“She never came out of the airport.” Gomez’s voice on the other end of the phone was full of apology.
“What?” Sam felt his gut clench.
“She got off the plane, because I checked with the airline. But she never came out of the airport. I’ve even had them search—restrooms, bars, the lot. She’s not there.”
“Holy Christ.” Sam breathed in deeply, starting a silent count to ten in an attempt to keep himself from losing it before abandoning the effort at number three in favor of immediately addressing the situation. Gomez was a new guy, a fucking new guy in Bureau parlance, and new guys were expected to fuck up (hence the nickname), but to have it happen now, on his case, on this case, threatened to drive Sam around the bend. He’d wanted Mark Sidow, a veteran agent, to handle the assignment, but he’d been informed that Sidow was on his annual August vacation and Gomez was the only one available. And now, sure enough, the fucking new guy had fucked up.
Sam exhaled. “You were supposed to pick her up off the plane.”
“Her car was in the lot. I waited by it. She never came.”
You fucking moron. The words were never said. Sam swallowed them, reaching deep inside himself for a semi-patient tone. Hell, he’d been the fucking new guy once. They all had. Anyway, chewing out Gomez would not help find Maddie.
“Did you check her place?”
“Yep. She hasn’t been there.”
Sam ran a hand through his hair.
“Maybe she went home with that guy she was with—uh, Jon Carter.”
“No. I checked that, too. He’s alone.”
This time Sam didn’t bother to try to swallow the curse words that fell from his lips.
“Did you try her office?”
“She’s not there.”
Okay. The possibilities were endless. The key was not to overreact. But the thought of Maddie alone out there somewhere while the sick bastard who had attacked her once before was God-knew-where made it difficult to keep a lid on what he recognized as a bad case of incipient panic.
“What you’re saying to me is that she never showed up at her car. You never even set eyes on her, right?”
“Right.”
“If she’s not in the airport, then she had to leave it somehow.”
What if the UNSUB had been waiting for her in the airport? What if he’d somehow managed to grab her right out from under Gomez’s nose? In that case, she was probably already dead.
Cold fear filled Sam at the possibility. It took a real physical effort to keep his voice even. “Find out how. Check the security cameras to see if you can see her hooking up with anyone. Check the cab stand, the buses, the car-rental agencies. Call Needleman.” Ron Needleman was the agent in charge of the St. Louis office. “Tell him you need some help.”
“Uh, he’s on vacation,” Gomez said in a small voice.
“Then call whoever’s in charge. I don’t care what it takes. Just find the woman.”
“Yes, sir.”
From the chastened tone of Gomez’s voice, Sam got the feeling that at last the urgency of the situation was starting to filter through.
“Now.”
“Yessir.” It was the equivalent of a verbal salute.
Sam hung up, ran a hand around the back of his neck, and looked at his team. “Pack up. We’re heading for St. Louis.”
THE SECOND cab dropped her off at the Greyhound Bus station.
Maddie went into the terminal, glanced around. The place was, appropriately enough, all gray: gray walls, gray-speckled linoleum floor, rows of gray plastic chairs, about a quarter of which were occupied. People of all descriptions—a pair of soldiers in uniform, an elderly black woman with two cornrowed little girls, a heavyset white couple sharing a pizza—waited in the seats. None of them paid the least bit of attention to her. Along the far wall, tall windows looked out on a loading zone where a line of buses waited under a canopy, motors running, silver skins gleaming beneath bright halogen lights.
A short line had formed in front of the window where tickets were sold. She joined it, bought a ticket on the bus leaving at 10:15 for Las Vegas, then headed along the hall marked Restrooms. There was an exit at the end of the hall. Pushing through it, she stepped outside. The heat wrapped around her like a blanket. It did nothing to ease the bone-deep chill that made her feel as though she would never be warm again.
The time was ten minutes after ten p.m. It was full night, with stars scattered across the velvety black sky and the moon a giant orange globe riding low on the horizon. Moths and other assorted insects swooped around the tall lights that lit the parking lot. Maddie crossed the pavement quickly, heading for the alley that ran between two rows of rundown commercial buildings. Stepping into the darkness of the alley, she couldn’t resist a quick glance over her shoulder.
No one, nothing. Gritting her teeth, she hurried on.
This was the most dangerous part of her journey. She was alone outside in the dark, hideously vulnerable to the hired thug who was on her trail. But she was almost certain that he wasn’t behind her at that moment, that she wasn’t being followed. She was almost certain that she was alone.
Almost.
So far she thought that she was doing a good job of keeping a step ahead of him. When he picked up her trail—and she knew that he would, probably soon and probably at the airport—he would eventually be able to trace her to the mall. He would probably even track her down to the bus station. But by the time he figured out that she hadn’t gotten on the express to Las Vegas, she meant to be long gone.
In a manner no one would be able to trace.
