Nick of Time (15 page)

Dimly lit and massive in its proportions, the inside of the Galleria was silent, save for the staccato slapping of their flip-flops as they hurried across the sky bridge toward the second-level entrance to the parking garage.

“Now we really need to hurry,” Brad said. “We're probably on a lot of security cameras right now.” Noticing the deep furrows of concern in Nicki's forehead, he smiled. “Like you said. Different.”

Nicki didn't know how to respond.

“Relax,” Brad said. “We'll do fine. I've come too far too fast to be stopped by some rent-a-cop.”

At the doors, Brad pulled them to a stop, then scanned the edges of the doors themselves. “You see any alarm contacts?”

“I don't even know what an alarm contact looks like.”

Brad crossed his fingers. “Here goes.” He pushed the door open, and then they were outside, where the humid night air embraced them in a wet hug.

“Wait here,” Brad said, grabbing Nicki by her shoulders and planting her on the curb. “I'll be right back.”

“I can keep up,” Nicki said, with barely enough air to manufacture a sound.

“I know you can, but there's no sense wearing you out. I've got to get some wheels.”

Nicki scowled. “But our car is at the hotel.” His look told her everything. “Oh,” she said.

With the skills he'd honed over the years, he could grab any car that he wanted. It'd be slim pickings, though. At this hour, there were precious few to be borrowed from a mall parking lot. Still, Brad took off as if he knew what he was doing, running full tilt across the largely empty upper deck and disappearing down a ramp.

The night seemed awfully quiet. Sitting there on the curb, all alone, she felt vulnerable, and the ceaseless hammering of her heart didn't help. In her mind, she could see countless thousands of blood cells log-jamming in the hardened vessels of her lungs, waiting their turn to supply her ever-increasing demand for oxygen. Already, she could feel the swelling in her ankles. In a few more minutes, she'd be able to see it, too.

It was still too soon to take any more meds, but it wouldn't be long; just an hour or so. Meanwhile, she could just wait out the episode.

The irony of it all made her so angry: After seventeen years on the planet, without any semblance of a life to speak of, why did
real
living begin at the very time when her body was least able to handle it? She'd had enough trauma in her life, for God's sake. Why couldn't someone else take a turn?

Nicki leaned back against a light post and scanned the concrete horizon, resisting the urge to close her eyes. With so little time left, she found herself begrudging every second that her eyes were closed. There was just too much to see.

But until today, the vistas had never changed. Classrooms. Hospital rooms. Bedrooms. The same neighborhood with the same houses and the same cars and the same people she'd seen every day of her life. It was all so boring.

So terribly normal. That's not how Nicolette Janssen wanted to be remembered. She wanted people to think of her as anything
but
normal. As
better
than normal, whatever that meant. She knew it was stupid to think such thoughts, but when she died, she wanted it to be an event on the news.

Her shrink had told her that it was destructive to concentrate on the finality of her disease. “Quality of life,” he'd said, “is more about what one feels in one's mind than what attacks one's heart.” He'd looked proud when he'd said it.

“Let's trade places,” Nicki had suggested. “I'll sit there saying important junk for two hundred bucks an hour, and you climb over here and handle a ticking bomb of your own.”

Nicki understood the doctor's point. Intellectually, she understood
everything
the doctor told her. Who the hell wouldn't understand it? But
knowing
how you're supposed to think about something is a whole world away from ignoring the fact that you're sliding toward a big rectangular hole in the ground.

Now, though, for the first time, she thought she might have a handle on how to make intentions meet reality. The trick was to walk away from everyone who attempted to tell you what to do with your life, and to take a chance for once.

Look at where she was now: She thought she was heading off to hang out with a sweet guy, and now they were running from the cops. It was scary—scary as hell—but it was
real.
It was
different,
a
surprise.
Besides, Nicki hadn't done anything wrong. If the cops caught them, she'd go back to same ol' same ol', and that would stink, but man, the trip to get there would be epic.

She smiled as she thought about the look on Brad's face when he told her about the killing stuff and the jail stuff. He thought she was going to freak out, but when she just took it all in, he was surprised. She liked that look on him. That superconfident Mr. God mask had to be peeled away from time to time.

And she'd been the one to do it.

