The Professionals (21 page)

He was a big guy in expensive clothes and a haircut to match. His face was friendly; he looked like somebody’s father, someone who would drive his son to basketball practice and look the other way if
the kid happened to steal a couple of his beers. But he was coming her way, and he was calling her Ashley. And that was bad news.

He was about ten feet away from her and coming in fast. “Ashley McAdams?” he said, smiling down at her. Marie felt the bottom fall out of her stomach.

“No.” She forced a smile. “Sorry. You must have me confused with somebody.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not confused, Ashley. You need to come with me.”

“Who are you?” she said. “Are you the police or something?”

“I’m a kind of police, yes.”

He can’t do anything here, she thought. You’re in a public place, and there are people around. Whatever he wants to do, he can’t do it here. “Could I see your ID?” she said.

“No.” He grabbed her arm. “You need to come with me.”

She tried to shake free. She couldn’t. “I’ll scream.”

He reached inside his coat. “You won’t.” He looked anything but friendly now. “I’ll shoot you dead right here.”

Marie looked around, searching for help, trying to gauge her chances. The man said he had a gun, and if he had a gun her chances weren’t good. He’d shoot her before she got ten feet away. But if she let him take her, he’d kill her anyway. Someone call the police, she thought. Someone get in on this,
please
.

The man wrenched her arm. “Get in the goddamn car.”

W
indermere circled the block and turned the car back down toward the apartment building. The Lincoln was still parked curbside, midway down the street, its four-ways flashing. The big guy was across the road, standing in the awning of an old brick walk-up, talking to a girl. Talking to
the
girl. “Holy shit,” said Stevens. “Is that—”

“Yeah,” said Windermere. “Let’s go.”

She pulled over to the curb and threw on her emergency lights.
Then she got out and ran. Stevens followed, dodging cars and a pissed-off cyclist, watching the scene unfold as he came closer. The big guy had his hand on the girl’s arm and was gesturing back to the Lincoln. Then he put his hand inside his coat.

“Freeze,”
Windermere shouted. Heads turned. “FBI!”

The man looked up for a moment, and the girl saw her chance, wrenching free and bolting around back of the apartment. The man took his hand from his coat, and Windermere reached for her sidearm. But the man came up clean, his hands empty. “You take this guy,” said Windermere. “I’ll get the girl.”

She took off around the apartment, and Stevens started for the big guy, who saw him coming and ran, cutting back across the street toward his Lincoln. Stevens was just about on him when the guy reached his car and dove in, punching the gas and lurching forward with tires squealing, shooting off down the street. Stevens watched as the guy kept his foot down, squeezing down the centerline to avoid the traffic, bouncing off cars going both directions and disappearing down the street.

“Goddamn it.” Stevens pulled out his cell phone and punched in Seattle PD. Relayed the situation to the dispatcher, who promised radio cars on scene within minutes.

D
’Antonio drove, shoving the car hard down the middle of the road, the engine howling and the car squealing metal on metal. He cleared the block and made a hard right and then doubled back on the next street over, hoping to cut off the girl and the cop in back of the apartment. I had her, he thought. I had the little bitch.

He searched through the trees as he drove, looking for signs of his target. Midway down the block was an alley, and he steered the Lincoln down it, fishtailing, careening off somebody’s wall and sliding all over the place.

Halfway down the alley and the girl appeared, just burst out from one of the apartment complexes, and nearly ran right into D’Antonio
and the Lincoln. He gunned it, swerving to try and hit her, but she dodged at the last second and ran behind the car.

D’Antonio shifted into reverse and kept his foot on the gas, the wheels shrieking in protest as he steered one-handed back toward the girl, who was fleeing now along the side of the alley, hugging the garages, looking for a way out.

He had the Lincoln lined up, closing fast, and was ready to run the bitch down when someone took a shot through the front windshield and he let his foot off the accelerator, lost focus, and twisted back to face forward, where the girl Fed stood in your classic Weaver stance, aiming the barrel of her Glock right through the windshield and directly at his head. She was yelling something, but he couldn’t hear it for the distance and the scraping of the car against the brick of some fucker’s garage, but she got what she wanted. He’d let the car slow just for a second, and when he looked back in the rearview mirror the bitch was out of sight, had ducked into somebody’s backyard and disappeared, leaving D’Antonio alone with the Fed.

W
indermere stood in the alley, both hands on her pistol, staring down the driver of the black Lincoln. Whoever this clown thinks he is, she thought, there’s no way in hell he’s killing my suspect.

She advanced toward the car, hearing the first few sirens in the distance and hoping Stevens was still around front to catch up with the girl. Goddamn this guy, she thought. I had her. “Turn off the car,” she called out. “Throw the keys out the window.”

The driver stared at her for a few moments, watching her advance. Then he glanced down, and Windermere let out her breath. He’s giving up, she thought. At least we can get this guy into custody, try and figure out his beef.

But the driver wasn’t giving up. Windermere heard the roar of the engine and the chirp of the tires scrabbling for traction as the car leapt forward toward her. She had time for one shot, but missed, and then she was diving for cover as the Lincoln sped past.

Windermere slammed against a garage door, feeling the rush of the wind in the car’s slipstream and the gravel spat back from the tires. She hauled herself to her feet and watched the car speed away down
the alley. The car reached the end of the block and made a right-hand turn and disappeared.

