Back Track (3 page)

The Mustang screeched away from the kerb and took off like a dog let loose from a trap. As he gained speed, Bishop checked the rear-view and saw the beefy cop back there yank open the door of his vehicle and get in. He was already backing up as his female partner jumped in the passenger side. Bishop heard sirens and then saw flashing lights.

Soon, they became dots in the distance. But they wouldn’t be for long.

Bishop changed gear and checked his speed. Fifty. Sixty. Seventy. The roar of the engine soon overrode everything else. The Mustang wasn’t pretty, but it could sure move. He still had to put some space between them, though. Time was against him now.
Every
thing was against him now.

He glanced at his passenger. She was staring straight ahead with wide eyes, her lips set in a straight line. Her face was white and she looked as though she’d rather be anywhere else but here.
Join the club
, he thought. At least she was quiet. Bishop faced front and saw the road was clear ahead. Houses and trees sped past in a blur. A few vehicles passed by, heading back towards town. Soon it was just trees and forest on either side. Farm country.

And about a quarter mile behind him were the tootsie-roll lights. Right now, they’d be calling for back-up. Aerial as well as ground units. That would take time. But how much? No way of telling. Bishop was already up to ninety when the road began a long, slow curve to the left. He kept his speed steady and lost sight of the police lights behind him. Once the road straightened out again he saw the State Route 4022 intersection coming up ahead. As he approached, Bishop tapped the brakes, brought them down to forty-five and swerved left into the two-lane road without stopping. Luckily, there was no traffic. Just empty road. Fields and farms on either side. He began picking up the pace again and soon saw the cruiser make the same turn. Still a quarter mile behind him. That was good. As long as they got no closer.

Bishop covered another mile without them gaining. Two miles. Then, in the distance, just before Jacob’s Cemetery, he saw what he wanted. The turnoff for the second leg of State Route 125, the heavily forested road bikers came from all over the state to ride. Mainly for its steep mountain climbs and its legendary, blind hairpin turns. He slowed as he approached, then took the right turn and increased his speed again on the straight. Sixty. Seventy.

Dense forest began surrounding them on both sides. A pick-up passed by, going south, closely followed by a convoy of four motorbikes. The cops were still back there behind him. The road began to ascend gently as he entered the Appalachians. A low guard rail lined the right side of the road now, protecting drivers from the steep drop-offs on that side. If you could call something that only reached your knees protection. After a couple more miles he saw the road take a sharp left turn up ahead. Slowing to twenty just before the turn, he negotiated the car round it before speeding up again. Then two more bikes whizzed by. Followed by a FedEx truck. Then more empty road. Bishop took them back up to seventy.

By the time he slowed down for a sharp right up ahead the cruiser still hadn’t appeared in the rear-view. He slowed to twenty-five, took the bend and was halfway round when he felt the rear end slide to the left. Sonja cried out and reached out to grab the dashboard for balance. Bishop ground his teeth as he steered into the slide, then shifted down into second and felt the tyres gain purchase again.
Careful, boy, careful
. Once he came out of the curve safely, Bishop kept pushing, pushing, pushing. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty.

This section was on a gentle descent and acceleration was easy. Almost too easy. Cliff face at his left. Guard rail at his right, followed by a sheer drop into the forest ravine below. He glanced at the rear-view and saw empty road. No cops yet. He knew he was making good time on the corners. Then he downshifted as he saw the yellow sign ahead. Another arrow at a right angle. This one pointing left. A blind hairpin turn. One of the worst.

Then he saw the turn, with the guard rail following it round. Beyond it were trees and a drop to nothingness. This time he reduced his speed down to twenty again. He kept his eyes focused on the few feet of black asphalt directly in front of him, gripping the wheel until his knuckles were white. But there was no time to waste. Halfway round, he pressed down hard on the accelerator again and by the time they shot out of the hairpin they were moving at over forty miles per hour.

Sonja suddenly raised her cuffed hands and screamed.

Directly ahead, a massive eighteen-wheeler was heading right for them down the centre line. Wide enough to take up both sides of the road. And only fifteen feet away from them.

Less.

