The Cure (13 page)

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t know what else I can say. I do what I’m told. I’ve very well paid. And I’m kept totally out of the loop. The people I work for take their privacy
very
seriously.”

Something in his tone made Erin believe that this Alan, if that was truly his name, was probably telling the truth. If he was, further attempts to elicit information would be a dead end, and she had no idea how much time she had before these men were missed and reinforcements arrived.

So what now? She looked around hastily. She was in the middle of nowhere and couldn’t exactly blend into a crowd, either human or vehicular. They could track her cell phone and she was certain they knew the make, model, and license plate of her rental car. They also knew she was scheduled to fly back to Tucson at eight o’clock that night, so it would be a simple matter to watch the San Diego International Airport. All of this meant that if she tried to run, she wouldn’t stand a chance.

Which only left one thing. Offense. An audacious plan began to take shape in her mind. But she would need to get the two men by the helicopter away from it. And for that she would need a diversion. She would need Alan to cooperate.

Which begged the question: what was she prepared to do to gain this cooperation? Would she finish the job she had started and blow out his kneecap?

Even as she considered this she knew she wouldn’t, no matter what was at stake. Yes, she had skirted the law by testing the anti-psychopathy therapy. She had gone over to the dark side. And yes, she had been a little rough with these two men. But that had been in self-defense. She couldn’t just maim a man, no matter what. It wasn’t in her, and she found herself relieved to realize this.

“Okay, Alan. I need for you to do exactly what I tell you.” She lowered the gun and pointed it at his knee. “The second you cross me, I take out your kneecap, understand?”

She couldn’t actually do it, but that wouldn’t stop her from bluffing.

Now if only he didn’t decide to call her bluff …

“I’ll cooperate,” he said with a sigh. “But you should know you’re holding a tranquilizer gun. You aren’t taking out anyone’s knee with that. Please keep in mind that even when I pulled this weapon, you were never in any danger of being killed. Or maimed,” he added pointedly.

Erin glanced at the gun in her hand and swallowed hard. She had thought she was doing pretty well for an amateur. But not as well as she imagined. She made her way quickly over to Alan’s partner, keeping the gun—the tranquilizer gun—trained on Alan as she did so. His partner was still unconscious, although breathing, and she quickly found a 9mm Sig Sauer semiautomatic pistol and another tranquilizer gun. She removed the semiautomatic and returned to where she had been.

“Thanks for the tip,” she said. This time she raised the 9mm and pointed it at the man’s kneecap. “So let me try this again. Do what I tell you, or never walk again.”

Alan sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

“Call your friends by the helicopter over there,” she said, gesturing due north toward the helipad with her head. “Tell them you found me a mile to the north of them, but I managed to find a dug-in position and I’m armed to the teeth. Give them the location and ask them to assist. Whatever you have to do. If they haven’t jumped in a car and headed in the opposite direction from us within three minutes, I’ll carry out my threat.”

She couldn’t believe she was doing any of this. She was a graduate student. A scientist.

Yet somehow she felt able to channel strategy from some of the fictional characters she had read. She tended to gravitate toward thrillers in her reading, as long as they didn’t feature overtly psychopathic characters. It was true that many thriller villains were technically part of the psychopathic 1 percent, but this was okay as long as they were after money or power, and not serial killers or rapists out to torture and maim for the fun of it. This hit too close to home.

Good fiction tended to have considerable elements of truth in it, and while she had never experienced any situation remotely similar to the one she faced now, she had been introduced to countless such situations through novels and always found herself trying to think her way out of them along with the books’ heroes and heroines. As though she had been subconsciously preparing her mental faculties for this kind of trouble along with her physical ones.

So what was she forgetting? Was she making all of the right moves?

After a few seconds of intense thought, she realized she had forgotten something. If fiction had taught her anything, it was that credit cards could, and would, be traced by a group such as this. So hers would be useless.

She wasn’t a petty thief, but they had started this—whatever
this
was.

