by Penny McCall
“There’s really no choice, is there?”
Cole heaved a sigh. “I’ll meet you in Tulsa.”
“Another ex-con friend?”
Cole didn’t say anything.
“Don’t you think Treacher will have agents on anyone you knew in Lewisburg?”
“Fine, no friends.”
She handed him some cash and the prepaid untraceable cell phone. “My number’s programmed in, and I-44 will take you straight to Tulsa. Call me when you get there. And be careful. The instructions will be shoot to kill.”
Unnecessary advice, Cole might have said. If there’d been any point. He opened the door, then thought better of it, leaning across and taking her mouth. He let the heat and sweetness take him, just as she did, sinking in for a few rushing heartbeats.
She didn’t push him away, but as soon as he pulled back, she said, “What was that for?”
“I don’t want you to forget me.”
She exited the driver’s side and looked at him over the roof. “I’m pretty sure that would be impossible, even without the kiss.” She started to walk away, then turned back. “But it was a nice touch.”
chapter 16
COLE FOUND HIMSELF ON THE OFF-RAMP OF I-44 alone in the dark. Tulsa was a bit under four hundred miles from St. Louis, as the crow flies, and a crow could probably make it in a few hours. It would take a man on foot a lot longer.
He had a phone, a wad of money, and absolutely no game plan except to take the quickest route. Stay on I-44, Harm had said, probably because she knew he didn’t have the kind of skills it took to be on the run for long. It didn’t bother him. She was right. He didn’t carry a gun, he couldn’t hot-wire a car, and he didn’t have the first clue about how to blend in and fly under the radar. If he hadn’t learned to think like a criminal after eight years under the tutelage of some of the best in the world, it was probably a lost cause.
The only thing he had going for him was unrecognizability. His mug shot was eight years old; he’d changed so much since it had been taken he was basically a different person now. But he was still a person on foot. He took out the untraceable cell and called information. The nearest bus station turned out to be in St. Louis, and heading back the way he’d just come, where people had already connected him to the guy on TV and the cops were probably all on alert, didn’t seem a very bright idea. The next bus station was in Springfield, over two hundred miles away.
Hopefully he’d find some sort of transportation before then, but at the moment he was surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Walking along the highway, where he’d be at the mercy of every dozing driver and backlighted by every car that went by, including state police cruisers, was out of the question. Cole opted for the service drive, keeping just off the shoulder. He could still see the road, but the dark hid him pretty well, and if anyone did see him and got nosy, he could disappear into the wilderness.
Two hours later, he was willing to try his hand at car theft. Or bicycle theft. Or horse theft. Any mode of transportation besides his own two feet would be a welcome relief. He could just imagine Harmony in some nice, warm car, gliding comfortably through the night, while he was cold and tired and pissed off, and wondering if it could get any worse. And then it began to rain. Torrentially. A gully-washing, cats-and-dogs, Noah’s Ark downpour that had him scrambling for high ground. That part of Missouri had clearly had a lot of rain over the last couple of weeks; there was standing water everywhere, and the dirt and gravel shoulder was striped with runoff channels. Even as he made that observation, the ground beneath his feet washed away, dumping him into the overflowing ditch, along with a ton of mud.
Cole came up, sputtering for air and clawing the phone, his only lifeline to Harmony, out of his pocket. He almost fumbled it because his hands were slick and clumsy with the cold, but he managed to hang onto it and flip it open. Water ran out. The display blinked half-heartedly a couple times, then went dark.
“Shit.” He dragged himself back up the embankment and stood there in the pouring rain, not daring to think things like It can’t get any worse, or At least it would be warm and dry in the back of a police cruiser. But when a car pulled over just ahead of him, he didn’t think twice, or factor in how bad his luck had turned since Harmony had deserted him. If Victor Treacher had been driving that car, with his goon squad in the back, Cole wouldn’t have hesitated.
What he found instead of FBI agents was cats. A car full of cats, piloted by a woman who looked like she belonged in a car full of cats. She was old and wrinkled and feisty-looking. Not to mention ornery.
