A police car rushed past the gas station, sirens blazing as it went. I craned forwards in my seat to watch it go, mainly to make sure it didn’t do a sudden U-turn and come back after us instead but, for now, our luck held.
Sean had just put the truck in gear and was preparing to move off when my father said, abruptly, “What about Miranda?”
Sean didn’t quite sigh out loud, but inside his head it must have been another matter. “What about her?” he said, expressionless. “Either Collingwood’s got people all over her, in which case she helped—willingly or unwillingly—to set us up, or they’ve got her phone tapped. Either way, the most sensible thing for us to do is stay as far away from her as we can.”
For a moment I thought my father was going to argue, then he closed his eyes briefly and said with stiff- necked calm, “I told her we would get to the bottom of this, but I never dreamt that would put her in any danger. I gave her my word.” He took in a breath, as if he needed to work his way up to this. “It’s not something I do lightly and I would rather not break it, if I can avoid it.”
Sean was silent for a moment. Glancing back, I saw my mother sneak her hand into my father’s, give it a reassuring squeeze.
“Darling,” she said, anxious to the point of timidity. “If Sean thinks it’s not safe—”
“We’ll go,” Sean said abruptly. “We’ll swing by the house, but if we think it looks dodgy, we’re not going in. All right?”
My father bridled at the steely tone, but he had the sense not to make an issue out of it when he was ahead. He nodded. “Thank you.”
“And if we pass any banks on the way there, we stop,” I said. When my father’s face darkened, I added quickly, “Five minutes isn’t going to make any difference, one way or another.” And I hoped that it was true.
We washed out on both counts. A slow drive-by of Miranda Lee’s house revealed no car in the driveway and no signs of habitation. We risked a phone call, but it rang out without reply.
And when I tried cards from three different accounts in the first hole-in-the-wall ATM we came across, the cash machine gave what I imagined was a mechanical gulping noise as it ate each one and passed on the indifferent advice that I should seek financial guidance at my earliest opportunity.
“So, we need cash and we need shelter,” I said when we were back out on the road again. A state trooper passed us. I watched warily until he was out of sight. “A safe house. Somewhere to hole up.”
“If Collingwood’s put the squeeze on Parker, anything on the company’s books will be compromised,” Sean said. He glanced at my father in the rearview mirror. “If you have any wealthy ex-patients around here who owe you big favors, now would be a very good time to call them in.”
“What about your ex-clients?” my father batted back at him. “Wouldn’t any of them be grateful enough to assist?”
Sean pulled a face. “Our clients are Parker’s clients,” he said. “And if they’re in Parker’s system, Collingwood will have accessed their details by now.”
“So, what do you suggest?” my father asked, a little of the old bite back in his voice. “That we keep driving round until we simply run out of petrol?”
“We can’t run for long,” Sean said, ignoring the tone, if not the question. “Not in this vehicle. And unless we nick one, we can’t get another.”
“We need Parker,” I said. “Or unhindered access to him, at least.”
Sean flashed me a tired smile. “Collingwood’s got him sewn up tight,” he said. “Clients, colleagues, friends— ours and Parker’s. Collingwood will have them all under surveillance.”
“Ah,” I said as a sudden thought struck me. “But what about someone who
His eyes flicked sideways. “You’ve thought of someone.”
“I might have,” I said, and told him who I had in mind.
Sean laughed, a short bark of sound, and cocked a cynical brow in my direction. “You really think you can talk him into helping us?”
“It’s worth a try.”
Still smiling, he shook his head. “Never let anyone tell you that you haven’t got balls, Charlie.”
“Well,” I said, “you should know … .”
We found a big shopping mall with four main department stores at its center and a rake of smaller shops scattered in between. The best thing was that one of the big stores had underground parking as well as the sprawling acres of asphalt up top. Sean drove the pickup into a corner of the second level underground and we left it there, nose to the wall. It left the plate on view, but we reckoned the bullet holes in the front windscreen would attract much more attention. And if the cops came checking plates on every red Ford F-350 they could find, we were likely screwed anyway.
The phone call was not one I was looking forward to making, but there was nobody else I could nominate. Determined to get it over with as fast as possible, I left Sean and my parents in the truck and took the nearest elevator up into the mall itself, pausing only to check the location of the payphones.
They turned out to be in the bustling Food Court, a recessed area at the far end of the mall. Restaurants lined three sides of a central square filled with tables and chairs like a school canteen. It seemed odd to find ladies in power suits, their feet surrounded by high-class carrier bags, lunching together in such a setting.
The mingling smells of fast food—stir-fry Chinese as well as the usual pizza, burgers, pretzels, and frosted doughnuts—hit my stomach hard and, though it quavered a little, I found I was actually hungry. It seemed a long time since breakfast, despite the fact that my watch told me lunch wasn’t yet strictly overdue.
Nevertheless, my stride faltered. Whoever said an army marches on its stomach knew their human nature. And, besides, who knew when we’d get the chance to eat again? I fingered the diminished fold of dollar bills in my pocket.
The phones were halfway down the painted block corridor that led to the rest rooms, so there was a constant stream of people passing by, but nobody lingered as if to catch me making my illicit call, and there were no obvious surveillance teams at work. I shook myself for this creeping paranoia. Did Collingwood really have the manpower— not to mention the clout—to cover every payphone in the area, at this notice, just in case?
I reached the phones and dialed the number quickly, before I had a chance to back out. The phone seemed to ring out for a long time before anyone picked up but, when they did, it was the guy I’d been hoping for.
I listened while he went through his ritual greeting, welcoming the caller to the facility and identifying himself by name.
“Hi, Nick,” I said, trying for casual and not quite bringing it off. “You know who this is. Please—don’t hang up.”
I had no idea if Collingwood might be using some kind of recognition software to monitor phone calls made to anywhere connected to Parker or to me and Sean. If so, that would naturally include the gym a few blocks away from the office, where I’d so recently had my dramatic run-in with my personal trainer. Was it enough of a link that Parker’s company had a group membership there?
I’d rarely had cause to speak to Nick on the phone and I wasn’t sure if he’d recognize my voice without a name attached to it. His sharply indrawn breath told me that he did.
“I got nothing to say to
“Then just listen,” I said. “This is serious, Nick. We need your help.”
“Huh!” The dismissive sound came out explosively loud in my ear. It clearly turned some heads at his end,
