The day passed without incident. I avoided Jon, Olivia, and Kent only because I knew it would be hard not to warn them about what was going on. Olivia would panic and want to bolt instantly. Kent would probably want to take a swing at Chris. And Jon, well, Jon might just come up with a logical explanation for it all, but I didn’t want to risk telling him for fear he would tell everyone else, and then Chris would be coming for us.
They would all know soon enough.
When I woke up early the next morning, Tori was already dressed and sitting on her cot with her arms curled around her legs and her gym bag over her shoulder. I gave her a quick wave and got dressed. While trying to make as little noise as possible, the two of us once again climbed out of the basement and stepped out to the predawn morning.
It was cold. Winter was definitely on the way. We walked quickly away from Faneuil Hall, looking around constantly to see if we were being watched. No alarms sounded. Nobody came running. We retraced our steps back to the parking lot where we had left the Explorer several days before.
“You’d better drive,” I said. “You’ve got more experience.”
That was an understatement. I wasn’t even old enough to have a license. Neither was Tori, but she had been driving her father’s pickup truck all over Pemberwick Island to deliver lobsters. I had no doubt that she could navigate the empty streets of Boston. The question was, could she trail a bus without being seen?
“Is the other gun back there?” Tori asked.
I lifted the back hatch to see… nothing.
“The cowboys must have found it,” I said uneasily.
Tori reached into her gym bag and pulled out the Glock. She reached in again and took out the fully loaded clip that held seventeen bullets. With one quick movement, she slammed the clip into the handgrip and locked it into place.
“I never shot a person,” Tori said. “But I’m willing to try.”
We got into the Explorer. Tori fired up the engine, and seconds later we were rolling back toward Faneuil Hall.
“Pull up near the dumpster,” I offered. “But keep close to the building.”
Tori drove with the headlights off, which made it tricky to see where we were going. The last thing we needed was to slam into a light post. Or a bus. Soon we were gliding close to the building with the dumpster. Tori drove up onto the sidewalk, crossed the brick pedestrian walkway, and pulled to a stop a few feet short of the end of the building.
“I’ll kill the engine, and we can watch from outside,” she said. “When the bus pulls out, we’ll get back in and follow.”
“Do you think you can shadow them without being seen?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” she said impatiently. “It’s not like I’ve done this before.”
She turned off the engine and pulled out the key. When we got out of the SUV, we left the doors open. Getting back in fast was going to be critical.
We crept to the dumpster and took up our familiar position to see that the bus was back and people were already being loaded.
“Jeez, we just made it,” I whispered.
“It’s going to be a full load,” Tori pointed out.
There were many more people than there were the day before. Maybe twice as many. It made me a little nervous to think that Chris might have caught wind that we were on to him and decided to increase his numbers. But there was no way he could have known. Or so I hoped.
Nothing else was out of the ordinary. The girl checked off the names of the victims, they boarded the bus, and the door closed.
“That’s it, let’s go,” Tori said.
We ran for the Explorer and quietly closed the doors after getting in.
“I’ll circle around toward the street they took off on yesterday,” Tori announced.
She hit the gas and rounded the block that was near the same route the bus had taken the day before. She pulled to the side of the road and waited.
I held my breath.
Seconds later, the bus rolled by in front of us.
“And the chase is on,” she declared.
Tori waited a few seconds, then took a quick left onto a street that ran parallel to the route the bus was on.
I rolled down my window in the hope of hearing the bus even when we couldn’t see it. It worked well enough; we could hear the steady, low rumble of its engine.
We soon hit an intersection that forced us to turn directly onto the street that the bus was on.
“Don’t follow too close,” I said. “It’s not like we can get lost in traffic.”
It was still fairly dark. I hoped that would help us blend into the city.
Tori let the bus get several blocks in front of us. It made a few turns, but we saw them all and were able to keep pace.
“It doesn’t look like its leaving town,” I said. “It’s not headed toward the interstate.”
The driver didn’t obey traffic rules. The bus turned the wrong way onto one-way streets and didn’t even slow down for stop signs.
Tori did an awesome job keeping up. There was no way of knowing if the bus driver had seen us, but I felt as though we were doing okay.
“We were here the other day,” Tori pointed out. “It’s turning onto Storrow Drive.”
It was the same route, parallel to the Charles River, that we had taken the day we arrived in Boston. It was also the route we took between Fenway Park and Faneuil Hall.
“Stay on the local streets,” I said. “If we follow it onto Storrow Drive, they’ll see us for sure.”
I had set an almost impossible task for Tori. We had to drive on the far side of buildings from the bus while trying to keep pace. If there had been traffic, we never would have been able to do it. As it was, all we had to do was swerve past abandoned cars. We traveled like that for several minutes until we saw the bus take the curve that led toward Fenway.
Tori was able to stay focused and shadow the bus from a few blocks away, using the buildings to shield us from sight. When the bus turned onto Yawkey Way, there was no doubt in my mind. Its destination was Fenway Park.
Finally, the bus slowed and stopped in front of an entrance gate to the old ballpark. There were a few abandoned cars a block away, so Tori pulled upbehind one. We were a safe distance away but had a clear view of the bus.
“It’s safe to say they’re not here to catch a game,” I said.
Two bulky men stepped out of the gate and approached the bus.
“Oh, that’s not good,” Tori said.
They were dressed in gray, military-like camouflage fatigues and wore black berets. From that distance I couldn’t see whether they had any insignias or patches to identify them. From each of their belts hung what looked like a two-foot-long black baton. They didn’t appear to have any other weapons. When they stepped up to the bus, the door opened and the victims stepped out. Knowing how Jim had been tranquilized, it now looked obvious that they all had been drugged in some way, for they shuffled along in line, zombie-like, toward the entrance.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing above the stadium.
There was a giant steel frame peeking up above the stands. Next to it was the top of what looked like a construction crane.
“Did you see that before?” I asked.
“I don’t remember,” Tori admitted. “But it isn’t normal. It’s like something is being built inside the stadium.”
“That fast?” I said. “I swear that wasn’t there a couple of weeks ago.”