Phantom Instinct (9780698157132) (23 page)

H
arper grabbed the side of the pay phone. It was cold and grimy. “I'm here. On time. It's a public phone, and somebody was using it when I arrived.”

“Not my problem,” Travis said.

Traffic pulsed past, lights strobing over her, music thudding from car stereos.

“I'm ready to take the next step. Tell me what that is,” she said.

Twenty yards away, Aiden continued walking in her direction, but he blended into the crowd on the sidewalk and kept going. She forced herself not to look directly at him or watch him as he passed.
Eyes on.
She had to presume that Travis was watching her.

“I need Oscar,” Travis said.

The phone booth's privacy hood felt cold, but the phone in her hand was warm. The pay phone smelled of grubby metal.

“I need Piper,” she said.

“So you're agreed that we'll swap. You aren't so stupid after all. Or so redeemed.”

“I'm not going to swap,” she said. “We need to make a deal, but I won't just let Zero take Oscar and disappear with him.”

“Piper's a grief-stricken sixteen-year-old who had the bad luck to get to know you before you got her brother killed,” Travis said.

Harper's throat clenched.

“She's an innocent bystander who loves you unreasonably,” Travis went on. “Oscar is a thief and a doper who'd turn on you for the price of a key. Either a kilo of dope or a cryptological key that lets him play in people's accounts online. You know that.”

She looked at traffic. The night was growing cold.

“Here's what you're going to do,” Travis said. “You're going to put Oscar in your car and drive him to the GPS coordinates I text to your new phone. And you're going to slave your phone to my computer system. I'll send a request and you'll authorize me to mirror your displays and data in real time. That way I will be able to monitor your progress on the GPS. You will follow the directions I give you without deviation. Got it?”

“What if Oscar won't come with me?” she said.

“Convince him.”

She slowly turned, eyeing the street. Aiden stood against the wall of a clothing store. The streetlights didn't reach him. He was in shadow, wearing Oscar's clothes and hat, indistinguishable from him.

“Okay.”

“That's the spirit,” Travis said. “Give me the number for your burn phone.”

She lit the display and read it to him. Then she said, “Let me talk to Piper.”

“This isn't a cheap action movie. You don't get to talk to anybody.”

“No proof of life, no Oscar.”

He was quiet a bit. “No, you're right. It would be best to remind you of the importance of doing as I tell you.”

She leaned her forehead against the pay phone, her chest tightening. Soon she heard noise and muffled voices.

Piper's voice was thin. “Harper?”

“You're going to be okay.” Harper strained to keep her own voice level. “I'm going to get you out of there.”

“I'm so scared,” Piper said. “These guys . . .”

Harper could hardly bear it. “I'm going to bring you home. Hear me? Piper, I'm going to bring you home.”

“They said if the police come, they'll kill me. They took my phone and sent texts to people, like I was fine. They made me call Mom and Dad and say I was at a basketball game so nobody would know they have me. I don't understand, Harper. Don't they want money?”

“Piper. Stay steady. Dig deep and hold on. I'm coming.”

“You couldn't get Drew out of Xenon. Can you get me out of here?”

Claws to the heart. Harper leaned heavily on the phone.

Piper's voice filled with tears. “Help me. Please. I'm begging you.”

“I hear you. Hang in there. Can you do that?”

The tears were in Harper's eyes, too. She swallowed, and they ran down her throat. “I'm going to help you. Do you understand?”

Piper sobbed.

“Do you understand? Say it,” Harper said.

After another sob, Piper said, “I understand.”

“You are a strong fucking girl. Do you understand? Say it.”

“I am a strong fucking girl.”

“I will find you, Piper. Wherever you are. I will bring you home.”

There was a pause. “Like the Pied Piper? Hansel and Gretel? Ariadne?”

Harper's mouth hung open.
What?

“Please, Harper. Please—
omigod, let go . . .”

Noises erupted on the other end of the line. Piper's voice rose and was abruptly silenced.

“Travis, Jesus Christ, leave her alone,” Harper said. “Don't hurt her.”

His voice was smooth and about two degrees above freezing. “I take care of the merchandise,” he said. “I covered her mouth so nobody has to hear her mewling.”

Harper gripped the pay phone. “If Zero touches her, I'll hurt you so bad your grandchildren will feel it a hundred years from now.”

In her hand, the new burn phone vibrated. On the brightly lit display were GPS coordinates—latitude and longitude.

“That's where you're heading,” Travis said.

She thumbed the burn phone and brought up the physical location of the coordinates on a map.

“That's in Canyon Country,” she said.

The map pictured a bright blue pushpin for the destination, on a stretch of road at the far north end of Los Angeles County. Past the city limits, past the suburbs and strip malls and amusement parks and horse ranches, over the pass and on the down slope to the high desert. It was seventy miles away.

“It should take you ninety minutes to drive to those coordinates from your present location on Wilshire,” Travis said.

She calculated. Once she cleared the morass of the L.A. freeways, it should be clear sailing.

“Be there in an hour,” he said.

