David Morrell - The naked edge

"Time for lunch, babe." Jamie's voice was close outside the trunk.

"Don't you think about anything except food?"

"And a bathroom," Jamie said. "But restaurants have bathrooms, so we're got everything covered. Incidentally, I'm pretending to unlock the trunk."

Cavanaugh released the rope and let Jamie raise the lid.

Her green eyes studied the enclosure. "Reminds me of the first dormitory room I had at Wellesley. Minus the weapons, of course. Nobody's watching. I'm partially shielding you. Come on out."

Cavanaugh's legs felt stiff as he stepped down to the concrete.

Eddie looked rested, putting a stick of gum in his mouth.

More cars entered the parking garage. Sounds and movement filled it. Men and women wearing business clothes walked toward the elevators. Cavanaugh heard bits of troubled conversation about rumors of what had happened during the night.

"Ready to go?" Eddie no longer wore the janitor's coveralls. Despite his beard stubble, his clean leather jacket and turtleneck made him look the most presentable of the three.

Jamie closed her blazer over the blood spots on her white blouse.

Cavanaugh decided that the coveralls he wore would attract less attention than the damaged clothes underneath. "Let's do it."

They got in the Taurus, Eddie behind the steering wheel, Cavanaugh next to him, Jamie in the back. Despite the care they'd taken to make sure the car didn't have a bomb, Cavanaugh tensed when Eddie turned the ignition key. But the only sound was the car's smooth drone.

Eddie drove up the ramp toward the building's exit, where he showed a GPS badge to a security officer. The crossbar went up. They emerged onto the noise and commotion of 53rd Street.

"It'll be hard to follow us in all this traffic." Eddie drove through noisy Madison Avenue and continued along 53rd.

"Unless they planted a location transmitter so small we didn't spot it when we searched the car."

"Unpleasant thought." Eddie checked his rear-view mirror. "Where to?"

"Get us off the island," Cavanaugh said. He turned on the radio. Billy Joel sang about "A New York State of Mind." Cavanaugh pushed a button that switched the sophisticated radio to an extremely wide FM spectrum, a Global Protective Services modification. "Jamie, why don't you tell us the fascinating story of your life?"

Jamie hesitated only long enough to gather her thoughts before starting her monologue. "It is fascinating. First I was born, and then I learned to crawl, and then I was toilet trained…"

Cavanaugh proceeded FM spectrum on the radio. Most location transmitters used an FM setting, as did many eavesdropping devices-tuned to bandwidths that weren't employed by local radio stations and police/fire-department radios. To discover if that type of beeper or bug had been concealed in the car, Cavanaugh needed only to continue up the FM spectrum and listen for Jamie's voice or the beep of a location transmitter to come through the radio.

"And then I went to junior high, and then I started dating boys, and then I went to high school, and I really started dating boys."

"You can skip that part," Cavanaugh said.

"And then I went to Wellesley, and I dated men."

"You can skip that part, also."

"And then I met you, and my life got weird, and…"

Cavavaugh reached the top end of the FM spectrum without hearing Jamie's voice come from the radio. "Seems like it's safe to talk." He didn't add his next thought, which was that if the attack team had used a radio transmitter that gathered conversations on exotic frequencies and sent them in microbursts, there was no easy way to detect it.

Eddie had his hands at ten o'clock and two o'clock on the steering wheel, his fingers slightly spread as a professional driver was trained to do. "How about the Lincoln Tunnel?"

"Good," Cavanaugh said. "Then head south on Ninety-Five."

"To?"

"Washington."

Eddie passed Fifth and Sixth avenues, then turned south onto Seventh, switching his grip on the steering wheel. The next light remained green. The many lanes of one-way traffic increased speed.

"Why are we going to… Shit."

"What's the matter?" Jamie asked.

"Something…" Eddie took his right hand off the steering wheel and stared at it. "Stung."

"What?"

"Something stung me."

They kept with the rapid traffic.

"A bee?" Cavanaugh glanced around. "A mosquito or something? It's a little late in the year for-"

"No." Eddie's voice was thick. "Steering wheel. Something on the…" Eddie pointed toward the two o'clock position on the steering wheel. "Jesus." His breathing sounded labored.

"Hey." Jamie touched his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Don't feel… Cavanaugh, have you got a…" Eddie shivered. "Handkerchief?"

Cavanaugh frowned. "In my jacket." He pulled it out.

"Wrap it." Eddie gasped. "Your hand."

"What?"

"Grab the…" Eddie shivered more violently. "Bottom… steering…"

Suddenly, Eddie's head jerked back. He slumped.

When Cavanaugh had learned defensive/offensive driving techniques, one of the drills involved what to do if you're in the front passenger seat of a car, your partner driving, and the windshield blows apart from super-velocity bullets, and the driver takes one in the head. You can't let the car veer off the road into a wall or a tree. You can't let it stop. The prime imperative is to get away from the shooting zone as quickly as possible. And that meant you had to do what Cavanaugh did now.

Conscious of the rapid traffic on either side, he undid his seatbelt and shifted close to Eddie. With his handkerchief wrapped around his fingers, he grabbed the lower portion of the steering wheel, far from where Eddie had gripped it, far from whatever had stung him. Simultaneously, Cavanaugh shifted his left foot over to the floor pedals, pressing the brake as traffic slowed and then stopped for a red light.

Seeing a police car ahead on the left, he blurted, "Jamie, lean forward! Prop Eddie up! Tilt his head so he seems to be looking forward! Make it seem like he's driving!"

Sweating, Cavanaugh propped Eddie's right hand on the steering wheel. As he neared the police car, he told Jamie, "Now lean back!"

Cavanaugh tried to put distance between him and Eddie, making the space between them look normal while still managing to stretch his leg toward the brake. Amid waiting traffic, he eased to a stop next to the police car, put the transmission in neutral, and moved back to the passenger seat, the idling engine allowing him to take his foot off the brake. Looking ahead, he pretended this was the most boring day of his life. From the left side of his vision, he had a blurred image of one of the policemen peering at the Taurus. The officer watched Eddie and Cavanaugh for what seemed an eternity.

The light turned green. Traffic shifted forward. The cruiser seemed frozen in place, the policeman studying Eddie. Then the van ahead of the police car went through the intersection, and the police car caught up to it, filling the gap.

Working to control his breathing, Cavanaugh slid close to Eddie, gripped the bottom of the steering wheel, put the transmission into drive, and eased his left foot onto the accelerator, matching the pace of traffic.

"Jamie, lean forward again. Put your head next to Eddie as if you're saying something to him. Put a hand on his shoulder. Keep him from slumping over."

In the middle of several lanes of traffic, Cavanaugh saw a space open on his right and steered into that lane so he wouldn't be next to the police car. A taxi blared.

Jamie had the sensation of spiraling downward. Since having met and married Cavanaugh (which wasn't even his real name), the abnormal had become the rule. Chases. Gunfights. Even getting shot five months earlier. She didn't understand how she'd managed to adjust to Cavanaugh's dangerous, upside-down world, where things were seldom as they appeared. He once joked that she must have been a protective agent in another life. Leaning toward Eddie, holding his shoulder to keep him from slumping, putting her head next to his to keep it from tilting while she pretended to talk to him-all this seemed insanely natural. From the listless feel of his body and the increasing coolness in the skin, she was certain he was dead. Another first, she thought. Touching a corpse. Talking to it.