She could hear her father already, ranting on about the danger she'd caused herself by hanging out with a felon. She could see his red face and the distended veins at his collar. He wouldn't care that Brad had never hurt anyone, just as he'd never cared about what Nicki wanted for herself. In Daddy's mind, her worst offense of all would be her defiance of him.

But without the defiance, there'd be no living. That's what he couldn't see. It's why she could never go back, either.

Somewhere down below, the silence of the night rumbled with the sound of an engine turning over.

* * *

The stairwell door to the lobby was also locked.

“God
dammit
!”

So what the hell were people supposed to do in the event of a fire? Just pile up in the stairwells like ice floes in April?

Carter pounded with his fist on the locked door. “Let me in!”

No one answered. And then he understood. This was an emergency exit. If the building was burning, they'd want people to go all the way outside, not to cluster in the lobby. If it were any more obvious, it would have smacked him in the face: down another half-flight, the sign on another door read
EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY/ALARM WILL SOUND.

He should have taken the elevator.

Carter charged at the door, hitting the panic bar with his hip and slamming the door open against the brick façade of the hotel. As promised, an alarm squealed, and he couldn't have cared less. Even the exit chutes were decorative, sporting colorful plants and bushes. He could see the portico circle at the top of the hill on the right. He took off at a run.

If his sense of direction did not betray him, the skyway to the mall was past the main entrance, on the other side of the hotel. It occurred to Carter as he ran up the hill that he couldn't remember the last time he'd taken a quick step. Not exactly out of shape, he wasn't exactly
in
shape, either, and as sweat soaked his clothes, he could feel every one of his forty-five years.

Two uniformed police officers stood sentry at the front doors of the hotel, clearly stationed to watch anyone who might try to leave. The sight of a middle-aged man running straight at them put them on edge. In unison, their hands moved from behind their backs to rest on their Sam Browne belts.

“Come with me!” Carter yelled. “I know where they are!”

The cops exchanged glances that betrayed their assessment of Carter's mental stability. When Carter closed to within a few yards, the cop on the right shifted his hand from his belt to his weapon, holding the other hand out in a gesture that stopped Carter in his tracks. “Okay, mister,” said the cop on the right. “Don't be stupid.”

Carter knew what they must be thinking. “My name's Carter Janssen,” he said breathlessly. “My daughter is with the man you're looking for—Brad Ward. They're not in the hotel anymore. They've fled to the mall over there. If we move fast, I think we can catch them.”

The cop scowled. “I haven't heard anything about that.”

“Of course you haven't. They don't know in there. But I'm telling you now.”

The cop shook his head. “Sorry, sir, but I've got orders. If the lieutenant thought—”

Carter didn't wait for the rest. This was a waste of time. The officers did in fact have their orders, and they were not going to violate them on the whim of a complete stranger. His guys back in Pitcairn County, New York, would have done the same thing.

Without another word, he spun away from the cops and headed for the Galleria parking garage. The two minutes it took for him to run the distance made his legs feel as if they'd hammered out a marathon.

He surveyed the layout of the garage with a single glance. It had been built into the side of a hill, with the mall itself blocking a second side. Nicki and Brad would face two options for escape: they could exit from the bottom level of the four-story parking structure, thus bringing them straight at him, or they could exit from the top level, which, thanks to the rolling hills of the surrounding countryside, was actually at ground level, with easiest access to the freeway.

Upstairs was it. The humidity pressed in on him as he paused to look up the seemingly endless flights, and then got down to business, taking them two at a time.

He was nearly to the third level when he skidded to a stop so abruptly that his momentum pitched him forward on the steps.

Off to his left, from somewhere in the middle of the dimly lit expanse of concrete, a starter switch ground, and an engine caught. From where he stood at the landing between parking levels, he couldn't tell if it came from the second floor or the third.

Then, from the floor above—the third—headlight beams swept the walls of the stairwell.

Carter dashed up the half-flight to the next level in time to see taillights disappearing up the ramp to the fourth floor.

* * *

This time, it was a Honda Accord.

Nicki stood as she saw the headlights painting the far wall, shocked at how much the effort took out of her.

The engine roared as Brad piloted the car around the curve, through a stop sign without slowing, finally skidding to a stop with the front passenger door positioned three feet in front of her. The window lowered itself, revealing a beaming Brad on the far side of the center console, leaning low over the steering wheel to make eye contact.

