The Spider Thief (13 page)

“
Ash!
”

Ash didn’t give himself time to think. He sprinted for the edge of the roof, fists pumping, building up speed in the short distance he had. He hit the edge and leaped.

Feds

The empty air surrounded Ash like an invisible beast, its hot breath blowing up at him as he fell. His arms and legs churned in the emptiness. His stomach clenched with animal panic.

Dangling from the duct tape, Mauricio stared, slack-jawed. Ash plowed into him head-first, arms grabbing Mauricio’s waist. The momentum hurled them in a downward arc, landing on top of the vent shaft with a sharp crash. Its rectangular top was no bigger than a coffin, attached to a vertical shaft that ran straight down the side of the building, like a towering letter T.

On impact, the metal caved in under their weight. The breath exploded out of Ash. He tumbled over Mauricio and dropped over the far side of the duct. He grabbed onto the crumpled metal edge with both hands, his fingernails fighting to catch the rusted seam in the metal.

The air duct sang a chorus of creaks and pops. Mauricio, hyperventilating, flattened himself against the brick wall. He clawed his fingers into the cracked mortar between the bricks.

“Little help,” Ash croaked out. He made the mistake of looking down at the dirty asphalt and stacks of wooden pallets below, still two stories beneath his feet. Every instinct screamed at him to get back on solid ground.

His legs kicked in the empty air. The duct groaned.

Sweating, Mauricio kept his back against the brick wall, slid down and grabbed onto Ash with one hand. He got a grip and pulled. Ash heard the fabric of his shirt tearing.

“I got you,” Mauricio said through gritted teeth.

“You sure?”

Without warning, the air duct jerked, scraping against the bricks. Mauricio let go of Ash and clawed at the wall, trying to hold on, but it was no good. With a screech, the duct broke loose.

Like a felled tree, the T-shape of ductwork toppled over, dumping Ash down hard on top of a stack of weather-beaten wood pallets. The metal duct trapped his ankle against the wood. Ash twisted his leg free just as Mauricio tumbled down past him. Ash reached for him and missed.

The stack of pallets tipped over, then broke loose. The pallets slid over each other like a landslide. A few tumbled end over end, slamming into Ash, bruising his shoulders, his ribs. He stubbornly held on, rough wood digging into his palms.

When the noise and motion finally died down, Ash held on tight, eyes closed, expecting everything to give way again. His feet kicked, finding nothing to push against.

“Ow,” Mauricio said nearby.

“You okay?” Ash called, his voice shaky.

“Yeah. Um, I think you can let go now.”

Carefully, Ash peered down over his shoulder. The asphalt was only inches beneath his heels. Mauricio stood next to him, covered in dirt, his hair scrambled up to truly impressive volume.

“Oh.” Ash let go, dropping to the pavement. More pallets slid off the pile and toppled around him, cracking against the hardtop.

“FBI!” someone yelled from above. Two figures in vests and helmets sprinted along the edge of the roof. In the distance, Moolah barked.

Turning around to orient himself, Ash stumbled. Mauricio caught his arm.

Ash pointed in the direction of the Galaxie. “Come on!”

Together, they sprinted around the corner of the building. The Galaxie sat parked in the sun. Moolah hung his head out the window, watching for them, tongue lolling. Ash had never been so glad to see that mutt.

He opened the door and slid in behind the wheel. Mauricio climbed in next to him. For once, the Galaxie started on the first try. Ash put it in reverse and whipped the car around.

Mauricio scowled at him across the huge black bench seat. “You made me sell my car for
this?
”

Ash held up a finger. “One thing at a time.”

A blur of black and gold roared past. Ash caught a glimpse of Andres at the wheel of his Trans Am. Tires shrieked as Andres braked. The Trans Am’s tail lights glowed in the shadow of the building.

Mauricio ducked down. “Go, go!”

Ash nailed the gas and spun the huge steering wheel, heading the opposite direction from Andres. The tight walls of the alley closed in, a blur of stained brick and broken windows. It opened into a vast empty yard, expanses of gray concrete showing beneath drifts of dirty sand and random junk.