“You just going to stand there,” she yelled at him through the open passenger-side window. “The upholstery is getting all wet.”
The upholstery looked like worse things had happened to it. “It’s going to get a lot wetter if I sit on it. I’m kind of dirty, too. I fell in the ditch.”
“That’s why I pulled over. I don’t normally pick up strange men, but I felt kind of sorry for you. I’m a sucker for strays.”
“I can see that,” Cole said, but he still wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem like an old woman should give him pause, but an old woman with a car full of cats struck him as crazy, and he’d had enough crazy in his life lately.
“No offense,” she yelled, “but it ain’t like a fella in your sort of predicament can be picky.”
She had a point. He pulled open the door and angled himself into the passenger seat, the window motoring up as he did, so that when he pulled the door shut he felt trapped.
“I’m Maizie,” the old woman said.
Cole took her hand and shook it, saying, “Pleased to meet you, Maizie.”
“What, you don’t have a name?”
He smiled faintly. “You can call me Dick.”
“Hmmmm.” Maizie sounded unconvinced, but she didn’t comment. “What are you doing wandering around in the middle of nowhere in the dead of the night in a thunderstorm, Dick?”
“My car broke down on the highway,” Cole said, shaking his head a little over how easily the lie came. He’d spent eight years with criminals and nothing had rubbed off on him. Less than a week with Harmony Swift and he was lying like a pro. “I figured it would be a bad idea to walk along the highway, but that was before the shoulder of the service drive gave way and dumped me into the ditch.”
“Sounds like you had a disagreement with god,” Maizie observed.
“It’s been that kind of night.” Hell, it had been that kind of decade. “I’m sorry about getting your seat all wet.”
“Can’t hurt this car none.”
She had a point. The rest of the interior of the ancient Chrysler wasn’t any cleaner than the passenger seat. It smelled, too. In all fairness he probably didn’t remind anyone of a flower garden, but he’d had a rough night. And as long as he didn’t resemble a scratching pole or a litter box, he was happy. There had to be twenty cats in the backseat, and when he ventured a look over his shoulder, he saw that they were all staring at him, not moving or making noise or even blinking, just their yellow eyes shining in the darkness.
“Not a cat person, huh?”
“Nope,” Cole said, keeping his eyes on the cats and trying not to be freaked out. Not that he really had anything against cats, but as best friends went they left something to be desired, especially if you were a kid. They didn’t fetch or catch a Frisbee or greet you at the door after school like you were the best thing that had ever happened to them. Cats were independent. And sort of sneaky.
“You strike me as the kind of person who favors dogs,” Maizie said.
“I was until recently.”
“Nasty, slobbery things.”
It was more their teeth Cole didn’t like. Hounds especially. “So, where you headed?” he asked Maizie.
“Home, but I won’t take you there.”
“I’m surprised you picked me up at all.”
“My babies won’t let anything happen to me.”
Cole turned his head and got a face full of cat
because one of her “babies” had hopped onto the back of his seat. He sneezed. Twice. It hissed at him both times.
“Sounds like you’re mildly allergic,” Maizie said, “and I’m going a bit beyond Springfield. You sure you want to tag along?”
Cole considered his chances of finding another ride. Springfield was a bit over halfway to Tulsa, so about two hundred miles. Even at old lady speed it shouldn’t take more than five hours. He could catch a bus from Springfield and be in Tulsa by noon. Maizie was right about his allergies being mild, too. As long as the cats stayed in the backseat, he seemed to be all right. And it would be worth a few hours of sneezing to see the shock on Harm’s face when he beat her to the rendezvous.
“So, you in?”
“Yep, let’s go.”
Maizie put the car in gear and guided it back onto the road. “It’s your funeral.”
It wasn’t long before Cole wondered if she’d been trying for humor or making a prediction. Maizie hadn’t figured out that cars went faster than forty miles per hour in the twenty-first century, and she wouldn’t let Cole drive because he “didn’t look like a rapist or serial killer, but that there Ted Bundy fella didn’t either.” Apparently she was afraid he’d take her to a remote location, kill her in some gruesome manner, and bury her in a shallow grave.
