Carol O’Connell - Find Me

She turned to her partner. Barry Allen’s face was placid, though he must have seen her boxed into this lane; the boy was green but not blind. Damn him. He had known that they would miss the airport road. That was the plan. Her partner, a good little soldier, had yet to question a single order from Dale Berman. However, this was hardly a good time to accuse Agent Allen of conspiring against her.

Nahlman watched Joe Finn’s reflection in her rearview mirror. Apparently, the boxer had seen nothing amiss. He was wholly concentrated on his children-reading to them from a book of fairy tales that they were much too old for. Yet they listened to his every word, loving this attention from him. Dodie seemed like any normal child, like Peter, enraptured by the sound of her father’s voice, eyes on the big man’s face, unable to get enough of him.

The construction zone ahead was a divided highway. Opposing traffic was separated by high retaining walls. Two lanes of westbound vehicles moved through the narrow canyon of concrete, and Nahlman was reminded of a cattle chute in a slaughterhouse. It went on for miles before she could see ahead to a break in the wall. And then she heard the words that she had been waiting for, counting on.

“I have to pee,” said the little boy in the back seat. “Dodie does, too. See? She’s squirmy. Can we stop?”

“Yes, we can,” said Nahlman. The timing was perfect. She had already spotted the sign for the next gas station, and it carried a warning: the turnoff beyond the construction zone would be a sharp one.

“Call in the toilet stop.”

“We’re not supposed to use the cells,” Agent Allen reminded her. “Dale said-”

“Agent- Barry, you know you can’t use the car radio. To o many private police scanners on the road. So use your cell phone and blame it on me.” Her eyes were on the car driving alongside her, herding her, locking her into a lane with no turns. The exit sign was in view when she leaned toward her partner and raised her voice. “That’s an order !”

A cell phone was quickly pressed to Barry Allen’s e ar. “No answer,” he said. “Dale’s going to be pissed off about- What’re you doing ?”

Nahlman moved into the occupied lane, forcing the other vehicle into the retaining wall. The other agent’s car was dropping back as sparks went flying in the scrape of metal on concrete. And now the lane was hers alone.

Agent Allen’s mouth hung open and his eyes bugged out.

Nahlman glanced at the rearview mirror. The boxer was still reading, turning pages of the storybook, but young Peter, eyes on the passenger window, whispered, “Cool.”

Mallory was a hundred miles short of Gallup, New Mexico. The top was down, the night was fine, and I-40 was light on traffic. The construction zone was like an arcade game, zinging through curves bound by concrete barriers. On the other side of the zone, out on the open road again, there was no sign of the Finns’ FBI escort.

Good.

Evidently Dale Berman had ceased to play the fool long enough to find his way to the airport road.

She drove faster until the speedometer’s needle could be pushed no farther, and she was pleasantly surprised. Back in Kansas, Ray Adler had given her more than a roll bar. He must have tweaked the factory settings on her Porsche engine. The hump of the Volkswagen ragtop had previously cut her speed to one-eighty, but now she was doing two hundred and ten miles an hour.

Thank you, Ray.

This was truly a race, for she was bone tired. Before sleep could overtake her, there was one more landmark to see, and, once there, she could close her eyes to doze and dream, though dreams exhausted her.

Waking or sleeping she was always driving this road.

The Chicago detective’s traveling companion was high on the FBI food chain, the Assistant Director of Criminal Investigations, and the airplane seats were first class-courtesy of taxpayers everywhere. Between the Illinois airport and their current holding pattern over New Mexico, the only useful information Kronewald had obtained from this man was a telling protest.

“I haven’t memorized the name of every damned field agent,” said Harry Mars. “Sorry, I can’t recall an Agent Cadwaller.”

Detective Kronewald took this denial as confirmation that Cadwaller was Washington’s spy in Dale Berman’s field office. “Well, the guy’s s u p-posed to have a background in profiling. Does that help any?”

In a further evasion, Harry Mars launched into another Lou Markowitz story that began with “That wonderful old bastard” and ended with “So what do you think of Lou’s kid?”

“Ah, Mallory.” Kronewald forced a smile. His irritation was growing. He knew that Mallory must have done some dirty backroom deal with the fed beside him. But something big was definitely going down-that much was clear. The Bureau’s assistant directors did not run errands; Harry Mars was here to take over and run his own game.

Detective Kronewald had grown weary of being sidetracked and handled. Leaning toward his window, he looked down on the landing lights of Albuquerque International and began the prelude to his best shot. “So, you think Dale Berman can do this one little thing without screwing it up?”

The man from Washington checked his watch. “He’ll be waiting with the Finns when we land.”

“Only if you’re sure Dale doesn’t know what you’ve got planned for him.”

Gold!

The AD’s composure had been fractured, and Kronewald knew he was on to something. In the past hour, Harry Mars had racked up four failed attempts to make a cell-phone connection, and the Chicago detective did not buy the story that this bureaucrat was calling his wife. So Mars had lost contact with his people on the ground.

The plane touched down on the runway with a bump and then another in a not-so-smooth landing.

An omen?

Joe Finn was waiting by the door to the ladies’ room when Nahlman emerged hand-in-hand with Dodie. The boxer had only been parted from his daughter because neither child could wait. Now he scooped Dodie up in his arms and carried her off to the aisle of chewing gum, a staple of every child’s road-trip diet.

A state trooper had been watching Nahlman’s back during the potty detail, and now the man faced the convenience store window. “That boss of yours is a real piece of work.”

She followed the track of the officer’s e yes. Dale Berman was outside in the parking lot, casually leaning back against his show-and-tell exhibit, a car missing paint on the side where she had forced an agent to drive it into a concrete barrier.

The state trooper stood beside her, and his voice was low, confidential. “Just for the record, ma’am, that was a real fine piece of driving tonight. I’d b ail out of this detail, too, if I could.” He nodded toward the window on the parking lot and her boss. “You should talk to that asshole about using the radio.” Before she could ask what he meant by that, the trooper turned smartly on his heel, saying over one shoulder, “While you take care of that, I’ll get these folks back to the car.” He walked toward the small family standing by the cash register.

When Nahlman stepped out of the convenience store, Berman pointed to the damaged area of the other agent’s vehicle, saying to her so calmly, “Nobody has to pee that bad.”

Agent Allen had a worried look about him as he hovered at the edge of this conversation. Nahlman smiled. She could not trust her partner; he was Berman’s creature now, but she could appreciate Barry Allen’s concern for her. She turned her eyes to Special Agent Berman, saying, “If we don’t turn around right now and head back to the airport road, we’ll miss the plane to Chicago.”