She walked two blocks, then turned left down another alley. The buildings were a mix of residential and commercial now. It was a poor section, a bad section. The faint smell of decomposing garbage hung in the air. Broken pavement made pulling her suitcase difficult, so she slowed down, choosing her route carefully, lest the rattle of the wheels should attract too much attention. A homeless man slept on a flattened cardboard box. A man and a woman rooted around in a Dumpster behind a small Korean restaurant. A car pulled up some distance in front of her, dousing its lights. Her breath caught, and she stopped walking. Her heart thudded. Her stomach knotted. But it was nothing, a false alarm. After a moment that seemed to stretch into hours, a man got out, glanced around, and disappeared inside a rickety privacy fence. She remembered to breathe then, and started walking again. Straining her ears for the sounds of pursuit, she heard instead the whirr of insects; an occasional crash, as though a dog was investigating a garbage can; muffled yelling from a fight inside one of the houses; and the wail of a siren in the distance.
By the time she reached her destination, she was bathed in cold sweat.
The detached garage was dark and deserted. Unlocking the door, she slid inside, pulling the suitcase in after her. When she closed the door behind her, it was so dark that she literally couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. The air was stifling, and the place smelled musty, dirty. She stood motionless for a moment, listening, getting her bearings. Her heart raced. Her breathing came fast and shallow. Icy prickles chased one another over her skin.
But she heard nothing out of the ordinary. Sensed nothing out of the ordinary.
Finally she moved, finding the ten-year-old Ford Escort by touch, unlocking it, opening the door. By its interior light, she saw that the car was covered in a thick layer of dust and the garage was festooned with cobwebs. Everything looked exactly as it should—as if no one had been there in the three months since she had last visited. Opening the trunk, she heaved her suitcase in beside the emergency kit she had prepared long ago. She had cash in the emergency kit, papers, things she would need to survive until she could start anew.
No one in the world knew about her emergency kit, or that she owned this car or rented this garage. She’d always considered this place her safety net, her Plan B.
If she had the sense of a gnat, she told herself, she would be busy about now, thanking God that she’d had
the foresight to prepare it.
Instead, as she drove away, she felt sick inside. For seven years she had been prepared to run—but she realized now that as more and more time had passed, she had grown increasingly confident that she would never have to.
She had hoped and prayed she would never have to.
The last thing in the world she wanted now was to abandon the life she had so painstakingly built for herself—but what choice did she have?
Basically, it came down to this: Leave or die.
Some choice.
Hating what she was being forced to do, she pulled onto I-64 and headed east. Traffic was moderately heavy, and as she approached downtown she could see the brightly lit arch that was the symbol of the city curving silver against the night sky. It dwarfed the surrounding skyscrapers. Beyond it, the Mississippi River rolled south toward New Orleans, its slow-moving waters reflecting the glowing lights of the city. Since it was Friday night, the riverfront would be busy. Tourists would be thick in the park beneath the arch, visiting the gift shop, strolling the paths, lining up to ride the little train that took them up inside the arch to the monument’s pinnacle. As she reached the bridge, she saw the steamboats that had been converted into floating gambling casinos plying the river, lights twinkling festively. On the other side of the river, East St. Louis stretched out, deceptively dark and quiet. It was a dangerous place, East St. Louis, and except for those who lived there, the cops who patrolled it, and a few unwary tourists, people tended to stay away from it at night. A handful of long-established factories still existed there, Brehmer’s among them. Maddie was just coming off the bridge when she saw its neon sign glowing orange against the worn brick wall of the manufacturing plant.
We won the account.
On any other day, under any other circumstances, she would have been hugging the victory to her like a beloved child, giddy with happiness, overwhelmed with possibility. Now the knowledge was like a lead weight inside her, making it hard to breathe.
Impulsively she took the exit that led past the plant. She needed gas anyway. Might as well get it there as anywhere, and spend her last few minutes in St. Louis mourning what might have been.
We won the account.
At least the others—Jon, Louise, Ana, Judy, Herb—would have this weekend to celebrate before everything turned to ashes.
When she was reported missing, what would happen to Creative Partners? She didn’t know. Didn’t even want to speculate.
They’d all be out of work. The clients would go elsewhere. The Brehmer account—forget the Brehmer account. It would vanish like smoke in the wind.
She drove past the tall chain-link fence that surrounded the plant, then slowed as she came even with the manufacturing facility itself. It operated twenty-four hours, producing food for nearly every kind of domestic animal, and tall, frosty lights illuminated the scattering of cars in the parking lot. Smoke poured from a smokestack on top of one of the buildings, and a uniformed security guard manned a white hut beside the gate.
Landing this account was the culmination of every dream she’d had since she’d arrived in St. Louis. She had been terrified, broke, friendless, with no one in the world to depend on besides herself. Gravitating to the area’s colleges because she had felt she would blend in with all the kids her own age, she’d slept on couches in the libraries and dormitories in those first hard weeks, until she’d scraped together the money to rent a room in a ramshackle old house that catered to students. Unable to find a job, she had made her own work, using campus kitchens to bake cookies and brownies from mixes and peddling them to tourists on the waterfront along with “souvenirs” she made herself from rocks on which she painted things like the arch above the name of the city. Impressed with her entrepreneurial skills, a man whose business was selling advertising over the phone offered her work on a commission-only basis. She’d made seven hundred fifty dollars her first week.
