G. Moffat - Blindside

The helicopter pilot’s voice came on the radio telling them that Butler’s car was about a half-mile ahead of them. Irvine saw the speedometer press on past a hundred.

She realised that she didn’t even have her seatbelt on, grabbed at it and took three attempts to click it into place.

‘There he is,’ the driver said, pointing at a car weaving in and out of the traffic up ahead.

‘Boy doesn’t have the power to outrun us,’ his partner added.

He got on the radio and alerted all other cars to their exact location. Activated the lights and siren. It was louder than Irvine remembered.

Cars in front of them started to slow and pull out of their way and they gained quickly on Butler. He was pulling the car recklessly across the road, almost colliding with a big four-by-four.

‘He’s going to get someone killed,’ Irvine shouted.

‘So long as it’s only him,’ the driver replied.

They passed another on-ramp and Irvine saw two more police cars with their lights flashing get in line behind the car she was in.

They pulled to within fifty yards of Butler.

We’ve got this guy now, she thought.

He swerved hard towards the outside lane to avoid a car slowing ahead of him. Didn’t quite make it.

The rear panel of his car clipped the back of the other one. It sent Butler’s car spinning through the central barrier and into the path of a truck on the opposite carriageway.

Irvine watched smoke billow from the truck’s tyres as the driver slammed on his brakes. Thought she saw Butler’s face looking back at her.

Then the car was obliterated.

Irvine was sitting with her legs out of the rear door of the traffic car when an unmarked car drew up on the stretch of motorway that had been closed to deal with the accident. The place was crawling with emergency service vehicles and personnel. Irvine looked over and saw Liam Moore and Paul Warren get out of the car. She raised a hand and they walked over to meet her.

‘How’s Kenny doing?’ Warren asked. ‘I was told he got shot but didn’t get the details.’

‘He lost two fingers,’ Irvine said, holding up her hand and touching her own fingers. ‘Otherwise he should be fine, I think. I didn’t have time to wait around to find out.’

‘Butler was waiting for you when you got to the flat?’ Moore asked.

‘He must have been hiding out there after what he did to the accountants.’

‘What about the women at the flat?’ Moore asked.

He looked around at the carnage on the road and shook his head.

‘One dead for sure. Touch and go if the other one will make it. Both shot.’

‘Jesus,’ Warren said, shaking his head. ‘What a psycho.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Irvine said.

‘You don’t look so good,’ Moore told her.

‘Thanks. I feel as good as I look.’

She tried to smile at her own joke. Didn’t succeed. Couldn’t seem to get her muscles to do anything that she wanted. The constant chatter from the car’s radio sounded like white noise buzzing in her ears.

‘Let me get someone to drive you home,’ Moore said.

She nodded and rested her chin on her hands. Didn’t have the energy to know how she felt about it all now that it was over. Tears welled in her eyes and she wiped at them, unashamed to do so in front of Moore and Warren.

‘You did good,’ Moore told her. ‘You and Kenny. Busted this thing open.’

Warren nodded.

‘Thanks,’ Irvine managed to say, hearing the tremor in her own voice.

She didn’t trust herself to hold it together and speak at the same time so she said nothing else.

A member of Warren’s team came over to speak to him. He walked away with the man for a moment then turned back to Irvine and Moore.

‘Word from the hospital is Kenny will be fine,’ he said.

One of these days, Irvine thought, no one around me will get shot or killed.

Logan looked right along the block of Market Street as they crossed the intersection with Sixteenth Street heading north. He saw the lights on in the diner at the far corner of the block. The buildings across the street were dark. A homeless man lay in a doorway two buildings along from the diner. Everything looked normal.

‘They must be in the diner now,’ he said to Cahill. ‘The FBI, I mean.’

‘Yeah. Which means they’ll be across the street also. Probably put blackout coverings up at the windows so that they can have lights on inside without anyone outside being able to notice.’

They reached the sidewalk on the other side of the intersection and kept on walking.

‘How will they know what’s going on outside?’

‘Radio communications will be open all the time. Plus they’ll probably have cameras set up to give them a view of the street and the interior of the diner. Technology’s good for that stuff. It’ll be small and unobtrusive.’

‘Can’t see it unless you know what you’re looking for.’

Cahill nodded.

They passed the bus station, crossed the road at the intersection with Blake and turned right on to Wazee Street. The street was parallel to Market, two blocks north. There was another diner there open for the breakfast trade.

Cahill stopped outside the diner and checked his watch. Saw that it was seven in the morning.

‘Let’s grab something here. Those biscuits didn’t do it for me. I need a muffin.’

Logan followed him inside. The place was basic, but they didn’t need anything beyond a hot drink and a muffin. They ordered and ate in silence, Logan wondering how he was going to keep the muffin in his stomach.

‘Did you see the two guys pass by at the end of the street?’ Cooper Grange asked Randall Webb.

Grange pointed at one of the four monitor screens set up in the second-floor apartment across from the target diner. Webb nodded.

‘They kept on walking?’ he asked.

‘Yes. But you want them checked out?’

Grange turned to look at the two agents standing behind him — men in their mid-thirties with ballistic vests on under FBI windcheaters. Webb had decided that he wanted more personnel after all. There were four of them in the apartment, Ruiz and Martinez in their car and three more agents in the diner. Plus the city cops, Hunter and Collins.

Eleven should be enough.

‘No. Leave it for now. But if you see them again, get someone on it.’

Grange leaned forward and tapped the screen of a different monitor.

‘What about him?’

Webb looked at the same screen. Saw the homeless man lying bundled in a doorway.

‘How long has he been there?’

Grange looked again at the agents behind them and raised his eyebrows. They looked at each other.

‘Since before we got here,’ the shorter of the two men said.

The other man nodded to confirm.

‘Go roust him,’ Webb said. ‘Move him on, but don’t create a fuss. If he gets too rowdy leave him be.’

The shorter man left the room. The three remaining men watched as he appeared on the screen in front of them. He went to the homeless man and crouched beside him, shaking his shoulder.

Webb glanced at a monitor to his left and saw Matt Horn enter the frame of the picture.

‘Horn’s here,’ he said.

Grange looked at the same screen and then at his watch.

‘He’s early.’

They watched as Horn went inside the diner.

When they looked back at the other screen they saw the agent back away from the homeless man, turn and begin to walk back to their building. He looked up at the camera and shook his head.

They waited in silence until he was back in the room.

‘Well?’ Grange asked the agent.

‘He’s out of it. Stinks of booze and piss. He’s not going anywhere any time soon.’