Roman grabbed him by the arm.“Don’t give out on me now.We’re going to plan B.Come with me.We don’t have much time.”
For the first time since Ryder had exited the car, he became aware of a loud, popping sound, but he was too focused on Roman to consider the source.“Where are we going?”
“Marlow is on the move,” Roman said.“I’ve been tracking him, but he’s moving out of range.You’re going to have to help me, brother, or we’re going to lose our best chance to find your wife.”
They had just cleared the corner of the house in full stride, when Ryder stopped in his tracks.
“Son of a bitch.”
Roman grabbed him by the arm, almost yelling in his face to be heard above the noise.“It’s a Bell Jet Ranger, just like the one you have at home.”
“I know what it is,” Ryder said, staring at the helicopter’s spinning rotors.“Where the hell did you get it?”
Roman almost grinned.“I borrowed it, so don’t wreck the damned thing.I have to take it back when we’re through.”
Ryder started to sweat.Wreck?Hell, that meant making it fly first.
Roman grabbed him by the shoulder and jerked.“Are you going to stand there, or are we going to try to save your wife?”
Ryder started to run.“If you stole this, I’ll break your neck.”
“Just shut up and get in,” Roman yelled, as he leaped into the passenger seat and grabbed at a laptop computer he’d laid on the floor.
A strange sensation swept through Ryder’s body as he climbed into the seat.The sounds were familiar, even the feel of the seat at his back and the scent of fuel mixing with the dust and debris flying through the air caused by the rotor’s massive pull.
Then he glanced at his brother and the moving blip on the computer screen in front of him.The tracking devices!Roman had bugged Marlow’s car after all.His pulse surged.“Is that him?”
Roman nodded.“Yes, but I’m losing him.Take her up!”
Ryder stared.That blip kept blinking—blinking—blinking—like a pulse.Like Casey’s pulse.He grabbed the seat belt.It snapped shut with a click he felt rather than heard.He took a deep breath and pushed in on the throttle and it felt as if the helicopter took a deep breath.Ryder glanced at the blip one last time and the guilt he’d been living with for the better part of a year simply disappeared.
“Roman.”
Roman glanced at his brother.
“Buckle up.”
Seconds later, the chopper went straight up in the air, then flew into the setting sun like a hawk flying out of a storm.
* * *
Lash was ecstatic.It had all been too easy.Just this afternoon, he’d driven Fostoria Biggers’s little car to an abandoned garage near the downtown courthouse, then taken a cab back home.A short time later, he got in his own sedan, drove to his office, picked up some legal briefs, then drove to the courthouse and parked in his usual place.
Only when he got into the elevator, he didn’t go up, he went down.Down into the basement.Down through a maze of heating pipes and furnaces, past the janitor’s quarters where he picked up two large bags he’d hidden earlier, as well as a pair of gloves which he immediately put on.He was smarter than Pike.He wasn’t leaving traces of himself anywhere to be found.
Down he went into a shaft leading straight to the sewers beneath the city.Counting tunnels and watching for numbers written on the walls beside the ladders with something akin to delight, Lash knew when he reached number seventy-nine that he was directly beneath the newsstand.
He waited, and minutes later, he heard the echo of boots against metal as Ryder Justice walked across the sewer lid and dropped the bags full of money…his money.A smile broke the concentration on his face.So far, so good.
He knew the bags were bugged.He’d watched the Feds planting the bugs himself.So he transferred the money from their bags into the ones he’d brought, and left the original bags and their bugs right where he knew they would eventually be found.
Once again, he was using the underground sewers of Ruban Crossing as a means by which to travel.With the narrow beam of a small flashlight for guidance, he began to count tunnels and ladders again until he came to ladder number sixty-five.This time he went up, coming out in the alley just outside the abandoned garage where he’d parked Fostoria Biggers’s car.
When he drove out of the city, he was three million dollars to the good.As for the fifty thousand he was supposed to pay Bernie and Skeet, it was unfortunate, but he was going to have to renege.
It wasn’t his fault Bernie had left fingerprints behind when they’d yanked Casey out of her car.Eventually the police would find Bernie Pike.And if they found Bernie, Skeet Wilson would not be far behind.Lash didn’t trust them to keep quiet about his part in the crime.He couldn’t leave witnesses.Not after he’d gone this far.
As he drove, he reached down and felt the outside of his pocket, reassuring himself that his gun was still there.Once or twice, as he pictured pulling the trigger and ending two men’s lives, he came close to rethinking his decision.And then he would remind himself that, for three million dollars, he could live with a little bit of guilt.
