Island of Thieves

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Shaw reached in to press on the metal. It shifted a millimeter. Something underneath was stopping it. He took a penknife and inserted the blade between the sheet of metal and the cabinet to lift it.

  Another golden folder lay on the floor beneath. Hargreaves’s file? Shaw pulled it out.

  It wasn’t an employee record or anything else he’d found so far in the Paragon desks. The top sheet was a printout of a transfer of funds. He didn’t recognize the name of the company sending the money, but the name on the receiving end made him look again. Linda Edgemont.

  The next few pages documented more electronic transfers to a bank account in Edgemont’s name. The earliest was four months prior.

  Beneath the bank transfers was a different sheaf of pages. An employment contract between Droma International and someone named Kelvin Welch, hired on a contract basis as an “IT Engineer Level 3,” whatever that was.

  Shaw flipped back to double-check a date. Welch had joined Droma in February, the same month the first payment was made to Edgemont.

  He looked at the next page on Welch. A nondisclosure agreement. Shaw felt like he was becoming a reluctant expert on those damned things. He had nearly flipped past it when he caught the name of the company who had engaged Welch for three months from Droma’s pool of expert resources.

  Avizda Industrial. In Dallas.

  The same company where Nelson Bao had worked.

  There were more pages. Too many for Shaw to photograph. He’d overstayed his time at Paragon already. He would have to take the file with him if he wanted to unravel what it all meant.

  Worth the risk. He stuffed the file into his messenger bag before replacing the cabinet’s false bottom and relocking everything.

  As he exited the Paragon office, a bell dinged from the bank of elevators at the far end of the hall.

  Shaw ran to the closest set of stairs, hearing the muted thump of the elevator doors sliding open even as he slipped inside. The stairwell door creaked softly on its hinges.

  He descended half a flight and stopped. Something else was wrong. It took him a second to register the soft taps of shoes coming up the stairs. He leaned to look over the railing, down the sliver of space running along the center of the spiraling flights. A shadow, three floors below. The person continued ascending at the same measured pace. Maybe they hadn’t heard Shaw. Maybe it was just some Jansson Building employee, getting his Fitbit steps on the way to putting in some hours on a Saturday.

  Shaw didn’t think so.

  He silently backtracked to the eighth floor and up two more to the tenth. The footsteps below kept coming. There were cameras in the stairwell. Were the building security guards on his trail? He didn’t want to risk opening the door to floor ten, not if it would make as much noise as the one on eight.

  From below, Shaw heard the door to the eighth floor squeak open. He held his breath.

  The door didn’t close again. Was the bastard listening? Whispering to whoever had come off the elevator?

  He waited, knowing that whoever was below him was waiting, too.

  Hargreaves had been watching the Paragon cameras on his phone. He’d seen Shaw spend twelve full minutes in Chiarra’s office, as much time as he’d spent searching Hargreaves’s and Karla’s offices combined. Had Shaw been planting a bug? A camera?

  Or had he found something? Hargreaves’s mouth tightened.

  Hargreaves had texted Riley and Taskine updates on Shaw every two minutes. All the while silently cursing the pair for not getting there faster. When Shaw left Chiarra’s office and headed for the door, Hargreaves had reached the end of his patience and called Riley directly.

  “Shaw’s leaving,” Hargreaves said.

  “We’re headed up,” said Riley’s soft voice. “Hold.”

  Hargreaves checked the camera feed again, knowing it would tell him nothing. Shaw was out of its field and likely out the front door.

  Riley came back. Hargreaves could tell by the sound that he was on the move. “Shaw’s left the floor. Probably in one of the stairwells, going down. We’ll take the elevators and pass him. Get a fix on him when he hits the street.”

  “There’s a service entrance,” said Hargreaves. “A garage door at the next building up Forty-fifth. If he’s not headed for the lobby . . .”

  “Roger that.” Riley hung up.

