Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(96)

The Shrike then only had to surveil the building where Sun Ray Studios were located to figure out how he could use the parking-garage situation to his advantage. The attendant left the keys of the cars he moved around on each vehicle’s front right tire. The Shrike could have snuck in while Rodrigo was shuffling cars, used the key to unlock my Range Rover, and then secreted himself in the back.

I suddenly realized there was another possibility. I had broadcast the podcast’s time and location to everybody. It was possible that if someone was concealed in the back, it wasn’t the Shrike. It could be another crazy incel like Robinson Felder. I took the phone from my ear to try to text this possibility to Rachel when I heard her voice again.

“Jack?”

I waited.

“We have a plan. We want you to get to Sunset Boulevard and take the exit. It dumps you out on Van Ness at an intersection with Harold Way. Take the immediate right onto Harold Way and we’ll be set up for you. LAPD has got two units there right now and more are on the way. Matt and I are two minutes out. Clear your throat if you understand and we are good to go.”

I waited a beat and then cleared my throat loudly. I was good to go.

“Okay, Jack, now what I want you to do is try to text me a description of what you’re driving. I know you mentioned in a recent email that you got a new car. Give me make, model, and color. Color is important, Jack. We want to know what we’ve got coming. Also put in what exit you last passed so we’ll have a sense of timing. Go ahead, but be careful. Don’t wreck while texting.”

I pulled the phone away and typed the needed information into a text to her, cycling my focus repeatedly from the phone to the rearview to the road ahead.

I had just sent off the text, including the fact that I was about to pass the Highland exit, when my eyes went to the road ahead and I saw brake lights flaring across all lanes.

Traffic was stopping.





45

There was an accident ahead. My SUV gave me a view over the rooflines of several cars in front of me and I could see smoke and a car turned sideways blocking the fast lane and left shoulder of the freeway.

I knew I had to get to the right before I was stopped dead in the backup. I hit the turn signal and almost blindly started pushing across four lanes of the slowing traffic.

My moves brought a chorus of horns from angry motorists who were trying to do the same thing I was. The traffic slowed to a crawl and the spaces between cars compressed, but nobody on the road had the kind of emergency I had. I didn’t care about their frustrations or horns.

“Jack?” Rachel said. “I hear the horns, what is—I know you can’t talk. Try to text. We got the info you sent. Try to tell me what’s going on now.”

I did what most L.A. drivers do when they are alone in their cars. I cursed the traffic.

“Goddamn it! Why are we stopping?”

I had one lane left to get over to and I believed it would be the fastest way around the accident backup. I didn’t trust the mirrors anymore and was turning half in my seat to check my competition through the windows, all the while keeping the phone to my ear.

“Okay, Jack, I get it,” Rachel said. “But ride on the shoulder, do whatever you have to do and get down here.”

I coughed once, not knowing at this point if that meant yes or no. All I knew was that I had to get around the backup. Once I got past the crash, the freeway would be wide open and I’d be flying.

I had slowly passed the Highland exit and could see that the accident scene was a couple hundred yards ahead and before the Vine Street exit. That was where traffic came to a complete halt.

Now I could see people getting out of their cars and standing in the freeway. Cars were moving inch by inch as they passed the smoking wreckage. I could hear a siren coming up behind me and knew the arrival of first responders would shut things down even further and for longer. I also knew I could go to those first responders with the deadly cargo I believed I was carrying. But would they understand what I had? Would they capture him?

I was considering these questions and the last mile I had to go to Sunset Boulevard when there was a loud thwack from the back of my car.

I turned around fully and saw that the spring-loaded cover to the rear storage area had been released and had snapped back into its housing like a window shade.

A figure rose from the space. A man. He looked around as if to get his bearings, then must have seen through the rear windows that the siren he had heard was from a rescue ambulance making its way to the crash site.

He then turned and looked directly at me.

“Hello, Jack,” he said. “Where are we going?”

“Who the fuck are you?” I said. “What do you want?”

“I think you know who I am,” he said. “And what I want.”

He started climbing over the rear seats. I dropped the phone and pinned the accelerator. The car lurched forward and I yanked the wheel to the right. I clipped the right corner of the car in front of me as the SUV veered onto the freeway shoulder. The wheels spun on the loose gravel and litter before finding purchase. In the rearview I saw the intruder thrown backward into the space where he had been hiding.

But he quickly reemerged and started climbing over the seats again.

“Slow it down, Jack,” he said. “What’s the hurry?”

I didn’t answer. My mind was racing faster than the car as I tried to think of an escape plan.