His dark eyes flickered open, pupils too large and too slow to contract. Drugged, maybe. Or concussed. “Jazz?” His tongue came out, pale, to wet his lips. “Turn the light off.”
She let her breath out in a rush and, for no particular reason, kissed him. Hard. Felt his lips curl up under hers, vaguely smiling.
“Jazz!” Lucia was beside her, and the red envelope in her hand was open. A sheet of crisp paper was in her hand. “Jazz, we have to go. Now.”
“I can’t leave him here. He’s bleeding.”
“He’s fine. Jazz, the cops are about a block away. He’ll be okay—we’ve got to go right now!”
Jazz grabbed the sheet of paper and scanned it. Directions to an address and a time—ten minutes away. Two Polaroid photographs, one of a girl about ten years old, one of a nondescript-looking young man, maybe twenty, twenty-five.
Two words:
Stop Him.
“What the hell?” She looked up at Lucia, who handed her one more thing. A newspaper clipping.
“It was in the envelope,” she said.
Third Victim Found Dead, Killer Still At Large. Black-and-white newsprint photos of three children, two girls and a boy, all smiling eagerly for the camera, their lives ahead of them.
“Oh, God,” Jazz murmured. She looked down at Borden, whose eyes were at least partly comprehending now. “James—”
“I know,” he mumbled. “I’m good. Go.”
Lucia grabbed her by the collar and dragged her upright, pushed her into a stumbling run, heading farther down the block. Jazz tried to stop, to turn back, but Lucia shoved her again.
“The car’s back that way!” Jazz yelled, just as a huge black SUV roared around the corner, taking it on two wheels, and squealed to a stop next to them. Jazz fumbled for her gun, but Lucia lunged for the passenger door.
“In!” she screamed, and clambered up. Jazz, breathless, followed.
As she slammed the door, the SUV took off with a sudden jerk, and she nearly slid off the bench seat before she could brace herself with the panic strap over the door.
Manny Glickman was driving. Manny.
“What the hell…?”
“Bulletproof glass,” Manny said, and reached out to tap a knuckle against the thick surface of the side window. “Reinforced steel. The ride’s custom, but I think the President has one like it.”
“Manny!”
“What?” He looked honestly puzzled, staring over at Jazz. She just blinked, unable to think of a single thing to say.
Lucia, ever practical, unfolded the paper and read off the address. Manny reached over and pushed a recessed spot on the wood-grained dash; a section of it glided out, revealing a keyboard and a small plasma screen. “Put it in,” he said. “We have GPS navigation.”
Even Lucia paused at that, then nodded and began typing. The SUV felt smooth and comfortable, after the initial jerk; Jazz let herself relax a little. Enough to gulp in some air-conditioned breaths, and say, “‘Thank you for not hating me?’ Jesus, Manny, is that really the best you could do?”
The GPS navigator’s smooth female voice said, “Right turn at the next traffic signal.”
“Well,” Manny said, and glanced down at his speed, “I figure having a woman not actually hate me is a pretty big accomplishment. All things considered.”
He whipped the wheel. The SUV raced around the corner, straightened out, and smoothly avoided two lumbering trucks, a taxi, and two sedans before the navigator read off another turn.
Lucia had her eyes on the clock. “We’re not going to make it in time,” she said. “Dammit. Why didn’t we know about this? Why didn’t Simms tell you?”
“I don’t know,” Jazz admitted. “Maybe he thought we already knew.”
Lucia cursed under her breath, a steady stream of Spanish. The computer recited another fast set of directions. Jazz clung to the panic strap, swallowing, glad that they’d left Borden behind; she couldn’t imagine this kind of thrashing around could be good for a head injury. It wasn’t doing much for her sense of claustrophobic panic, either.
“Where’s Pansy?” she asked. Lucia checked the directions on the paper against what was appearing on screen, then tossed the paper aside and pulled the gun from its holster behind her back.
“Distracting the cops,” Lucia said. “Did you know she has a cousin in uniform? His name is Ryan. Kind of cute. We’re almost there. You good to go? No broken bones?”
Jazz nodded. “I’m fine.”
Lucia shot her a distrustful look. Jazz supposed, on balance, her croaky, damaged voice wasn’t exactly the traditional definition of fine.
Manny made the final turn onto a suburban street and cut his speed to something less than enough to break the sound barrier.
“There!” Lucia yelled, and pointed. A car was just pulling away from the curb ahead, an electric blue boat of a car with black-and-yellow plates. It was the same car. Jazz remembered it, remembered seeing it accelerate down a street just like this one, the day they’d done the surveillance on the woman loading boxes.
There had been kids playing, she remembered. Kids playing two yards down.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “They were wrong. They were wrong about who to watch.”
They’d managed to disrupt an abduction by accident, rather than design.
She threw a desperate look over at Lucia, then at the house where the car had been parked. The front gate was open, still swinging. A neon-pink backpack lay abandoned on the sidewalk, books spilling out of it.
“He’s got her,” Jazz shouted. “Manny, go! Follow him!”
He applied the gas, and they rocketed after the disappearing taillights of the Pontiac.
The idea that Manny Glickman, of all people, was some kind of stunt-car driver was so weird that Jazz couldn’t get her head around it.
Luckily, her belief—or lack thereof—didn’t seem to matter much. Manny drove like a maniac, keeping them within sight of the Pontiac as it dodged and danced in and out of traffic. Lucia got on the phone to the cops and fed them directions and information. Jazz just kept wishing she’d paid more attention to what Simms had been telling her in the prison. If everything we do makes a difference, is this right? Are we doing the right thing? Should Manny be here? Should I have left Borden back there?
You could make yourself crazy, thinking these things.
A turn slid Lucia down the bench seat to collide with her. Lucia muttered an apology and put one hand on the dashboard to anchor herself in place. Jazz belted herself in, not willing to risk it any further. Sure, maybe it was a matter of fate that they wouldn’t wreck and die, but there was no sense tempting it.
Manny rounded a corner with a squeal of rubber, and they all scanned the road ahead. “Not there,” Manny said, slowing. “I think he lost us.”
“Dammit, he turned.” Lucia scanned side streets on the left, while Jazz took the right. “Anything? See anything?”
“Nothing,” Manny said grimly. “There’s no sign of him up there. He must be down one of these side streets.”
It seemed to take forever.
“We’ve lost him,” Manny finally said. “He’s a ghost.”
“No, he’s here, he’s got to be here,” Lucia said. “Back up.”
Manny hit the brakes, shifted gears, and glided the giant SUV backward into shade. A narrow alley stretched on the left. At the end of it was a dilapidated tin shed, some forgotten warehouse that had clearly missed a demolition notice or two.
Jazz saw it first. “Paint.” She pointed to the corner of the alley. There was a fresh-looking scrape on the brick there, and a glitter of electric blue.
“I can’t fit the Hummer down there,” Manny said.