“Our deal was not for open-ended jobs, either, Peter. You’re taking advantage of my trust on this one. So we do the meeting my way, or you do it yourself.”
“Are you going to stay in Montreal?”
The only response was the line disconnecting.
Peter did not receive word back from Primus until noon the next day. He was afraid Primus had cut all communication links. The emergency cell phone number, a number that was only supposed to be used once, was no longer in service. The only thing Peter had left was an anonymous email address that he hoped Primus was still checking.
Thankfully, it appeared he was.
Peter’s original message had read:
Request for meeting. Earliest possible.
The Field Museum. Chicago.
The response was equally brief:
Noon. Thursday.
Los Angeles, not Chicago. LACMA. Entrance.
Thursday was two days away. And the location would please Quinn. They were on.
CHAPTER
17
THEY HAD ALMOST GOT HER. THE PEOPLE WHO HAD wanted Iris, the people who had tried to trap her in New York, the people who she was now one hundred percent positive killed her family had come within seconds of trapping her in her parents’ house. She had thought for a moment that one of them, the man whose picture she’d seen on the news, was going to try and pull her out of her car as she drove away. But he had only stared at her as she drove off. Then, thinking at first she was free, a flash of lights swept across her rearview mirror as a car pulled from the curb and began following her.
“No! Leave us alone!” she had said as she pressed the gas pedal down.
In the back, Iris first laughed, then screamed in surprise as she slid along the upholstered seat. Marion looked back, aware she had not secured the child, but knowing she couldn’t stop now to do anything about it.
“Iris, sweetheart, give me your hand,” Marion said. She stretched her right arm back toward the girl, hoping Iris would understand. “Come on, please. Take my hand.”
After a moment, Iris reached out her small five-year-old hand and put it in Marion’s. Marion closed her own around it and pulled the child forward. Iris whimpered in fear, but allowed Marion to move her toward the gap between the front seats.
“All right, baby. Up here with me.”
She lifted Iris and tried to move her between the seats, but the girl’s feet got caught and wouldn’t come through.
“Lift your legs, honey.”
But Iris couldn’t figure out what Marion wanted. She just smiled, her loving, simple eyes oblivious to the danger around them. Marion had no choice but to pull the girl through as much as she could, then lay her headfirst on the passenger seat while she freed the girl’s legs.
Once she got Iris situated in the front seat, and the seatbelt fastened around the girl’s tiny form as best as possible, she checked her mirror again. The car was still there.
As they drove onward, a streetlight illuminated the driver. A man. About her age or maybe even a little younger. He didn’t look particularly menacing, but he did look determined, and that was all the danger she needed for motivation.
She remembered a church ahead. It was another four blocks down and off to the right. If she could somehow get to it while he was out of sight, she might have a chance. She turned a few blocks shy of the church and pushed the gas down hard. But he remained right with her.
Two blocks down, she went left, then left again, circling the block and hoping to get him off guard. Then she had her first bit of luck all week. A taxi pulled into the road behind her, and in front of her pursuer. It was driving slower and forced the man who had been following her to reduce his speed.
She went right at the next corner, going as fast as she dared. Half a block down on the left was the entrance to the church parking area. The tires of the Saab jammed up against the wheel well as she turned in to the lot. She doused the car’s headlights but kept driving. Because there were few cars present, she was able to race across the parking lot and out the exit on the other side, onto the parallel road.
For the next hour she checked her mirror every few seconds, but there was no one there. She’d lost him. When she finally allowed herself to pull to the side of the road, she began to cry.
It was too much. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know if she should do anything. Maybe she should just give in to the inevitable, and wait for them to find her.
She heard sniffling to her right.
Iris.
The girl had been so quiet for the last fifteen minutes, Marion had almost forgotten she was there. But she wasn’t quiet now. Her lower lip arced upward in the middle, quivering. Her eyes were full of water, some already spilling onto her cheeks, and her short, shaky intakes of air were punctuated by silent pauses. Her hands were against her chest, one holding the other.
“Oh, baby,” Marion said. She reached down, released the seatbelt, and lifted Iris into her arms. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Together they cried, Marion’s tears running down onto Iris’s hair, and Iris’s tears soaking Marion’s shirt. The child, so innocent, so unknowing, scared of what was happening, scared because the woman who was protecting
