Furious

31

Kris had them pull off the freeway into a working-class neighborhood. Penny was just about to do it herself. “We ought to be safe here,” the cop’s daughter said. “No one pays for surveillance cameras where there’s little worth stealing.”

They cruised the side streets, working their way slowly toward the town’s center. Penny was the first to call for a halt. “I need a cup of coffee, which is a ladylike way to say I need to pee.”

“Nelly, can you find us a small restaurant with a back entrance?”

“Kris, I have a map of Wardhaven. It’s about two years old, but it does have all the traffic cameras on it. There’s a small bar and grill five blocks from here. It’s on a main drag with traffic cameras, but we can get to it by back streets.”

“Let’s head for it. I need to powder my nose. Noses, from the looks of the proboscis you put on me.”

Five minutes later, a visual check showed no cameras covering the rear of the place, so they pulled into the back parking lot of Mulligan’s Irish Bar and Grill.

Inside was shady and cameraless. They ordered coffee and pie, then took turns keeping an eye on things while one of them took care of business.

Jack was just coming back as the pie arrived. Kris studied the few occupants, it being between lunch and dinner, and the several TV screens, which showed various sporting events. One, however, was on a news channel.

Kris watched it out of the corner of her eye for about ten minutes, but none of their faces appeared. If they were the subject of a search, it hadn’t gotten to flashing their faces every five minutes.

They slowly enjoyed their coffee and pie. Jack had acquired Colonel Hancock’s receiver for the police net, and he and Sal monitored it while they ate. Traffic stayed moderate with no spikes. After a quiet hour, Jack paid the bill in cash, something that didn’t raise the waitress’s eyebrows even a smidge.

While he did, Kris browsed the back of the bar. Between the men’s and ladies’ room was a phone with a bright red and yellow sign. FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS DRIVE DRUNK. CALL A CAB. There were numbers for four cab companies’ phones below it. There was also a bulletin board beside it with twenty or more business cards pinned to it.

NELLY, RECORD ALL THOSE CARDS.

DONE, KRIS. WHAT’S IT FOR?

WE’LL SEE LATER.

Jack rejoined them, and they slipped out the back.

“Where to?” Penny asked.

“Cruise the back streets,” Kris said. “Don’t do any one twice. Stay in quiet, middle-class neighborhoods. We’ve got time on our hands until eight. Think about where we want to eat supper.”

Kris had missed out on cruising as a teenager. She’d heard about it but never done it, having Harvey to take her anywhere she wanted. Somehow she suspected the usual teenage cruising was not done with two girls in front and a lone guy in back. Still, she got Jack talking about himself, and that was a good way of spending time.

Around five, they found a small seafood place, the Sail Inn, with an easy rear entrance. Again, no cameras, and plenty of screens showing sporting events and one on the news. Their faces were still not up. That was nice.

Kris still didn’t relax.

As it got close to six, Kris visited the powder room. Sure enough, there was another phone with the injunction to call a cab rather than drive drunk. There was also a collection of business cards pinned or taped up next to the phone. Cards for town-car businesses. Unregistered and without any of the controls that cab companies operated under, the town cars were usually just a driver and a car and a lot of business cards. They weren’t quite illegal, it being hard to outlaw someone offering to drive you around town and you offering to pay them.

NELLY, ARE ANY OF THE CARDS AT THE BAR AND GRILL NOT PINNED UP HERE?

THREE OF THEM, KRIS.

GIVE ME THE NUMBER OF THE ONE CLOSEST TO HERE.

Kris made the phone call, asking to be picked up at the back door of the Sail Inn. The driver said he’d be there in five minutes.

He was there in fifteen.

As Kris and her team got in, she noticed a police car pulling into the back parking lot. Maybe he was there for supper. Maybe he wasn’t. Kris ordered the driver to turn left, away from the main street and back toward quiet residential ones.

A few minutes later, she heard sirens in the distance. The sound grew more distant as they drove away.

* * *

Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile hated it when he hovered over one of his subordinates. At the moment, he was hovering over Leslie. She’d spotted the car they were hunting.

Problem was, she’d spotted three cars identical in make and color to the one that should have been in the garage of the mountain lodge. Three had meandered past the gas station ten miles farther down the mountain. None had stopped. They had no license plate on any of them.

“Should I check farther up the mountains?” Mahomet asked.

Foile shook his head. “They’re heading back to town. On that I’d bet my pension.”

