I Will Find You(35)

“How bad is he, Philip?”

“Bad. But he’ll know the truth. I promise you that.”

I check behind me. Still no cop cars. Now or never. My pockets are stuffed—Adam’s phone, Adam’s wallet, Philip’s wallet, the cash they gave me.

“One more thing,” Philip says.

“What?”

“Leave the gun behind.”

“Why?”

“You plan on using it?”

“No, but—”

“Then leave it behind. If you’re armed, they’ll be much more likely to not bring you in alive.”

“I don’t want to be brought in alive,” I say. “And why would I leave the gun behind? Who’s going to buy that? They’ll know you were involved.”

“David…”

But there is no time to debate this anymore. I pick up the mobile phone and call Semsey’s number. He picks up immediately.

“I’m glad you called back, David. You guys okay?”

“We are both fine,” I say. “For now. But I need a way out of here. Some transportation, for starters.”

“Okay, David, sure.” Semsey spoke with the we’re-in-this-together-pal voice. He sounds calmer now, more in control. The five minutes have helped him. “We can try to arrange that.”

“Not try,” I snap.

We have reached the Lamy Outlet Center. Philip veers to the left. We start down toward the parking garage. I grab the car door handle and get ready.

“I want it done. No excuses.”

Philip adds for Semsey’s listening pleasure, “David, put down the gun. He’ll do what you want.”

“I need a helicopter,” I tell Semsey. “Fully fueled.”

Dialogue straight from an old TV show. But Semsey seems okay with it. He plays his role: “That might take a few hours, David.”

“Bullshit. You have a copter in the air. You think I’m stupid?”

“That’s not ours. It’s probably a traffic copter. Or maybe a commuter. You can’t expect us to shut down—”

“You’re lying.”

“Look, let’s stay calm.”

“I want that copter away from us. Now.”

“I have a guy calling the closest airports now, David.”

“And I want my own helicopter. With fuel and a pilot. And the pilot better be unarmed.”

Philip nods up ahead. I’m ready.

“Okay, David, no problem. But you have to give us a little time.”

Philip stops the car. I pull the handle, open the door, roll out. As soon as I hit the pavement, Philip drives off. It all happens in a matter of two, three seconds tops. I crouch down and hide behind a gray Hyundai as I say, “How much time?” to Semsey without missing a beat. “I don’t want to shoot the warden.”

“Nobody wants that.”

“But you’re forcing my hand. This is all bullshit. Maybe I’ll shoot him in the leg. Just so you know I’m serious.”

“No, David, look, we know you’re serious. That’s why we’ve been keeping our distance. Just be reasonable, okay? We can make this work.”

I dart between cars, heading toward the entrance to the mall. No suspicious cars have followed us in. No suspicious people are in the area. “Listen, Semsey, here is exactly what I want.”

I enter the lower lobby of the mall and take the up escalator.

I’m free. For now.





Chapter

14



Max—FBI Special Agent Max Bernstein—paced the warden’s reception area in a fury.

Max was always in constant motion. His mom used to say that he had “ants in his pants.” Teachers complained that he was disruptive because he never stopped squirming in his chair. One teacher, Mrs. Matthis in fourth grade, begged the principal to let her strap him to the back of his chair. Right now, as always when he entered a new space, Max paced the room like a dog getting used to his surroundings. He blinked a lot. His eyes darted everywhere except to the eyes of another human being. He chewed his fingernails. He looked disheveled in his oversized FBI windbreaker. He was short of stature with a thick steel-wool head of hair he could never quite comb into place on the very few times a year he tried. His constant yet inconsistent jittery movements had led to him being good-naturedly dubbed Twitch by his fellow federal officers. Of course, back in the day, when he’d first come out of the closet at a time when no other federal agents were following suit, the ever-creative homophobes had switched the moniker from Twitch to—ha, ha, ha—Bitch.

Feds can be funny.

“He got away,” Detective Semsey, the local cop who had unsuccessfully tried to handle this, told him.

“So we heard,” Max said.

They’d set up home base in Warden Philip Mackenzie’s reception area because the actual office was still a crime scene. A street map of Briggs County was hung on a wall to trace the path of the warden’s car with a yellow highlighter. Old-school idea, Max thought. He liked that. There was a laptop computer providing a feed from the helicopter’s camera. Semsey and his cohorts had watched it all go down. By the time Max and his partner, Special Agent Sarah Jablonski, arrived, it was all over.

There were seven other people in the reception area with Max, but the only one he’d known before five minutes ago was Sarah. Sarah Jablonski had been Max’s partner, his lieutenant, his right hand, his indispensable associate, whatever other term you need to understand that he adored her and needed her, for sixteen years. Sarah was a big redhead, a full six feet tall, broad at the shoulders, and she dwarfed Max, who was more than six inches shorter. Their size difference led to a somewhat comical appearance, something they used to their advantage.