“Over here,” I call back to her. “Help me with this!”
I race behind one of the wheeled baggage carts, trying to whirl it around. It’s enormous, and cumbersome, thick-gauged chains along each side clanking in protest as I maneuver it across the floor and aim it at the Cessna. One hand on each side of the cart, shoulder high, I try to push the ungainly metal carrier-like a grocery cart on growth hormones-pressing forward, straining, one step at a time. I’m too slow. The cart is too big. I can’t possibly get there in time.
“Keresey!” I call again. “Hurry! This needs both of us!”
Keresey falls in beside me, still holding her gun. She takes the left side, and I take the right. “Now!” I yell. This is our last chance. Whoever I just radioed to help us may not be able to find us in time. The plane will take off. The guys will get away. With the evidence.
“Push it, push it, push it,” I scream. “Into the propeller! This will work! Do it!”
We move forward together, shoulders bent and legs extended, trying to aim our ungainly weapon where it’ll do the most good. Suddenly, we feel the wheels align. The cart picks up speed, seeming to acquire a momentum and will of its own.
“Don’t get too close to the prop!” Keresey screams as we power the cart, faster, toward the moving Cessna. “We have to let it go!”
“On my count!” I yell. Slamming every muscle in my body against the cart, I know this is our final play. I hate airplanes. “Three two one-go!”
Both of us are yelling, something, anything, as together we heave the cart directly into the path of the propeller, both of us stumbling backward as we let go. Keresey trips, and I grab her, catching her, and then, in an instant, we see it’s going to work. Perfectly. The cart is headed straight for its spinning target. We’re both breathing hard, panting, gasping. And then we realize what’s going to happen next.
“Take cover!” Keresey yells. “Now, now, now!” She grabs my arm, dragging me along with her. We run, together, and dive behind another massive baggage cart. My elbow clangs on one of the metal rails and I feel one knee of my jeans rip on the rough cement floor. “Cover your head!” she commands. “Stay low! If it’s a direct hit-”
Whatever she says next is lost in a shriek of splintering metal, a scream of mechanical rage. I lift my head, just enough to peer over the thick wood-and-metal baggage cart we’re using as a shield. The spinning propeller chokes and staggers, twisted into an angry tangle by the lumbering metal missile we launched. The crippled Cessna lurches forward, one wing tipping, scraping along the floor with an ear-shattering metallic screech, red-orange and white-hot sparks spitting ceiling high. The baggage cart is thrown into the air, its chains caught on the prop blades, then it crashes to the ground, wood splitting, chains popping, shards of rubble and wreckage jettisoned across the hangar.
And then in seconds, although it doesn’t seem possible, it’s even noisier. The screaming wail of sirens, one, then another, then another, signals-finally-Keresey and I are no longer in this alone.
I would have thought nothing could ever surprise me again. But sitting in the squad room of the State Police airport headquarters, an institutionally neutral-on-neutral array of battered office furniture and paper-piled metal desks tucked into the rear of Logan Airport terminal C, I can’t take my eyes off FBI Special Agent Keresey Stone. And I’m surprised.
It’s not only because she slammed her own boss into his handcuffs and supervised the grim-faced posse of feds who took him away. It’s not only because, as she’s just explained to an equally grim-faced U.S. Attorney, she got a buddy in the Bureau’s “facial rec” section to do an Internet photo scan and found the photos of the purported Katie Harkins on a Web site of some small-town photographer. That’s when she realized Lattimer had created an imaginary informant-a fictional nonperson he was using to sidetrack law enforcement focus and set FBI raids up for certain defeat.
It’s also because I can’t see her face, which is buried in Detective Christopher Yens’s uniformed chest. And her still-hoodied body is being cradled in his arms. And it does not look like interagency cooperation. It looks like love. Well, lust.
“Sweetheart, you’re sure you’re okay?” Yens asks. He smooths Keresey’s hair, more tenderly than I could have predicted, lifting one strand away from her forehead, then carefully putting it into place.
Whatever Yens was saying is lost in a kiss so passionate I only allow myself to watch the beginning. The big finish, which doesn’t appear to be imminent, I’ll let them handle on their own. And I’ll grill Miss Keresey about this later. Married to Uncle Sam indeed.
Since the police operator has finally connected my phone call, I turn away from this law-enforcement love affair and focus on Franklin. Who apparently hit the video jackpot.
“So, Franko, you got it? All of it?” I ask, rolling a rickety chair up to a paper-littered desk. “You’re the best. What’s the video look like? How’d you know to-”
“Hello, to you, too, Charlotte,” Franklin says. “You’re on speaker phone here. I’m in the newsroom. With Kevin. With Susannah. Toni DuShane just left. And she says, legally, we’re fine.”
“Good to go,” Kevin’s voice interrupts. “Public place. Hidden camera, video only. And wait until you see the-”
“I totally got it all,” Franklin puts in. “First you, I mean Keresey, going for the suitcase. Then the two union goons dragging her through the door. That took about one second. Clearly they’d held the suitcase back, kept it for last, had this all arranged. And then Keresey, I mean you, making that Batgirl move through the conveyor belt entrance. Of course I thought it was Keresey going after you. So I figured you were fine. And she’d call for help.”
“But where were you?” I ask. “I looked for you.”
“Pink shirt, tan cap. Positioned just close enough to the Dunkin’ Donuts kiosk to look like an employee. It was closed, of course, but a guy who looks like a minimum wager standing next to a coffee shop? Invisible.”
Keresey and Yens have untangled themselves from each other, although they’re still holding hands, and are listening to me. She points to an orange button on the phone.
“Good one,” I say to Franklin, giving Keresey a thumbs-up. I hit the button and the squad room is filled with the buzz of the newsroom. “But how about Lattimer?”
“Well, that’s when I knew things were not, shall we say, what they seemed?” Franklin replies through the speaker. “He ran to the luggage claim, grabbed the suitcase, then bolted. But not in your direction. I followed him of course, out the door. He threw the bag onto a curbside check-in rack, then took off. And I lost him. And that’s when I called the cops.”
“And I guess we found him,” Keresey says, leaning toward the phone. “He knew exactly what was supposed to go down.”
“And we found the bag,” Yens puts in. “Full of phony Delleton-Marachelles. Now sealed tight in the evidence room. And a whole battalion of state cops are on their way to 325 Strathmeyer Road.”
“Yoo hoo,” Susannah’s voice trills through the speaker. “Let’s schedule an airtime for this, shall we? I’m off to California for a meeting. But ‘It’s In The Bag’-seems to be in the bag.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Happy Anniversary, Brenda Starr.” Josh yanks the sheet back up over his knees. And mine. I’m not sure we’ll ever find all the clothing that’s strewn across the floor, fallen behind the mattress, pushed down between the sheet and the puffy chocolate-and-caramel striped comforter of Josh’s classically sleek cherrywood bed. Propped up on pillows against the slatted headboard, we’re the definition of disheveled. It’s almost four in the morning. We’re wide-awake.