“Hey, good-lookin', want a ride?” he asked.

Nicki smiled in spite of it all. The guy never knew a serious moment. She lifted the handle and pulled the door open.

“Nicolette!”

Her head jerked up, not believing what she'd heard. Sure enough, there stood her father, fifty yards away, illuminated by the wash of a streetlight. He waved his arms over his head as if to divert an approaching aircraft. His chest heaved from the effort of his run.

“Nicolette Janssen, don't get in that car!”

She froze—having no idea what to do. Looking back through the window, she saw Brad's gaze shift from the front, where he could see and hear her father, and then back to her.

“Nicolette, please!” Carter yelled.

Nicki pleaded silently for Brad to tell her what to do.

“You've got to call this one yourself, hon,” he said. “But do me a favor and do it fast.”

“Do you want me to come along?” she asked him.

Up ahead, her father started walking quickly toward them. “Nicolette Janssen, I forbid you to get into that car!”

“Stay there!” she yelled back at him. She hated the airy sound of her voice, but there was enough emotion there to freeze her dad. She returned her gaze to Brad.

He looked back at her, his face showing nothing. “Nicki, you know what I want you to do, but that's not a reason to come, any more than what he wants you to do is a reason to stay.
You
decide.”

“Nicolette, please don't go,” Carter said. There was a new tone to his voice. A pleading tone. He sounded as if he might be ready to cry. “He's a killer, sweetheart. I don't know what he's told you, but I guarantee you that much is true. Please don't get into that car with him. Don't leave me.”

Why did her father have to do this? Why couldn't he have just stayed away? Why did it have to be about staying with
him
or leaving
him
?

The clock had ticked down to nothing, and the whole world seemed to pause, waiting for her to make up her mind. In the end, the decision wasn't all that complicated. She could choose something new and alive, or something old and dying.

“My name is Nicki,” she said.

She slipped into the seat, barely getting the door closed before Brad peeled rubber clearing the parking lot.

TIME TO STEAL

Chapter Fifteen

C
arter Janssen hadn't moved from the spot there in the parking lot, and when the police cars arrived, they came as a six-pack. Warren Michaels was first to step out onto the concrete.

“You missed them!” Carter shouted. He was furious.

Warren said, “I got a radio report from one of our men on the front door. He told me that you had tried to get them to come along.”

“They wouldn't,” Carter said.

“They should have,” Warren said. “This is the only thing that made sense. Somehow they knew we were coming. Did you see them?”

“I talked to her,” Carter said. He closed his eyes and saw that look of confusion in his daughter's face all over again. “I tried to convince her to stay, but she went with him anyway.”

“What were they driving?” asked the lieutenant.

“A Honda,” he said. “Red, I think, but it might have been blue. They were gone before I could get a tag number.”

“Don't worry about it,” Warren said, reading his thoughts. He squeezed Carter's shoulder then let it go, a gesture of commiseration. “Besides, Ward is a smart guy. Chances are, he's already switched those plates out for someone else's.”

“I tried to yell to you,” Carter said, a little calmer. “There in the hallway, but I couldn't get your attention.”

“I understand. The good news is, there can only be but so many Hondas out on the street tonight. We'll put the word out on the radio and stop every one of them if we have to. We'll get 'em.”

Carter closed his eyes and tried to push away the approaching headache.
Please just let it be that simple
. “What did you find in the room?”

“They were definitely there,” Warren said. “And they left quickly. All that formal wear and such, they left it all behind.”

Carter sighed. “I guess that's good news.”

“But there's bad news, too, I'm afraid.”

The tone of the cop's voice caused a spear of pain to pierce Carter's body. As the cop reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out its contents, the pain blossomed even more. “These bottles have Nicki's name on them. I suppose they're important?”

It was all of her meds.
All
of them. “Oh, my God,” Carter said.

* * *

Nicki watched with amazement as Brad went to work.

The Honda lasted all of five miles, zigzagging from the highway off onto back streets, before he slowed to a crawl in a residential neighborhood.

“We need new wheels,” he explained. “Your dad's probably got the license number, and even if he doesn't, at this hour, the cops'll be stopping anything that looks like a Honda.”

