Island of Thieves
Page 30
Two minutes later Chiarra’s sobs had subsided to weeping. The drilling, the most intense part of the pain, had lasted only three or four seconds. Chiarra would even be able to walk—hobble at least—on that foot if they went no further, Hargreaves knew.
The pain wasn’t the point. It was the fear that lasted.
“Why did you print those records out, Ed?” he said when he was sure Chiarra would hear him. “You could have shown Edgemont the transfers on any laptop, any phone screen. Why print hard copies and hide them in New York?”
“I can’t . . . I can’t breathe.”
“Did you have another purpose for those papers? Were you going to send them somewhere?”
Chiarra kept shaking his head.
“Hand them off to someone?”
Hargreaves crouched down to watch Chiarra’s face as it twisted.
“Were those the only documents you printed?”
“Not all.” So softly that Tucker, a few feet away, tilted his head as if unsure of what he’d heard.
“What else, Edwin? What else did you keep with the transfer records?”
“Welch,” Chiarra said, tears and snot mixing on the man’s chin. Hargreaves’s lip curled.
“Kelvin Welch? The hacker? What about him?” Chiarra was back to quaking in denial. Hargreaves glanced at Tucker, who reached for the drill again.
“Avizda.” The word was almost a howl.
“Welch’s contracts,” Hargreaves said, filling in the blanks of Chiarra’s gasping. “His papers for Droma and his hiring contract with Avizda.”
Chiarra was back to nodding frantically. “That’s all. Just those.”
Those were enough to cause trouble, Hargreaves mused. Not with the courts. It would be an uphill battle for any district attorney to prove that Kelvin Welch’s placement at Avizda through Droma’s IT resource pool was anything more than normal business. Droma overlooking Welch’s criminal record could be excused as a bureaucratic error. Rohner would pretend ignorance. And Welch was long past being able to testify.
But the revelation would set Avizda frantically searching for security breaches. Welch’s black-hat work in their internal network might be uncovered. That could lead Avizda to check their labs for missing inventory, including testing samples. They might learn that their wondrous innovation was no longer solely theirs.
Ample cause for concern. And action.
“Which brings us back to why.” Hargreaves patted Chiarra on the shoulder. “I know you were nervous, Ed. Nervous when Shaw killed Linda Edgemont. Nervous about helping us arrange for Shaw to be sprung from custody. You told me as much. You wanted something to protect yourself. To hand over to the police if this went the wrong direction. Yes?”
Chiarra didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
“It’s all right,” Hargreaves said as he stood. “You had a crisis of faith. We can move past that. Just rest.”
He looked at Tucker and Vic. The two men followed him to the front of the abandoned shop.
“You want us to . . . ?” Tucker angled his head toward the lawyer, now curled like a fried shrimp in the chair, not daring to touch his perforated ankle.
Hargreaves said no. “Too many people know he’s here. We can’t have anything happen in Seattle connected to us.” He folded his arms. “Ed has family. His children’s names are Junie and Ed the Third. I’ll get you their schools and other background. Make sure Ed understands that the drill touches them next if he even twitches the wrong way.”
The idiot, Hargreaves thought, looking at Chiarra. Probably printed out the records thinking he was being smart, creating physical copies that couldn’t be hacked or erased. Where did that get you, Ed?
“Shaw is the problem,” Tucker said. “If he goes to the cops . . .”
“The police can be managed. I’m more concerned that Shaw might contact Avizda. The whole point of hiring Welch was that Avizda can’t know they’ve been taken until it’s too late. Chen needs the lead time.”
“So what does the freak want?” said Vic, his voice made adenoidal by clogged sinuses. Hargreaves’s immediate thought was that Vic resided in a glass house, mocking Shaw’s scarred visage. His own face might be permanently altered after Shaw’s continued rearrangement of it.
“He’s not playing defense,” said Hargreaves. “Chiarra keeps employment records in his office. That means Shaw might have made each of you. He’s clearly trying to return to Seattle. Rohner tried to pay him off before. Maybe Shaw thinks he still will, if he trades his information about Linda being our inside source.” He shrugged. “But Shaw’s intentions are moot. Riley and Taskine are following him now.”
