Chase

by Linwood Barclay

  “What I’d really like to do is blow your head off,” he said to the dog. “Which I’ve been given the okay to do, if that’s what it takes to keep the world from finding out about you. But you’ve got a lot of valuable equipment in you, and bringing you back intact may just score me some points. So when I zap you with this thing, you’ll go to sleep and we’ll tie you up tight and get you back to The Institute. But you,” and he turned to look at Jeff, “are a different matter altogether.” He pointed to the dial on the weapon in his hand. “When I change the setting on this and shoot you, you’ll be dead.”

  Jeff said, “Why was the dog looking for me?”

  Chipper shot him a look and wished Jeff was looking at his phone. He would have shouted: SHUT UP.

  Daggert blinked. “What?”

  The boy pointed to Chipper. “He didn’t just find me at random. He was looking for me. Why would he do that?”

  Daggert looked genuinely puzzled. “That’s a very good question. Why would he be looking for you?” He said to Chipper. “Maybe, when we get you back, we can hook you up to the computer and ask you a few questions.”

  Jeff wasn’t going to let on that the phone in his pocket had been set up so he could do just that. But then Daggert looked back at him and said, “How would you even know the dog was looking for you? Did he tell you?”

  “Uh…”

  Daggert took a step closer. “Did you figure out a way to communicate with this animal?”

  Jeff shook his head furiously. “No! That’s crazy! No one can talk to a dog!” He laughed. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Chipper yawned.

  “What are you not telling me?” Daggert asked. “You’re holding something back. What’s your name?”

  “Jeff. I told you.”

  “What is your last name? Who exactly are you?”

  Chipper yawned a second time, and wished he could say to Jeff: Remember what I said? He hoped he would remember.

  “Conroy,” he said. “Jeff Conroy.”

  “Conroy,” Daggert said. “Conroy? Did you say Conroy?” Chipper yawned again, even made a small yelping noise as he did it.

  The woman said, “I think we’re boring the dog.”

  “What?” Daggert said. He looked at Chipper opening his jaw wide for a fourth time.

  Jeff looked at Chipper and he did remember. He stuck his index fingers into his ears.

  Daggert glanced back at him. “What are you doing? Why are you—”

  And then a sound came out of Chipper’s mouth that Jeff could not believe. Even with his ears blocked, it was the loudest thing he’d ever heard in his life. A high-pitched squealing noise, like a fire alarm and an air raid siren and a chainsaw all going off at once.

  It was so high-pitched that the tiny window he’d peeked out earlier shattered.

  Chipper had given Jeff a warning, but Daggert and the other two had none, and before they could even think of covering their ears, their knees went weak and they dropped to the floor.

  Daggert let go of the device in his hand as he put his palms over his ears. Once he landed on his knees, he keeled over to one side. So did the other two. They were all screaming, but Chipper was making so much noise it was hard to tell.

  Chipper gave Jeff a look, tipped his head towards the stairs, then, like lightning, bolted straight down them.

  Jeff was right behind him.

  “What the heck was that?” Jeff asked Chipper as the two fled from the train station. “How did you make that sound?”

  Chipper didn’t want to take the time to explain. He knew that the deafening noise would only put Daggert and his crew out of commission for a few minutes. The priority was to get away.

  “Hang on,” Jeff said, running to Harry Green’s van to see whether the keys had been left in it. A quick look through the window told him they were not. Daggert wasn’t about to make that mistake twice. And with no way to start the SUV, Jeff didn’t see that they had much choice but to keep running.

  The question was: Head back to the main road, Flo’s Cabins, or Shady Acres?

  It seemed to him the only option left was to go back to his or Emily’s camp and try to get help. They might have been able to give this bunch the slip for now, but they were going to be hard to lose, and for all Jeff knew, they had more people they could bring in to help.

  Despite Chipper’s warnings, Jeff thought it was finally time to call the police.

  “Chipper,” Jeff said, pointing in the general direction of Shady Acres, “we’re going this way. We might be able to get help there.”

  That seemed as good an idea as any to Chipper right now.

