Ridley Pearson - Cut and Run

“Okay, okay. You can relax now. We’ll get you fed and cleaned up, all right? You smell like low tide and your face looks like you’re still doing Halloween.”

“I stay with the girl.”

“You do what I tell you to do.” Philippe felt his hand slip toward the leather pouch. It brushed the stock of the gun. “We’ve got a hell of a night ahead of us. Don’t make trouble for me, Paolo. You’ve done good. Keep it that way. We’ll get that face looked at. That’s got to hurt.”

“I’ve got pills.”

“Get the girl.” Philippe reached down to the dash and switched off the car’s interior light so it would not come on when a door was opened. “And no names when she’s in the car. You got that?”

Paolo didn’t answer. He climbed out of the car, shutting his door, but then opening the back door a moment later.

Philippe leaned over. He felt the.22 at his back. “Put her behind me, so you can keep an eye on her.”

Paolo shut that door and came around and opened the opposite door. He moved heavily, under the weight of great fatigue.

Philippe put all the windows down to air it out.

It stank in there.

Hope and Larson crouched in the bushes less than twenty yards from Meriden Manor’s front gate as the headlights approached.

“Sit absolutely still.” Larson hoped they were far enough back in the thicket not to be seen. White skin showed up easily at night, especially in a collage of green and black.

With their eyes now adjusted to the darkness, it took several seconds for Larson to establish it was the same black Mercedes they’d seen leaving the estate less than twenty minutes earlier. The car rolled toward the gate, the driver’s side toward them. For a fleeting second, just a momentary flash, they saw a young girl’s profile through the rear side window. Hope heaved forward and off-balance, and Larson caught her and clapped his hand to her mouth to hold back the sobs that began involuntarily. That profile had been Penny’s.

The car window went down as driver consulted the gate guard and Larson committed the face behind the wheel to memory. Male. Late twenties. Short, perhaps. Dark coloring. Roman nose. The large black gates yawned open. Taillights quickly receding.

Larson had to think fast. He slapped his BlackBerry into her hand, while peeling his windbreaker from her shoulder and slipping it on. He zipped it, containing his upper body in its black fabric. In nearly the same motion, he retrieved her original cell phone from the windbreaker’s pocket and switched it on. Hope’s number had previously been call-forwarded to the untraceable Siemens he’d supplied her. He changed that now, call-forwarding that number to his own BlackBerry, now in Hope’s possession.

He explained in a forced whisper, one eye tracking those receding taillights. “Can’t wait for those guys. If Romero tries to call you-and he may, because I’ve just turned on your phone-you’ll now get the call on my BlackBerry. I’m taking both yours and the Siemens.” He took the phone off her hip without asking. “With the BlackBerry, you can send me text messages.” He showed her quickly how to do this, though she cut off the demonstration. “I need to know what’s going on out here. Make your way back to the van, and keep me up-to-the-minute. When I establish her location, I’ll send for Hamp and Stubby.” He seized her by the shoulders, unclear if she’d heard anything he’d said. “We’re going to do this,” he said strongly. “We both saw her in the car: She’s okay. Right?”

He waited for her faint nod, said, “Okay,” and then he took off low and fast through the dense undergrowth.

Whether a nine- or eighteen-hole golf course, Meriden Manor covered far too much ground to be patrolled effectively. For this reason, Larson worked his way quietly through the woods for well over a hundred yards past where he’d seen the fence turn a sharp corner. Now he crossed the road and stayed low. He entered the woods and cut an angle to intercept the fence. He reached a chained gate-spiked wrought iron-used for dumping lawn and garden debris into the woods. The gate offered a good chance to get into the compound, but he was haunted by LaMoia’s description of a “Kodak moment,” and feared a video camera watching the gate.

The fence was likely intended as much for keeping deer out as for blocking intruders. He continued down the wall until spotting an overhanging limb. He climbed the tree, worked his way out the limb precariously and dropped over the other side.

LaMoia had infected him with paranoia. He imagined night-vision video and infrared “trip wires” set at waist height to avoid raccoons and dogs but to catch intruders. He envisioned silent alarms and legions of security guards patrolling the grounds, though in fact he didn’t see any such boxes or wires running up trees or any evidence indicating any such equipment or personnel. It was probably just fantasy. With the Romeros having called a meeting for some heavy hitters, they would concentrate their manpower around wherever that meeting was scheduled to take place.

He began crawling. Hands and knees into the center of a fairway, believing the wide-open, grassy expanses the most difficult to electronically survey. Fairways were sprinkled, even in rainy Seattle, and sprinklers would trip alarms as quickly as any person would. The smart money put security sensors-if there were any-across the cart paths and at intersections between holes. He crawled on.

A hundred yards farther he arrived at what was marked as the eleventh tee. The course had been cut out of forest. Stands of tall, mature trees separated one fairway from the next.

Minutes later, he crested a small embankment, peering over at the clubhouse.

An enormous Tudor structure loomed close by. Built a hundred years earlier and standing amid a ring of towering pines, this was clearly the original Meriden Manor-perhaps imported from England beam by beam, brick by brick. He imagined it as a family home belonging to a lumber tycoon or shipping baron. Running away from it were more structures, some private homes, some looking more like companions to the manor house, though built more recently. It looked more like the campus of a private boarding school, now that he had a closer look. Places like this went through a dozen such uses, one owner to the next. The Romeros had bought themselves an enclave.

To his left, one road stayed on the level and appeared to service the private homes. Another fell down and away from the manor house, into the clutch of the dark woods. He could imagine barns and maintenance sheds, workshops and garages and buildings dedicated to equipment storage.

Not five minutes later, headlights appeared from the woods to his left. What appeared to be the same Mercedes he’d seen at the gate climbed into view and parked in the manor house’s porte cochere. Larson couldn’t make out details well enough at this distance, but two men climbed out.

No Penny.

Larson glanced quickly left down the hill. Penny had been dropped off-or disposed of .

He broke into a run. He would have to improvise.

One of Philippe’s guys hurried over to him. At first Philippe thought he intended to valet the Mercedes around back, but his face indicated otherwise.

“What is it?”

“Her phone’s up. The mark-the Stevens woman. Her cell phone logged on to the PacWireless network a few minutes ago.”

Philippe’s face tightened. It was too good to be true. The timing couldn’t be coincidental. “Now? After what, three days?” He thought a second. “They know about the meeting. They’re using this to try to distract us. They don’t want this meeting taking place.” He looked for what else it might mean. “Do we have a fix?”