Run: A Novel (17 page)

The door crashed back on its hinges four seconds later, and I simultaneously clicked to start playing the doctored camera footage.

“Look!” A voice yelled above the racket. “He’s outside.”

Heavy footsteps sprinted across the floor, but I couldn’t be sure the cops had really left. And I couldn’t hear anything else above the screeching of the alarm, which was boring into my head, stopping me from thinking straight. Eventually I peeped out from behind the desk. I caught sight of movement. But it was only Brian, keying his code into the alarm console and shutting off the infernal noise.

“Marc, you devious bastard!” Brian spun around when he heard me emerge. “Amazing move, my friend! But the cops won’t be fooled for long. They’ll be back. You better hurry. Grab your things. You remember the address I gave you? Where the summerhouse is? Go there. Quickly. You’ll be safe.”

I retrieved the jacket and suit carrier, then Brian bundled me out through the door. He slammed it behind me and I was left silhouetted against the pale building. The hairs on my neck prickled in the chill night air. Somewhere to my left I heard a motorcycle engine. A deep growl like a Harley, not the trail bikes from earlier. But still, it broke my trance. I started to run, replaying Brian’s directions in my head, when another sound reached me. A siren. I changed course and dived behind Brian’s Rolls-Royce. Seconds later the parking lot was flooded with pulsing red and blue light. Then the sound and the colors abruptly died, the motor fell silent, two doors slammed, and a pair of heavy feet pounded away from me across the asphalt.

I peered out in time to see two officers disappearing around the side of the gallery, heading for the entrance to Brian’s apartment. If I was going to escape, this was my chance. I counted to thirty, giving Brian time to come down and open the door. Then I broke cover.

For a moment I wished I’d taken the keys to the Rolls, but then thought better of it. A gold Rolls-Royce is hardly a discreet getaway vehicle. And stealing his car wouldn’t have been fair to Brian, after all he’d done to help me.

Wait. What
had
Brian done to help me? The police had turned up at his apartment, and his first thought had been to deny calling them. Why? Then he’d sent me down to the gallery, which was pretty much
a dead end. When I didn’t get caught there, what was his top priority? Before kicking me out? To make sure I remembered the address of the summerhouse. The unoccupied, perfect-for-an-ambush summerhouse. And now the police had returned, just as he’d predicted they would.

Or just as he’d known they would?

The officers had been in Brian’s apartment for too long. What were they talking about up there? Had he sold me out yet? Or were they still negotiating? Haggling over the price on my head? Changing tack, I headed for the north side of the gallery. I slipped Brian’s jacket on over the top of mine. Swung the suit carrier up onto the first Dumpster. And sprang back as something launched itself at me from the darkness. A cat, all claws and teeth and fury, howling and hissing and slashing at my face. I swung the bag, using it like a shield, and pushed the animal away. Then I scrambled up onto the Dumpster, and from there onto the fire escape.

The door from Brian’s apartment had a window, and through it I could see—nothing. He’d hung a curtain over it. And I couldn’t hear anything, either. Whatever was going on at his little summit meeting, it remained a mystery. All I’d done was waste precious minutes that I could have used to put some distance between me and the police. Frustrated, I started back down the fire escape and was about to lower myself onto the Dumpster when I heard two car doors slam. An engine start. A siren spool up. Tires squeal.

Whatever Brian had told them, the cops had left in a hurry. There was no way I could risk the summerhouse now.

But where else could I go?

S
LEEP CAME TO ME SLOWLY THAT NIGHT
.

The metal rungs that formed the platform at the top of the fire escape were square, but they were set at an angle with their sharp edges pointing upward. They were painful to lie on so I unzipped the suit carrier and laid it out as a makeshift mattress, using the old guy’s rolled-up dress pants as a pillow and his dinner jacket as a comforter. His shoes served no immediate purpose but I held them in reserve anyway, in case the cat came back for revenge.