Deputy Louise Fletcher held on to the dashboard as her partner, Deputy Garry Cavanaugh, carefully steered them through the bad hairpin turn. Every cop in the area hated this road. And this was the reason why. As soon as they were facing the straight, she saw what lay ahead and shouted, ‘
Stop!
’

Cavanaugh jammed both feet on the brakes and the Crown Vic immediately jerked to a halt. They both stared at the scene in front of them.

‘Holy shit,’ Cavanaugh said.

An eighteen-wheeler had stopped almost twenty feet away, the cab turned at an angle to the long box trailer it was carrying. The long stretch of road behind it was empty. For now. Fletcher watched wide-eyed as the truck driver ran over to the missing sections of guard rail and peered down into the ravine below.

At the Mustang.

Without a word, Cavanaugh pushed his door open, jumped out and ran over to join the young driver, a heavily built black man in a baseball cap. Thinking quickly, Fletcher slid over into the driver’s seat and carefully backed up until she was on the other side of the hairpin. So Richardson and Baynard, following half a mile behind, wouldn’t smash right into the back of them. She switched off the siren, too. The flashers she left alone.

Then she got out and ran back towards the broken guard rail, where the truck driver and Cavanaugh were standing at the edge, looking down into the gorge. She was only a few yards away when she heard the sound of the gas tank exploding below. Cavanaugh and the trucker jerked their heads back at the concussion and then Fletcher was alongside both men, looking down through the trees. A hundred and fifty feet below, Fletcher saw the smashed-up remains of the blue Mustang they’d been pursuing lying amongst the foliage. A moment later the wreckage was completely obscured by flames and smoke.

Fletcher searched for a way down, but there were no handholds and the drop was too steep. Impossible without proper equipment. And that wasn’t likely to arrive any time soon. Fletcher pulled the two-way from her belt as a second explosion shook the air. The truck driver lost his balance and fell back to the ground.

As she put a call in to Jean at Dispatch, she saw Cavanaugh look back at her briefly and shake his head. They both knew it was hopeless. But she still requested an ambulance ASAP, and told Jean to notify the fire department three towns away. Then she turned back to see the young driver looking up at both of them as though only just noticing he wasn’t alone.

He raised the visor of his baseball cap and said, ‘He was just
there
, officers. I mean, deputies. He just came out of nowhere, going
way
too fast. Then he must have seen me and just lost . . .’ The guy shook his head and looked at the ground. ‘Oh, Jesus. He was going too fast. There was nothing I could do. He just . . . Oh, man.’

‘You see anybody get out?’ Cavanaugh asked, looking down at him.

The driver kept shaking his head as he slowly got to his feet. ‘I didn’t see nobody, man. He just swerved and went right over. Jesus, he was just going too fast and I pressed down on the brakes. What else could I do?’

Fletcher shook her head as she watched the smoke rising into the air. ‘Nothing, sir. Nothing at all.’

‘How long before we can leave?’ Sonja whispered from the passenger seat.

Bishop removed the wig that had been annoying him for hours and dropped it on the dash. Brushing a palm back and forth over his buzz cut, he sat back and let out a deep breath as the adrenalin left his system. ‘Not too long. Once they take our driver’s witness statement, they’ll let him go. An accident scene like this, they’ll want to get this rig moving before it starts blocking traffic.’

‘God, I hope so,’ she said, still shaking. ‘Just knowing the police are a few feet away scares me half to death.’

‘Try and relax. They’re seeing exactly what we want them to see.’

‘So am I finally safe from
him
?’

‘Well, you’re officially dead. Or you will be in a few days. I figure you can’t get much safer than that.’

Sonja looked at him without smiling. ‘I thought we really
were
dead a couple of times back there. My car never handled that good before.’

‘That’s because your car’s currently at the bottom of that ravine where we planted it earlier. We’ve been preparing this one for weeks to make it as identical as possible to yours, then swapped them last night while you were asleep.’

She leaned over and checked the speedometer. ‘The mileage is all wrong and I never even noticed,’ she said. ‘Not even when I was driving into town this morning.’

‘You had other things on your mind, I guess,’ Bishop said, turning to watch the large shape of Luke Shelton at the rear of the trailer.

