, his eyes almost perfect circles behind the spectacles.
‘Barry?’ Nicky prompted quickly.
He nodded jerkily. ‘I understand.’
‘Come with me.’ The man got up and walked slowly ahead of Nicky over to the Jeep. ‘We’re boxed in on all sides,’ Nicky said, showing Kat the phone after having opened a navigation map application; there were hazard triangles on every road that crossed into New York State. Blocks, barriers, dogs, guns, and State troopers. He knew they were both looking at twenty five-plus years inside, maybe even life after so many had been killed thanks to the Loughlins.
But only if they got caught.
‘Can we…stay here?’ she asked. ‘My side hurts, Nick. I need to rest.’
‘I know, but we gotta get out now. The doc’s disappearance will be noticed any minute if it hasn’t already and they’ll be putting an alert out for the Jeep’s plates as soon as the owner reports it missing.’ Nicky turned to check out Barry’s large white Audi. ‘What storage space do you have in there?’ he asked the man, who was visibly trembling now as he looked back and forth at the pair. He’d been listening to the radio before he’d stopped at the lookout point and like Tejwani before him, had just realized who Nicky and Kat were.
‘Er…the trunk. Spare tire well.’
‘First place they’ll check,’ Kat said quietly. ‘And I won’t…fit.’
‘There’s behind the front seats, too,’ Barry added quickly. ‘You can f-f-fold the rear seats down, leaves quite a big gap in the footwell. I use it when the trunk is full sometimes.’ He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. ‘Lying down, she could squeeze in.’
‘Show me.’ He and Nicky went to Barry’s car, an Audi SQ8; the man opened the nearside back passenger door and released a catch on the side of the seat.
It popped out slightly, and after he folded it over, Nicky knelt to see a space underneath.
‘That might work,’ he said quietly, as the high-pitched wail from another cruiser on the highway reached them through the trees. ‘It’s gonna have to. Help me get her out, man.’
Across the border in Chautauqua County, NY, a gray SUV was approaching two police cruisers parked to one side of the highway; the officers inside checked it out as the vehicle passed but lost interest when they saw it was a woman driving. They were looking for two large, bearded men and another smaller man with tattoos covering his arms driving stolen, bullet-riddled Erie PD cop cars, not a gray seven-seater with a soccer mom behind the wheel.
But if they’d looked closer, they’d have seen all wasn’t as it should be.
‘Stop crying,’ Brooks told the woman from where he was lying on the flattened back seats, the barrel of his rifle pushed low into her side. His brother was jammed in beside him, the two bags holding the titanium box from the heist and their guns resting between them, Billy not taking his eyes off the driver who was visibly shaking as she gripped the wheel tight with both hands.
They’d dumped the Erie police cruiser on a country road just over the State line after they’d seen the SUV driving their way in the distance and had pulled across the highway to block her. Billy had stepped out and held the terrified woman at gunpoint while his brother reversed the damaged cop car off the road and out of sight. They’d kept one of the dead officer’s radios, and both brothers were listening in closely, making the most of it while they were still in range.
But the two fugitives had achieved something Nicky and Kat hadn’t yet: they were now in New York State.
‘Thought Frank might run on us, once we broke his ass out of the joint,’ Billy grumbled, holding his upper arm which was still bleeding after being winged by a bullet from Archer’s rifle. ‘Lying sack of shit.’
‘We’ll find him later, forget about it.’ Using the woman’s cellphone, Brooks was looking at the border between Pennsylvania and NY near Erie. It was clogged up all over with roadblocks on the main routes out, including the one w
here they’d shot and killed the four officers and the two college kids in the Winnebago. He’d been reading the updates on Reyes as they came in and had discovered their fellow former C Block resident was also in the area. He’d have to be trying to get out as well, just like them.
‘He ain’t making it through that,’ Billy said, after his brother showed him the map with the red triangles and told him Reyes was in the region. ‘They’ll scoop him up along with the cash if he tries.’
‘The guy ain’t stupid. He got out of Gatlin, remember.’
‘By using us.’
‘So he might end up using someone else. We better hope he makes it.’
Billy looked puzzled. ‘What?’