Windermere stood in the alley a moment, catching her breath. Then she swore, loud, and walked around to the front of the apartment building to find Stevens.

M
arie heard the gunshot and nearly froze up, thinking the big guy was somehow shooting at her from behind the wheel. But she looked back and saw the female agent take aim while she yelled at the driver, and he slowed down just as Marie reached another open gate and ducked through it, cutting across a back lawn, nearly tripping over a sandbox, and then hurrying around the side of the house and back out onto the sidewalk.

She could hear the sirens now, and her heart was pounding. Somewhere behind her was the male police officer, and soon the whole street would be filled with police cars. So she kept her head down, ran as fast as she could out of the neighborhood and down toward Kinnear Park again, where the sound of sirens dissipated and she could slow down to a walk, blending in with the crowds walking the paths and enjoying the sunshine.

This was bad, she knew. Really bad. That guy had found her right at her door. Somehow he knew where she lived. Somehow the police knew, too. They were compromised. They were found out. She had to tell Pender, and she had to get out of Seattle.

She wanted to sit down on a park bench and cry. She was tired and scared, and she had no idea how anyone had figured out where they lived or how the cops had been on her so fast. She wanted to slow things down and think things over, but she knew if she stopped she wouldn’t get started again. She’d lie there until the police or the bad guys caught up.

She forced herself to keep moving. Let’s figure this out. The apartment’s blown. Can’t go back. You’re stuck with what you’ve got, right
now, on your person. She looked through her purse. No cash. ID and credit cards for Ashley McAdams, Darcy Wellman, and Rebecca Decoursey. And Marie McAllister. The McAdams alias was done. So was Marie McAllister. The thought made her want to cry again. Marie McAllister was as good as dead. So was Arthur Pender.

Still two good aliases left. Darcy Wellman was used in Detroit, though. One good alias left. Rebecca Decoursey was never used. Marie dug around in her purse some more. What else? The backup burner. Thank God for that. Anything else? A pack of spearmint Trident. What the hell, she thought, trying to think like Arthur. One alias, one cell phone, and some chewing gum. Let’s hope that’s enough to get out of here safe.

T
he clerk at the Hollywood Motor Lodge yawned as he watched the Trans Am pull out of the parking lot and onto the highway. Damn, but that car looked familiar. Those kids had been hanging around for a day now, and they hadn’t done a thing. Hadn’t gone sightseeing, hadn’t even gone out to eat. Three or four of them, Florida plates, car parked at the very back of the lot. The clerk wasn’t stupid; he’d seen plenty of people come stay at the Hollywood who didn’t want to be seen. Question wasn’t were they on the run, it’s what they were running from. And was it worth getting involved?

The clerk sat down at the front desk and shuffled his newspaper. Had to be the kids from that South Beach shooting, he figured. He dug up the local news and paged through it. Sure enough. Trans Am, kids in their twenties. Three men, one woman, one presumed injured. Probably bleeding on the furniture, the bastard.

Paper said the Dauphin—that was the South Beach hotel—got torn up, said it looked like drugs. Well, damn it. Drug shootings and bullet holes were something the Hollywood didn’t quite need. Hard enough keeping customers around without wireless Internet, these days.

He didn’t like to get involved in these things, not usually. People had a right to privacy, and who was he to judge? But when their presence
started to interfere with another man’s commerce, well. It was time to put a stop to things.

The clerk put down the newspaper. He glanced around the lobby. All right, he thought. If you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna do it. He reached for the phone with one hand and dug around in the desk drawer with the other, reaching for the old .38 while he dialed for the police.

P
ender and Sawyer drove the Trans Am into Hollywood on the Federal Highway, Pender at the wheel and Sawyer on the lookout for cops. It gave Pender a funny feeling, driving around in broad daylight, but how else were they going to get out of here? We’ve gotta swap this rig somehow, he thought.

They found a used-car dealership on a slummy main drag, a little corner lot with a shitty corrugated-iron shack in the back and a razor-wire fence around the perimeter. “These guys will do fine,” he told Sawyer. “Probably criminals themselves.”

Pender parked the car on a side street, and they wiped it, threw the plates in a dumpster a few blocks down, and hiked onto the lot, where a man in a bad suit and a wrinkled tie shook their hands and squinted through the sun and tried to sell them on a repossessed Porsche Boxster.

Pender talked him away from the sports car long enough to set his eyes on a big Dodge truck, a Durango, and then pulled out his wallet and got the salesman to sign off for seven thousand in cash, no undercoating necessary.

He purchased the car in Ryan Carew’s name, and they were off the lot within forty-five minutes and feeling a hell of a lot better about the situation.

“Clothes and a computer,” said Sawyer. “And then let’s get the hell out of Florida.”

They drove until they came to a shopping mall, and Pender found them a computer store inside. He handed Mouse’s note to the first salesman
he saw and came out ten minutes later with a brand-new computer. Then they hit JCPenney and set about buying clothes.

Pender hooked himself up with a decent wardrobe and started working on getting Mouse some clothing of his own. Then he caught sight of Sawyer a couple aisles down, working his way through women’s wear. Pender wandered over to him. “Don’t think they have your size, guy.”

Sawyer held up a purple sweater. “You think she’ll like this?”