“Pull in here, ”Macias said, and Titus wheeled into a new shopping center carved out of acres and acres of new ranch houses. There was a twenty-four-hour supermarket, a twentyfour-hour home repairs complex, a twenty- four-hour pharmacy franchise, a twenty-four-hour restaurant franchise, and several smaller businesses, their common sprawling parking area brightly lighted by towering halogen street lamps.
“Park here, ”Macias instructed, directing Titus to one of the largest clusters of cars in the area. He got out and opened Titus's door.
“Come on, ”he said, but as Titus turned to get out, Macias reached in and put the barrel of his pistol to Titus's Adam's apple. He said nothing, but he pressed so hard that Titus could feel the cartilage of his trachea rolling under the steel. Then Macias jabbed the gun sharply for emphasis, bringing tears to Titus's eyes.
“Get the keys and hand them to me, ”Macias said.
Titus did, and then Macias stepped back and let him get out.
Standing next to the Navigator, he watched Macias pull out his shirttail to cover the automatic with the suppressor and the mole, which he crammed into the front waistband of his pants. Titus cringed, hoping he didn't rake the mole off in the process.
Macias put his arm around Titus and draped his left hand over the top of his shoulder. “I know you want to keep your kidneys, ”he said. “Let's go.”
But Titus froze. “Hold it. This isn't what we agreed on. They'll kill you if I don't stay with the Navigator.”
“They'll have to find us first.”
“Look, ”Titus said, “I've… I'll be honest with you. I'm hot. I've swallowed a bug. They know where I am every second. When they see my signal leaving the car, you're screwed.”
“Then why in the hell are you telling me this?”
“Because I'm not an idiot. I don't want to get killed in a shoot-out, and I'm telling you, if I leave this Navigator, they're going to come after you.”
They were standing face-to-face, and Macias smelled of stale cologne and perspiration. Both men were dealing with fear and with the mystery of the odds of chance. Titus could smell Macias's breath, too, and he thought it smelled of desperation.
Chapter 57
Rita looked out of the backseat windows of Kal's Jeep Cherokee as it pulled off the Loop 1 South expressway and into the parking lot of the La Quinta Inn. Kal was driving, Ryan was sitting in the front passenger seat beside him, and Janet was sitting next to Rita behind them.
They pulled up beside a van just as its rear door opened, and Garcia Burden stepped out into the parking lot. They all got out of the Cherokee and stood at the opened door of the van to talk. Rita could see inside the van, its cramped, dark interior glittering with banks of computer screens covered in colored lights. A clutter of transmission noises wafted out to her.
Burden spoke directly to her. “Two things: I don't have any more people, and before this is over I may need your three bodyguards here. So this is good for me. The other thing, you're right. If he's going to die, you shouldn't have to watch it like that. If this involved a lot of people, as it did earlier in the evening, I wouldn't have allowed this. But it's down to just Titus and Macias.
“Titus's signal has stopped moving, ”he went on, “and it's coming from somewhere in all those shopping center lights over there.”
He pointed across the expressway. The back of his saggy shirt was black with perspiration. He seemed wrung out. “Calo's over there, trying to get as close as he can. If we're lucky, that's where Macias is planning to leave Titus with the telephone.”
Ryan turned and stepped inside the van and immediately came back out with one of the technicians, who was carrying a LorGuide that they'd disconnected. They went to the Cherokee and started installing it between the driver and the passenger in the front seat.
“Hey, ”Norlin said from inside the van. “It looks like the signal's leaving the Navigator.”
Burden was instantly back inside the van, and the others crowded around the opened rear door.
“This's a big supermarket, ”Norlin said, pointing to the schematic graphics on one of the screens. “It looks like the signal's going in.”
Burden got Calo on the telephone.
“Yeah, I see that, ”Calo said. “I'm easing into the lot. I'll try to get to the Navigator.”
Nobody had to say it: This wasn't good. The signal was on the gun. Titus was supposed to be on the phone talking to them when Macias left the van. He wasn't.
Rita remembered her conversation with Burden earlier. She'd been stubborn, wanting to be closer to it all, and now here she was. She'd be damned if she'd fold and get whiny. She wasn't going to do it. Titus wasn't dead. She would know it if he was. She'd feel it, like the vibrations of a tuning fork, some subtle fibrillation within her stomach. She believed that as surely as she believed the sun would come up again in the morning. She stared into the dark van and waited.
Titus started walking, and they headed for the supermarket.
Inside the huge and brightly lighted store, Macias slowed down and they walked as casually as possible past the cereals and the soft drinks and the refrigerated goods, past the fresh produce and the meat market, and headed through the double swinging doors into the back of the store. Some of the workers threw them curious glances, but they weren't being paid enough to be too curious, and Titus and Macias went right on through to the back of the warehouse and out the back metal door into the alley without anyone saying a word to them.
Outside again, Macias glanced around to see that they were still alone. Now he had his gun out in the open and jammed into Titus's kidneys again and shoved him forward, fast walking down the alley, past the Dumpsters with their rancid odors hanging in the still summer air. On the other side of them, a tall fence of wooden slats ran the length of the long alley behind the stores, hiding it from the housing development.
To Titus the alley seemed more isolated than the Antarctic, but Macias kept checking the rears of the stores, and when he passed into the shadows between the security lights over the back doors of a pet store and camera shop, he guided Titus with pressure from his pistol barrel, and they veered to the fence.
They slowed to a walk, then a slow walk, then they stopped and went back a few steps. Macias scanned the backs of the stores again, seeming to check his bearings, and then they went up to the fence, lifted the bottoms of three adjacent slats, and crouched into the backyard of a small ranch house. The yard, lighted by the street lamps in the adjacent alley, was overgrown with weeds; the house was dark.
Macias unlocked the back door of the house and pushed Titus in first. The alley lights were the only thing that lighted the darkened kitchen through its small windows, and then Titus saw a seam of light at the bottom of a closed door.
“Over there, ”Macias said, and he pushed Titus forward. When they got to the door, Macias told him to open it, and they stepped into the garage. A black Honda Accord was waiting there, backed into the garage, and there was a man sitting on the trunk, his feet on the rear bumper.
“Whoa, ”the guy said, suddenly alert and getting off the car cautiously, eyeing Titus with alarm. “Oh, shit, what's going on here, Jorge?”
He was in his late twenties, maybe, Hispanic, though he didn't speak with an accent. He wore jeans and a short-sleeved nylon shirt, open, over a white T-shirt.
“No questions, ”Macias said.
Titus was judging the younger man's reaction. He looked as though he wanted to bolt, his eyes darting back and forth between Titus and Macias.
“Look, ”the young man said, “when you called me and told me to be here, you said you'd pay me off. I… don't want anything to do with this.”
“You don't have anything to do with it, Elias, ”Macias said. “You've got one more chore and you're through.”
“One more? I thought I was coming here to get my last payment for the photographs. And you said you'd reimburse me for them taking my laptop.”