‘You want a titanium mystery bullshit box we can’t open or the millions he’s carrying around right now?’ Brooks snapped, looking at the screen. ‘I saw the bitch drop the second bag she was lugging when I shot her. It was heavy; much heavier than this one. That’s the one packed with dollar bills.’ His eyes shifted to the holdall they had from the heist, containing the lockbox and nothing else. ‘We can’t get into that thing right now without spending time we ain’t got and ending up destroying whatever’s inside. Even if it’s worth something, we need cash, little brother. Fast. Especially now Frank took off.’
‘And you think Reyes will wanna make a deal? You just said he ain’t stupid.’
Brooks pointed at an engraving on the lockbox. K O’M, it said: Kat O’Mara. ‘His girl risked twenty five to life to get this. Now we need to find him.’ One advantage of the news reports was he was able to keep track of his fellow escapee’s whereabouts. ‘Use your brain, Reyes,’ he muttered, before dialing and calling a number.
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s me again,’ he told the man who answered, their cousin Cusick, Brooks’ visitor at Gatlin on the same afternoon Kat had met with Nicky a few days ago. He’d bought a disposable phone in preparation for the brothers’ escape, Brooks memorizing the number, and with him calling Cusick on it from random phones, he knew the calls couldn’t be intercepted or easily traced by the US Marshals or police.
‘The hell are you? Pennsylvania’s starting to glow red hot looking for you guys.’
‘It’s good, we got over into New York. We’re heading north.’ Brooks glanced at the woman behind the wheel; she was rigid in her seat and taking rapid, hitched shallow breaths, her vocal cords seeming to have locked as tight as the Granit padlock on the titanium box. She hadn’t said more than two words since they’d taken her hostage, seeming almost catatonic with fear. ‘Where are you?’
‘Parked in a lot near Rochester, waiting on your call like you said.’
‘Anyone watching?’
‘Not right now. Made sure I weren’t followed, but there’s police all over the area back home. Place is crawling with cops.’
‘Need you to get your ass down here to Chautauqua County and come pick us up. I’ll tell you where once you’re closer. Get moving.’ Brooks then paused, looking back at the titanium lock box with K O’M on the front, the heavy-duty lock seemingly impossible to release without the key. ‘Bring a can of spray paint too.’
‘Spray paint?’
‘Just do it.’
‘Tell me the story again,’ Nicky said to Barry, returning from the lake’s edge at the lookout point just outside Erie. He’d quickly stripped off to scrub himself with some soap and shave, using items from a washbag he’d found in Barry’s overnight bag. He’d taken the man’s car keys with him, the unassuming and terrified salesman having had his hands tied to the steering wheel with Kat in the back holding the revolver on him.
‘We’re going to the conference in Syracuse,’ Barry recited nervously, as Nicky dried off with a towel also lifted from the bag, before using deodorant and a small amount of cologne. ‘You work with me in the company.’
‘My name?’ Nicky asked, starting to button up a shirt from a suit that Barry had had hanging off a hook in the back of his car.
‘Stephen Rydell. From Dayton, Ohio.’
‘And if you try to give the cops a signal?’
‘She’ll shoot the first officer who tries to open up the backseat. Then me.’
Nicky finished dressing; the shoes were too small but he wasn’t planning on wearing them long, and although Barry was carrying more weight than Nicky, his suit didn’t look too bad a fit. As he zipped up the fly, he realized he hadn’t worn a suit since his father’s funeral when he was sixteen. He hadn’t worn anything other than prison orange for over a decade since Friday morning.
‘If this works please let me go.’
‘If it does, you have my word.’ Nicky checked the pockets on the dirty jeans he was relieved to be leaving behind in exchange for the suit pants and saw he had sixty four bucks left from when he’d bought supplies at the Wegmans, Lowes and liquor store. It went into his pocket, along with his fake ID, the Leatherman pocketknife going into the bag of cash which he stuffed into the rear footwell. ‘Time to lie down,’ he told Kat.
He helped ease her across the footwell of the car beside the money and settled her in as comfortably as he could before covering her with a blanket. He folded the seat carefully over and pulled some of the boxes in the trunk forward to cover it.
‘You good?’ Nicky called.
‘Not really,’ she replied faintly. ‘I’ll be OK.’ Pause. ‘Just hurry.’