  They ran through the woods, the knee-deep weeds and grasses brushing up against Jeff’s jeans and Chipper’s furry tummy. The dog had regained much of his strength, bounding almost happily through the foliage, his nose up, taking it all in.

  Charging through the woods side by side, Jeff felt an incredible bond with this animal that he had known for only a few hours. Events had somehow brought them together—according to Emily, it was not some random thing—and now the two were shoulder to shoulder, fighting for their lives.

  At this moment, there was no one Jeff depended on more than Chipper. His parents were gone, Emily had made a run for it. And even if Aunt Flo was alive, as Daggert suggested, Jeff couldn’t count on her for help.

  What Jeff did not know was that Chipper felt the same way. He had found the boy, and now he needed the boy’s help to stay alive. He was going to do everything he could to make sure the boy stayed safe.

  Unless, of course, he became distracted.

  They were running together, side by side, when Chipper suddenly veered left. He was like one of those cycles in that old Tron movie, making a ninety-degree turn at a hundred miles per hour.

  Jeff stopped dead. What had Chipper noticed that he had not? Were the bad guys right in front of them? Were they already at Shady Acres? And if running straight ahead was no longer a safe strategy, why hadn’t the dog given him some kind of signal that they had to go a different way?

  He didn’t have to send him a message on his phone. A simple bark would have done the trick.

  Jeff stopped and called out Chipper’s name at the same time as he brought out his phone, just in case there was a message.

  Nothing.

  So Jeff started running after him. “What is it, boy? What’s going on?”

  He’d lost sight of him. Chipper had dashed off so quickly, the tall grasses had swallowed him up. Where the heck was he?

  Jeff heard rustling to his left, then half a second later, darting right past him, inches from his shoe, was a rabbit.

  And a millisecond after that, Chipper flew past like a bullet.

  “Chipper!” Jeff shouted.

  About thirty feet away, the dog’s head poked up above the grass, looked back at Jeff.

  “What the heck are you doing?”

  Words appeared on the screen.

  I saw a rabbit.

  “Is that rabbit trying to kill us?” Jeff asked, unable to hide his frustration. “Did he have a gun?”

  As Chipper came trotting back, he expressed his regrets.

  Sorry. It happens sometimes.

  “Sorry? You take off after a bunny and that’s all you have to say?”

  Do you want to terminate me too?

  The words were like a knife to the heart. Jeff dropped to his knees and held out his arms. The dog walked into them and Jeff squeezed his neck. “I would never, never, ever want to terminate you,” he said.

  Good to know.

  Still squeezing, Jeff said, “I think you’d be a great dog without any of your computer stuff. I’d love to hang out here and watch you chase rabbits and squirrels, but right now, we kind of have more important things to deal with.”

  That is true. I lost it for a minute.

  “Come on.”

  They picked up their pace once again, and in five more minutes they were walking—more like sneaking�
��onto the Shady Acres property. The place was pretty quiet, but Jeff knew there was a chance Daggert and his team might somehow have gotten here before them, once they’d recovered from that sonic boom that came out of the dog’s mouth. Emily’s dad’s truck was over by the house, but Jeff didn’t see either of them around.

  Jeff had an idea.

  “Chipper, instead of trying to steal another car—if we could borrow a boat, get across to the other side of the lake, they’d have no idea where we were. That would buy us some time, give us a chance to figure out what to do next.”

  Chipper studied him, then slowly nodded.

  That might work.

  “Let’s head down to the water.”

  Jeff made his way across the camp carefully, sneaking around cabins, skulking behind bushes, much like when he was getting out of Aunt Flo’s house. He wanted to be out in the open as little as possible.

  His back pressed up against a cabin’s wall, Chipper leaning into his leg, he could see the waterfront, no more than forty feet away. There were three fishing boats tied up to the docks. All aluminum, about fourteen feet long. The outboard motors bolted to the back of them weren’t very powerful—no more than ten to fifteen horsepower—and wouldn’t get them across the lake in a hurry, but they would have to do. Jeff noticed that Emily’s boat was missing.