The wind plucked at my clothes, chilling me, and carrying a constant barrage of sound. A persistent car alarm. Passing vehicles. A helicopter. A couple staggering home at three am, drunkenly squabbling. Stray dogs barking. The odd car stereo, cranked up to eleven. And the muffled bass notes of the music Brian kept blaring in his apartment to drown out his guilt.

BRIAN WAS STILL INSIDE
when I awoke, shivering, in the early hours. But the guilt had relocated to my side of the wall. What was wrong with me? There was no reason to believe Brian had betrayed me. If anything, the opposite was true. He’d gone out on a limb to help me, and all I’d done was mistrust him. Despite taking his money. And his things. I’d even thought about stealing his car. So I resolved, there and then, that when the nightmare was over I’d make it up to him. And that wasn’t an idle promise. Because at some point, between the noise and
the discomfort and the fitful moments of sleep, I’d had a revelation. And from that, at last, I could make a plan.

The data I’d taken from AmeriTel wasn’t—on its own—the key. What really mattered was
the virus
. Discovering it on my laptop was what had gotten everyone worked up into a frenzy. But there was also something critical about my home computer. Something serious enough for someone to steal it from under the detectives’ noses. I couldn’t see how everything was connected, before. But now the beginning of an explanation was coming—very slowly—into focus.

The laptop had been at AmeriTel’s offices, hooked directly into their corporate network. My home computer hadn’t been, but I’d loaded it with AmeriTel data to test my new algorithms. So, the common factor linking the two computers was AmeriTel. The company was the epicenter of whatever was wrecking my life. The virus
must
have come from there.

McKenna was on the right track. He’d been keeping AmeriTel—including Carolyn—under surveillance for a while. It didn’t throw any light on Peever’s real intentions, though. Or the identity of the guys who’d attacked us on the bikes. But that didn’t matter. I could sidestep them. All I had to do was call Homeland Security directly and report a suspicious virus on AmeriTel’s computers. Give them time to go and check. Then surrender to the police. Once I was proved innocent, someone else from Homeland Security could protect me. Finding out who all these other players were would be their problem. And they might even be able to catch whoever’d stolen my prototype, as a bonus.

THE BATTERY IN THE CHAUFFEUR’S
phone died before its browser could open again, so I hit the Power key on the old Motorola Brian had lent me and waited impatiently for it to light up and find a signal. I called the operator, and she didn’t miss a beat when I asked for Homeland Security. She even offered to connect me. Within seconds I was through to an automated service, which came as a relief—it’s easier to lie to a machine—and I happily spun a tale about what I’d found when I was working for AmeriTel.

——

I FIGURED THAT TWO HOURS
should be long enough for Homeland Security to take some action. Cautiously I made my way down to ground level, in case anyone spotted me and I had to run again. And then I settled back into the shadows to wait.

Normally hanging around for that length of time would drive me crazy, but that morning things felt different. I wasn’t exactly happy—that implied something more active—but I was certainly content. Like when you’ve just taken a long, hot bath after a grueling session on the tennis court. Only after a couple of days of being the ball—and getting smashed all over the court by unseen opponents who were playing by their own private rules—I was finally back in charge of the game.

The first hour I spent resisting the urge to try Carolyn’s number, still anxious about the consequences. And the second being bounced repeatedly into her voicemail. The only consolation was that she had no way to recognize the number I was using, which meant she wasn’t ignoring me in particular.

Then, when I was finally ready to leave, another upside dawned on me. I didn’t need to go off wandering the streets in search of the police. I had a cell phone and two detectives’ cards.

The police could come to me.

O
UR DESTINATION WAS TWENTY MINUTES’ DRIVE AWAY, BUT NEITHER
Hayes nor Wagner said a single word to me the whole time we were on the move.

The station house was a square, single-story structure with brick walls, a flat roof, and bars on the windows. It reminded me of a doctor’s office I’d visited once, when I was in college. I was helping Carolyn do community service in a housing project. Only this building was about fifty times bigger, and it wasn’t swathed in razor wire.