“Wait,” she said. “Before you call your colleagues, throw your wallet over to me.”

The man frowned but did as instructed. Other than a driver’s license, which identified him as Alan Smith, he had no credit cards or other forms of identification. She wasn’t surprised. She found a thick sheaf of twenties in his wallet and removed them. She tossed the wallet back to him. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Be sure to have your wealthy boss reimburse you.”

She rifled through his partner’s wallet as well and removed considerable additional cash, keeping the gun trained on Alan the entire time. Both men had been loaded, probably because they didn’t carry credit cards.

“Okay,” said Erin, nodding to the north. “Now call your buddies over there at the heliport and get them to leave.”

She slid the headphones for the parabolic listening device over her head, but only placed one of the two soft cups over an ear. The other ear she kept free. “I’ll be listening to both ends of the conversation,” she said. “So don’t try to get cute.”

The man glanced quickly from the headphones on her head to the large parabolic dish pointing toward the helipad. He nodded, almost approvingly, and the corners of his mouth turned up into the slightest of smiles. “I wouldn’t think of it,” he said evenly.

13

ERIN WAS BELTED
in the backseat of the car so Alan wouldn’t think it was a good strategy to slam on the brakes, and made sure she was behind the passenger’s seat to maximize the distance between them. Alan’s partner had returned to consciousness, briefly, until she had shot him with a tranquilizer dart and left him in the church parking lot.

Alan had done a masterful job of getting the two men by the helicopter to leave in a hurry, but they wouldn’t be gone for long once they realized they had been misled. Fortunately, even taking winding roads they arrived at the heliport gate almost immediately. Erin crouched down even lower in the seat, the gun still pointed at the driver, as he entered the gate code on the metal keypad and the gate slid open.

Alan parked near the helicopter and motioned for the pilot, now standing outside of the aircraft, to walk over to the car. As he neared the driver’s side, Erin shot Alan in the neck with a tranquilizer dart and jumped out of the backseat, training the gun on the pilot as Alan slumped forward against the steering wheel.

The pilot raised his hands without being asked.

“Inside the helicopter,”
she ordered.
“Let’s go.”

The pilot glanced at his colleague slumped over in the seat, and nodded.

They entered the helicopter, which was as opulent as Erin had guessed. The passenger cabin was spacious and contained cushioned captain’s chairs, made of soft, ivory-colored leather, well spread out and with enough leg room to satisfy a seven-footer, along with a bar, cabinetry, and large-screen television. The pilot quickly made his way through the luxurious cabin on his way to the cockpit, with Erin maintaining a safe distance behind him.

“Get this thing in the air!” she demanded the instant he reached the cockpit. “Now!” Erin had so much adrenaline coursing through her body she wondered if she could rocket into the sky without the aircraft.

The pilot worked several switches and the blades on top of the helicopter began to turn, quickly picking up speed. Moments later the flying limousine left the confines of gravity behind and lifted gently into the air.

“Where to?” shouted the pilot. Neither one of them had bothered putting on headphones to facilitate conversation.

Good question, thought Erin. She knew she would have to be her sharpest to get out of whatever it was she had gotten herself into. While adrenaline muddled the thoughts of some, for her it had the opposite effect. When she was giving a presentation in front of a large crowd, the adrenaline would hit, and suddenly she was more articulate than she had ever been, constructing dazzling sentences during tough stretches of the talk that had tripped her up in rehearsal.

“Just gain altitude,” she shouted back to the pilot. “I’ll let you know in a minute.”

So where
would
she go? Could the chopper make it all the way from San Diego to Tucson? And if so, how long would this take?

She shook her head. Bad idea.

She considered ditching her cell phone so they couldn’t use it to track her, but her instincts told her to save it for later. After all, they had to be able to track their own helicopter, using a transponder, or whatever you called those things aircraft carried that broadcast their locations.

So knowing they would track her, what did that suggest?

