Authors: Penny McCall
“No jailbreak on that mile-long rap sheet of yours?”
“Not necessary. My lawyer eats cops for breakfast. Especially yokels like these. Besides, they don’t have anything on me.”
“They just arrested you for the heck of it, right?”
“I came up here to do some off-roading. Turns out it was sort of illegal. A friend of mine set me up, you know, a practical joke. I tried to tell Morrissey that, but—”
“He has no sense of humor,” Aubrey said absently.
“None whatsoever.” George stopped talking for a minute. Aubrey didn’t miss the sound of his voice, but apparently he did. “Ummmm, don’t jailbreaks usually involve getting the door open?”
“This sounded a lot easier when I read about it,” she muttered. Just slip the paper clips or hairpins into the lock, manipulate the cylinders until they clicked into place and voila, the lock would open. She had the paper clip part down, and the sticking it in the lock part was a piece of cake, but the manipulating, now that took some finesse.
She could have done more than read about it, she realized now. She could have practiced. She would have practiced if she’d ever thought she might be thrown into protective custody in some podunk little town. For a woman who prided herself on her imagination, she’d shown precious little of that commodity back in her old, safe life, along with a complete lack of appreciation for the ridiculous.
She was making progress on the lock, though. She thought she almost had it when, without warning, the door to the stairs started to ease open. Of course the lock gave at that moment, her cell door swinging out a little way before she pulled it back flush and streaked across to flop on the cot like she’d been sitting there all along.
The outer door opened, and so did George’s mouth. Aubrey held up the paper clips and laid her index finger on her pursed lips, international sign language for “my paper clip works on your lock, too, unless the cops take it away from me.”
But it was Jack who came in.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. There was definitely some sort of relief going on inside of her, and if it was because he hadn’t broken his neck jumping out of Jasper’s truck, that was okay. As long as it had nothing to do with seeing him again. She wasn’t allowed to be happy to see him again, especially when seeing him again ruined her plans.
“I wasn’t able to get the key,” he whispered, easing through the door and closing it silently behind him. “I was thinking maybe you had something in that bag of tricks you carry around with you . . .” He saw her inching her hand behind her back. Or maybe he caught the evasion on her face. He didn’t have any use for books, Aubrey thought, but he could read people, even someone as good at hiding her emotions as she was.
Jack tried her cell door and shook his head. “I should have known,” he muttered, coming inside and dragging her out of the cell.
Aubrey expected some sort of protest from George, but when she glanced over her shoulder, he was lying down, face to the wall, pretending to sleep.
“It’s about time,” Jack said, keeping his voice low as they went through the door into the hallway.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Either you were breaking out because you were dying for my company, or you decided not to trust the cops.”
“Door number two,” she admitted for obvious reasons.
“Glad to know you finally got the message.”
“It was hard not to with you repeating it every other minute.”
“Since you’re in such a cooperative mood, suppose you get your ass in gear.”
“Another oldie but goodie.”
All he did was look at her, and she got the picture. Now that there weren’t any iron bars to protect her, best she stop talking and not piss off the rabid dog who’d come for her.
Sighing, she followed Jack down a little hallway that went past the stairs. At the end of the hallway was a window, high up in the wall. Since the window was practically ripped out of the frame, Aubrey figured that was how Jack had gotten in. He laced his fingers together and hunkered down, and when Aubrey hesitated, looking back toward the stairs, he said, “Don’t even think about it. And you better be waiting up there when I come out.”
She put her foot into his hand and let him boost her through the window, crouching in the shadows by the side of the building.
Jack didn’t appear.
“I’m waiting,” she said in a stage whisper.
Still no Jack.
She crawled over to the window, saw his hands on the edge of the sill, heard him grunting, and after what felt like forever, his head inched into view. It took such an effort for Jack to heave his shoulders onto the sill that Aubrey took pity on him. She grabbed him by the armpits and pulled with all her might, falling backward when Jack suddenly shot out of the window.
“Ouch.”
Aubrey would have echoed that, but Jack was sprawled on top of her, and the parts of her that weren’t oxygen deprived were kicking up an entirely different kind of fuss.
“Nice to know you’re human,” she wheezed out, choosing to focus on his outburst.
“I’ve been shot.” He rolled off her and got to his feet. “I fell over a waterfall, got bit by a dog, and jumped out of a moving truck because of you. I think I’m entitled to show a little pain.”
“I can’t do anything about that other stuff, but I saved you some dinner,” Aubrey said, opening her backpack and taking out the two wrapped sandwiches.
Jack took one of the sandwiches, tore the plastic off and stuffed half of it in his mouth. And then he spit it out, narrowly missing Aubrey’s feet.
“Jeez, Jack. It’s not gourmet”—which for him would be Burger King—“but it’s not all that bad.”
He was bent over coughing and scraping at his tongue. He straightened long enough to look up at her and grate out one word: “Allergic.”
“We ha to moo.”
“What?”
Jack took a swig of lukewarm tap water from one of the bottles Aubrey had refilled, rinsed, and spit. His eyes were puffy, and his tongue was a little thick, but he’d dodged the worst of the allergy bullet. “We ha to get mo’ing.”
“You’re not going to steal a police car.”
“How ’bout that,” Jack said, pointing to a vehicle parked at the far end of the lot, so wreathed in shadows he’d barely recognized it as a pickup truck. A badly bashed-in black F-250.
“Is that . . .”
“Yeah. Prob’ly your frien’ in the next cell.”
Aubrey staggered back a couple of steps. Jack wrapped an arm around her waist and brought her up against him—and felt her trembling. “What? You realizing how close to death you came? ’Bout time.”