Ahead, the yard ended at a tall chain-link fence that bordered the railroad. Two orange-and-brown locomotives thrummed past, nose to tail, towing a train of coal cars that stretched back to the horizon. On the right, the factory buildings rose up like an endless wall of bricks and glass. To the left, in the distance, the yard stretched all the way to an electric gate that closed off any chance of exit. Beyond the gate sretched an empty access road that led to a construction site of half-finished condos, bustling with activity.

“We’re trapped,” Mauricio said. “The only way out is the front gate. And the Feds have got to have that covered.”

Ash squinted at the electric gate. It was the only other way out of this factory complex and back into the city. He turned toward it and hit the gas.

As he raced toward the gate, flashing red and blue lights appeared among the half-finished buildings of the construction site beyond. A trio of gray SUVs bounded through the dirt lot across the street, slewing around yellow bulldozers and backhoes. Men in hardhats and orange vests scattered.

A flash of cold adrenaline shot through Ash as he realized the FBI trucks could reach the other side of the gate before he did. They’d cut him off.

Mauricio pointed, eyes wide. “Why don’t we just surrender to them?”

“Are you crazy?” Ash said. “They think we’re with Andres!”

“Maybe if we just stop and explain--”

“You’re his nephew. Apparently. How are you going to explain that?”

The Trans Am shot out from the alley behind them like a black arrow. Seconds later, it pulled up alongside Ash. Salvador leaned out the passenger window with his assault weapon.

“Down!” Ash yelled, ducking in the seat. In the same movement, he pushed Mauricio down next to him.

Salvador opened fire, but not at the Galaxie. Ahead, sparks cascaded out of the control box next to the gate, followed by a burst of smoke. The gate rumbled open, clearing the way to the empty side street that divided the factory from the construction site. The Trans Am’s engine jumped up in pitch, and the black car shot ahead.

Andres reached the gate just before the FBI did. He burst through and slid in a wide arc, tires smoking as they left black claw marks on the pavement. He streaked away down the side street.

The lead SUV turned to follow, too tightly. It lurched and wobbled on two wheels, then tipped over. It skidded across the road into the curb and turned onto its roof.

The next SUV made the turn and lumbered after the Trans Am, disappearing around the corner of the building. The last one drove right into the open gateway and stopped, filling up the gate opening, blocking the way.

Ash pumped the brakes, struggling to bring the Galaxie to a controlled stop on the sandy lot. They slid, angling in, finally coming to a halt just a few feet from the SUV’s front bumper. A cloud of dust from his tires drifted across the gate, making the SUV fade away like a ghost.

“Ash!” Cleo yelled.

He spotted her running along the outside of the chain link fence. She stopped at the gate, her gun in one hand, her other hand clinging to the fence. “Ash,” she called to him, “don’t run!”

At that moment, Ash had never felt so dumb. So used.

So blind to the obvious.

“Shit,” Mauricio breathed. “She’s FBI.”

Fugitives

Cleo watched, stunned, as Ash whipped out a silenced pistol and shot out both of the SUV’s front tires. The agents inside the vehicle tried to get out to return fire, but the driver had stopped with the doors between the gate posts, making them impossible to open. By the time they buzzed down the windows and leaned out, Ash had already turned the Galaxie around and high-tailed it in the opposite direction.

She had to get to him before he made this any worse.

Pistol in hand, Cleo raced back around the end of the long building, stumbling on a rusted pipe. Thigh-high weeds grew up through the long cracks in the pavement, forming random hedges that plucked at her legs.

She pounded down the length of the red brick wall, past towering pipelines and electrical conduits. Skidding around the other corner, she caught a glimpse of the Galaxie as Mauricio awkwardly leaned out and shot the padlock off of a side gate, where the abandoned factory’s lot adjoined a bus depot.

The last Cleo saw of the Galaxie was a streak of bright red slipping away between rows of white and blue buses.

She sagged against the pitted brick wall, feeling all of the energy drain out of her, replaced with the seeping heat from the bricks. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, breathing through her nose, letting the sun beat down on her face.

When she’d seen Andres drive off, she wanted more than anything to reach out and somehow grab him with her bare hands. She wanted to hurt him for the hole he’d torn in her life. Make him pay for her father’s death. But he’d slipped away like a wisp of smoke.

Now, Ash and Mauricio were gone, too.