“So you're just going to steal another car?”

Brad shrugged. “What difference does one more make?”

“So, when the owner wakes up in the morning, he's going to report his car missing, and when that happens, we're right back where we began.”

Brad laughed, just a chuckle at first, and then a real laugh, like one you'd hear at a comedy club.

“What's so funny?” She wasn't sure why, but deep in her gut, Nicki felt offended.

“Think about it. You've got a fatal illness, you're wandering through the night with a convicted murderer, we're both probably gonna die in a hail of gunfire, and you're worried about getting caught stealing a car. It really is pretty funny.”

Nicki was not amused. “Maybe I'm just too tired.”

“Your head is in the right place, though. The trick is to find a car that no one will notice is missing.”

“How do we do that?”

Brad stopped the Honda and pointed past Nicki at a house on their right. “Like this,” he said. “Look at this place. The people aren't home.” And sure enough, there was an old Toyota parked alongside the curb.

Nicki followed his finger, but couldn't follow the logic. “Brad, there's a light on in the house.”

“Exactly,” he said, pulling into the driveway. He killed the lights on the Honda. “What's the last thing your father does before he goes to bed at night?”

“How should I know?”

“Think about it. Before he goes upstairs for the last time, what's the last thing he does?”

Nicki pondered the question, but the answer wasn't there. An ember of anger started to burn.

“He turns out the lights, right?”

She thought about it. Yes, that
was
the last thing he did.

“It's the last thing
everybody
does,” Brad explained. “But what does he do before he goes on vacation to make people think there's someone at home?”

Now she really did see it. She smiled. “He turns on a light.”

He slapped his thigh triumphantly. “Exactly. Not just any light, mind you, but a light downstairs. I've broken into my share of houses, and I've got to tell you, at three in the morning, the ones with lights on are the ones that are empty.”

“How do you know somebody's not sick?”

“If they were, then an upstairs light would be on, or maybe the foyer light. But look there. That's like a living room light. You can tell because of the bay window.”

Nicki released a chuckle. “You know, there aren't any rules for that stuff. You could be wrong.”

He flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture and made a face. “I'm never wrong.” He opened the car door and got out, leaving the Honda running in the driveway.

Nicki followed. “What are you doing?”

“I'm making a trade,” he said. As he approached the driver's side of the Toyota, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a ring of what might have been keys, but from what Nicki could see, they all had an odd shape about them.

“What are those?” Nicki asked.

Brad scowled and brought a finger to his lips. “One of the first lessons in thief school is not to shout, okay? We call it stealth.” He stooped to the side of the door and stuck one of the thin black objects into the lock, while his other hand stuck a tiny Y-shaped strip of metal into the top and bottom of the key slot. “These are lock picks,” Brad explained. His tone was that of a master explaining to an apprentice. “I stick the pick in the lock while holding tension on the cylinder with the tension bar.” He raked the pick in and out of the slot, then withdrew the pick and reinserted it. “These older Toyotas aren't as hard as some of the other cars. This is a 1992, I'd guess. Beginning in '95, the lock technology got pretty tough.”

“What are you scraping?” Nicki asked.

“The pin tumblers. There's a diamond-shaped point on the end of the pick, and as I push the tumblers out of the way, the cylinder turns a bit, and the tension keeps them from popping back in. When I get them all”—Nicki heard a distinctive
click
, and the lock turned all the way, raising the lock button just inside the window—“the lock opens.” He stood and pulled the door open, triggering the dome light inside, which he extinguished by turning a knob on the dash.

Nicki's jaw dropped. “I don't believe you know how to do this stuff.”

Brad beamed, clearly proud of his accomplishment. “But wait,” he said in a strange announcer's voice, “there's more.” He produced the Leatherman and again folded out the needle-nose pliers.

“First we have to unlock the steering wheel,” Brad said. Slipping into the driver's seat, he grasped the steering wheel with both hands and wrenched it violently to the right.

A loud
crack!
made Nicki jump.

“It's just a pin,” Brad explained. “A piece of plastic. Break that sucker off and you've got an unlocked steering wheel. Now, watch this.” Manipulating the pliers with only one hand, he grasped the ignition cylinder with the tool's jaws, and again broke something with a mighty twist. Grinning widely, he pulled out the whole assembly and brandished it for Nicki to see.