Vic twitched in surprise. “I thought you wanted him alive.”
“I will take what I can get. If they capture Shaw, he’ll tell us whatever he knows. If not.” Hargreaves’s gaze turned to Chiarra again. The blood had soaked through the attorney’s sock, likely filling his wingtip shoe. “Death is better than Shaw deserves.”
The thief had learned about Paragon from someone.
If not from Chiarra, then from Karla Haiden.
Karla had claimed not to have been in contact with Shaw since before the thief’s arrest. Hargreaves knew that to be true, at least when it came to Karla’s personal cell phone, her work phone, and her tablet. No calls had been routed to her room at the Crowne Plaza. Hargreaves had weighed the merits of bugging the room before her date with Shaw, but Karla was skilled enough to avoid talking—or anything else—in a potentially compromised room before she’d checked it carefully. She might have even found the bug and used it against Hargreaves. He’d hired the woman for more than her considerable looks.
Perhaps Shaw had told Karla more about the stolen chemical sample than she’d admitted. Perhaps the new lovers had gotten ideas.
“Get Ed cleaned up,” Hargreaves said to Tucker. “Put him on a plane. We have work to do.”
FORTY-NINE
Youngstown, Ohio. Shaw had chosen it before he was halfway across Pennsylvania. He’d never been through the town before, but it was a reasonable bet the two men in the white Jeep Cherokee tailing him hadn’t either.
He’d clocked the Cherokee as one of a dozen cars keeping pace behind him on the same Jersey stretch of I-80. As the miles wore on, the other candidates had dropped out, either exiting the freeway or falling far behind.
Rounding a curve outside Lewisburg, Shaw had crossed quickly to the right lane and let the Ford coast. As the Cherokee came up the fast lane where he’d been moments before, he caught the dark outlines of two men in the front seats. They were experienced enough not to immediately slow to match Shaw’s speed. The Cherokee drifted alongside. Shaw hadn’t glanced at it, not wanting to reveal his interest. Over the next twenty miles, their vehicle had gradually faded back, almost out of sight.
They were good. It had taken him a lot of miles to be sure of their intent. And being skilled, they had to know he’d make them sooner or later. They’d be expecting him to run.
The next three hours had passed without change. His pursuers seemed to have started with a full tank, like he had. Shaw didn’t want a war of attrition, letting his tank run low in the process. The Cherokee might be the heeler, the dog that stays behind the flock, driving it forward into the pen. Or into the chute leading to slaughter.
Shaw wouldn’t wait for that moment. Youngstown would have to be the place.
The town was optimal. It lay at the intersections of multiple highways and interstates, leading to every point on the compass. Even if the men tailing him assumed that Shaw would still ultimately head west, he might go north or south or even backtrack for a short while before picking a state route or a suburban back road in that direction. Too many possibilities for even a large coordinated team to cover.
Eight miles over the state line into Ohio, he pulled off the freeway and headed south on a five-lane thoroughfare toward the city. A stretch of inns and strip malls, banks and family restaurants, with plenty of elbow room between each for
abundant parking. All of them chain stores or franchises. The same street might exist in Fort Worth or Anchorage or Tallahassee. Apart from the telephone poles, the tallest things on the horizon were business signs on their posts, lining the thoroughfare like monuments to corporate logos.
The Cherokee followed him, keeping a hundred yards distant. Shaw might be preparing to stop for gas or food at any of two dozen places. He imagined the men in their vehicle flexing sensation back into their limbs, checking their weapons. Readying themselves to finally make the kill after their long chase.
When the upcoming light turned yellow, Shaw hit the gas through the intersection and then immediately turned left into the vast parking lot of a Walmart, a structure large enough to host a college football game. He accelerated, cutting a diagonal path across the empty acres of lot nearer the road.
In the rearview he caught the white flash of the Cherokee as it swerved around cars stopped in the intersection. They knew he was fleeing now. They had no choice but to run him down.