After that, she had never looked back. She had worked hard, saved, dreamed, all the while doing her best to put her past behind her. When the chance to buy Creative Partners had arisen, she’d jumped at it. She knew, knew, knew she could make the agency a success.
And after an admittedly slow start, she was now well on her way. Out of all the advertising agencies who’d pitched them, Creative Partners had won the Brehmer account.
Then the clock had struck midnight. Like Cinderella at the ball, she was left with no choice but to flee.
She’d come so far. Was she really going to just let it all go?
Slowing, she turned right into the parking lot of a QuikStop just beyond the plant. Through its windows she could see a couple of customers inside the store, and there was an old Chrysler at the gas pump. She pulled up to another of the pumps and stopped the car.
Then she just sat there, hands tight around the steering wheel, staring out through the windshield at the glowing Brehmer’s sign.
“WELL?” SAM growled into the phone. He, Wynne, and Gardner were in the air now, about a third of the way into the three-hour flight to St. Louis. They had been experiencing varying degrees of turbulence since they’d taken off, and right at that moment the small chartered plane was bouncing all over the sky. Gardner, in the seat facing Sam, was wrapped in a blue blanket and slumped against the fuselage, fast asleep. Beside her, Wynne was sprawled in his seat as if he didn’t have a bone left in his body. He was pale and slack-jawed, his parted lips faintly purple from his gum—hopefully discarded before he went to sleep—which Sam could still smell. Only a gleam from beneath nearly closed lids told Sam that the ringing phone had roused him—unlike Gardner—from oblivion.
“We think she took a taxi to the mall,” Gomez said on the other end. “Looks like she went shopping.”
“Shopping?” Sam repeated, momentarily dumbfounded. Then he frowned. How likely was that? “Directly from the airport? Without picking up her car?”
“This cab driver says he gave a woman matching her description a ride to the mall,” Gomez repeated doggedly.
“So she’s at the mall.”
“Well ...” There was something in Gomez’s tone that told Sam that the other shoe was getting ready to drop. “The thing is, the mall’s closed now and she doesn’t seem to be there. Actually, uh, we can’t seem to locate her anywhere. I’m thinking maybe she, uh, met some friends at the mall and went somewhere with them.”
Breathe. “Find out.”
“I’m trying. I’ve got Hendricks with me now, and we’re doing everything we can to locate her.”
Deep breath. Deep, calming breath. “Do more. Put out an APB if you have to. I want her found.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now.”
“Yessir.”
And on the heels of that verbal salute, Sam broke the connection.
“Fucking new guy still fucking up, huh?” Wynne asked. As far as Sam could tell, the only muscles he’d moved were connected to his eyelids. His eyes were open now, and he was looking at Sam.
“Yeah.” The plane pitched. Sam’s fingers curled instinctively around the arms of his seat. Outside the windows, the night was black. No stars, no moon. Just—nothing. A void. “You know, that guy isn’t going to just let her walk away. He’s going to kill her if he can.”
He tried to keep the tension he was feeling out of his voice. He knew himself well enough to know that if it hadn’t been for the turbulence, he would have been up, pacing the cabin.
“You think he’s already going after her again? Or is he out there somewhere, planning a hit on this Walter?”
“I don’t think he has to plan a hit on Walter. I think he knows exactly where Walter is, and can hit him any time he wants. The others, too. They were all planned in advance. This chase thing he has us doing is a game to him. He likes to drive us crazy trying to figure it out, then do the hit right before we close in. He’s taunting us, letting us know he’s smarter than us.”
“Sick son of a bitch.” But Wynne said it lazily. This case wasn’t g
etting to Wynne the way it was to him, Sam realized. Of course, the phone calls weren’t directed at Wynne. And now, there was Maddie Fitzgerald. “You think he’s having fun with it?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sam said. “But we’ll get him. He’s already made one mistake. And one mistake is all it takes.”
“Leaving Maddie Fitzgerald alive.”
“That’s the one.”
“So you think he’s in St. Louis.”
If the bastard was already in St. Louis, and Maddie Fitzgerald was missing, things weren’t looking good. The idea that she was out there, unprotected and possibly in danger, while he was stuck in this tiny cabin, miles above the earth, made Sam nuts.
“Depends on how he’s getting around. If he’s driving, which I think he is, it’s possible. But even if he isn’t in St. Louis yet, he will be. Soon. I’m as sure of it as I am my own name. There’s no way he can be sure she can’t identify him.”
Wynne looked at him. “Think it’s fair to abandon Walter to his fate while we mount guard over her?”
The plane dropped a couple hundred feet, and Sam’s grip on the seat arms tightened until his knuckles turned white. Wynne the Placid never even moved.
“You ever hear the saying about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush? Maddie Fitzgerald is our bird in the hand. We don’t know where Walter is, and chances are we’re not going to figure it out in time to save him. We do know where she is. And we can assume the UNSUB’s off-balance, because he hadn’t figured on having to get to St. Louis to take care of a mistake. This is probably our best chance to catch him, and the best way to save Walter, whoever the hell he is, and anyone else who might have made the sick bastard’s hit parade. What we do is put a tail on Maddie Fitzgerald, and wait. He’ll show up. Always supposing he hasn’t already gotten to her, that is.”
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