“Did you break it?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by breaking.”

Brad brought the pliers around to the ignition switch again, but with the steering column in the way, she couldn't see exactly what he did. Whatever it was, the engine turned and coughed to life.

“All you have to do is close the circuit,” he explained. “All of this other crap is supposed to make you feel more secure.”

Amazing, Nicki thought. Simply and utterly amazing. “So, what do we do with the Honda?”

“I need you to follow me in it,” he said. “We'll dump it a couple of blocks from here and then take off.”

Ten minutes later, they were done. It would have been even sooner, but Brad spotted a similar Toyota—later model but same color—parked down the street a ways, and he took an extra few minutes to swap the license plates.

“It's the little things that make the difference,” Brad explained when they were on the road again. “To be on the run and stay alive means thinking three steps ahead all the time. When you steal, steal from someone who won't notice, but then plan that they might. This car here? We're gonna have to dump it and get another one before too long, probably tomorrow. Meanwhile, if someone does notice that we boosted the car and they report it, cops on the highway are going to be looking for those old plates. If they see us on the road, they'll call in the plates we've got and find out that they belong to a silver-gray Toyota, and we'll be in the clear. Pretty cool, huh?”

When Nicki didn't answer, he craned his neck to get a look at her.

She was sound asleep.

* * *

Carter sat on the sofa of the Governor's Suite, perusing the accumulated evidence. Somebody named Vincent Campanella had one hell of a surprise waiting for him when he got back from his vacation in France. His car had been stolen and over six thousand dollars had been racked up against his credit card without his knowledge. Carter wondered if the gendarme would break the news in person, or if it would merely be handled through a phone call.

The Braddock County cops had found the Mustang in the Ritz-Carlton garage, safe and sound, and even with a full tank of gas. There on the bed, Carter could see the assortment of clothes that his daughter had bought with money she didn't have.

“Under the circumstances, I think we can make a pretty good case for dropping any charges against your Nicki,” Warren said. “They didn't keep anything they stole. That's a little bit of good news, anyway.”

Carter forced a smile. “Somewhere under all that horseshit there has to be a pony, right?” he quipped, recalling the punch line from an old joke.

“We've got a BOLO out for their vehicle,” Warren went on, “and we've got word going out to all the hotels and flophouses. We've narrowed their lead to virtually nothing, so I think there's a lot of reason to be hopeful.”

Carter nodded because it was the thing to do, but he sensed that Warren knew, just as he did, that things were not nearly as rosy as he was painting them to be. In the first place, Brad Ward was proving himself to be resourceful. Carter placed the likelihood that they were still in the same vehicle at just about zero.

“You've got to have some faith,” Warren said. “Things have broken your way pretty well so far.”

“You know what?” Carter said with a suddenness that turned heads. “I think I need to be reunited with my car and take off on my own.”

“Where are you going?” Warren asked.

“South and east. Chris Tu, a detective on the force back home who's been working that end for me, told me that they talked in their e-mails about going to the beach.”

Warren's eyebrows scaled his forehead. “Specifically? I mean, if you think they're headed for a particular beach—”

Carter shook his head. “No, it's nothing that overt. Apparently, they just talked about the beauty of the beach in their e-mails. That was one of the things she wanted to do before she . . . Well, it's one of the things she wants to do.”

Carter eyed the brown pill bottles on the bed, the ones with his daughter's name on them. “I don't suppose you'd let me have those, would you?” he asked. “I know they're evidence, but if I happen to run into her—”

Warren scowled and shot Carter a look that said he was crazy. “Those aren't evidence at all, as far as I'm concerned.” He scooped the bottles up with one hand and gave them to the worried father. “No, like I said, as far as I'm concerned, this isn't even a crime scene anymore. We've got everything we need.”

Warren Michaels was doing Carter Janssen a huge favor here, turning away from Nicki's part in what clearly was grand larceny, if not worse. “Listen, Warren, I—”

“This doesn't begin to repay my debt to you, Carter. Nathan's debt to you. You just go and find Nicki, and be sure to give me a call if you need any help.”

“I'll do that,” Carter said. “Now how about a ride back to your house where I can get my car?”