He kept pressure on the gas, roaring out the side entrance of the lot and onto a two-lane road to swing hard right, back toward the thoroughfare. A driver turning into the store stomped on her brakes, leaving rubber. A thick line of trees shielded the road from the Walmart lot. The two men in the Cherokee would have to slow, if only for an instant, to see which way he’d gone. Every yard Shaw could put between them counted.
The Ford was doing fifty miles an hour when he crossed the five-lane road, straight through a red light and over a flattened curb into what looked like a park. Car horns blared, too late to do more than announce their fury and fright. He braked and swerved, narrowly missing a tree. No sign of the Cherokee in his mirrors.
Not a park, Shaw realized. A cemetery. Beyond the spruces and oaks, a path formed a winding perimeter around a collection of low headstones and crosses, with dozens of other markers beyond. He veered to follow the path, the only safe way through the minefield of memorials.
Shit. He had hoped to haul ass directly through a field and lose himself in the streets on the other side. Maintaining speed was impossible here. He couldn’t drive directly off the cemetery grounds; an ivy-covered fence ringed the block. He sure as hell couldn’t go back.
Had they seen him enter the graveyard? The trees and fence would provide some cover. He would have to keep moving forward. Find another way out. The path curved gently every few yards, forcing Shaw as slow as fifteen miles an hour. People walking among the stones in the distance stopped and stared at the black Ford’s intrusion on hallowed ground. He gritted his teeth and pressed on.
There. The mortuary office, a hundred yards away. The path would take him directly into its lot. He could cut around the building and escape.
Shaw heard the Cherokee’s engine first. To his right, on the road running parallel to his path. Racing to get ahead of him, to beat him to the end of the fence and cut him off. The cemetery was nearly empty. An optimal place to make their move.
He glanced left, searching for an opening in the crop of tombstones. Nothing. The cemetery was old and had filled every available plot. Moss and water stains and crumbled corners on the markers for the dead. He might join their ranks soon enough.
The Cherokee reached the end of the fence line, forty yards ahead of him. It turned left, banging over the curb and onto the grounds. Shaw swerved right to skim the fence. His sideview mirror tore strands of ivy from the links. Maybe he could cut behind them, reach the open road before they could turn around in the tight confines of the cemetery—
No good. The Cherokee stopped abruptly, a wall ten yards from his front bumper. He had an instant’s glimpse of the driver, a bushy black tangle of Viking beard and tattooed forearms like Christmas hams. He’d have to stop. He couldn’t stop. Stopping would mean the end. He stood on the gas and hauled the wheel sharp left, away from the fence.
The driver saw Shaw trying to veer around them. Maybe he’d been waiting for just that moment, a chance to hit Shaw broadside as he passed and smash the Ford into the dragon’s maw of tombstones. He punched the gas.
Too hard. Too eager for the kill. The Cherokee’s front wheel spun for half a second on grass still wet from the afternoon sprinklers. It lurched forward just as Shaw’s truck raced past. Their front bumper clipped the rear of the Ford. The impact knocked the tail of the Ford sideways. Then the Cherokee slipped free with a screech of tearing fender. Left without anything to impede its momentum, the charging vehicle flung itself across the path and into the gravestones beyond.
Shaw heard the agonized crack of something large and metallic snapping. He saw only the jostling view ahead as his truck fishtailed on the grass, finally gaining traction and bouncing over the curb onto the road. He floored it, roaring away into the residential streets on the far side of the cemetery. Only when he had ten blocks and two turns behind him did he slow.
No sound of sirens. But the cops must be close. With any luck they would arrest the two assholes in the Cherokee.
If any of the people at the graveyard got involved, they would report his black truck. A sharp-eyed witness might have noted the New York plates. Disposing of those was a priority.
Take the side roads, backtrack the few miles to Pennsylvania. Find plates there. And check the damage from the love tap he’d received from the Cherokee. Getting pulled over for a busted taillight would do him no good at all.