“Should we order a roadblock down the mountain?” Leslie asked.

Foile stared up at the lodge’s high wooden ceiling for a moment, estimating distance and time. He shook his head. “They’re already back in town. We should have, though, when we headed up here.”

“You know, sir,” Leslie said, “if either of those three cars are them, they must have seen us barrel past them as they left.”

“That thought has crossed my mind,” Foile said. “I’m getting real tired of being just a few steps behind those people. Real tired.”

“I’ve run a search on that car in town, sir,” Leslie said. Apparently, she was also tired of playing catch-up and had already done what he was about to order.

Foile gave the young woman a smile. “Talk to me.”

“Sorry, sir, but I don’t have a lot,” she said. “There are two samples of that car parked outside no-tell hotels. Their GPSes are off, and their license plates are screened. There are three examples of the car parked outside houses that have private security cameras. They also have shut down. I checked. All three of the houses have teenage daughters in the family.”

“So they likely have their boyfriends over and don’t want either one or both of their folks to know about it,” Foile said.

“Most likely,” Leslie admitted. “I’ve checked the hotel registers. They usually are paid in cash. No surprise, both of the cars are likely cash payers.”

“Do we want to knock down some doors?” Mahomet asked.

“We’ve bashed in our quota of doors for this week,” Foile said. His boss had gotten a complaint on that topic, one she’d only mentioned to him, though he suspected she’d taken a lot more heat. “No, have some agents drop by the office of those two hotels. Take pictures of the three. Ask the clerks if any of those cars belong to a threesome. That ought to add some excitement to their day.”

“I’m on it,” Mahomet said.

“Leslie, stay on that car. Have every surveillance camera in town set to scream if it catches sight of one of them.”

“I’ve already done that, sir. There are a lot of hits, and so far all of them are for cars with working GPS units and readable licenses. I think our princess has gone to ground, sir, or is staying on streets that aren’t covered by cameras.”

That proved true for a long, quiet afternoon as Foile and his team drove in from the mountains and settled back into their squad bay at the Bureau.

“Everyone makes a mistake,” Foile kept repeating, a mantra that had gotten him through a lot of hard chases. Then again, he’d never been chasing one of those damn Longknifes. Maybe she wasn’t going to make any mistakes.

He called Rick at Nuu House. No surprise, the two Marines sat blank-faced in separate rooms saying nothing at all. Not even their name, rank, and serial number.

Foile found himself cycling back to the thought that he’d gone to sleep on last night. Who would dare kill Kristine Longknife, Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy, Princess of United Society?

The Prime Minister had balked at sharing who that might be with a Bureau agent. What would a retired general, known for being trouble, have to say?

Foile fetched his hat and coat and headed out the door. He was just pulling to a stop at the ivy-covered old mansion known as Nuu House when Leslie called.

“We’ve found the car, in a lot behind a dive, the Sail Inn.”

“Any sign of the three?”

“No sir. They ate, paid in cash, and left. They used the phone to call a cab. We’re checking on any fares picked up there.”

“Get back to me as soon as you get anything.”

Foile had only gotten to the room General Trouble was being held in when his commlink buzzed again. “Tell me something good,” he said.

“Sorry, sir,” Leslie began. “I have nothing good here, sir. No cabs picked up anyone at the Sail Inn, sir. There are a batch of cards for town cars. We’ve already called all of them, but none had a pickup anywhere near there. At least none any are admitting to.”

Foile closed his eyes in frustration. Those three were once again ahead of him. Worst, he’d lost his last connection to them. He’d finally gotten the license number of their car, and it now sat in the back of a dive telling him nothing.

Where had they gone? Were they walking? The last thing Foile wanted to do was turn loose a bunch of beat cops with pictures of the Longknife princess. He might as well go straight to the media hounds himself with the story.

Besides, they intended to go someplace where they could get themselves killed. The quiet neighborhood where the Sail Inn stood wasn’t the right place for that. “Keep on it,” Foile told Leslie. “Try all the town-car places. I’ll bet you she found a card someplace else and called one that wasn’t up at the Sail Inn.”

“Yes, sir. That sounds like something she’d do. Where are you, sir?”

“I’m about to see if I can cause Trouble a little trouble.” And on that cryptic remark, Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile let himself into the room where the legendary war hero was silently doing battle and, damn it . . . winning . . . with the best the law had to muster.