Hayes dumped the car in a lot that was separated from the rest with thick red lines and she and Wagner led me to a side entrance. A pair of glass doors parted and the detectives ushered me into a small, square room. It was divided down the center by a chest-high wooden counter, and the air was heavy with the stink of sickly sweet disinfectant. An older, uniformed officer on the other side of the divider got to his feet as we approached. Hayes nodded to him, and he smiled back at her. The old cop made a show of looking me up and down—filling me with a strange sensation, as if he could somehow see right through my clothes—then he slapped a large Ziploc bag down on the countertop.

“Possessions,” he said.

I looked at Hayes. She nodded, so I picked up the bag and filled it with my keys, Brian’s cell phone and charger, and the money he’d lent me. I’d dropped the chauffeur’s phone in one of the Dumpsters outside the gallery along with the old guy’s suit carrier and clothes, not wanting to explain how I came to have them.

“Sign.” The officer slid the bag to his side of the counter and handed me a worn wooden clipboard with a blank form attached to it. A cheap ballpoint pen dangled from it on a length of filthy twine.

“It’s not filled in,” I objected.

“Sign,” he insisted.

Hayes nodded, and I figured it wasn’t worth making a big deal out of. Aside from the keys, none of the stuff was too important. The phone wasn’t mine. The cash could be replaced. And soon I’d be home with this living hell safely behind me. I smiled and scrawled my name across the bottom of the page. Although I did use the vague “deniable” version of my signature I’d developed years ago in my first job.

The officer took the clipboard back, grunted, then hit a button that released a door to our right. It opened onto a long corridor with more doors, evenly spaced along both sides. The detectives led me to the second from last on the left. Hayes opened it, and Wagner shoved me through. She pushed a lot harder than she needed to, and concentrated the force through one knuckle which gouged into my back, but when I turned to complain the door had already closed behind me.

The room was very simply laid out. There was a table in the center, and a chair on either side. All three were made of metal. And all three were bolted to the floor. A thin rubber strip ran around all four walls at waist height—probably a trigger for a panic alarm—and there was a CCTV camera in a metal cage in the corner above the door. The only other feature was a large mirror on one wall, but I’d watched enough cop shows to know that this would be made of one-way glass. So, in keeping with my new cooperative image, I sat down, clasped my hands on the table in front of me in my best Roger LeBrock pose, and tried hard to look innocent.

There wasn’t a clock in the room, but I guess they kept me waiting for over an hour. My sense of well-being was ebbing rapidly and when I moved my arms and saw a line of words that had been crudely scratched into the tabletop, my spirits sank even faster:

your screwed theyll never let you go

It’s a joke. It’s not aimed at you
, I was telling myself over and over, when the door opened and a woman walked into the room. She was very tall—over six feet, even in the flat shoes she was wearing—and very skinny, with shoulder-length auburn hair and a long, pointy nose. I couldn’t help thinking that if you dyed her hair black and gave her a tall hat and cape, she’d sweep the board as a Halloween witch.

I stood up and held out my hand but she brushed straight past me, went to the spare chair, and sat down.

“My name’s Agent Brooking. I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Marc, but I was on the phone. To my boss. He’s not happy, because of you. And you know how these things go. Shit rolls downhill. Which means I’m not happy, either. So, now’s a bad time for you to be playing games.”

“I’m not playing games. I came here of my own free will. Because I want to help.”

“When you come out with shit like that, remember Homeland Security still has agents in the hospital after your performance last night. Now, do you still say you’re not playing games?”

“I do. People tried to kidnap me last night. I nearly ended up in the hospital myself.”

“Yada yada yada. I won’t ask again, Marc.”

“I’m telling you. I’m not playing games.”

The woman flashed a sour smile, then pulled Brian’s Motorola out of her jacket pocket. She straightened a tag attached to its antenna, which showed its number. Then she placed a sheet of paper next to it—a call log—with an entry from that morning highlighted in yellow.

“You acknowledge this is your phone?”

I nodded.

“Do you really need me to do this?”

“Do what?”

She shrugged. Then she took out an iPhone, tapped the screen, and a sound file began to play. It was a recording of the call I’d made that morning. To Homeland Security. My tip-off about AmeriTel.