First, she needed a short trip, so they wouldn’t have time to guess where she was going and plan a welcoming party, or send another helicopter after her. Second, since they would know exactly where she was, she needed to be able to get lost quickly after she landed. If she landed in the middle of a desert, she could never hide. But if she landed in the middle of a major city …

“Fly to downtown LA,” she shouted. “At best possible speed. I’ll tell you where to land.”

The pilot nodded, eyeing her gun warily. The helicopter banked and shot northwest.

“How long?” she shouted.

The pilot shrugged. “About thirty minutes.”

She knew he could land on top of a flat building or skyscraper, with or without a helipad. But after thinking it through she decided against it. Landing on an actual helipad might be the better play.

So where would you find a helipad in the middle of a busy city? After a few minutes, she had it.

They rode in silence, other than the steady beating of the blades, and Erin focused on staying alert and keeping the pilot in her sights. When downtown LA came into view off in the distance, she said, “Take us to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in West Hollywood. Land at their helipad.”

“You know I won’t have clearance,” shouted the pilot. “What if another helo is landing or taking off?”

“Then try not to hit it,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Five minutes later they landed at the helipad, a large circular expanse of concrete with a six-foot-wide yellow strip painted all around its circumference. The second the blades began to slow, Erin shot the pilot in the leg with a tranquilizer dart.

She still couldn’t believe she was doing any of this, but this was no time to be squeamish. The pilot would be just fine, which she wasn’t at all sure was true in her case. She opened a glossy, lacquered storage compartment, shoved the Sig Sauer and tranquilizer gun inside, and then exited the craft.

The helipad had a fantastic view of the Hollywood Hills, interrupted only by a large Macy’s next door, but she didn’t have time to enjoy the scenery. Fortunately, the helipad was currently deserted and she rushed through a door and into the hospital.

Minutes later she exited the facility and made a beeline for Macy’s. She quickly purchased an entirely new outfit, the least expensive clothing she could find, including socks, shoes, panties, and even a baseball cap, and changed, throwing her own clothing away.

She knew she was being ridiculously paranoid, but she had read too many books, and watched too many movies, in which the bad guys had managed to plant tracking devices on the hero’s clothing—which is exactly what she had planned for her meeting with Drake, an irony that wasn’t entirely lost on her. And the penalty for being too paranoid wasn’t nearly as high as the penalty for not being paranoid enough. Besides, even if they
couldn’t
track her clothing, if she kept it on it would help them identify her, whereas this new clothing might throw them off.

She was about to leave the store when she thought better of it. Instead, she bought an additional T-shirt and tied it into a ball around her phone as she exited onto the sidewalk. She scanned the busy streets around her, looking for both a taxi and a pickup truck. She spotted the pickup truck first and tossed the cotton shirt-ball, with her cell phone inside, into the open bed of the truck as it passed. As she had hoped, the shirt muffled the sound of this maneuver and of the phone sliding around in the back well enough that she doubted the driver would realize he was hauling extra cargo. With any luck, this pickup truck would draw pursuit away from her and buy her additional time.

Three minutes later she caught a cab. “Take me to the main bus terminal,” she said as she slid into the backseat.

The driver, a swarthy, unshaven man with a huge gut said, “You mean the Greyhound terminal?”

“Um … yeah. That’s the one,” she said.

As they drove, Erin thought about her next move. It could be that she had vastly overestimated the trouble she was in, the resources this organization had, and their interest in her. But then again, maybe she hadn’t. She felt she had no choice but to assume they would spare no effort to locate her—although she still couldn’t begin to hazard a guess as to why.

But if they were as capable as she feared, they would know she had landed in LA and would camp out at LAX. They also might be able to trace her if she tried to rent a car.

Which left a bus. She couldn’t imagine they would expect
this
move. No one took buses anymore. She was proud of herself for coming up with the idea. Even if they did guess she would take a bus, she hoped the last destination they would expect her to choose was the most obvious: Tucson, Arizona.