The Heir Hunter (50 page)

“See the trees?” he asked, flicking his head in the direction of the woods. “Last chance.”

Kragen quickly turned and started walking. Nick waited for him to move forty yards into the brush before taking Alex’s arm. They turned and ran back to the car.

Kragen stopped and watched from the cover of the trees as the investigators pulled back onto the road. He quickly removed a tiny transmitter from a side pocket in his jacket and punched in an activation code. A green diode began to flash. He watched it momentarily, then ran back to the side of the freeway and waited.

The stars were out now. The black outlines of trees pointed like daggers into the night sky. Nick’s eyes were dividing time between the road ahead and the rearview mirror. He was heading south at seventy-five miles an hour. He couldn’t stop talking.

“He
knew
,” he said. “That’s why he tried to tip me off, that’s why he gave you the pistol. He knew they might try this.”

“Tip you off?” Alex asked. “What do you mean?”

“Gordon told me something strange before he sent me off. I wasn’t sure of the point he was making until later. It was a warning. He was trying to tell me that they might try and kill us. He must have given you the gun because he didn’t feel comfortable putting it in my hands. What did he tell you?”

Alex was rubbing her forehead. A road sign announcing the approach of Pottersville zoomed by.

“He told me to take it and get it to you if necessary. I asked him what was going on, but he just shook his head. He was acting so strange, Nick.”

Nick nodded quickly as he changed lanes and accelerated past another car. “He knew,” he said again. “Once we were dead and our bodies disposed of, no one would have ever been able to prove that we hadn’t disappeared out of the country. No one would ever have known what really happened to us.”

They passed the turnoff to Highway 9. They were half an hour from the airfield.

“Something else,” said Nick. “Did you notice the driver’s hand?”

“What about it?”

“The little finger on his right hand. It was gone. Maybe I’m nuts but when I saw that, it was like a switch got triggered. A damn buzzer went off in my head.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either. But something stunk about that guy. Even Gordon knew, Alex.”

“Why didn’t he stop him, then?”

Nick shook his head helplessly. He had no answer. The speedometer climbed beyond seventy-five as he pressed the accelerator to the floor.

Malloy was confused. His tracking screen now showed two blips, and they were separating quickly. Something
had gone wrong. He held the wheel and tried to zero in on his boss’s signal. It was close, so close he was practically right on top of him.

Slowing the car to forty miles an hour, he scanned the deserted highway. His high beams suddenly illuminated a solitary figure waving his arm back and forth by the side of the road. Malloy skidded to a halt in the gravel, then floored it in reverse. Kragen emerged from the cloud of dust, ripped the door open, and slid in.

“The feds gave ’em a gun!” he shouted.

“What?”
Malloy leaned toward him. “What happened to you?”

“Gimme the damn phone!”

Malloy handed it to him. Kragen punched in a number and held it to his ear, cursing under his breath as he waited.

“Yeah.”

“You reading that blip?”

“Yeah. Where are you?”

“Don’t worry about where I am—just follow that fucking blip. They’re running for it. Get everybody moving now!”

“We’re gone.”

Kragen threw the phone aside and reached for the tracking screen.

“Gas it, Malloy. We’re not that far back.”

Malloy grabbed the gearshift, then hesitated. A pair of headlights suddenly beamed through the haze behind them.

“Who the hell’s this?” asked Malloy, reaching for his gun. He watched as the car’s door flew open. A figure raced up to them out of the dust cloud. Philip Cimko’s face was a twisted blend of fear and anger.

“You idiots!” he shouted.

Malloy looked at Kragen, confused. “You know this guy?”

Kragen frowned and the two of them stepped out of the car.

“You let them go!” screamed Cimko, all restraint discarded. “You had them!”

Kragen’s lips were tight, barely holding back a boiling fury. He grabbed the back door of the car and flung it open. He approached the ranting Cimko, silently daring him to speak again, to say one more word. Philip Cimko did not disappoint.

“Incompetent fucking
idiots!
”

Kragen could take no more. His hands shot forward viciously, locking on the smaller man. He twisted Cimko’s arm behind his back and bent him down to the car.

“Get him in the car! Help me, Malloy!”

“Hey!” shouted Cimko.“Stop!”

