Frame wasn’t surrendering. He wasn’t abandoning them.
Around them, other late-night Miami Beach traffic sped and spun out of their way, cars steering to the shoulder, drivers reacting in alarm and shock to the war waging in the lanes. With bay on both sides, the highway offered no place to exit until Alton Road and the residential neighborhood edging South Beach.
She has to slow for the exit. Our chance to get out. Evan eased the seat back, exposing the dark of the trunk.
‘Go!’ Carrie shouted.
Evan wriggled through into the pitch-black. He swept his arm in the darkness ahead of him. Looking for the thin wire and handle that would release the trunk door from inside. Assuming there still was one. Maybe the CIA or McNee had removed it.
Bullets dinged above his head, hitting the trunk’s top.
The Town Car careened to the right, then again to the left. Evan lay wedged in the narrow opening, and the charging rocked him back and forth. He twisted, pulling himself through the tight gap, pushing their small luggage out of the way. Carrie pushed his feet and he popped through the leather canal into the full dark of the trunk. She pushed the laptop bag into the trunk after him.
Evan found and jerked the release cord.
The trunk popped up and the wind of traveling at ninety miles an hour boomed in his ears. The night lay vacant of stars, the clouds low and heavy over the city like a pall, and the Navigator drove up close to the bumper, ten feet from him, Frame’s face a white smear behind the dazzle of the lights.
McNee urged more from the engine, the speed surging past one hundred as she barreled onto the South Alton Road exit, blasted through a green light, standing on her horn, cars screeching as drivers slammed brakes to avoid crashing into the Town Car.
The Mercedes charged close and a man leaned out of the passenger side, gun leveled at Evan. Dezz. Grinning, hair flying around his face. Gesturing him back into the trunk.
Evan hunched down. Reached back into the rear seat, groped for Carrie’s hand. Nothing.
‘Come on!’ he yelled to her.
The Mercedes rammed the Navigator again and a second burst of gunfire flared. The Navigator flew over the median through a gap in the palms and flipped. Bedford’s body flew from the wreck and tumbled along the asphalt. The Navigator slid on its side in a shower of sparks, nose-diving into a darkened storefront, metal and glass splintering and shattering.
The Mercedes retreated to the right, then revved forward, coming up close behind the Lincoln. Dezz leaned out the passenger side, fired into the trunk hatch. The bullet hit above Evan, ricocheted into the night. Warning shot; he didn’t doubt Dezz could put a bullet through his throat.
Evan steadied his gun and fired.
Missed. He was no pro. He fired again and the bullet popped into the Mercedes’s hood. The Mercedes backed off twenty feet. He didn’t know the pistol’s range, but he wasn’t about to waste another bullet. And too many people around; he could miss, kill an innocent bystander.
McNee lay on the horn, driving with insane abandon, powering down Alton Road, through the maze of beautiful people in their beautiful cars. She would kill people, he couldn’t stop her.
But he could shoot out the tires.
The idea occurred to him with almost eerie calm. Before she killed innocent people, before she got back on a highway. It was the only way he could take command of the situation.
Evan leaned out again, aimed the gun at the tire below him. He wondered if the tire’s exploding would kill him, if the car would somersault into the night sky and kiss the unforgiving concrete. In the car, Carrie might survive. He wouldn’t have a prayer.
He held the gun steady and the Lincoln slowed.
They see me and they radio McNee. It’s like having a gun to her head.
He fired.
The tire detonated. The blast of pressure and the car’s swerve threw him back into the trunk. The Town Car spun into the oncoming lane; a banner for Lincoln Road passed above his head. Then the car stopped, amid a shriek of brakes.
The passenger window shattered from inside, Carrie emptying her gun onto the same fracturing point, firing the clip empty. Carrie went out, feet first, hitting the concrete in a tight roll, her arm out of the sling, and the Mercedes skidded to a stop thirty feet from her, crashing into a Lexus.
She held the decoy laptop in her good hand, raised it like a trophy. And ran. Away from both cars, into the snarl of traffic.
Dezz and Jargo came out of the Mercedes and fired at her. Evan took aim but two people got out of the Lexus, between him and Dezz, and he stopped, afraid of hitting them.
Dezz fired once at him, pinging the trunk lid, and Evan ducked down. People on the street, in the cafes, fled and screamed. He risked a look.
But Dezz and Jargo ignored him; they saw Carrie had the laptop. Carrie bolted toward the western end of the street; she hurtled into the parting crowd, into traffic, and the two men followed her.
They vanished around a corner.
Evan heard a police siren approach, the spill of blues and reds racing along the scorching path they’d taken. He grabbed the laptop bag and jumped out of the trunk; McNee’s door was open, she ran hard in the opposite direction, her gun out, aiming at anyone who tried to stop her.
The BMW – that had been behind the Mercedes on the highway – headed straight for him. Braked. The window slid down. ‘Evan!’
His father behind the wheel, dressed in a dark coat, a bandage on his face.
‘Dad!’
‘Get in! Now!’
‘Carrie. I can’t leave Carrie.’
‘Evan! Now!’
Clutching the laptop bag, Evan got in. This was not what he had expected; he thought Jargo had his father locked in a room, tied to a chair.
‘Here.’ Mitchell Casher pulled away from the Mercedes, tore along the sidewalk, steered off the chaos on Alton, took a side road. Then another side road.
‘Dad; oh, Jesus, Dad.’ He grabbed his father’s arm.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No. I’m fine. Carrie-’
‘Carrie is no longer your concern.’
‘Dad, Jargo will kill her if he catches her.’ Evan stared at his father, this stranger.
Mitchell took a street that fed back onto Alton, two blocks away from the chaotic mess of the crash, then went onto 41 and cruised up to the speed limit on the stretch of road that cut through the bay. On the left, giant cruise ships shimmered with light. On the right, mansions crowded a spit of land, yachts parked on the water.
‘Carrie. Dad, we have to go back.’
‘No. She’s not your concern anymore. She’s CIA.’
‘Dad. Jargo and Dezz killed Mom. They killed her.’
‘No. Bedford’s people did, and we’ve taken care of them. Now I can take care of you. You’re safe.’
No. His dad believed Jargo. ‘And Jargo just let you go.’
‘He made sure I had nothing to do with your mother stealing the files and running to Gabriel.’
‘You were CIA, too. Bedford told me. If one loved, one feared. I know the code.’
Mitchell kept his eyes on the road. ‘The CIA killed your mother, and I didn’t want Bedford coming for me. All that matters now is that you’re alive.’
‘No. We have to be sure Carrie got away from them. Dad, please.’
‘The only person I work for now, Evan, is myself. The only job I have is to keep you safe, where none of these people can ever find us again. You have to do exactly what I say now, Evan. We’re getting out of the country.’
‘Not without Carrie.’