He was carefully arranging the crates of soft toys back there until they reached all the way to the roof. After all this hard work and effort, Bishop thought it would be pretty sloppy to get caught out by a routine inspection. God, after all, was in the details. Luke worked fast, just like he had when he’d guided the Mustang inside. The truck hadn’t actually been moving towards them, of course, although it had seemed that way at first glance. Hence, Sonja’s scream. It had merely been idling. Waiting for Bishop. As soon as he’d come out of the hairpin turn, he’d steered the car precisely through the thin gap between truck and guard rail. Once through, he’d performed a 180-degree handbrake turn and seen Luke at the rear of the truck, waving him in. Bishop had then quickly guided the vehicle up the ramps and inside, after which Luke retrieved the ramps and shut the rear doors after them. The whole thing had gone like clockwork. But then, after all their practice runs, it wasn’t surprising they’d got it down to a precise science.

Bishop removed the .357 from his waistband and placed it in the glove compartment. It joined the Swiss army knife he’d used to cut Sonja free from the cuffs. Then he adjusted the rear-view mirror. His pale blue eyes focused on the lower part of his face as he slowly peeled off the fake beard and moustache.

Sonja turned to him. ‘What if they check the dental records of . . . of the girl in the car? You know, with our regular dentist?’

‘Then they’ll find definite proof that the burnt female body down there is one Sonja Addison. We took the trouble to switch your dental X-rays with hers a while back, so don’t worry.’

She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Sorry, I’m just . . . I still can’t believe this is actually working out.’

Bishop turned to her and smiled. ‘Now might be a good time to start believing it.’

She nodded reluctantly and faced front again. Bishop studied her profile for a moment, thinking back to the chance encounter three weeks ago that had started all this. He’d been waiting at a stop sign just outside Louisford when her Mustang had bumped into the back of his BMW. It was a ten-year-old model he’d bought last year, using some of the money the city of New York had paid out for his wrongful imprisonment. He’d been racking up the already high mileage by driving aimlessly across America, trying to figure out what he wanted to do next, when Sonja had entered the picture.

There was barely any damage to either car, but Sonja just went to pieces like the world had come to an end. It was puzzling. She didn’t seem crazy or anything. Just very highly strung. And scared. After managing to calm her down a little, Bishop drove her to a snack bar and made her drink something hot. He wasn’t in any rush to get anywhere, and her behaviour interested him. After an hour of talking about everything except her problem, she finally came out with it. Slowly at first, then it all came in a rush.

She talked about her lawyer husband, Carl, and the daily beatings he inflicted upon her, both physically and mentally. She described the gruesome methods he used to keep her in line, and why she only wore long-sleeved shirts these days. But mostly she talked about how impossible it was to escape. Carl would either kill her, or go to the ends of the earth to find her. And he had plenty of influential friends to help him. For years, every local cop had known that if they had a legal problem they could retain Carl Addison’s services for next to nothing. He believed in supporting his local police force. Which meant he was owed a
lot
of favours.

She also told Bishop how she’d recently overheard telephone conversations that convinced her Carl was also in the pocket of some big drug dealer over in Reading. That had earned her a major beating that resulted in a broken collarbone. She still had the bruises. After that, Bishop hadn’t needed any more convincing. At the tender age of twenty-three, she was far too young to have to face that kind of fear every day. That she also reminded Bishop of someone he knew who’d been in a very similar situation just made his decision that much easier. And that situation had ended very badly because of him. He felt that by helping Sonja he might atone for a past mistake that haunted him to this day.

Bishop wasn’t the impetuous type, though. Never had been. He did plenty of research of his own before committing himself. He’d learned the value of on-the-spot reconnaissance from his time back in the Corps, where accurate intel could mean the difference between life and death. Even more so when he entered the close protection business a couple of years after his discharge. In this case, before he did anything, he needed to be absolutely sure Sonja was on the level. He researched her whole life. Bishop’s occasional girlfriend, Jenna Falstaff, had even chipped in to help by utilizing her unique information-gathering skills. In the end, everything Sonja had told him checked out.