  But then, about a hundred feet offshore, a powerboat appeared. Long and sleek—at least twenty feet, Jeff figured—with a black hull and an oversize outboard motor on the back. Eighty horsepower at least.

  There was only one person in the boat, behind the wheel. A man, probably in his thirties or forties. Pretty old, anyway.

  Jeff thought if they could flag him down, maybe he’d take them across the lake. They’d be there in minutes.

  “Let’s go, Chipper,” Jeff said.

  Jeff charged out from his hiding spot next to the cabin and ran out to the end of the dock, waving both hands in the air, the way you might try to get a pilot’s attention if you were stranded on a desert island.

  Chipper ran to catch up to the boy and looked eagerly at the speedboat. Even this far away, he caught the scent of exhaust fumes spewing from the engine. He wagged his tail and let out an encouraging bark.

  The boat had been heading straight past, but when the driver saw them he cut the throttle and steered in. As he nosed in to the dock, the motor dropping from a roar to a soft put-put-put, the man said, “Everything okay?”

  Jeff had to think of something fast.

  “My dad just took off across the lake and forgot his phone!” Jeff said, holding up his own. “He needs it in case he gets a call from the hospital!”

  “The hospital?”

  “He’s a brain surgeon,” Jeff said. “He’s always on call in case someone needs to have their brain fixed.”

  Chipper looked up at Jeff as if to say, Seriously? Brain fixed? “Whoa, okay, then you better come aboard,” the man said. “I can have you over there in a couple of minutes.”

  “This is fantastic,” Jeff said, glancing nervously over his shoulder, terrified that Daggert would show up before they could get into the boat.

  Jeff reached out to catch the bow so it wouldn’t bump the end of the dock and eased the boat around to the side of the dock so he and Chipper could jump in. Jeff got a leg over first, planted it on the sturdy bottom of the speedboat before swinging in leg number two.

  Chipper ignored Jeff when he reached out his arms to help him in and leapt through the air into the boat instead.

  “This is really, really nice of you,” Jeff said.

  “Hey, no problem,” the man said. “My name’s Gordon.”

  “Hi, Gordon. I’m Jeff.”

  “That’s a nice dog you got there. What’s his name?”

  “Chipper.”

  The man said, “No kidding? That’s a nice name for a dog.”

  He moved a lever to his side to put the motor in reverse, and slowly backed the boat out into the lake. Reaching into a small compartment under the dash, he came out with a phone.

  “Just got to make a quick call to let someone know I’ll be late,” he said.

  Chipper and Jeff dropped into a couple of cushy seats just ahead of the motor. “It’s going to be okay now,” Jeff said to his furry friend.

  But Chipper wasn’t looking at the boy. He had his eyes on the man, and both his ears perked up.

  Gordon was speaking into his phone, but with the motor rumbling just behind him, Jeff couldn’t make out a word of it.

  But Chipper’s sense of hearing was right up there with his sense of smell. He listened for several seconds, then turned to Jeff and barked.

  “What is it, sport?” Jeff asked.

  Chipper barked again and looked at the phone in Jeff’s hand. The boy glanced down and saw a new message on the screen.

  He just told Daggert “I got them.”

  Gordon kept the boat idling about sixty feet offshore.

  “You’re working for them,” Jeff said to the man.

  He turned and smiled. “Yep. We’ll just wait here a few minutes until Daggert arrives.”

  They could have jumped out of the boat, but what good would that do? It wasn’t as though they could outswim a craft with eighty horsepower strapped to the back of it.

  “Please let us go,” Jeff said. “Please.”

  “Sorry, kid. You sit there and don’t give me any trouble.”

  Chipper and Jeff exchanged glances. Jeff looked like he was losing all hope, but Chipper wasn’t ready to give up. Maybe he could try a very simple strategy.

  Attack Gordon.

  No high-tech gimmicks. No supersonic sounds. He’d just leap at Gordon and bite him. Clamp his jaws on the man’s arm and bite down hard, like he did with Simmons. If he could hurt the man, maybe he and Jeff could push him overboard. Chipper was pretty sure Jeff would be able to drive the boat. It wasn’t very complicated.