  The moment the door on the eighth floor closed, Shaw exited onto floor ten and ran for the opposite stairwell. He didn’t stop running for nine flights and half a block, to the service ramp where he’d first entered. He spared a glance outside and rolled the door up to slip underneath.

  It had been close. The Jansson Building guards had come to investigate, or maybe he’d triggered something in the Paragon office that had alerted their people. At least he was out and clear now. The truck was four blocks away, and he wasn’t going to waste a step in reaching it.

  “We’re on him.” Riley said. “Moving east on Forty-fifth.”

  They couldn’t take Shaw on the street. “Transport,” said Hargreaves.

  “Already got some. Taskine’s there now. If Shaw takes a cab or a train, at least one of us can follow him. If he goes to the airport, we’ll find out what flight he’s on and call you.”

  “He’s a fugitive. If he takes a commercial flight, that means he’s got fake ID good enough to pass.” The mental image of Shaw traveling made Hargreaves realize something. “It’s been four days since he escaped the cops. Plenty of time to drive to New York.”

  Riley’s thoughtful hum stuttered a bit with the man’s steps. “Hang on.”

  The silence stretched long enough for Hargreaves to pace his hotel room five times. He could picture Riley and Taskine striding a more direct path.

  With his heavy black-rimmed glasses and thinning hair, Riley looked like any office drone who drove a computer every day. Until you noticed the smile. Like everything was funny and the worst things funniest of all. Riley could almost pass for sane. Taskine had no such disguise. He was an animal and looked the part.

  “Right,” Riley said, chuckling his soft laugh. “Your Shaw’s a nervous boy. Stopped in a doorway for a while to check for a tail. Now he’s doubling back.”

  “Did he make you?”

  “Who you talking to? He’s wandering in the wilderness, boss.”

  “His car,” Hargreaves pressed.

  “Yeah. There are two parking lots round the block. A garage farther up. Task will make a loop, get in front of him. If we can’t take him quiet here, we’ll follow him. The road is long, boss.”

  “If you need support . . .”

  “We got this. Shaw’s alone. And he’s, what, twenty states from home? Call you later.”

  Tucker’s men had been overconfident, too, Hargreaves was tempted to say. But Riley would just remind him once again that he and Taskine were different. And he would be correct. Different, and far more unhinged.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Among the gear in the truck, Shaw had brought a prepaid mobile hot spot. Its boosted connection let him use his laptop while on the road. He set the open computer on the passenger seat. Each time traffic on the George Washington Bridge stopped, which was every fifty feet, Shaw typed a few words into a secure chat application.

  The first to reply was Wren, just as the jam was beginning to disperse in the express lanes on I-80. She leaned in toward the lens, her black-coffee hair like a second frame in the chat app’s window.

  “Van?” she whispered.

  “Where are you?” He had to turn his attention to the road. She would see his right profile, the one without the scars.

  “I’m down the road from home, using Lettie’s computer.”

  Shaw nodded. The odds that the SPD would tap a girlfriend’s phone or Chromebook, on the chance that a fugitive suspect might call her, would usually be as low as a snake’s belly. Warrants like that didn’t come easy. Nor did the personnel hours. But Paragon would have no such limitations if they had managed to find Wren.

  “I’
m okay,” Shaw said. “I’m safe. How are you doing?”

  “Staying strong and going crazy, depending on the minute. This is . . . I hate worrying about you all the time. And then I feel guilty for not wanting to care so much. A bad spiral.”

  “I’m glad you care. I’m to blame for putting you in this spot.”

  Wren attempted a smile. “We’ll flame out together.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Sneaking around is strange. It’s as though I’m eight again and scared my parents will find me out of bed and stealing macarons from the kitchen. Are you used to this?”

  Shaw wasn’t quite sure how to answer. He’d had to go into hiding before. But breaking out of custody was new territory, as was being under the shadow of a homicide charge. Maybe multiple charges by now.

  “No,” he said, “and I hope this is over before the novelty wears off. Did you hear from Hollis?”

