into the front boot, the only other possible storage place for the geolabe. He opened the driver’s door and squeezed inside, slamming it behind him. He crouched down across the passenger seat as the Ferrari stopped and waited for the exit bay’s floor to slide aside for the tray to rise up.
He redialed Grant’s number.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Is Stacy with you?” Tyler said.
“No, she’s still in the lobby. If Cavano goes back in, she’ll see Stacy for sure.”
“Tell her to leave through the front door in fifteen seconds.”
“Okay.” He and Grant had known each other long enough for Grant not to waste time asking why.
“And, no matter what you see, stay where you are.”
“But Cavano-” Grant wouldn’t like that request, but Tyler hung up before he could hear more.
The Ferrari began rising again and stopped in the exit bay. As the doors opened, Tyler sat up and started the engine.
Right in front of him were the three bodyguards and Cavano, who stared at Tyler in disbelief.
When Sal had left to find out what the surprise was, Cavano suspected Pietro was attempting to get one of the other bodyguards to switch places with him.
But a few minutes after he’d gone, Sal called to say that the BMW was missing and that they couldn’t get hold of Pietro. Cavano wondered if Pietro had left his post and taken the BMW for a drive, but she realized that he couldn’t have exited the garage on his own. Retrieving the car could be done only from outside the garage. Perhaps the computer system had directed the tray to the wrong spot in the garage, but a nagging feeling told her that something was wrong, so she instructed Sal to retrieve the Ferrari to make sure it was still there.
As Cavano hurried from the elevator to the garage exit, she had barely registered the sight of the guard speaking to a woman at the front door, their backs to her.
She was standing in front of the bay with Sal and the other two bodyguards when the Ferrari arrived, seemingly intact. But as the doors opened, she was stunned to see Tyler Locke sit up in the seat of her car and start it up.
Before any of them could react, Locke gunned the engine and smoked tires out of the bay, sending the four of them diving to avoid being run over.
Cavano had thought the whole business with Locke was a sideshow until this moment. Now she realized how important that device must be to him if he was willing to take this kind of risk to get it back.
As she pushed herself to her feet, Cavano vowed again that Orr and Locke would not beat her to the Midas treasure. She ran out into the street and saw her new Ferrari screech to a halt. The woman the guard had been talking to burst through the doors and ran to the Ferrari.
“Get in,” Locke yelled through the open passenger window.
At the Ferrari’s door, Stacy Benedict turned and locked eyes with Cavano, who was momentarily frozen with rage.
Benedict jumped in, and the Ferrari took off.
An alarm went off in the Boerst building, but Cavano ignored it. She had to get her car back, and the BMW was nowhere to be found.
Cavano could hijack a car driving by, but it would never be able to keep up with the Ferrari. Then she remembered the exotic car dealership, the same one that had brokered her purchase of the Ferrari.
She whirled around and saw the truck delivering cars for the dealership. Two were already parked on the street, a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo and a black Pagani Zonda. Both of them were supercars at least the equal of her 458 Italia.
Cavano waved to her men and pointed at the cars.
“Let’s go!” she yelled.
A salesman from the car dealership was inspecting the cars. Cavano ran to the driver’s door of the Zonda and opened it.
The salesman started yelling in German.
“What are you doing?”
Sal jumped into the passenger seat of the Zonda, while the other two took the Lamborghini. The keys were still in both cars.
The Lamborghini took off after Locke, leaving the salesman screaming at them.
Cavano started the Zonda and revved the twelve cylinders to the redline.
“Tell your boss Gia Cavano just bought these cars,” she said to the salesman through the open window in her passable German.
The salesman sputtered in amazement, but Cavano didn’t wait to hear his response. She threw the Zonda into gear and laid down a patch of rubber twenty yards long.
THIRTY-SIX
W ith a yellow Lamborghini in the rearview mirror, Tyler knew his escape wasn’t over. It had to be the one he’d seen as he exited the garage, which meant that Cavano wasn’t giving up on her Ferrari that easily.
He had hoped to find a good place to ditch the car and make their escape on foot into Munich’s U-Bahn subway, but the rush-hour traffic had slowed them enough to allow their pursuers to catch up. Because he and Stacy were unarmed, a footrace would be suicidal. And going to the police wasn’t an option after trashing the garage, killing a man, and stealing a car.
“Oh, my God!” Stacy shouted above the roar of the engine. “You’re bleeding!” She took off her sweater and pressed it against his arm.
Tyler winced. In the escape he’d forgotten about the gunshot wound, but now the pain in his shoulder howled.
“I’ll be fine,” he said through gritted teeth.
“It looks like you got shot! Are you hit anywhere else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I saw a wrecked car in the garage. What the hell happened? Why are we in Cavano’s car?”
“Had a little trouble getting into the BMW. Pietro surprised me.”
The traffic slowed ahead, so Tyler cranked the wheel to the right, turning onto a street called Steinsdorfstrasse that ran alongside the river. Stacy squealed as he weaved through the traffic, occasionally zooming into the oncoming lane when he saw an opening.
Now she’d get an idea of what it had been like for him on the horse. Using the paddle shifters, Tyler had complete control, as if he were part of the car. Stacy, on the other hand, looked distinctly unhappy as she struggled to keep from getting thrown back and forth.
“Put your seat belt on,” Tyler said. “This could get dicey.”
She snapped the belt into place. “Dicier than this?”
“Could be.”
Tyler couldn’t put any distance between them and the Lamborghini, which had now been joined by a black Pagani Zonda.
“Did you get the geolabe?” Stacy asked.
“It’s got to be in the front boot.”
“Where are we going?”
He had to get out of these narrow streets. They could corner him if he ran into a traffic jam.
A blue sign flashed by depicting a highway overpass and an arrow toward 95.
The autobahn. The sleek sports cars following them were a match for the Ferrari. Outrunning them would be next to impossible, but the open highway was better than a city traffic jam.
He gave Stacy his phone.
“Call Grant and tell him to head this way.”
“But he’ll never catch us.”
