Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight (Stephanie Plum #28)(21)

I’m directly in your line of sight, Oswald answered. You look but you don’t see.

Diesel stared straight ahead and typed in his reply. I didn’t recognize you. You’ve put on some weight. You’re looking a little chubby.

Diesel’s screen went blank.

“Are we going after him?” I asked.

“No. He’s too far away and there are too many people here. We’ll cover the exits to the parking lot. There are only two.”

The exhibits shut down at four o’clock and the crowd dispersed. Diesel was at one exit, and I was at the other. The parking lot was mostly empty by five o’clock and Oswald hadn’t passed through either exit.

I called Diesel. “Now what?”

“Now we go home. Stay where you are, and I’ll pick you up.”

“You don’t have a key to my car,” I said.

“Not a problem.”

A couple of minutes later Diesel pulled up next to me in my Focus.

“Would it be a waste of time to ask how you unlocked the doors and got the car started without a key?”

“I’m special,” Diesel said.

I wasn’t sure if this was good or bad, but I had to concede that it was true. And I suppose it was a comfort to know that if times got tough, Diesel could always support himself by stealing cars.

“At least we know Oswald’s here,” I said.

“He didn’t walk past us,” Diesel said. “If he exited in a car, he wasn’t the driver or a passenger in the front seat. There were some cars with tinted back windows and there were a couple of vans.”

“If he was on foot, he could have escaped the area by going around or through one of the buildings.”

Diesel rolled out of the lot, onto the street, and I spotted Oswald walking two blocks ahead. Black ponytail, chubby guy wearing a black shirt, black messenger bag hung cross-body.

“It’s him,” I said.

Diesel cranked the Focus over. “I’m on it.”

Oswald entered a parking garage and Diesel idled out of sight of the garage exit. Five minutes later a black 911 Porsche turbo with New York plates motored out of the garage and turned right.

“Two options,” Diesel said. “Either I run him down or we follow him at length and hope he doesn’t make us.”

I was afraid if we followed Oswald we’d lose him and I really didn’t want that to happen. I was super close to avoiding Clark Stupin’s viewing.

“My vote is to run him down,” I said.

Diesel got on the bumper of the 911. Oswald ignored a red light and Diesel followed him. The 911 cut into a side street, made two quick right turns, and got onto the freeway. In seconds the Porsche was up to 90 mph. Diesel stayed with it. I held tight and regretted my decision to run Oswald down. We were weaving in and out of traffic and passing cars as if they were standing still. The Focus was sounding wound out and it was vibrating. I was afraid we were going to lift off the road.

Oswald took an off ramp and rocketed through an industrial area. I had no idea how this was going to end, but I expected that it would end badly. Oswald skidded into a U-turn and came at us. Diesel avoided him by inches, wheeled the Focus around, and was back on Oswald’s bumper. Oswald returned to the divided highway at high speed and entered, going in the wrong direction.

Diesel stopped at the beginning of the off-ramp. “I draw the line at this one,” he said. “He’s driving flat out against traffic.”

We circled around to the on-ramp and made our way back to the office.

Diesel looked at the Focus with the pink spray paint and mismatched wheel covers. “What about you?” he asked. “I’m guessing that cars aren’t your passion. So, what is your passion? Do you play the guitar? Do you collect bottle caps? Is it yoga? Bowling? Unicorns?”

I was stumped. “It isn’t anything,” I said.

“Darlin’, everyone has something that they love to do.”

“I like to walk Bob, except when he poops.”

“I guess that’s a start,” Diesel said. “What else do you like? What makes you happy?”

“Birthday cake with white icing and pink and yellow roses. And wind. I like wind.”

Until that moment I didn’t know that I liked wind. It just popped out of my head in a burst of desperation to have a passion.

Twenty minutes later I pulled into the parking lot to my apartment building and parked next to Morelli’s green SUV. Here was another thing that I liked. It was nice to come home to Morelli and Bob. Maybe not every day, but sometimes.

Morelli was in the kitchen, unpacking a large to-go bag, when I walked into my apartment.

“I felt like having Chinese,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”

“That great. What did you get?”

“I got everything.”

We took all the boxes of food into the living room and turned the television on.

“What do you want to watch?” I asked.

“Anything but news.”

I surfed around and settled on a golf tournament. It wasn’t anything either of us was interested in, so it wouldn’t interfere with eating.

“Have you ever played golf?” I asked Morelli.

He mixed fried rice with ginger chicken. “I played a few times with Marty Stackhouse. I liked it okay, but it takes all day, and I don’t have that kind of time.”