Cole couldn’t think of anyplace more remote, and he had no sexual designs on the old lady, violent or otherwise. Murder was a different story. He could have worked himself up to a nice strangulation, if not for twenty pairs of cats’ eyes watching his every move. One of them hissed at him whenever he sneezed; he could just imagine what they’d do if he went for the old lady—which became more of a temptation as the hours dragged by.
Not only was she slower than Christmas Eve for a five-year-old, but she stopped once an hour to let the cats out, and then it took forever to round them all up again. And she always stopped on some deserted stretch of road, which made her the best of a bad situation every time. What should have been a five-hour trip at most took them well over eight, but Cole managed to get some sleep, mostly because he’d been bored into a stupor.
Maizie nudged him out of a light doze about mid-morning, and Cole straightened in his seat, puffy-eyed, congested, and itchy from the dried mud in his clothes. And he smelled like wet cat.
“Where are we?” he asked, yawning and stretching.
“Shawville, just like I told you.”
“I wanted to get out in Springfield.”
“Then you shoulda said something.”
Cole sighed dejectedly, not bothering to muster up the energy to point out he’d been asleep. “What’s in Shawville?”
“Farmers,” Maizie said, “but they got a mall here now.”
“That works for me.”
Mall was the last thing he’d have called the blocky, industrial-looking brick building she took him to.
“Used to be a manure factory,” she explained when he just sat in the car and stared for a minute.
“That explains it.” He shooed the cat off his lap and reached for the door handle. “Thanks, Maizie,” he said, getting out of the car and taking a deep breath of the fresh air—through his mouth since his head was filled with goo from the cat allergy.
Maizie peeled off on her bald tires, and he headed for Sears, the mall’s big anchor store, outfitting himself from head to toe in less than ten minutes. The sales clerk took the twenties he handed her, eyeing the wrinkled, damp bills, then studying him suspiciously before she deposited the cash in the register and gave him change.
He hit the bathroom next, stripping down and washing up as best he could, including his hair, then dumping everything he’d been wearing into the trash. Getting rid of all evidence of cat. It helped, but putting wet paper towels on his eyes was even better. Sure, he felt a little girly, but it worked. Some of the swelling went down, and the congestion seemed to clear up a bit, enough that he could feel his stomach talking to him.
There were maybe ten stores in the Shawville mall, but it boasted a small food court. Since it was mid-morning, his only choice was one of those huge cinnamon buns and coffee. Not that he was complaining. He was clean, he had food, and a table all to himself at the edge of the seating area. Things were looking up. For all of about five minutes.
Cole’s coffee had barely cooled enough for him to drink it comfortably when a kid with acne and ADD wandered by. He was wearing droopy, three-sizes-too-big Levi’s, hanging so low Cole could see a pair of Simpson’s boxers between the waistband of the jeans and the hem of his khaki security guard shirt. There was a name tag on the shirt pocket that read Ted jasper, and since he wasn’t wearing a holster, Cole’s level of alarm dropped sharply.
His mouth should have been classified as noise pollution, though. He decided to stop at Cole’s table and chat, and by chat, Cole meant talk nonstop. Every sentence ended in a question mark, and he didn’t seem to notice that he was crossing the line from annoying to nosy.
The third time Ted asked where he was from, Cole said, “I’m just passing through,” deciding it probably wasn’t a good idea to ignore the kid. It certainly didn’t discourage him.
“I could swear I’ve seen you somewhere before,” Ted said. “You ever get to Kentucky? I got kin over that way.”
“Never been to Kentucky.”
“Huh, you sure look familiar. Like I knew you a couple years ago or something.”
Cole got to his feet. “Time for a refill,” he said, holding up his coffee cup. “Nice talking to you.”
