Deadlock (31 page)

“What, just stop? As in go away, and we never see them again?”

“Yeah, why not?”

The voice came from the rear of the SUV: “Because that's not what they do.”

They spun in their seats. Dillon's knee tapped the horn, giving audible expression to their surprise. Michael was sitting up in the cargo area. His eyes, catching the brightening light of day, appeared keen and alert.

FORTY-EIGHT

Hutch hurried through the jetway. He pushed past other disembarking passengers, tossing out apologies as he went. “Excuse me . . . sorry . . .”

Home, finally.

He pulled the mobile phone out of his pocket and pushed a button to turn it on. As he jogged for the trams to the terminal, he watched the phone slowly come online.

Come on, come on!

When it chimed and a bar graph appeared, showing signal strength, he dialed Larry's number.

“Did she call?” he said when Larry answered.

“What time is it?”

“Don't tell me you fell asleep!”

“Only a little.
Your
call woke me up. No, no, she didn't call. Where are you?”

“I'm in town, I'm home.”

“Hutch, this came in last night,” Larry said. “Nichols is dead.

They found his body in a motel room in a place called Pinedale, California. They're thinking suicide, but it's still under investigation.”

“Last night?”

“They found him yesterday. Released his name last night. They believe the time of death was the night before.”

“When Page's people invited me to see him,” Hutch said. “It
was
his call to me that triggered this. They kicked into cleanup mode.”

Larry said, “I'm ready to call the cops.”

“Larry, hold on, hold on.” Hutch stopped at the top of an escalator leading to the tram platform. People from his own flight bumped into him, grumbled as they went around. He stepped sideways to clear the way. He cocked his head to one side. But the voice over the intercom had moved on: “. . . Mr. Jack Johnson, Ms. René, Ms. Lynda René, please pick up . . .”

“Larry,” Hutch said into the phone. “I think someone is paging me. I'll call you back. And don't call anyone. Not until I get Logan back.” He hit the disconnect button, scanning the area for a phone. He saw one on a pillar by the food court. Ran to it and picked it up.

“Paging operator,” said a pleasant-sounding woman.

“You paged me. David Ryder.” It had to be from Laura.

“It was just cleared.”

“Cleared? Expired? I just heard it.”

“It was picked up.”

“No, I'm David Ryder. I didn't pick it up.”

“We show it cleared, sir.”

“Okay, what was it?”

“It's cleared, sir. We no longer have it in our system.”

“You have to have a record of it.” He took a deep breath. “Please.”

“One moment, please.”

Be Laura
, he thought.
No, no. Be Page.

Could it be him, calling to accept Hutch's deal? Why wouldn't he have called the mobile? Hutch looked at the mobile phone's screen. There was no indication that he'd missed a call or that a message was waiting to be picked up.

Be Page,
he thought again.
Be Page ready to give me my son.

“Mr. Ryder?”

“Yes.”

“The message was: Please wait for your party at door number 502 in Terminal West.”

“Who's the ‘party'?”

“It doesn't say.”

He hung up and headed for the tram platform. It was either Laura or . . . His steps quickened. What if Page's men were here with Logan? Page had made his point. Hutch had agreed to get off his back. Could it be this easy? Were they here to release his son?

Another possibility presented itself. That it was a setup. They were here, but not with Logan.

He pushed the thought away. It went kicking and scratching, because Hutch knew that this last scenario was the most likely, the most like Page.

He'd know soon enough. There was no way he could avoid the rendezvous, not with the chance that Logan or Laura was waiting for him there.

FORTY-NINE

Laura had watched the sun bleaching the sky and the photostatic lights outside turning off one at a time. She had traversed the airport a dozen or more times. All she could think about was how every step brought her closer to the time the men after Hutch—and Laura and the kids, she reminded herself—showed up to look for them at the airport.

Come on, Hutch. Where are you?

It was still early—not even seven. She expected him earlier than his scheduled flight, which had been midafternoon, but dawn shouldn't be her patience's breaking point.