Her phone rang. That would be Snyder, wanting to make her feel like possibly the world’s most incompetent agent. Soon to be
former
agent.

But the phone showed Graves’s name. That surprised her. She answered it. “Yeah.”

“Hey.” Wind blew on his end of the phone, along with the squawk of a police radio somewhere in the distance. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Wonderful.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to ward off the tension headache creeping up her skull. “What’s up?”

“That victim you brought in from the apartment shooting?” Graves said. “Not so much as a moving violation. He’s squeaky clean.”

“Huh. That’s interesting. What about his friends?”

“Well, that’s another story. Both of them had long lists of priors.” Graves paused a moment, clearly thinking something over. “But I don’t get that sense of wrong place, wrong time. I think the victims all knew each other pretty well. So your victim, I believe, is good at never getting caught. Or someone else is covering for him.”

“Could be. It’d be nice if we had someone to talk to.”

“We do. He’s awake now,” Graves said. “His real name is Demetrius Tripp. He goes by DMT.”

“DMT,” Cleo repeated, thinking hard. “I don’t recognize it. You going to go talk to him?”

“That’s the thing. I’d love to, but I’m caught up in the mountains right now. Not too far from your Mom’s house.”

A bad feeling settled in the pit of Cleo’s stomach. “Caught up in what?”

The wind noise abruptly cut out and a wooden door banged shut. Graves’s voice dropped down a notch in the quiet. “That license plate you asked me to run for you? I had to go all the way back to paper files here in the county. It belongs to an old Ford Galaxie, owned by a woman in your home town.”

A memory shot through Cleo like a spark of electricity. Seeing that big red car as a kid on the way to church. The Galaxie was all angles and chrome, shining clean, but even then it was an old car. She’d known it looked familiar. She could have smacked herself.

“Only one owner,” Graves went on. “Local woman affiliated with a church.”

“The preacher’s wife,” Cleo whispered, more to herself than to him. The preacher and his wife had disappeared years ago, after a scandal that everyone gossiped about but no one really understood. Drug addiction, most people agreed, with a click of the tongue and a shake of the head. What a shame, how the righteous could fall.

She always thought they’d moved away. Everyone did.

“I came to the address to check it out, maybe find the owners of that Galaxie,” Graves said, as if he could hear her thoughts. “Turns out they’re still here.”

“Did you talk to them?”

“No. They’ve been dead a long time.”

Hearing that threw Cleo off-balance. Had their bodies been there all these years? How were they connected to Andres? Could Ash really be in that deep over his head?

Too many questions. No answers.

Graves cleared his throat. “You think this could be connected to your apartment shooting?”

The facts snapped through Cleo’s mind like photos spread out across a desktop. The preacher’s old car. Ash behind the wheel. Mauricio captured by Andres. Two known perps and their friend gunned down. Andres escaping. “It’s a safe bet. They’re connected.” How much could she trust Graves? Would he understand that Ash was caught in the middle of this? “We need to talk to this DMT, find out what he knows.”

“
We?
” Graves said, sounding genuinely surprised. “Cleo, you do understand what it means to be suspended, correct?”

“I don’t think you could let me forget if you tried. But you’re not going to get back to town before the hospital releases this DMT. Unless we can hold him on something.”

“No. Well, I don’t know.” She could picture Graves, his crisp white shirt and gray suit in sharp contrast to his dark brown skin, shaking his shaved head. “Cleo, you’re sitting this one out.”

“I think he’s connected to Andres,” she said, feeling the heat in her face. Not all of it was from the sun beating down on her. “I can’t risk this DMT slipping away.”

“No, Cleo, listen to me. The last time you interviewed a suspect with ties to Andres, you hit him.”

She shrugged. “Well, not that hard.”

“On purpose.” Graves took in a patient breath. “With your
car
.”

“Your point being?”

“Cleo, do not put me in this situation. I’m asking you.” His voice took on a note of urgency. “I’ll be done up here as soon as I can. But the last thing you need is any more heat from Snyder if you step into the middle of this case.”

Cleo thought it over. No matter which way she looked at it, there was only one thing she could do, and Graves wasn’t going to like it. “Look, I’ll promise to stay out of trouble if you promise to bring me back a six-pack of Honey Wheat from the brewery up there.”