would be sufficient to pull it off, though there could be ten or more.
It wasn’t easy to break containment, but it could be done. What was required was a series of maneuvers that would shake off her pursuers one or two at a time, carried out quickly enough that they had no time to regroup.
The assignment would have been easier at night, with darkness as cover, but on these long summer days the sun didn’t sent before eight p.m.. She would have to make the best of it.
She took a few moments to adjust to the Chevy’s handling. Every car had its own feel. This one rode pretty solid, with no rattles or squeaks. Tight suspension, decent traction, smooth steering.
When she was comfortable behind the wheel, she decided to make her move.
She cut right on Tuxford Street and took the on-ramp to the Golden State Freeway westbound, easing into the fast lane. The chase cars were behind her, she had no doubt. She sped west for two miles, gradually upping her speed, then abruptly cut across multiple lanes and shot down an off-ramp onto Osbourne Street. A slick maneuver, which might have lost the command vehicle, at least.
But she had to assume that other surveillance cars had managed to follow her or had been paralleling the freeway on surface streets. She hooked southeast onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard, a major thoroughfare, and accelerated, weaving through traffic and running yellow lights. As she flashed through the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Saticoy, she spun the steering wheel and whirled around in a screaming skid, then slammed on the emergency brake and floored the gas. The car nearly flipped over from centrifugal force but somehow stayed upright, now facing north. She popped the emergency brake, and the Chevy tore forward, racing north while outraged drivers blasted their horns.
She didn’t know what they were so upset about. It was a standard bootleg turn. Moonshiners did it all the time.
The tactic must have shaken off a few more of the pursuit vehicles. Any cars ahead of her would never be able to turn around fast enough to catch up. Any cars following too closely behind her would have been all the way through the intersection before they could react. By the time they found a way to turn around, she would be far gone.
The only danger was that one or two cars might have been farther behind her. If so, they could have been warned in time to stay on her tail. It was doubtful, but she was taking no chances.
She sped north for a half mile, then cut onto a side street lined with bungalows and slammed the Chevy left at the first intersection, then right, right again, left, cutting down street after street in the gridwork of residential blocks, until even she didn’t know where she was.
Finally she pulled into an alley walled in by a double row of houses and parked behind a Dumpster, where the car wouldn’t easily be seen from the street. She let her head fall back on the headrest.
No way the feds could have followed her this far. Even if one of the chase cars had stayed with her after the bootleg turn, her subsequent maneuvers would have shaken it off.
Though she was out of pocket for the moment, she wasn’t home free. Already the surveillance team would be initiating a lost command drill, retreating to the perimeter of the area where she was last seen in an effort to pick her up again when she started moving. But that was okay, because it was the Chevy Malibu they were looking for, and the Chevy wasn’t going anywhere.
She took off the wig and left it on the seat. Carefully she wiped the steering wheel, dashboard controls, and door handle to remove any prints. Then she left the car and took her cell phone out of her purse. She had never ended her call to Andrea.
“Still there?” she asked.
“I’m here.”
“I lost our friends and ditched the car.”
“Ditched the-”
“Not to worry. You’ll pick it up later. Right now, though, I need you to pick me up.”
“Where?”
She glanced at the nearest street signs and told Andrea the intersection. “You know where that is?”
“Not really.”
“There’s a Thomas Brothers map book in the Mazda’s glove compartment. I’ll be loitering on the street corner like a hooker, only better dressed.”
“What’s the plan, Abby? What are we doing?”
“It’ll all be clear soon enough. You’ve trusted me this far. Okay?”
There was a beat of hesitation. “Okay.”
“Don’t sweat it. You’re in good hands. The hard part is over.” She ended the call and hoped Andrea believed her.
There was no reason why she should. It was a lie, after all.
The hard part hadn’t even begun.
43
Tess was finishing off the recitation of her misdeeds, and enjoying it considerably less than her last visit to confession, when Michaelson’s secretary interrupted to say that Hauser was on the line. Michaelson took the call on the speakerphone.
“We’ve got a problem,” Hauser said. “One of my surveillance agents just called. Lowry has broken out of containment.” Michaelson uttered an expletive, which Hauser ignored. “She couldn’t have done it alone,” he went on. “She had to have help.”
Michaelson shot Tess a cold glance. “Your friend again?”
Tess frowned. “Stop calling her my friend.”
Michaelson asked Hauser where he was now. “At Sinclair’s condo in Westwood. She’s not here. Her Mazda Miata’s not in its assigned space.”
“She’s hooked up with Lowry,” Michaelson said. “For all we know, the two of them could be conspiring to kill Reynolds together. Or maybe Sinclair’s working with Reynolds to get Lowry.”
“Abby wouldn’t do anything like that,” Tess protested.
“How the hell do you know? She’s already killed Garrick. Now she’s pulled Lowry away from surveillance. The goddamned situation is out of control.”
Hauser’s voice crackled over the speaker. “McCallum, you’ve been in contact with her. You know her cell phone number?”
Tess recited it from memory.
“We can track her by her cell,” Hauser said. “She doesn’t even need to be using it. As long as the phone is turned on, it’ll send out periodic transmissions to check for signal availability.”
“We’ll need the cooperation of her cellular provider,” Michaelson said.
“Those outfits usually offer assistance to law enforcement voluntarily. We can use her number to find out which provider she subscribes to. Hopefully we can obtain whatever real-time info they’re getting.”
“How accurately can we track her?”
“Depends on the phone and the carrier. Mainly the phone. Most cell phones have GPS chips built in. With GPS we can pinpoint her to within five feet.”
“And if her phone doesn’t have a chip?”
“Then its position can be triangulated from the signals received by the three nearest cell towers. It’s just as fast, but not as precise. We can narrow down her location to a city block, maybe.”
Michaelson nodded at the speakerphone as if he were addressing Hauser face to face. “All right, get going on this.” The call ended, and Michaelson turned to Tess. “Looks like we’re done for now. You can go.”
“I want to stay. I want to be part of the takedown.”
“You have to be joking.”
“I know Abby. I can be helpful.”
“Yes, you’ve been nothing but helpful so far. Get lost, McCallum.”