She reached the door that marked another complete circumnavigation, but didn't go through it. She slowed her pace, turned in a circle, and leaned into a wall. She stretched her back against it and raised her right knee up high, then the left, as though she'd just completed a long run. She bent over, gripping her thighs above the knees.

Her clumpy hair fell over her face. She never did get to a store for a brush. She hadn't wanted to waste a minute doing anything other than looking for Hutch. He would simply have to tolerate her lack of hygiene. She raised herself up to her full height, snapping her head to flip her hair back off her face.

One of the men from the parking lot was heading for her. Black boots, pants, jacket. He was young and fit—there was no mistaking him. He had come out of the elevator and was taking great strides, trying to rush without drawing attention.

She turned and slammed through a metal fire door. She had discovered the possible getaway earlier, which was one reason she'd chosen that spot to rest. It opened onto a long, doorless hallway, which led to a labyrinth of connecting corridors. She had gone only a few intersections in, enough to get the idea that she could lose a pursuer in there.

Behind her, the door
ka-chunked
open and banged against the wall. As she darted around the first corner, something struck the wall. Sharp debris struck her face. He had shot at her.

In an airport!

No sound from the gun, but that didn't matter to the bullet. Of all the places she could have scouted for Hutch, this one lay way outside the security checkpoints. He'd have been able to carry a firearm without anyone challenging him.

The man's footsteps, surprisingly quiet, picked up pace. She turned right, then left. She hoped she was too quick for him to catch every turn. Eventually, the combination of directional changes she could have taken would force him to give up. While she ran, she thought about how he'd found her. Could be, he'd simply stumbled onto her. More likely, the men had made the connection between David Ryder and Hutch, and picked up the page.

She believed the man had missed her last few turns. It was time to get out of town. She opened a door: storage room. Another door: janitor's closet. Finally she found a short hallway leading to a door labeled
DENVER COFFEE BAR
. She stepped around a stack of boxes to the door—and heard the man's footsteps, approaching fast. A flap of the top box was tipped up, revealing four coffee decanters. She pulled one out, gripped the handle, and edged to the corner of the hallway.

The footsteps grew louder.

She swung around the corner, swinging the coffeepot. It cracked into the man's forehead. He flew back, staggering, his arm flying up over his head. She had already set the coffeepot on top of the box and was at the door when she heard him hit the floor with a loud
oomph
! Metal clattered against the floor. She hadn't knocked him cold, but he might have lost his gun, at least for a few seconds.

She pulled open the door and stepped through. She was behind the counter of a coffee bar she had passed a dozen times. A young woman was handing a customer a tall paper cup. Her mouth dropped when she saw Laura.

“Security,” Laura said, knowing full well her appearance didn't fit the part. “This door is supposed to be locked. You have the key?”

The woman pointed to a key hanging from a nail by the jamb.

Laura grabbed it and locked the door.

“My partner's right behind me,” she told the barista with a wink. “Don't let him in.”

She went around the counter and hurried to the escalator to the fourth level. She still needed to find Hutch, but she had to take care of a few things first.

FIFTY

Hutch exited the terminal on the third level, which connected directly to the parking garage complex. He climbed the garage stairs to the fifth level. He watched door 502 for a minute from an island where a few limousines idled. No one waited for him. He walked to the other end of the building and entered. He worked his way back toward the meeting place. When it came into view, he went to a row of chairs, picked up a stray newspaper, and sat. He peered over the sports section toward the rendezvous spot.

A man burst through an interior door. Holding one hand to his forehead, he swung his head around, looking, looking. . . . His hand fiddled with something behind his back. No doubt, a gun stashed in his waistband.

Hutch's insides felt blowtorched. Stomach, heart, muscles ached with disappointment. Page's man wasn't here to return Logan. He was here to kill Hutch. Page had communicated his answer: no deal.

