“Let me think about that.”
The house was surprisingly quiet. Lucas and Devlin went through the front door to find the SWATs in the living room talking to a frightened, bespectacled Hispanic woman with a vacuum cleaner. She was saying, “... by the time they got home, they wanted every rug in the house to be clean. Really clean. I been vacuuming...”
The team leader asked, “They went out the back door?”
“Yes, but I seen no car go down the driveway, maybe I was in the wrong room...”
“When was that?”
She shrugged. “Maybe... one hour? Maybe less.”
The team leader said to Lucas and Devlin, “Sansone and his wife are running for it.”
Lucas grabbed Devlinby the elbow and pulled him to the door. “They had the housekeeper running around the house so the SSG guys would see her shadow on the drapes.”
“Now what?”
“We go man-to-man.” Lucas got on his cell phone, called Koch. “Where are you?”
“Out at the curb. I followed you over. What’s happening?”
“We need another ride,” Lucas said. He held up a hand to the SWAT team leader, saying, “We’re outta here,” and on the sidewalk outside the door, Devlin asked, “Where are we going?”
“When we followed the money delivery man, he went to a locksmith shop over in Elizabeth. Sansone was there to get the money. I’m hoping he went there for one last pickup... could be a hundred thousand dollars. Might be hard to give up, if you’re about to run off somewhere. South America, Southeast Asia.”
“I’ll buy that,” Devlin said. “We better hurry, though. He’s been out for a while.”
Lucas didn’t knowexactly where the locksmith shop was, and called Orish to find out. She found the address from the SSG driver’s daily log and asked, “Do we hit the car wash?”
“Is anything happening there?”
“Yes, we had that Zamora come in a while ago. Just left.”
“Hold off, then. Call me if the car wash delivery guy leaves. He might, and soon.”
Orish called afew minutes later, said that Kerry, her second, wanted to be at the locksmith shop. “That could be awkward,” Lucas said. “Devlin and I do this a lot. If this isn’t Kerry’s kind of thing...”
“He’ll be fine, he used to be SWAT, and besides, he’s already on his way,” Orish said. “Where do you want to meet?”
The driver had a map up on the navigation screen, and gave Orish an intersection a couple of blocks from the locksmith’s. Off the freeway, they threaded their way through an older section of the city, tall narrow yellow- and blue-painted clapboard houses built directly on the front sidewalks, no lawns at all, the houses separated by narrow driveways. Cars were parked all along the street, and in the dark, and cold, they saw only one man and one woman, the man getting in a parked car, and then pulling away, the woman standing outside a closed store, hunched against the wind, smoking.
“Let’s troll the shop,” Lucas said. They did that, saw one dim light, but no movement in the windows.
Lucas got on the phone to Orish: “Call your SWAT team. See if there are cars in Sansone’s garage.”
“Back in a minute,” she said.
A minute later she called back and said, “It’s a three-car garage with two cars in it, and the third space is filled up with stuff—lawn mower and so on. So... they’re on foot.”
“I can promise you that they’re not on foot,” Lucas said. “Where’s Kerry?”
“He should be at the rendezvous,” she said, anxiety leaking into her voice. “I talked to him three or four minutes ago and he was close.”
“We’ll be there in a minute or so.”
They were, and saw a deep red RAV4 sitting on the street with its windows fogged. “There they are,” said Koch. “How do you want to do this?”
“We’ll walk down, I think,” Lucas said. “We’ll call you when...”