  “He called Francine. She handed me the phone.” Wren shook her head. “Does this make my roommates your accomplices? Or his? Hollis said to contact him if we see anyone hanging around the house. I could tell from the way he said it that he wasn’t only talking about policemen.”

  “Just a precaution,” Shaw said. “There’s probably no reason to worry.”

  “I’m still going to look both ways twice before I cross the street. This must be what they call a healthy paranoia. Tell me something that I can do. Anything. I do not sit well.”

  Shaw had known Wren long enough to recognize her terse phrasing as a riptide threshing below the surface.

  “Addy,” he said. “And Cyndra. Cyn most of all. Addy will fret, but she’s seen a lot worse than me going on a sudden secret vacation.”

  “About that. I spent the afternoon at Addy’s house earlier this week, hoping to have some time with Cyndra. She barely came out of her room.”

  “I thought it was me she was mad at.”

  “She is. She’s angry with everything. You and me, our relationship, that’s . . .” Wren made a gesture that Shaw missed while driving. He guessed it was something Gallic and expressing her frustration. “That issue is just a way to divert herself. Addy had a better perspective. She thinks Cyn is mad because you might go away.”

  “Go away?”

  “To prison.”

  Cyndra’s dad had been a convict for most of her life. Absent.

  “Goddamn, Wren.”

  “Yes. I want to hold her and tell her it will be all right.”

  “But we don’t know that it will.” Shaw’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  “She eats her dinner in three bites, Addy says. When she eats at all. I wish I knew what to do.”

  “If Cyn was like me, I’d say give her some space. Tell her . . . tell her I want to talk to her. Just her and me. Addy can figure out where and when.”

  “Like this? From the road?”

  “I’ll make it happen. Even if she wants to just hurl shit at me for an hour, at least that’s something. Let her get some of the poison out.”

  “She loves you.”

  “I loved Dono, too. Doesn’t mean I didn’t want to brain him with a crowbar every second Tuesday.”

  Wren’s laugh was one of Shaw’s favorite things about her. Loud and unabashed. “I know what you’re doing, making jokes. How can you be the cause of my trouble and the salve?”

  “Is it working?”

  “Yes. But salves are temporary. You’ll have to come home to cure me.”

  “On my way. I’m going to sort this out, Wren.”

  Somehow.

  After Wren hung up, Shaw had a mental vision of himself lighting fuses and running. The wick sputtering and sparking, inching ever closer to disaster. The women in his life left behind to deal with the wreckage.

  Even before escaping custody, Shaw had habitually scanned his rearview while driving for anything out of the ordinary. Checking for a car matching his speed too closely or suddenly reappearing after being out of sight for a time, which might signal two or more tail cars working in tandem. After nearly a week on the run, that practice had become as reflexive as pressing the brake pedal to slow. He knew that most of the vehicles behind him were the same as those that had been there five miles before. Nothing weird about that, not on a busy multi-lane just outside the nation’s largest city.

  So why couldn’t he shake the feeling that someone was following him?

  The Jansson Building, for starters. He wasn’t certain that whoever had been coming up the staircase to the eighth floor had been hunting for him. But he didn’t have to be certain. He had to trust his instincts. And his gut said that inside the building, and out on the street, and right now in the truck, he was being watched.

  Not cops. Cops would have bottled up the Jansson Building or taken him on the street if they’d needed an extra couple of minutes for backup to arrive. Paragon’s agents. Had to be.

  Which meant his truck was burned.

  The Ford’s previous owner had sprung for the extra-capacity fuel tank, and Shaw had topped it up in Brooklyn. Enough gas to carry him over seven hundred miles. He could remain on the interstate all the way to Indiana and see which car or cars went the distance.

  Of course, time for him meant time for them. They might already have reinforcements waiting ahead, multiple teams trading off the intensive work of surveillance. Ready to converge whenever Shaw dared to stop. Or force him off the road if he didn’t.

