Michael Prescott - Deadly Pursuit

At the end of the beach Kirstie paused to look back. The sun was a full circle now, stamped on the sky like a target, burning a fiery path through the shallows to the shore. As she watched, the pelican dived into the glitter and bobbed up with a catch in its pouch. It floated on the surface, head lowered, as if in thankful prayer for the gift of food.

The same thought recurred to her: Hunter and prey.

She turned away with a jerk of her head and followed Steve and Jack into the forest.

Close-packed trees and shrubs swallowed them like the walls of a cave. Flies buzzed like miniature dive bombers. Green darners chased mosquitoes in the tremulous young light.

Jack twisted a cane free of a blackberry bush, then produced a pocketknife and deftly sliced off leaves, stems, and thorns. Kirstie thought of Jack’s hand reaching for his pocket as they faced each other on the beach. A tremor passed through her as she watched the slim, clever blade coruscate in a patch of sun.

He threw the twig to Anastasia, continuing their game. The dog snatched it up and scampered away. Jack followed at a jog trot, laughing.

Kirstie touched Steve’s arm to hold him back.

“How could you invite him to stay all day without asking me?” she hissed.

“I didn’t have much choice. He’s an old friend.”

“So I gathered. Tom Sawyer, reunited with Huck Finn.”

“It’s not like that,” Steve said quietly, as his eyes took on that unfocused gaze she knew too well.

She wouldn’t let him drift away. “When he was alone with me,” she whispered insistently, careful not to let Jack overhear, “he seemed

… weird. Dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Steve frowned. “How?”

“The things he said.”

“Like what?”

She replayed their conversation in her mind. Suddenly the encounter struck her as frustratingly innocuous. There had been no open threats, nothing blatantly improper, only an intuitive sense of jeopardy, impossible to justify with a bare recital of the words exchanged.

She tried, anyway. “He kept asking if I was alone. When I told him to get off the island, he ignored me.”

“Did he say he wouldn’t leave?”

“Well… not exactly. But I didn’t feel safe with him. And I still don’t.”

Steve smiled. “Look, there’s nothing to worry about. He’s just a high-school friend who happened to turn up. Anyway, I’m here to protect you. Okay?”

He moved on, rejoining Jack, without waiting for an answer. Kirstie stared after him.

She’d barely heard what her husband had said. Her whole attention had been focused on his face.

His mouth had been smiling. But his eyes had captured some other emotion, something she could not define. Grief, perhaps, or guilt. Or

… fear.

She wasn’t sure what she had seen or what it meant.

But somehow it scared her, scared her worse than the knife in Jack Dance’s pocket.

Kirstie felt herself trembling as she continued down the trail.

Delta flight 627 out of Atlanta touched down at Miami International at 9:57 a.m. Lovejoy and Moore hustled their carry-on bags out of the overhead bins and got off fast.

An Airphone call to the Miami office shortly before landing had established that no one would be meeting them at the gate. The field office’s resources were entirely consumed by the hunt for Mister Twister.

“At least there isn’t any shortage of cabs in this town,” Lovejoy said as he and Moore hurried down the concourse. “But before we leave the airport, it might be advisable to pay a call on security.”

William Proster had been chief of security at Miami International for seventeen years. He offered his visitors a donut (declined) and a seat (accepted). The radio chatter of patrol units crackled and buzzed over the squawkbox on his desk.

“I understand you’re still not a hundred percent sure your boy actually deplaned here,” Proster said, dunking a cruller in a mug of coffee. “So I came in early today and watched some TV.”

He chewed the donut, waiting for the obvious question. Moore obliged. “TV?”

“Well, nothing that’ll give Phil and Oprah a run for their money.” Proster chuckled at his own wit. “We’ve got dozens of video cameras set up in strategic locations. Any arriving passenger would have to walk right past some of them to exit the terminal. This morning I screened the sections of the tapes recorded in the relevant time frame.”

“Did you see him?” Lovejoy asked.

“I can’t say for a certainty.” The soggy cruller vanished in two last bites. “But maybe yes. At least, there’s one fellow who’s dressed right-jeans, casual shirt, knapsack. ’Course, a million joes dress like that. The face…” Proster sighed. “To me it’s a blur. Why don’t you take a look-see for yourselves?”

He escorted them to the video surveillance center, where rows of color monitors lined the walls from floor to ceiling, showing overhead views of the concourses and baggage-claim areas. Flocks of miniaturized travelers hurried past in real time, exiting from one monitor only to enter another a moment later. Two security guards nursed coffees and watched the screens.

The tape from last night was already cued up on a video deck in the corner. “This camera is stationed on the American Airlines concourse,” Proster said, “near the security checkpoint.” He punched Play, and a hazy image of what might have been Jack Dance passed across the upper right-hand corner of the picture tube. A digital display in a corner of the frame marked the time at 10:04 p.m.

“Again,” Lovejoy said.

Proster rewound the tape a couple of feet and replayed it.

Lovejoy shook his head. “I’m not sure.” He looked at Moore. “You?”

“I think it’s Jack. But I can’t be positive. The image is too hard to read.”

“We picked up the same man on a couple of other cameras, but in those instances he’s pretty much lost in the crowd or in shadow. This is the best look at him we got.”

“It’s not enough to confirm his arrival,” Moore said.

Proster nodded. “True enough. However, I’d bet my winnings from a good night of five-hand stud that this fellow”-he tapped the picture tube, where the frozen image lay like a painting behind glass-“is your boy, and here’s why. Two cars were stolen from long-term parking yesterday. Now admittedly this is Miami, where grand theft auto is not exactly unheard of, but even so…”

Lovejoy was taking notes. “What kind of cars?”

“One was a ’93 Dodge Dynasty LE sedan, silver exterior, gray interior. Owner went off on a day trip, got back at eleven p.m. and discovered it missing. With the other car we got a little bit lucky. The owner expected to be away till Sunday night, but his seminar got canceled, so he came back from Houston only a few hours after he left. His car was gone. Must’ve disappeared between four and midnight.”

“Make and model?”

“Pontiac Sunbird. Four-door hardtop. 1992. White exterior, blue interior.”

“Plates?”

Proster rattled off both license numbers without consulting any notes.

“Miami P.D. put out APB’s?”

“You betcha. Statewide. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. Lots of cars go to the chop shop in the Sunshine State.”

Lovejoy was still looking at the fuzzed image on the monitor. “Would it be possible for us to borrow that tape?”

“Think if you ogle it long enough, you can convince yourself it’s him?”

“Not exactly. There might be a whole new way of seeing it.”

Moore asked him what he’d meant once they were back in the concourse.

“From what I understand, certain computer programs can do video enhancements of single frames. Improve the resolution, bring out more detail.”