Instead of taking the hint, Ted followed after him like a puppy, still asking questions but not waiting for answers. “What do you do for a living?” he wanted to know. “Are you between jobs? I mean, it’s the middle of the morning on a weekday and you’re not at work. And you’re not dressed like you have a job, unless you work at a real casual place. One that allows tattoos . . . Shit.”
Cole turned around. Ted was backing away slowly, his eyes riveted to the tattoo Cole’s new T-shirt sleeve wasn’t long enough to hide completely. The tattoo that must have been used on TV as an identifying mark of the dangerous federal fugitive who’d just unleashed a virus in the FBI’s computer system.
Sure enough, the kid pulled a square of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, and held it up, looking from the paper to Cole, paper, Cole, his eyes shifting back and forth so fast it was a wonder he didn’t make himself dizzy.
Cole’s streak of luck—all bad—was holding strong. Ted reached into his other pocket, pulled out a pistol, and pointed it at him.
It wasn’t like that was a first for Cole, but with Harmony he’d thought she wouldn’t shoot. He was afraid this kid’s gun would go off and kill him accidentally. Ted’s hand was shaking, his eyes darted back and forth, and if he didn’t hit Cole, he’d likely take out one of the innocent bystanders. There weren’t a lot of people in the food court, and most of them were employees, but they all decided to leave their cash registers and grills to come out and gawk. And get in the line of fire.
“Linda,” Ted said to a cute brunette in a striped apron, “scoot off and call the sheriff.”
Linda dimpled at Ted and scooted right off.
Before he could even begin to think of a way out, Cole found himself handcuffed and bundled into the back of a white SUV with a county sheriff’s shield on the door. He was taken to the sheriff’s office, the FBI was contacted, and the sheriff was only too happy to inform him that there were a couple of agents in the area.
Cole just sat there in a daze of disbelief, no question in his mind who the agents were and who they answered to. Victor Treacher was about to get his hands on Cole again, and Harmony was nowhere in the vicinity. Even if she hadn’t made it to Tulsa, she was too far away to help him.
So much for her promise to keep him out of jail. Then again, he was probably headed for much smaller accommodations than a jail cell. Like a coffin.
EVEN MILES AWAY FROM COLE AND THE TAURUS, HARMONY was still chugging along, fueled by anger a
nd righteous indignation, seeing all her hard work spiral down the drain. Along with Richard’s life. Walking like a maniac wasn’t helping much, so she finally screamed, “Fuck,” at the top of her lungs because, although she rarely saw the use in profanity, that had been her first reaction to Cole’s story, and it still seemed to sum up the situation pretty completely. Shit was a good word, too, as in, she’d stepped in it. Big-time.
The Russians she could handle. Somehow. And anyway, they were criminals. They deserved whatever they got. She’d already cleared herself with Mike; he wasn’t happy about it, but he was watching her back. Victor Treacher was a roadblock she couldn’t see a way around, and he was a roadblock with a hell of a motivation. His whole world was riding on silencing Cole—and by extension her—and criminal or not, Treacher was a powerful man. If she’d known what she was getting into . . .
What? She’d have found another geek to handle the computer work? There hadn’t been time. No law-abiding computer expert on the planet would have broken into the FBI voluntarily, and dealing with the hacker community was risky. Unless she had leverage. Cole had been her only option, so she’d put on blinders and bulldozed ahead, and now here she was, at the edge of a cliff, hanging by her fingertips, weighed down by the sheer magnitude of her own shortsighted overconfidence.
Cole had told her more than once that the FBI had framed him, but she’d written it off as the typical jailbird’s protestation of innocence. Even after she knew Cole was basically an honest, moral guy who was keeping his word despite his distrust, she’d stayed focused on Richard and ignored the warning signs. It was all her fault. All of it. And it wasn’t bad enough that her neck was on the line, she was going to pull Cole and Richard down with her. True, Richard had been in trouble to begin with, but if he died she’d still blame herself.
She kicked at a clump of roadside weeds. It didn’t help. Neither would shouting more obscenities, because the truth was, she admitted with a heavy sigh, she wouldn’t change any of it, even if she could. There was no way she’d leave Richard to die. No. Way.
