A part of her could have stood like that forever, but she forced herself out of the spell and moved back into the hall, then speed-walked back to the stairwell. The exit was empty, so she pushed through the door and crept onto the landing, a draft blowing up from the street level ruffling the tips of her hair. Hannah shifted against her and made a soft sound of sleepy susurration, then resumed her drowsing.
Moments later, Jet was strapping Hannah into the new child’s seat in the Explorer, readying her for the short drive to where the RV sat waiting. A police car rolled by on the street in front of the hospital, and her breath caught in her throat. It hit its brake lights as it neared the intersection, slowing. Jet pulled the Beretta free of her jacket as she eased the driver’s door open.
The squad car picked up speed and continued on its way.
Jet exhaled with a sigh and then climbed behind the wheel. She took another look at Hannah in the child’s seat, her small head cocked to the side, eyes clenched shut as she slept, and then cranked the ignition and put the car in gear.
~ ~ ~
“It’s over,” Jet said into the cell phone as she backed the RV out of the driveway, the headlights off so as not to wake the couple in the house.
“All of them?”
She described her night’s activities in clipped sentences.
“And Hannah?”
“Sleeping next to me.”
“What’s your next move?”
“You’ll be the first to know as soon as I figure it out. First thing I need to do is get as far from Washington as I can. I’ll call you in another couple of days. What about you? What are you going to do?”
“I guess I need to think about that some. Can’t see any reason to hide out in the jungle if the bad guys with the grudge are history. Can you?”
“Not really. Unless you’re a nature nut or something.”
“I’m really not.”
“Then you thinking maybe you’ll buy yourself an island and hang out a hammock?” she asked.
“You make it sound like a pretty attractive proposition.”
“Right now, it sounds great. I envy you.”
“I’ll let you know what happens. You got the fifty in stones?”
“Of course.”
“Then you have a good reason to come back.”
She glanced at Hannah in the seat next to her, still asleep.
“I suppose I do.”
Chapter 37
Jet sat at a weathered table across from a heavyset Latino man, Hannah by her side, watching as he took a photo with the elaborate digital camera and then inspected it on his computer.
“Perfect. I can have the passport finished within two more days. It’ll pass cursory inspections, but you don’t want to use it anywhere they have an automated scanner. Those are typically linked to a central computer, and it will come up as an unrecognized number,” he advised.
“I need a few of those photos myself. Can you send them to this e-mail?” She handed him a piece of paper with a cutout e-mail account on it.
“You betcha. I’ll do it right now.” He moved his mouse around and typed in the address with excruciating slowness, then hit return. “Still not completely comfortable with these damned things. Technology. Although it’s made the business easier. Used to be a passport would take two weeks, not three days. But now you just press print and the machine does the work for you.” He shook his head. “But why a Mexican passport? Most of my customers want a U.S. one. If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I like Mexico.” She smiled sweetly.
“And the name on the passport?”
She’d thought about it a long time.
“Lawan Nguyen.”
“Spell it.”
She did.
“Good Mexican name. You sure you don’t want something like Maria Perez? Just saying…” He spread his hands wide, palms up.
“Nope.”
“Fine. Now to the mundane part of our transaction…” He looked at Jet expectantly.
She removed three thousand dollars from her purse and counted it, then sat back, studying the display cases on the walls filled with stamps and obscure currencies.
“And the balance when it’s done. Any problem with that?” he asked.
“No. I’ll be back in three days.”
She pushed back from the desk and stood, then held out her hand for Hannah, who joyfully grabbed it and slid off the chair. Hannah had decided that she hated strollers and was hell-bent on walking everywhere, her fierce determination to be independent reminiscent of her mother.
“What do you want to do now that your photo session is done, Hannah?” Jet asked.
Hannah pointed at the two-year-old Toyota Highlander she’d recently bought from a private party, parked twenty yards away in the Santa Ana sunshine. Hannah loved riding in the Highlander more than anything in the world, which was a good thing, because soon they would be doing a lot of driving.
The trip from Washington, D.C., had taken a week, and they’d slept at rest stops and campgrounds every night, avoiding the formalities of hotels. Once they’d made it to southern California, she’d put out feelers among the immigrant community and quickly found someone who could create good quality papers for her. If all went well, by the end of the week they would be in Mexico, where she planned to travel down the coast while she decided what to do next.
She placed Hannah into the child’s seat and buckled her in, then retrieved a cell phone from her purse and made a call.
“How’s it going?” Matt’s voice was slightly distorted from the sat phone.
“Good. I got the photos and will send them on within an hour. How long to get another passport for Hannah?”
“They said a week. Only a hundred grand, seeing as we’re return customers.”
“And that will be another genuine one — not one that could come back and bite us later?”
“Correct. Full citizenship. But no diplomatic immunity for a two-year-old, so keep her out of trouble.”
“Isn’t she covered under mine?” Jet asked.
“Of course. That was a joke.”
“Can you FedEx it whenever you have it?”
“Sure. Where?”
“I don’t know yet. Probably somewhere in Mexico.”
“Ah, Mexico. Make sure you stay away from the cartel hotspots.”
“Good thinking.” She paused. “What’s the latest?”
“From what my sources tell me, the heroin business is up for grabs now — there’s been no communication with the drug lords for a week, and the Russians and now the Yakuza are putting pressure on them to do a deal. I think it’s safe to say the CIA lost that round. My contact tells me that internally it’s a disaster — the associate director ran the day-to-day of the agency. So with him gone and Arthur gone missing, there’s a real vacuum. And it looks like they covered up Arthur’s death. Kind of figured they would. Hard to explain four dead agency gunmen and a high-ranking staffer bleeding out on the streets of Georgetown. My hunch is they had a cleanup team sanitizing the place within minutes of getting word.”
