Thomas Perry - Blood Money

She turned her eyes to the car again. It was almost new. The afternoon sunlight shone on the gleaming black finish of the trunk, and she saw her reflection. The reflection was wrong—a little bit wavy, like a funhouse mirror. She moved closer, but the impression didn’t change. She stepped to the trunk and ran her finger along the finish near the lock. There was a slight depression around the lock, and there was a thin layer of oil on the lock’s surface. She walked close to the driver’s side and peered in. The odometer said three thousand miles. It was possible that a gypsy cab might have had its trunk lock punched in by a thief in the first few thousand miles and had it replaced. She bent over to bring her eye close to the long, shiny side surface of the car.

The finish on the upper parts was perfect, but the paint near the bottom of the doors was thicker and duller, as though it had been applied in one coat and not rubbed as thoroughly as the upper part. No new car came from the factory that way, and it was unlikely that a car that had been totaled and salvaged would have three thousand miles on the odometer. It was also unlikely that the insurance company that had paid off wouldn’t have gotten the key to the trunk. She surreptitiously removed her pocketknife from her purse and scratched the finish near the bottom of the door. The undercoat was bright green. The car had been stolen and repainted.

Jane straightened and looked toward the terminal. The driver had just crossed the street, and he was entering the lot pulling her two duffel bags. She was fairly sure that he had not yet looked inside. The baggage area would not have been a good place to break the locks, and a slash in the fabric would be difficult to hide. She scanned the lot to see whether any of the driver’s friends were visible yet. He would be confident that he could pick her up and take her somewhere without help, because she would go eagerly. But there had been so many watchers between her gate and the baggage area that he’d had numerous chances to tip them off. They would come because there was no reason not to. If she resisted, they would make it easy to overpower her quickly and quietly without killing her. Even the first man, the one in Sea-Tac airport, had figured out that he needed to take her alive.

As the driver approached the car, Jane kept her eyes on the terminal behind him. At last, she saw two men coming out of the exit together. They walked quickly to the crossing, one of them pounded the button mounted on the pole to change the signal, then they both ran across. She was sure. There was always a reason to run to a terminal, but almost never a reason to run toward the parking lot. She focused on the driver and gave him a false smile.

He came around to the trunk and let go of the bags. “Been waiting long?”

“Not at all,” said Jane. “Did you have trouble with the bags?”

“No,” he said. “They didn’t even hold me up at the door to check the tags.”

Jane watched him open the trunk and lift the first heavy duffel bag into it. As he bent down for the second, she looked over the trunk lid toward the two men. They were getting into a dark blue Chevrolet four rows away. She stared down at the driver as he began to lift the second bag. She devoted two seconds to contemplating him. He was feeling very clever and masterful right now. He had managed to get a lone woman who was running for her life to trust him. In a moment she would be in the back seat and he would be driving her someplace where a group of his friends would be gathering. They would torture her until she told them where the rest of the money was, and then kill her. Afterward, maybe tonight, he would laugh about it—probably be very funny describing how stupid she had been. She had called the limo service herself—picked that one. But the details made the story: how he had waited at the gate to be sure that the “Deborah” who had called for a ride was the right woman. Jane converted the dull anxiety of the past few hours, and the growing fear of the past few minutes, into hot rage. As the man leaned into the trunk with the second bag, she felt the adrenaline pump into her veins, then exploded into motion.

Jane brought the trunk lid down hard on the top of the man’s head just as he was rising to meet it. His knees gave way and he fell across the duffel bag, then unsteadily backed out in a crouch.

Her hands gripped his head and pushed it down as her knee came up to meet it. He seemed stunned, unable to pop up, so she brought her knee up again, harder. This time he stood erect, but reeling, his nose bloody. He lunged toward her. She pivoted to throw her leg in front of his feet and got both hands onto the space between his shoulder blades to add her full strength to his momentum. His forehead smashed into the rear bumper, and blood began to run down his face from a cut above the hairline. Jane snatched the keys out of the trunk lock, slammed the lid, and stepped toward the driver’s door.

As Jane moved past the man, he suddenly rose to his knees and swung hard. His blow caught her in the stomach and the force of it threw her against the side of the car. The man’s eyes shone through the slick of blood streaming down from the cut above his hairline, and there was a kind of glee in them, until he looked at her. Almost instantly, the brows knitted, and Jane could see he was puzzled. He had hit the pillows. The wide eyes blinked and the man’s hand came up to wipe blood out of them. Jane leaned her weight against the side of the car and kicked the face upward. The man’s head jerked back and caromed off the car beside his. Jane unlocked the door, slipped into the driver’s seat, and hammered down the lock button.

As she started the car, she saw the man’s hand grasp the door handle. She threw the car into reverse, and the hand slipped off. She stopped and put the car into forward gear, then drove toward the end of the aisle and turned right at the exit sign.

She had lost track of the two men in the blue Chevrolet. She looked in their direction, but the space was empty. Suddenly a flash of blue appeared directly behind her, filling her rearview mirror. She could see that the car was big and powerful and new. It was so close that she could make out the safety belts across the men’s chests. As she started up the next aisle, the blue car tried to edge up beside her, and she understood the uncharacteristic concern with seat belts. They were going to try to push her into the line of cars and stop her.

The belts reminded her of something she knew about cars. She turned up the next aisle and accelerated, groping beside her for the seat-belt buckle. She drew it across her and clicked it in, tugged it to tighten the lap belt around her hips across the lower pillow, adjusted the chest belt so it lay flat between her breasts and across the upper pillow, then leaned back against the headrest to test the fit. At the end of the aisle she slowed just enough to make the turn, and looked for the exit ahead. There was a small kiosk where people presented tickets and paid. She reached into her purse to pull out a bill without looking at it as she accelerated up the side of the lot. She would have to do this before she was too close.

When she found the money, she slowed a bit. The blue Chevrolet closed the distance quickly. When the Chevrolet had advanced to within twenty feet of her rear bumper and begun to coast, Jane stopped, threw the Audi into reverse, stomped on the accelerator, and leaned back into her seat with her head pressed against the headrest. She heard a little squeal as the driver of the blue car slammed on his brakes, but it was too late.

Jane’s Audi slammed into the front of the blue Chevrolet with a loud bang. The impact jolted her, and she had a brief impression that everything in her body that was loose had moved: her internal organs, her brain, her blood. She glanced in the mirror as she threw the car into forward gear again.