  It would be smart to pick the battlefield before they made their move. Shaw pulled up a map application on his phone and began to review the spiderweb of highways over the states ahead.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The business had been a laundromat. Now it was vacant, with square outlines of ground-in dirt on the walls and linoleum to indicate where industrial-size washers had once sat. Electrical outlets remained on the floor, like droppings left by the machines. Either Vic or Tucker had plugged a hand drill into the outlet nearest to Ed Chiarra. It lay on the ground, a foot in front of the man’s shoe, where the lawyer could see it—and dwell on it.

  Hargreaves nodded to Louis, standing watch outside, and closed the front door.

  “Ed,” he said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  Chiarra looked up from the chair. One of the stackable kind, molded from a single piece of plastic. So flimsy its legs would bend if someone shifted too far to one side. So cheap that not even the scavengers who’d gutted the coin-op laundry had thought it worth stealing.

  “Please,” said Chiarra. “James, please.”

  The men had taken Chiarra straight from his hotel room, knocking on the door before he was fully awake. Making him pack his bags, which now stood beside the wall next to Tucker.

  Hargreaves looked at Vic, who was gingerly washing his face in the dented tub of a sink by the laundry’s single restroom. Vic glanced back. Hargreaves saw that the swelling around his eyes had gone down. The flesh was still the color of a Gala apple, though.

  “You have nothing to worry about, Ed,” said Hargreaves. “If you answer my questions clearly and honestly, there’s no reason that you can’t be back in New York tomorrow. Do you understand?”

  Chiarra nodded. Wanting so badly to please.

  “Van Shaw was in our Jansson Building office this morning, Ed. Specifically, he was in your office.” Hargreaves waited a beat to make certain Chiarra comprehended what he was saying. The man was near panic. “We have Shaw on camera. He took something with him when he left.” That last was conjecture, but guesswork was sometimes necessary in an interrogation.

  Tucker, understanding his role in their little scene, moved a step closer to Chiarra. Hargreaves’s outward expression was one he had practiced, an equal mix of concern and compassion. His bedside manner, he called it.

  “What did you tell him to take, Ed?” Hargreaves asked.

  “I . . . Nothing. I never told him anything.”

  “Did you mention Paragon to him?”

  “No. I swear, James.”

  “When he asked who sent you to the
jail, what did you say?”

  “I didn’t. I avoided the question.”

  “Ed. Shaw escaped from custody. He left Tucker and Vic and Louis in the lurch after they took a tremendous risk to free him. And the very first thing Shaw does is travel all the way across the country, all the way to Paragon, and he goes straight to your office. Are you trying to tell us he did that on a whim, Ed? On a guess?”

  “I don’t know why—”

  “Because I don’t think that’s the truth. I’m sure they don’t either.” Hargreaves glanced at Vic and Tucker, now both standing within ten feet of the chair. Chiarra leaned away. He would have squirmed over the back of the chair if he could, just to put another inch between himself and the men who stared ominously down at him.

  “What was in your office, Ed?” Hargreaves said.

  “Only what we needed. I’m being straight with you. Really.”

  “Needed for what?”

  “For Edgemont. You said we might need to press her.”

  “Yes,” said Hargreaves. “I did say that.”

  “You did.” Chiarra lunged at what sounded like a way out, as Hargreaves had expected. So simple. “You said we might have to keep Edgemont quiet. Show her the bank transfers to her account and say we’d inform Rohner, or the cops.”

  “Go on.” The payments to Linda Edgemont had been through a bank in Guyana. Completely untraceable to Paragon. “You had these records in your office?”

  “I did. Hidden. If Shaw went through every one of my files, he still wouldn’t find them. And they can’t hurt us anyway.” The lawyer nodded. Like that was any kind of conclusion.

  “Why did you print them out?” Hargreaves said.

  “Why? I told you. You said you—”

  Hargreaves nodded to Tucker, who picked up the drill with impressive speed for someone so large. Vic pressed down on Chiarra’s knee with one powerful hand and grabbed the lawyer’s oxford shoe with the other. Chiarra’s cry of protest became a scream with the same breath as the eighth-inch bit bore through his argyle sock and the anklebone beneath.