  Yes, that’s what he’d do. He’d—

  Gordon turned the wheel hard, edged the throttle forward, and headed the boat back into shore. Chipper and Jeff turned their heads in unison to see Daggert striding out to the end of the dock. He gave Gordon a beckoning wave. He was still in his fancy suit and his eyes remained hidden behind his pricey sunglasses, but his right pant leg was ripped, and he was limping. Even from out on the water, they could see dark blood stains.

  Jeff bet that when Daggert was running back down those stairs in the old train station, he went through one of them. He wished the injury gave him reason to be optimistic.

  Once the bow was a foot from the dock, Daggert, as delicately as a cat, leaned forward, stepped onto it, and pushed his foot against the dock to propel the boat back out. He stepped over the windshield and planted a foot on one of the two cushioned bucket seats. To Gordon, he said, “If that dog starts yawning, put your fingers in your ears.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  Daggert gave Jeff and the dog one of his devilish smiles. “That was pretty good back there,” he said to Chipper. “That’ll be one of the first things we deactivate when we get a chance. In the meantime, Gordon, you got some tape?”

  Gordon reached under the dash and pulled out a roll of duct tape.

  Daggert said, “Wrap up that mutt’s snout so he doesn’t have a chance to make us go deaf.”

  Chipper growled as Gordon pulled off a two-foot length of tape, but when he saw Daggert pointing his weapon at the boy, he allowed Gordon to wrap the tape around his jaws.

  Once finished, Gordon asked Daggert, “Where to?”

  “Bailey and Crawford have taken the SUV north to Canfield. We’ll follow the lake up that way, then take the dog off your hands.”

  “What about the boy?”

  Daggert surveyed the landscape. “We got a whole lake to drown him in.”

  “Okay. You’re the boss.”

  Gordon turned the steering wheel as far as it would go until he had the boat lined up to the north. As he nudged the throttle forward the engine roared into action. The
bow began to lift as they accelerated.

  “Jeff!”

  The scream came from behind and to Jeff’s right. He whirled around and there, about ten feet behind the boat and just off to the side, was Emily in her small aluminum craft. She had it running flat out and was coming up alongside, but as soon as Gordon gave his boat more gas, they’d leave Emily behind.

  “Jump!” Emily shouted as her tiny boat came up beside them.

  Daggert and Gordon glanced back to see what was happening. Daggert shouted to Gordon, “Go!”

  But Jeff had already scooped Chipper into his arms and had one foot on the edge of the boat, ready to leap, when Gordon hit the throttle.

  There was no time to think about it.

  He jumped. He tumbled hard into the middle of Emily’s small boat. He and Chipper hit the bottom with great force, Jeff taking most of the impact on his back. He released Chipper, who leapt over the middle seat to greet Emily. He wanted to give her a big lick, but with his snout taped shut had to settle with nuzzling her with his nose.

  “What have they done to you?” she asked, using one hand to pick away the tape while steering the outboard motor with the other. She swung it hard, nearly tossing Jeff back out of the boat again. But it instantly put a lot of distance between them and the speedboat, which was speeding away in the opposite direction.

  The speedboat started to turn.

  Jeff was thrilled Emily had come out of nowhere to help them, but it was going to be a short-lived rescue. Trying to get away from Daggert and Gordon in her boat would be like a turtle trying to outrun a racehorse.

  It wasn’t going to happen.

  Jeff righted himself and dropped his butt on to the middle seat, facing backwards so he could see Emily and their pursuers.

  She had the tape off Chipper and flicked it off her fingers, the wind taking it away.

  “Thank you!” Jeff shouted. “But what now?”

  Emily kept a strong grip on the throttle. Her jaw was set tight and her eyes were fixed on something in the distance. Jeff turned to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing but open water. He’d only turned away for a second, but in that time the speedboat had gained on them, big time.

  The bow was getting so close that it obscured the view of Daggert and Gordon. It looked to Jeff as though their plan was to run them right over. Maybe Daggert had decided it didn’t matter if he got the dog back in one piece. Better to kill them all.