If Paragon sent more teams after him—and Shaw figured that was a given—his saving grace was that they wouldn’t want the cops to find him before they did. If he put distance between himself and Ohio fast enough, he could hold on to the truck for another day, maybe more. Driving through the afternoon and all night and taking the state routes to avoid I-90 would put him somewhere close to Kansas City.
Eight hundred miles to figure out his next move. Which had better be good. The closer he got to Seattle, the greater the danger. They knew he was coming home.
FIFTY
Half an hour later, Riley made the call. Taskine had been driving when they’d splintered the Jeep’s axle on that fucking granite slab, but it had been Riley’s idea to take Shaw in the graveyard. The way Taskine figured, it meant Riley had to deliver the bad news. Riley knew better than to argue when Taskine was in the kind of mood that got people’s eyeballs skewered.
“Yes?” Hargreaves said.
No point sugarcoating it, Riley thought. “Shaw got away. Outside Youngstown.”
“So he made you,” said Hargreaves.
“Just crap luck. We need a new car. We can grab one here, but the faster we swap it out for something clean, the better.”
“Cleveland,” said Taskine.
“Yeah,” Riley said to Hargreaves. “Rent a car in Cleveland. We can be there inside an hour if we haul ass.”
There was a pause, long enough for Riley to raise a doubtful brow to Taskine. He could read the vibe.
“No,” said Hargreaves. “You’ve had your shot. Shaw won’t get back on the interstate.”
“Any spending on his cards?” Taskine asked, impatiently motioning for Riley to put the phone on speaker.
They could talk as loud as they chose. One look at the totaled underside of the Cherokee had been enough for the two men to grab their bags and quick-time it away from the cemetery. When they stopped, they were a mile down the road and drenched in sweat from the sweltering humidity. They stayed out of sight behind a Youngstown strip mall that had nothing in its windows but for lease signs.
“Shaw’s too smart to be on the grid,” said Hargreaves.
“The truck,” said Riley. “A Ford F-250. Black with a silver toolbox in the bed.” He recited the plate number.
“Wherever Shaw got it, it’s not in his name. I’ll run the plates, but odds are he stole the truck in New York. He’ll probably steal another one now that he’s shaken you two off his ass. If you don’t have any better ideas, go home.”
“He went to Paragon for a reason,” Riley pressed. “Right? What was he looking for?”
“Which clients?” Taskine grumbled. “Could be he’s headed for them next.”
“Forget it. Shaw’s been in jail and on the run for a week. He’ll be worn out. Somebody in that situation goes to ground where he feels safest. For Shaw that’s Seattle, or it’s down in Georgia where he was stationed, or it’s with some Army buddy. I’ll make inquiries. If I can get a line on his old platoon, there might be something for you to do.”
“Mr. Hargreaves,” Riley said. “We can make this right. Give us a lead, we’ll bag this bird.”
Hargreaves didn’t answer immediately. Riley grimaced. This assignment was in the toilet. If they were given another, it would probably be pushing around labor organizers in Newfoundland until Hargreaves counted their debt as paid.
“Get to Seattle,” Hargreaves said at last.
The two men exchanged looks. More stunned than pleased.
“Sure, yeah,” said Riley. “Pittsburgh’s close. We’ll grab a ride, catch a red-eye.”
Hargreaves hung up.
“How you figure that?” Taskine said to Riley.
Riley stuck the phone in his pocket and frowned even deeper than before. “Not like Jimmy Boy to pass up a chance to stick this mistake up our asses and make us say Thank You, Sir. He must need all hands on deck right now.”
“He’s nervous. I can smell it.”
“You think Shaw’s holding something on him?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.” Taskine mopped his broad forehead with a shirttail already soaked through. “I just want to find this fucker and rip pieces off his face with pliers. Make him beg some before we start with the questions.”
Riley had been around. For most dudes talk like that was just so much shit, a way to pump themselves up. Taskine was different. He was probably already imagining the feel of the rubberized grip in his hand as Shaw’s nose or eyelid tore loose. Riley kept his mouth shut as they walked back to the main drag. Somebody would have to be a focus for his partner’s fury. Better Shaw than him.