Little Girl Gone (An Afton Tangler Thriller #1)(51)

Not surprisingly, nobody was browsing books in this particular aisle. No problem. This was a sprawling library and she still had lots of aisles to cover. She ghosted along, covering two, then three more aisles. No sign of Sponger. Turning a corner, she emerged into a common area. One man in a suit sat with his back to her, doing a hunt-and-peck number on his laptop computer. A young mother paged through a magazine while her toddler slept in a stroller. Another young woman, a student perhaps, read a Joan Didion novel, making occasional notes.

Sponger wasn’t here.

Okay, just keep going.

Afton was in fiction now, moving along, a few book titles that she’d always wanted to read catching her eye. She turned the corner and . . . boom.

Sitting on the floor, bent over a large book, was a man in a ratty gray parka, brown stocking cap, and dirty Sorel boots. He was frowning and muttering to himself. Was this Sponger? Had to be—he looked an awful lot like the guy from the photo. She just hoped he’d remembered to swallow his little pink pills this morning.

Afton backed out of the aisle slowly and went off in search of Max. She found him lurking in the Business Section.

“Sponger’s here,” she told him. “Maybe ten rows over. In fiction.”

Max’s eyebrows rose in twin arcs. “Show me.”

They dodged around shelves and tiptoed down a row of books just one aisle over from where Sponger was sitting. Afton pulled a book off a shelf and Max peered through the empty space. He nodded when he caught sight of Sponger’s face. He recognized him, too.

“Wait here,” Max whispered. He walked to the far wall, paused for a moment, and then dove around toward Sponger.

Sponger saw him coming and exploded like he’d been fired from a cannon. He leapt to his feet, squirted away from Max, and almost ran smack dab into Afton, who had headed around the other way.

“Hey!” Afton cried as Sponger skittered past her, wild-eyed and screeching, his arms flapping like an angry bird. She flailed out, trying to grab hold of him, but her fingertips only brushed the tail end of his coat.

“Noooo!” Sponger screamed as he raced through the common area. Chairs flew, stacks of magazines toppled, a row of CDs went down like dominoes. Sponger grabbed a metal chair, tossed it back at them.

Afton leapt over the fallen chair, but heard a crashing sound and then Max swearing behind her. He hadn’t cleared it.

“Call SWAT!” Afton cried. She pounded out the front door after Sponger and skidded to a stop. Her eyes darted up and down the street, trying to figure out which direction he might have run. Finally, she caught sight of him.

Sponger had dodged his way across Hennepin Avenue through fairly heavy traffic and was on the far sidewalk running north.

“Police! Stop!” Afton shouted, but Sponger ignored her. Scared but determined, she dove into traffic, was almost bullied back by a big black SUV with an aggressive driver and a honking horn, but managed to skitter across the street anyway. Sponger might have had a running start, but Afton had something to prove. If this was the guy who attacked her last night, she was out for revenge. Gonna run this * down, she told herself, kick him in the balls, grab him by the throat, and not let go no matter what.

Pushing herself, Afton sprinted after him. Up ahead of her, Sponger might have looked awkward and gawky, but he was setting a blistering pace. No problem. She was prepared to chase him forever. All the way into downtown Minneapolis if need be. Or until the guys in the black van showed up to take him down.

Which was why Afton was completely shocked when Sponger suddenly squirted off to his right and fled down a narrow, barely plowed alley that looked like a cul-de-sac.

Afton pumped harder, raggedly sucking cold air into her lungs, her legs driving like pistons as she followed him.

Sponger stumbled, turned to look back over his shoulder, and saw her coming. That’s when things went a little crazy. He zigzagged toward a pile of snow, seemed to hesitate for one frozen moment, and then tumbled forward and disappeared completely.

What?

Ten seconds later, Afton pulled up short and stared down a steep, snow-covered embankment. There he was, running below her on a trail. Like a fox who’d gone to ground, Sponger had slithered his way down into the deep trench that was known as the Midtown Greenway. Dug over one hundred years ago as a railroad corridor, it was now a paved road for bicycle and pedestrian traffic. But this time of day, in the dead of winter with the sun making an early descent, the roadway was deserted, icy, and cold. It yawned into the distance for miles, snaking under dozens of old bridges and offering myriad places to hide.

Still, Sponger didn’t have that much of a lead on her. Afton hurled herself over the side in what she hoped would be a controlled descent down the fifty-foot-high embankment. Feet set wide apart, she kicked up twin rooster tails of snow that blew back into her face and mouth. Slipping and sliding her way down the hill, she mentally prepared herself for a hard landing. As she hit bottom, she slewed to one side, rolled once, then recovered and bounced to her feet. Within seconds, she took off down the trail after Sponger.

“Sponger!” Afton shouted. She was cold and wet and angry as hell. She also knew this was a terrible place to be stuck. Even though she was running through the heart of the city, the hostile landscape felt more like something out of a nuclear winter. Enormous dark trees rose up on each side of her, their bare branches rattling in the wind like old bones. There were huge piles of snow-covered rubble everywhere, and the sheer depth of the trench deadened all sound.