then helped her on with her coat, stuffing her gun in his pocket, and pulling on his coat. He picked up their three bags.
“No,” she said, suddenly coming out of her daze. “David, they’re out there waiting for us.”
“They don’t know what we look like yet. Nor do they know that this one has failed. But we don’t have much time. You’ve got to pull yourself together. Now!”
She was shaking her head and she started to back away. McAllister dropped their bags, grabbed her arm with one hand and slapped her in the face, her head snapping back and a cry catching in her throat.
“We have to get out of here, Stephanie! Now!” McAllister said. She took a deep breath, nodded and straightened up. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll be all right. We have to leave.”
She averted her eyes from the body on the floor as McAllister again picked up their bags, listened at the door for a moment then opened it and stepped out. A young couple coming up the corridor stopped respectfully to let them get out of their compartment and close the door. McAllister nodded at them, and smiled, then headed for the end of the car with a limp, Stephanie shuffling along directly behind him.
They would have to get away from the train station as quickly as possible. It wouldn’t take long for someone to discover what had happened. Coing to ground and lying low for a few days was no longer one of their options. Speed was their only defense.
Do the unexpected. Strike back. Hit them until it hurts and they begin to bleed. Keep them off balance. Frighten them into making a mistake.
The porter helped McAllister down from the tall step, and then took Stephanie’s arm and helped her.
“Hope you folks had a nice trip with us,” he said pleasantly. McAllister nodded absently as his eyes scanned the busy platform.
A large man in a redcap’s uniform stood about twenty feet away, watching them, but then his gaze was diverted as the next passengers were helped down from the train.
Stephanie took McAllister’s arm and together they walked slowly down the platform to the gates, then past a big knot of people, among them two men dressed in sheepskin coats intently watching the departing passengers, and then they were on the escalator going up to the main ticket hall. The cavernous, ornately decorated station was decked out for the holidays. Christmas music played from the public address system, interrupted only when train announcements were made. There were a lot of people hurrying back and forth. Two police officers stood by the main doors.
“Easy,” McAllister said under his breath, Stephanie’s grip tightening on his arm as they headed directly across the hall.
The two cops barely glanced at them as they reached the doors and stepped outside into the very cold morning. A stiff wind was blowing off the lake. Taxis were coming and going. The driver of one of them near the head of the line, was dressed in a sheepskin jacket, just like the others below on the platform and the one who had come aboard the train for them. And like the others, he looked their way for just a moment, registering the fact they were not his targets, before his concentration went back to the doors.
McAllister tossed their bags in the backseat of the lead taxi and he and Stephanie got in. “Is there a hospital nearby?” The cabbie looked at them. “You sick or something?”
“My wife is going to have a baby,” McAllister said with a straight face.
For a moment a startled expression crossed the driver’s face, but then he grinned and laughed. “Yeah, sure, a baby,” he said. “Mercy Hospital is just a few blocks from here, that be okay?”
“Just fine,” McAllister said. “Actually it’s my ticker.”
“You going to be okay, mister? I mean is this an emergency?”
“Slow and easy,” McAllister said, his accent broad, southern. “That’s the ticket.”
They got off in front of the emergency room entrance, and as soon as the taxi was gone, they walked through the hospital to the front where from a pay phone McAllister called for another cab, this one out to O’Hare Airport.
While they waited for the cab to arrive, McAllister went into the men’s room where in one of the toilet stalls he quickly broke down both of their guns, unloading the clips and distributing the parts and the bullets in all three suitcases. They would check their bagsthrough, rather than try to carry them aboard. He didn’t expect any trouble.
“Where are we going?” Stephanie asked, her manner lethargic for the moment now that they were out of immediate danger, and the realization of what she had done suddenly hitting home.
“Los Angeles,” McAllister said. “It’s time to strike back.”
Chapter 26
It was just one-thirty in the afternoon when their plane landed at Los Angeles International Airport. McAllister got their bags while Stephanie waited for him by the walkway to the parking ramp. They’d had no trouble getting a flight out of Chicago, nor had they encountered any questions because of what their baggage contained. Nevertheless the flight had been a difficult one; for him because he had no idea what they would find when they got out here, and for Stephanie because of what she had done.
I have killed in the name of revenge. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and I am not proud of myself The act did notfilfill me as I had led myself to believe it would. Help me, David. I believe in you. Please hold me, and for God’s sake, never let me go.
But he could not help her, not now, not until this insanity had been resolved. Somehow they had been traced to Chicago. The message would already have reached Washington: They’re heading west! Stop them, at all costs, stop them!
“Are you all right?” he asked, reaching for her. She was pale, and there was a light sheen of sweat on her forehead. Los Angeles was considerably warmer than Baltimore or Chicago, and she was extremely nervous.
“Somebody is going to come looking for us once they realize we’ve left Chicago,” she said.
“Probably,” McAllister said. “We’re going to have to move fast now.”
“How? We can’t rent a car, not now, not in our own names.”
“You’re right,” he said. “We’re going to steal one.” They took the moving walkway to the long-term parking ramp at the outer perimeter of the terminal building. An elevator brought themup to the sixth level where he made her wait as he hurried down the rows of cars looking for just the right one.
He found it five minutes later. The car was a newer model Mercedes 300D, with the long-term parking ticket lying in clear view on the dash. There was quite a lot of traffic in the ramp, but no one paid him any attention as he took out his lock-pick set and started to work on the driver’s door lock. The date and time stamped on the ticket had been early this morning. The car’s owner would not have left it here if he hadn’t planned on being gone at least overnight. Which meant they’d have at least eighteen hours to use the car before any alarm was raised.
The car was equipped with electric locks, and within twenty seconds all four door locks popped open, and he got in behind the wheel, found the trunk release button and hit it, the trunk lid clicking open.
Around back he opened the trunk, found the tool kit which he knew all new Mercedeses were equipped with, and took the largest flat-bladed screwdriver out of it. Closing the trunk lid, he got back in behind the wheel. A blue Chevrolet station wagon came slowly past him, and then turned the corner at the end of the row and headed down the ramp to the exit. McAllister inserted the screwdriver blade beneath the lip of the ignition lock on the steering column and pryed it outward with a sharp twist, putting his muscle into it.
The lock popped neatly out of its hole, automatically releasing the pin that held the steering wheel in position, and exposing a bundle of wires. Again checking to make sure that he wasn’t being observed, McAllister bared three of the color-coded wires, twisted two of them together, then used the screwdriver to short across that pair and the third wire. The Mercedes’s engine roared to life.
The countdown had begun, and although he had no idea what they would find, if anything, there was no turning back for either of them.
Los Angeles was a huge, sprawling city. Traffic on the freeways was heavy even at two-thirty in the afternoon. In a few hours it would be bumper-to-bumper. Kathleen O’Haire lived in Canoga Park, a pleasantsuburb in the Valley about twenty miles north of the airport. McAllister had only been to Los Angeles twice in his life, but