On the plane, Hutch had clicked through Page's options. Several scenarios involved stashing Logan in Colorado until Hutch gave himself up to Page's men. Most entailed Logan being taken back to Page's campus and compound, where he had a thousand places to hide him and many times that number of people to help. A couple scenarios required Logan's quick death, but Hutch had tried not to dwell on those.

Page had told Hutch, “This isn't going to end well.” Hutch's hope lay in short-circuiting Page's plans before they reached their conclusion.

You're right again, Page
, he thought.
This isn't going to end well. But for you, not me.

The man walked through the glass exit doors. A few seconds later, he reappeared. He crossed toward the center of the level and walked out of Hutch's view.

Hutch beelined it for the exit.

Names rattled out of the airport speaker: “Mr. Neil Savona . . . Mr. Zhou Tong . . .”

The RapidParking shuttle wasn't in sight. He hopped in a cab. The driver grumbled about giving up his place in the queue for a five-mile, ten-dollar fare.

“I'll make it a twenty,” Hutch said. “Just get moving, will you?”

He watched the doors as they passed, but he didn't see the man with the gun or anyone else he would identify as a likely Outis soldier.

The cab turned left, and the building fell away. When he could see all of the airport's roof of thirty-four white spires, which represented the Rocky Mountains, he relaxed a bit.

He rubbed his hands over his face. He should have caught some z's on the two-and-a-half-hour flight from Chicago. His body had been more than willing, but his mind had refused to slow down. It had reeled out everything from practical action items—
get a gun
—to memories of Logan—
the first time he'd taken him fishing: the kid had fallen in, twice
. From considering Page's motivations—
protecting his freedom, his image, his pride . . . some kind of macho, competitive crap . . . the guy was just plain nuts
—to guessing the man's next moves—
keep after Hutch . . . negotiate for Logan . . . nothing, let Hutch stew.

He did not put it past Page to play dumb, pretend he hadn't taken Logan. At some point Hutch would have to call in the cops, which would not rattle Page in the slightest. The man had the kind of real estate holdings that made looking for Logan akin to finding a specific grain of sand in the Mojave. But
stew
didn't describe what Hutch would do if Page ignored him. If Page thought a crate of old dynamite, sweating nitroglycerin, was volatile, he didn't know volatile.

Those had been Hutch's thoughts on the plane. The man in the airport told Hutch which option Page had chosen. The man was coming after him. Didn't matter that he had Hutch's son. Page liked edgier games than that. He—

Zhou Tong.

Hutch had heard the name announced on the airport intercom while he was peering over the newspaper at Page's man. He'd heard it . . . but hadn't. He'd been concentrating on the killer, then on getting away from the airport without being seen.

Zhou Tong had been a famous archery teacher and military arts tutor in the Song Dynasty. He and Dillon had had long telephone conversations about him, because of Tong's blending of archery skills and self-discipline. He was an inspirational figure to Hutch. Dillon had sensed that and wanted to know everything about him. This time the page could only have been left by Laura.

The driver said something.

“Sorry?” Hutch said, pulling the phone from his pocket.

“Where's your car?” They were stopped just past the entrance barrier.

“Oh,” Hutch tried to remember. “The aisle with the bighorn sheep, S. Way down toward the far end.”

The driver cranked the wheel left and pulled onto the road that traversed the parking aisles.

Hutch called the information operator and asked for the airport's paging service.

A robotic female voice said, “You are being connected to that number.”

He touched the driver's shoulder and pointed. “Right here.” After the cab turned into the aisle, he said, “Almost to the end, on the right. Just go until I tell you to stop.”

A man came on: “DIA Paging. May I help you?”

“You have a message for Zhou Tong.”

“Hold, please.”

Hutch pinched the phone between his shoulder and ear. He fished his wallet out of his back pocket and selected a twenty. “Little farther,” he told the cabbie. “Here.” The guy grabbed the bill from him.

The paging operator returned. “Mr. Tong?”