Michael Prescott - Deadly Pursuit

No sounds at all. The equipment was sufficiently sensitive to pick up a person’s breathing in close quarters. There ought to be something.

Frowning, he removed the device and moved a few feet down the wall. The two snipers covered him. The thin plasterboard offered no protection against a gun on the other side. If the suspect heard someone moving there, he might open fire. A bullet would punch through the layers of felt and gypsum like a knife through paper.

The technician started to reattach the bug, pressing the suction pads into place. Then he paused.

The wall had moved.

No, not the whole wall. Only a piece of it. A loose section.

His flashlight beam revealed a movable panel, three feet square.

Patterson, Lovejoy, Moore, and the SWAT commander were in the storeroom ninety seconds later. They looked at the secret panel, still in place, and spoke in whispers.

“He slipped out that way,” Moore said.

Patterson shook his head. “Then where is he? We checked downstairs.”

Lovejoy spoke up. “He could have blended in somehow with the civilians we evacuated.”

“Impossible,” Patterson hissed. “Every member of the task force was looking for him.”

“It’s conceivable he changed clothes, disguised himself.” Lovejoy shrugged, a heavy, hopeless gesture, then added with a faint note of optimism, “Unless he’s still inside.”

“Want us to go in?” the commander asked.

Lovejoy looked at Patterson. The assistant SAC called it. “Go in.”

Instructions were relayed via radio headsets. The negotiator cleared out of the stairwell. The two snipers stationed there moved quickly up the stairs.

In the adjacent storage room, the other two containment officers covered the panel, ready to fire if it moved.

At the top of the stairs, the first sniper shot the storeroom door open, and then he and his partner were inside, scanning the dark, windowless chamber.

Empty.

Nothing to see, not even cartons of junk.

They flicked on the overhead light. White walls and cheap short-nap carpet.

Lovejoy and the others waited tensely in the parking lot, outside the kill zone.

There was still a possibility Dance was in there. Maybe he’d given up, shot himself. Maybe he was dead.

Please, Jesus, let him be dead.

Lovejoy realized he was praying. Catholicism had a way of coming back to you at times like this.

Over his earphone, the SWAT commander’s voice; “We’re in.”

“And?”

“He’s flown.”

Moore slumped her shoulders. Patterson pulled off his headset and swore.

“Understood,” Lovejoy said.

He turned to the assistant SAC and spoke rapidly, squeezing all emotion out of his voice.

“There’s a chance he’s still in the vicinity. Better have LAPD broadcast an alert and deploy any unit they can spare to cruise the area. West L.A. Division can stake out his apartment building in case he’s stupid enough to return. His girlfriend works at Bullock’s in Westwood. It would be advisable to take her into protective custody and squeeze her for anything she knows.”

Patterson nodded. “I’ll alert security at all the local airports, the bus station, the train station.”

“Rental car companies,” Moore said. “And his bank-he may try to withdraw funds, close out his accounts.”

“Got it.” Patterson moved off to speak with the LAPD Valley Bureau commander, who had just arrived on the scene.

Lovejoy waited till the assistant SAC was gone before permitting any crackup of his surface calm. Then he lowered his head, wrestling with the urge to scream.

“Fuck. We blew it. Blew it.”

A wet sneeze shook him. Suddenly his allergies were back, as if in punishment for failure.

“We’ll get him, Peter,” Moore said gently.

“That’s what we thought this morning.”

“Next time-”

“Next time may be too late. I mean… he’s done seven already. Who’ll be number eight?”

Moore took his hand, squeezed it tight. She had no answer.

Jack sat in a window seat at the back of the bus, watching the smoggy wasteland of the San Fernando Valley shudder past. He felt calm and confident and wonderfully self-possessed.

He had beaten them. Beaten them all. Cheated the law of its prize.

Across the aisle, a little boy was practicing coin tricks while his Latino nanny looked on.

The boy smiled at Jack. “I can do magic.”

Jack nodded. “So can I.”

“Really?”

“Let me show you.”

He took out a quarter and passed it deftly from hand to hand, then palmed it. A simple illusion he’d learned years ago while running a street-corner shell game.

“Wow,” the boy said. “You made it disappear.”

“I can do better magic than that. I can make myself disappear.” He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “In fact, I just did.”

He couldn’t stay invisible for long, though-not in this city. He had to get out. And he knew where to go.

Jack checked his watch. Ten o’clock. He could make it to LAX by eleven-thirty at the latest. There had to be a noon flight to Miami. He would land by nine p.m. Eastern time.

From there it was less than a two-hour drive to Islamorada… and Pelican Key.

Night sounds, drifting like echoes of dreams through the heavy tropical air.

From the mangrove swamp, the choral croaks of rain frogs, excited by the afternoon’s brief downpour. Out on the tidal flats, the cries of night herons, feeding. Kee-o, kee-o, keer: the song of a redheaded woodpecker nesting amid the forest’s mossy conifers. Everywhere, the background buzz of cicadas, an endless static sizzle.

The rippling shallows around the dock, dimly visible through gaps in the garden foliage, coruscated lazily in the starlight. The sparkle on the horizon marked Upper Matecumbe Key and the flow of traffic on Route 1.

There were nights when faint noises could be heard from passing boats, someone’s laughter or the tinny nocturnes of a radio wafted across the water by a westerly breeze, but not tonight. Tonight, Pelican Key listened only to itself.

“It really is perfect here.” Kirstie Gardner reached down to rub Anastasia’s smooth neck, and the dog eased out a sigh. “Like another world.”

Steve kicked off his loafers and curled his toes, reclining in the wicker lounge chair.

“I didn’t exaggerate, did I?” he asked quietly. “There’s something special about this place.”

“It’s the colors, I think. They’re more intense than in real life.” Kirstie laughed. “Listen to me. Real life. As if this isn’t real.”

“I know what you mean, though. The water-it’s not like water anywhere else. Stripes of color. Turquoise and teal. It ripples like a flag.”

“And the sunsets. The one tonight-I’ll bet they don’t have them like that even in Arizona.”

“The wildflowers… the birds… even the insects are colorful. Those big red and gold spiders are really something.”

Kirstie shuddered. “Yeah. They’re something, all right.” She waved off a whining mosquito. “Frankly, the bugs I could do without. They’re the one imperfection. The flaw in paradise.”

“The serpent in the garden,” Steve said lightly, then frowned. She saw the faraway look in his eyes she knew too well, the look that said he was drifting off into private thoughts. She spoke briskly, hoping to pull him back.

“That’s right. There’s always something around to foul up Eden.” The mosquito buzzed her again, and she annihilated it with a handclap. “But these darn bugs are worse than any serpent. There are more of them, and they’re annoying. In fact, they’re downright rude. The serpent, at least, was polite.”

Steve blinked, coming out of himself. “Was he?”