“Hey, hell are you trying—”

“You failed to answer this pay phone when I first called it,” Travis said. “As a penalty for that failure, you lose thirty minutes.”

She slammed the receiver down. He may have continued talking, but she had no time to hear it. She ran up the street, pulling out her car keys. Behind her, she heard Aiden's footsteps.

With her new phone, she quickly dialed Sorenstam. “We're heading north to the desert. Busting ass.” She didn't wait for Sorenstam to answer. She just ran.

S
orenstam followed Harper's taillights along Wilshire Boulevard, headed for the freeway. The sun was below the horizon in the west, tinting the car windows red. Oscar slouched in the passenger seat, his entire posture a grumble.

Radio to her mouth, she said, “They're going north to the Antelope Valley.”

Her lieutenant was curt. “Let them go.”

“I need to see how this plays out.”

“You've been playing along far too long, Detective.”

Her blood slowly boiled up. “What if I let them go and this isn't nothing? Nobody from LAPD or the Palos Verdes Police has actually seen Piper Westerman, have they? She hasn't arrived home yet, right?”

“That doesn't mean—”

“We're talking about a sixteen-year-old girl. If it turns out that she's actually been abducted, do you want to be the one who has to tell her parents, and FOX TV, that the sheriff's department stood down? I don't.”

“Detective Sorenstam, I need you to return to the station. We're shorthanded.”

“One hour. Give me sixty minutes. We'll know by then if this is for real or not.”

He breathed. Finally, he said, “Sixty minutes. No more.”

“Thank you.” She clicked off and pulled out her phone to call Aiden. When he answered, she said, “You've got sixty minutes. If you want my backup, you need proof by then.”

“Got it,” he said.

She hung up. Oscar was looking at her.

“Are we going to follow them?” he said.

“From a distance.”

“You calling in a surveillance team? Double up?”

She drove. “I'm going to call the Kern County Sheriff's Office to let them know their missing person has turned up safe and sound.”

“Nobody who cares about me would call it in the way they did,” he said. “My friends would put their name to it.”

He looked at her. She understood. She got on the 405 heading north. He slouched lower in the seat, knowing who might lie ahead.

Harper kept one hand on the gearshift, changing lanes and dodging in and out of traffic on the long slope down the 405. Ahead, the lights of the valley spread like a vast electric yellow bowl. She was going eighty-five, and if that damned pickup hauling a horse trailer didn't move out of her way, she was going to veer right and pass him on the shoulder. Aiden sat almost motionless in the passenger seat, but his legs were jammed hard against the foot well, as though he couldn't keep himself from invisibly trying to brake.

Forty-five miles to go. The dashboard clock told her she had forty-three minutes left.

The horse trailer signaled and pulled out of her way.

“Finally.” She shifted into fifth and accelerated.

Ahead of her was a river of red taillights, all the way to the bottom of the pass and beyond. She kept her foot hard on the pedal. Aiden glanced at the speedometer.

“Don't,” she said. “It's this or nothing.”

She glanced in the rearview mirror, the headlights hitting her eyes hard.

“If a cops flashes you, what then?” Aiden said. “Pull over and let them give you a ticket, I'd recommend.”

That would take ten minutes. “Drive it like I stole it.”

“Run from a flashing light and you lose any chance of getting to Piper. They'd catch you live on TV.”

“So I'm going to make sure no flashing lights get on my tail. They are not even going to spot us.”

He gave her a look like:
Good luck with that.

“You watch for LAPD or CHP. And I mean with eyes you didn't even know you had,” she said.

He continued looking at her for another long second.

“What?” she said.

“I see why people wanted you driving getaway.”

She didn't know if he meant it as a compliment. If not, she didn't have time to feel offended. They were in this now, and he would either trust her or not.

“We're going to get her,” she said. “We're going to get Piper back.”

She hit the bottom of the hill, holding hard to the wheel through what should have been an easy turn at the speed limit. Forty minutes left. Thirty-seven miles.

“We're ahead,” she said.

She blew past the 101 and headed north across the valley. Her heart was drumming, her mouth dry. The freeway stayed clear. Until they reached the mountains at the north end of the valley. They saw the red flick of traffic braking ahead of them, accordioning, people coming hard to a stop.

“Shit,” she said.

They slowed to stop-and-go. For three minutes, she stayed with it, her hand feeling numb on the gearshift. Aiden glanced at the clock.

He rolled down his window and levered himself out to peer ahead. “Accident.”

“No. No.” If they didn't do something, they had no chance of getting to the next stop.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.

No—his badge.

“Get on the shoulder,” he said.

She hit the blinker and he rolled down his window and stuck out his arm. She wished he had a gumball light for the dashboard. But this was second best.

He looked over his shoulder. “Go.”

She swung onto the shoulder, put on her flashers, and eased along past traffic, crunching over dust and detritus. She glanced again in the mirror. She saw lights, bright and relentless. She didn't know whether they belonged to cops or kidnappers or ghosts come to take her.

The red river of electric taillights stretched on for as far as she could see. Thirty-eight minutes.