“We are looking for three fugitives,” he neuroed. “Vienna Smith is assisting them.”
But where had that image come from?
Dodge’s head had lolled forward, but when Sam lifted it, it stayed up.
“How long has it been?” Vienna shouted back without looking around.
“What?”
“Since we left CDD, you egg!”
Sam checked his watch. What time had they left? “At least five, maybe ten minutes,” he guessed.
“Then why haven’t they shut us down?” Vienna wondered. “It takes five minutes max to locate a vehicle on the LoJack and kill the engine. We’ve got to get off the freeway! Hang on!”
She shot across a couple lanes without signaling, cutting in front of a delivery truck, which delivered its annoyance with a blast on its air horn.
As they spun around the long looping off-ramp, she said, “We have to lose this van now and leg it to the mall. They know our exact location.”
“It’s not going to work,” Sam said. “If they know where we are, it won’t take them long to find us after we leave the van.”
“I know,” Vienna agreed.
In front of them, a tow truck with a large orange towing arm and a mangy-looking dog standing upright on the bed turned on its hazard lights and drifted to the side of the road.
“What time is it?” Vienna asked urgently. “I may have an idea.”
“Four-fifteen,” Sam said.
To their right, a small Mitsubishi car was parked on the side of the road, the only car on the roadway. A few yards before it, a large sign proclaimed NO PARKING, 4 PM TO 6 PM MON–FRI.
The tow truck, its lights flashing, pulled over to the curb in front of the car and began to back toward it.
Vienna signaled and cut over to the right as well, sliding to the curb with a squeal of brakes, just in front of the Mitsubishi.
“Get Dodge out now,” she said. “And leave your cell phone and his in the van.”
Sam slid the door open and guided Dodge out of the van. A blast of cold air hit him. He wrapped his arms around himself and wished he had kept his jacket.
The tow truck driver was halfway out of his cab by now. A big hairy biker of a man. “Hey!” he yelled at them.
“Government plates,” Vienna called back, and flipped him the bird. She grabbed Dodge’s hand and began to walk briskly toward the huge shopping mall at the end of the avenue.
• • •
“Special Agent Tyler, this is Cuthbertson in Control.”
“Go ahead, Control.”
“The van has stopped. I repeat, the van has stopped on the Montague Expressway.”
Tyler cursed. They must have already escaped on foot. That would make things harder.
“Hold on a second,” the voice sounded again in his head. “They’re on the move again.”
Sam and Vienna walked swiftly along Falcon Drive to the huge outdoor parking lot of the mall, Dodge trotting between them. Security cameras on tall poles were scattered around the area.
“Don’t look up,” Vienna said. “Just keep moving. The facial-recognition software can’t ping you if you don’t look up.”
That was easy, Sam thought. The wind was bitter, scything around the sides of the building, and it was natural to hunker down and shove your hands in your pockets.
Vienna led them away from the entrance to the mall and around the side to a service lane.
She stopped at the entrance to the lane and scanned the walls of the surrounding buildings. “Two security cameras,” she said.
“Where?” Sam asked.
She pointed them out. “They rotate to cover the whole lane. When this near one is pointed away from us, run to the wall right below the camera, before it swings back and catches us. Do you think Dodge can do that?”
“Let’s find out,” Sam said.
The service lane was a long road, with concrete walls lining both sides. Nestled into the walls were large roll-up doors and smaller access doors. One or two of them were open, revealing loading docks inside. Signs next to each door gave the names of the retailers. Walmart, Borders, Sears.
“Okay,” Vienna said, watching the camera. “Now!”
They each grabbed Dodge by an arm and hauled him along as they ran into the lane. They slammed into the wall beneath the camera just as it turned back the way they had come.
“See the Walmart door?” Vienna asked.
“Uh-huh.”
Walmart was on the opposite side of the lane. The roll-up door was shut, but the access door next to it was open a couple of inches, propped open with a block of wood.
“Wait for the camera to swing back again,” Vienna said, looking straight up at the camera. “Move!”
They tore across the alleyway to the door, pulling it shut behind them.
Inside it seemed dark. Long overhead fluorescents filled the area with a flickering alien glow, but after the sunlight outside, it took their eyes a moment to adjust. The dock looked deserted.
They moved through into the warehouse of the big department store. Floor-to-ceiling shelving systems held every imaginable kind of product on flat, utilitarian racks. There were people walking around in here, but by carefully picking rows, they were able to pass through the warehouse without being spotted. A doorway on one side, near the entrance to the store itself, led into a dusty disused storeroom.
“Stay here. I’ll be back shortly,” Vienna said, and turned to leave.
“Vienna?” Dodge asked faintly.
32 | THE GREAT MALL
Tyler slammed the dashboard with the flat of his hand. “Come on!” he said to the driver for the third time in the last sixty seconds.
The van veered around the corner onto South Abel Street, tires smoking. The siren screamed at other traffic to stay out of their way.
“Tyler, it’s Control. The van has turned onto the Nimitz Freeway.”
Tyler thought about that for a moment. “Stupid kids. Okay, shut the van down. We’re just about there, and the next exit is not until California Circle. They’ll be trapped on the freeway. Shut it down now.”
“Confirming that—shutting down van four now.”
“Okay, all units, listen up,” Tyler said, finally feeling that he was recovering control of the situation. “We’re stopping the van on the freeway. Red Two, I want your team to keep moving over to California Circle and come in through the exit. Block them from getting out that way. We’ll come up behind them.”
“Tyler, it’s Control again; we may have a problem.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve engaged the remote shutdown, but the van is still moving, sir.”
Vienna was back in a few moments with a couple of Walmart plastic shopping bags, packed with items.
“We won’t have long,” she said. “They’ll backtrack from where we parked the van and find us on the parking lot cameras. We have to keep moving before they can close in on our trail.”
“I hope you paid cash,” Sam said, looking at the shopping bags.
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “No, I used my credit card. Egg.”