“He was locked up.” Aubrey straightened, shoving Jack’s arm away. Her face shone sickly white in the darkness, but at least she had the presence of mind to keep her voice down. “And if the cops were crooked, they would’ve solved Corona’s problem by putting me in the same cell with Horace.”
“What makes you think they wouldn’t have gotten around to it—Wait a minute, would that be Horace George?”
“That’s what he said his name was.”
“Six feet tall? Paunchy?”
“He was sitting down the entire time.”
“Whining?”
“Well . . . yeah, as a matter of fact.”
He laughed softly, a hacksaw rasp of sound that whispered into the night like a haunted house sound effect, giving her chills and the irrational urge to look over her shoulder.
“Sounds like you know him.”
“Used to.” He and Horace had hit the FBI payroll at the same time a couple of centuries ago. While Jack was working his way into the shadows, Horace was busy getting his ass in a sling every other minute, then mouthing off about how it was somebody else’s fault. Horace would’ve been a perfect candidate for throwing Jack under the bus, except for one thing. Horace had been out in the cold a lot longer than Jack had. His handler had taken pity on him and suggested a career change, before one of the bad guys took him out of the game permanently.
Last Jack had heard George had become a two-bit PI in Washington. Jack wouldn’t have thought he had the balls to work for Corona, but obviously old Horace was desperate.
“At least he’s out of commission,” Aubrey said.
“Horace was never a real threat.” It was only a matter of time before Corona got tired of excuses and cut him loose. And for Corona that would probably involve actual cutting.
As usual Aubrey wasn’t willing to take his word for it. “So that was just a friendly game of bumper tag on the Blue Ridge Parkway? And the part where he shot at us was, what, a little joke between old buddies?”
“No, but it explains why he didn’t hit us. Horace logged more time at the range than any ten agents put together and he still couldn’t hit the side of the barn if he was standing five feet away and threw his gun at it.”
“It would’ve been nice to know that before we had to sleep in the forest.”
“I’ve slept in worse places. With worse companions.”
“Sounds interesting. Care to elaborate?”
“I’m saving it for my memoirs. We have to get moving.”
“You’re not still planning to steal a police car.”
Understandable how she could get that impression. Except for the trashed F-250, the inventory of vehicles in the parking lot consisted of a Blazer, a fairly new police cruiser, and an older model Chevy pickup. All three were white and all three were marked with the sheriff ’s shield. Taking one of them would be the same as hanging an “arrest us” sign around their necks, but it didn’t stop Jack from giving Aubrey a hard time. “The Blazer, I think.”
“But that’s the sheriff ’s car. He only came in because I was here, and now that he thinks I’m locked in the basement, he’ll leave, probably at any moment.”
Jack scratched the back of his neck. “What does it matter to you? I’m the felon. You’re just being dragged along for the ride.”
“Patty Hearst,” Aubrey said, which was enough for Jack to get the idea, but Aubrey could never stop at just two words. “One minute she’s a kidnap victim, the next she’s on trial.”
“She robbed a bank,” Jack pointed out. “She pointed a gun at people.”
“And I only broke out of jail, which isn’t really a crime since I wasn’t actually under arrest. Until a police car goes missing, and Horace tells them I’m the one who picked the lock.”
Jack worked his head back and forth, trying to ease the knots in his neck.
“What?” Aubrey said.
“I thought by now all the optimism would have been wrung out of you.”
“If we steal a police car I’m pretty sure they’ll want to send me to jail for the next decade or so. How is that optimistic?”
“You think you’ll be alive long enough to go to trial.”
“Maybe it’s not optimism. Maybe I have some faith in you, Jack.”
“Sure. That’s why you keep trying to go off on your own. And when you’re not running, you’re second-guessing me or whining endlessly about something in the hope you can wear me down and I’ll change my mind.”
“I don’t whine.”
“Right.”
“You’re not stealing a police car,” she said in a voice that definitely went along with one of her librarian stares.
“No shit.”
“You mean you’re not? Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?”
“Because the only other way out of here is on foot. And now that you’ve come to that conclusion on your own, you won’t argue about it anymore.”
There was a welcome moment of silence while she figured out that she’d reasoned herself into a corner. “We could hitchhike again.”
“Yeah, that worked out so well the last time.”
She sighed. “Nobody’s likely to pick us up at night anyway, so I guess we walk.”
“We won’t get very far on foot before your friends in there catch up to us.”
“Which means you’re planning to steal a car in town.”
“You’re the idea person. What other choice do we have?”
“I don’t know, but you could do more than shoot down my suggestions. And you could get out of the light before someone sees you.”
Jack realized his exasperation had taken him out of the shadows and toe to toe with her. “And here I didn’t think you were happy to see me,” he said, ducking back under cover.
She didn’t respond, which sort of balanced things out. She might be able to drive him crazy, but he was getting pretty good at shutting her up. Now if he could only stop her from thinking. “You’re stuck with me now,” he said, watching the line between her eyes smooth out.
“I could scream.”
He stepped up to her again and damn the light posts. “Go ahead.”
She inched back, coming up against the tree behind her. She didn’t scream—she did worse. She talked. “Why don’t we go back to D.C.? I think that would be the best course of action. If you really want me to figure out what I know about Corona.”
“If you want to stay alive long enough to figure out what you know about Corona, D.C. is the worst possible place for you to go. They’re expecting you to show up there eventually, either with the cops or on your own.”
“And what’s your plan?”
“My plan is not to die, and at the moment the best way to do that is to keep them guessing.”