Michael Prescott - Deadly Pursuit

He didn’t need the blade now. Instead he used the built-in screwdriver to pry off the ignition switch, then hot-wired the ignition.

In Florida City, he stopped at a supermarket. His purchases totaled $128. Canned goods predominated: vegetables, fruit, tuna, sardines. Bread, peanut butter, honey. Chocolate chip cookies. Bottled water. No booze-he needed to keep his head clear-and nothing perishable.

The housewares aisle provided him with rubber gloves, paper towels, plastic utensils, and a manual can opener. In the hardware section he picked up wire cutters, a flashlight, and batteries.

After leaving the supermarket he prowled the streets of Florida City in search of a late-model Pontiac Sunbird parked outside. On Tower Road he found one. He removed the vehicle’s front license plate and placed it on the rear of his stolen Sunbird, discarding the hot car’s two original plates.

Then he headed south on U.S. 1, driving just under the speed limit. The highway took him through a few miles of flat, dreary land at the edge of the Everglades, then out over the water and into the Florida Keys.

Now it was shortly past midnight; he’d been on the road a little more than an hour.

A new mile marker expanded in his headlights. 98.

Restless, he turned on the radio. He dialed past melancholy country songs and twittering chamber music till he found some raucous rock ‘n’ roll. The lightning chord changes and racing drums acted on his system like a shot of caffeine. He laid his foot on the gas pedal, then remembered the danger of being stopped by the highway patrol and hastily applied the brakes.

The song ended in a cacophony of percussive clatter and synthesized wails. He left the radio tuned to that station as a news update came on.

A fire in Fort Lauderdale. Multiple-vehicle collision on Route 95. New developments in the investigation of a scandal involving the state legislature. Nationally, a manhunt was under way for John Edward Dance

…

“Jesus,” Jack whispered, and turned up the volume.

“… evaded arrest in Los Angeles and is now believed to be on the run. Dance, thirty-five, is described by authorities as a slick and experienced con artist who once served time for fraud. He is now wanted on charges of multiple homicide-”

All the breath went out of him. He was cold everywhere. A high, tuneless singing rose in his ears.

“… so-called Mister Twister crime spree, the serial murders of women in several southwestern states…”

They knew. Somehow they knew.. request anyone with any knowledge of Dance’s whereabouts to contact…”

He had believed he was wanted only for fraud. He had been wrong. Totally wrong.

The newscaster moved on to a sports update. Jack clicked off the radio with a jerk of his wrist.

This new development changed everything. It meant a larger, more intensive manhunt than he’d anticipated. Saturation news coverage. His picture on TV and in newspapers coast to coast.

Mile marker 92 appeared in his headlights. Ten miles to Islamorada.

Jack breathed in the damp salt air and tightened his grip on the wheel.

Gates were lowered across the entrance to the marina, their orange tiger stripes lit by harsh floodlights. Inside the guardhouse the dim figure of a man was visible, silhouetted against the bluish flicker of a black-and-white TV.

Jack steered the Sunbird past the driveway and parked thirty yards down the road, on the gravel shoulder. He killed his headlights and engine, then got out. Two quick steps brought him up short against a ten-foot hurricane fence, overgrown with virgin’s bower and buttercup.

From the trunk he removed the three bulging paper bags of groceries and his knapsack. He rummaged in the bags till he found the things he needed; wire cutters, batteries, flashlight, towels, gloves.

Six Duracells went into the flash, which then went into Jack’s pocket. All the other items except the wire cutters found a temporary home on the Sunbird’s passenger seat.

Then he set to work. The fence was a challenge, the eighteen-gauge galvanized steel strands tough to defeat. Even so, within five minutes he’d cut a breach big enough to slip through. He deposited the grocery bags and knapsack on the other side, concealing them in a thicket of columbine, and returned to the car.

Half a mile away, there was a failed restaurant, the windows boarded up, the cinder-block walls webbed with graffiti. Jack drove around to the rear and parked out of sight of the road.

Wearing the rubber gloves, he tore paper towels off the roll and thoroughly wiped any surfaces he might have touched-steering wheel, dashboard, door handles, trunk lid, license-plate frames. Next he unscrewed the license plate. It belonged to the other Sunbird, the one in Florida City; if the law had tracked his movements as far as the supermarket, someone might make the connection.

The vehicle identification number came off next. He nearly broke the jackknife’s screwdriver while levering the plaque free of the dash. He scraped off the two labels that also recorded the VIN. Then he cleaned out the glove compartment, taking the registration slip and other paperwork that could have established the vehicle’s ownership.

Hefting a rock, he shattered the Sunbird’s windshield. Slashed the tires. Jimmied loose the hubcaps and discarded them in the weeds. Peeled the molding off the passenger-side doors. Poured handfuls of dirt over the car till it was a brown-streaked horror.

An abandoned wreck behind a condemned building. Not the sort of thing likely to be noticed or attended to by anyone in authority anytime soon.

Walking back to the marina, he dropped the license plate, VIN plaque, gloves, towels, and assorted wastepaper into a trash bin.

He struggled through the gap in the fence again, retrieved his groceries and pack, and made his way down onto the dock, wary of a security patrol. None was evident. There might be people living aboard some of the vessels, but even if they glimpsed him through a porthole, all they would see was a man lugging groceries to his boat.

From somewhere out on the water, laughter and a murmur of voices rose over a rippling undercurrent of salsa. Somebody was throwing a party.

He headed in the opposite direction, toward silence and solitude, scanning the dock slips as he walked.

In a berth at the north end of the marina, he found what he needed. A rigid-hulled inflatable tender, eight feet long, equipped with a Yamaha outboard. The little boat floated on the water, shrouded in canvas, tied to the stern of a cabin cruiser. It reminded him, with an unaccustomed nostalgic pang, of the motorboats he and Steve had rented here, so many years ago.

Jack reached out and pulled the tender close to the dock, then worked the canvas free. The boat was a nice one-Hypalon skin, wooden hull, aluminum oars. The outboard had been tilted forward to raise the propeller out of the water; the blades looked clean.

Quickly he loaded his supplies on board, stepped in, and cut the mooring line, slicing it close to the cruiser’s gunwale and tossing the short end on deck, out of sight. He coiled the longer end at the stern of the runabout, then rowed out of the slip, through the narrow basin, into the main channel.

The night was warm, the air stroked by a gentle breeze out of the south that raised a light chop on the water. Jack let the boat drift for a few minutes, until he was sure no other vessels were approaching, then pulled the starter rope. The engine came alive on the first try. Steering with the throttle arm, he motored at less than five knots down the right side of the channel, keeping the centerline buoys to port.

Ahead was the harbor entrance. He opened the throttle slightly, accelerating to eight knots, and passed between the starboard and port buoys.