Nicky opened the front passenger door, but before he got in, thought of the vinegar and bleach he’d used when he’d escaped from Gatlin. When he’d passed the roadblock leaving Ohio, he’d seen sniffer dogs, and knew they were almost definitely being used at all the blocks on I-90 and 86. They were going to be his biggest threat.
Then he had an idea. Keeping hold of Barry’s keys, he went to the trunk and carefully peeled back the tape on two of the boxes. He removed a couple of cans from each and picking up a rock, bashed in their sides. Then he pulled the rings, dipped his finger into each can and smeared some of the contents onto the untouched packets and other cans, before slotting the now-damaged ones back in place and resealing the boxes, making sure there was no sign they’d been tampered with.
He went down to the water to rinse his hands off and looked up at the midday sun as he did so. Gonna be nowhere in the dark you can hide for long, Prez had warned him, the night before Nicky’s escape. Charged with nervous energy, and knowing Kat was suffering in silence in her hiding place with her pain only getting worse in those cramped conditions, the fourth Gatlin fugitive jogged back to the car and climbed inside.
He untied Barry, threw the binds out of the window, then passed him back his keys. ‘Anyone asks, the cans burst sometimes. Got it?’
‘Yeah.’
Nicky found a pack of gum in the inner pocket of the suit jacket and popped a piece into his mouth. ‘I-90. Let’s go.’
Twenty minutes later, Kat’s heart was racing as she heard muffled voices; she was getting hotter and increasingly uncomfortable in her hiding place, covered with a blanket and with the A/C turned off. She knew she couldn’t last like this much longer.
The excited barks of a dog had come from outside and she’d heard whoever was out there open the trunk.
Right now, she was barely daring to breathe.
She was cramped, in pain and increasingly light-headed despite having two functioning lungs again; her new shirt was damp with sweat, the gun she was holding slippery in her hands. She was gripping it too tight and relaxed her hand; having the revolver go off because she’d unintentionally squeezed the trigger would be unforgiveable, especially after all Nicky had done for her.
He’d spelt out to the guy who owned this car what Katherine would do to any officer or trooper who found her, but they both knew that was a lie. She’d meant what she’d told Nicky at Gatlin on Thursday, she’d never wanted anyone to get hurt during any of this. How naïve that hope had been in hindsight had immediately become obvious the moment the shooting started on East Superior, Erica, her brother and the other two thieves on the j
ob all killed on the spot, and was being reinforced with every second of sharp, stabbing pain from her torso. Nicky had warned her this wasn’t going to go to plan and she should’ve listened, but desperation had warped her thinking. She saw that now. But too late.
‘If that’s how much was stolen, your suspects need to rethink their business strategy,’ she heard Nicky say outside. Face to face, talking with the police, but somehow staying calm. The policemen standing out there with him would have seen his old Gatlin photo, but he’d matured a lot in the years since, the decade-plus of prison life etched into his face making him almost unrecognizable from the eighteen year old who’d been sentenced to twelve years for manslaughter. He’d also pushed his hair back after washing in the lake, shaved and was wearing the suit. The doctor who’d removed the bullet out of her side would’ve told police what she and Nicky had been wearing at the motel, the federal fugitive now dressed completely differently.
She hoped altogether it would be enough.
‘Who said anything about money being stolen?’
‘We’ve been listening to the radio. Heard what happened in Cleveland yesterday. Guessing that’s why you guys are here.’
She kept waiting, breathing as quietly and steadily as she could, her side burning now the whiskey and painkillers had worn off. Every movement made it feel like there was a clump of barbed wire packed inside the right side of her body, slicing into her internal organs. But then after another muffled comment she couldn’t quite hear, she heard the front doors open and close, seatbelts get clicked on, then the engine started again.
Once no-one disturbed the blanket, she finally dared to start hoping they were through.
They drove on for what felt like an age, Kat not daring to make a sound until they pulled over and the seat and blanket were lifted up.
‘We made it?’ she asked, as Nicky nodded before helping her out.
‘We’re over,’ he told her, Kat managing to smile from a surge of relief as she breathed in lungfuls of fresh air, despite the pain it caused. Nicky shifted the boxes, put the seats back down into their usual position and helped her get as comfortable as possible, before placing the bag containing money and jewelry boxes on the floor beside her.