Malloy eagerly joined in, and the two of them shoved him face-first into the backseat. Kragen fell in next to him as Malloy retook the wheel.

“We’ll see who’s incompetent, you little shit!” He looked to Malloy. “Gas it!”

Tires kicked dirt and pebbles as they made a wild U-turn and reentered the highway. Cimko frantically grabbed the door handle but the vehicle was already moving too quickly for him to bail out safely. He shouted for them to let him out as the speedometer climbed to sixty-five. Kragen smiled to hear the fear in the little man’s voice. He ignored his pleading and leaned over the tiny fluorescent screen. The signal was clear and strong. They weren’t any more than ten or fifteen minutes ahead of them, heading south. When they caught up to them, he would personally bring this assignment to a close.

For minutes they sat in silence, the only noise being the thump of the wheels on the road. Alex’s voice gave Nick a start.

“I didn’t tell you,” she said quietly. “They approved it.”

For a second, he had no idea what she was talking about.

“The judge okayed it,” she said, seeing the confusion in his eyes. “They’re releasing the Jacobs money.”

The car was strangely quiet. Nick shook his head. A week ago he would have been popping champagne corks. Now he just felt numb. All of this—
all of it
—had happened because of money. Rose dead, Doug arrested, he and Alex fleeing the country—everyone had lost something forever because of the Jacobs case.

“They got Tim Von Rohr, Nick. They found him in prison and killed him.”

“The FBI told me.” He slammed his palm to the dashboard savagely. “They killed everyone, then. Everyone but us and Jessica!”

“Not only that,” continued Alex. “They found six hundred thousand dollars more. A joint bank account held by Holtzmann and Monica Von Rohr.”

Nick held the wheel and said nothing. Jessica had been wrong all along—her mother
had
succumbed to her brother’s terrible greed. He wondered how Jessica would have reacted to this. He wondered if she would have even cared.

They passed Warrensburg. The sign read G
LENS
F
ALLS
7 M
ILES
. The turnoff was only minutes away now. Nick was now doing eighty miles an hour.

“We’re over an hour late,” Alex said. “There’s no way this guy stuck around for us.”

“He better have.”

“Do you think this car might be rigged, Nick?”

Nick’s face was grim. He found Kragen’s gun and handed it to her.

“That’s why this guy better be there.”

Nick wasn’t certain he had taken the right dirt road. The turnoff wound through the forest like a snake. The trees
were thick and black, like some nightmare landscape from a child’s fairy tale. Nick almost began to worry after a minute of nothing but trees, but then their surroundings cleared and a strip of concrete, glimmering light gray under a half-moon, was visible before them. The scene was desolate and cold, like an abandoned lunar outpost. Two solitary structures stood alone on the edge of the airfield, one the size of a small home, the other more like a shed. He could see two beat-up cars in a dirt lot behind the larger building. A light was on.

“What time is it?” Alex asked.

“Seven-thirty. What time was he supposed to wait until?”

“He wasn’t. But there’s a light on.”

Dust kicked up behind them as they pulled into the lot next to the two junkers. Nick couldn’t remember the name Alex had told him to ask for. He grabbed his pistol as a figure suddenly stepped from the building. They watched him as he drew nearer. The man stopped about ten feet away from them.

“Well, hey there. Is that Alex finally?”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s your damn pilot, that’s who. You’re over an hour late, y’know. I was getting ready to shut off the lights and head home.”

Nick let out a loud breath of relief. They stepped out of the car and hurried up to him.

“What’s your name?” Nick asked.

“Call me Bob.”

“We need to get going now, Bob. Are you ready?”

“I’ve
been
ready. What kept you two?”

“I’ll tell you when we’re in the air. Let’s just get going first.”

“You got it, buddy.”

They followed him through the building, which was really nothing more than a dusty, oversized toolshed. Several hanging fixtures cast faint light over wooden
workbenches and rusting metal aircraft parts. Bob grabbed a ring of keys hanging next to a girlie calendar and led them back outside. He gestured to a small four-windowed Cessna that sat about forty yards down the single strip of asphalt.

“There she is,” he announced, like he was showing off his newborn child. “She’s gotta idle for five minutes before we can lift off. Engine needs to build up some heat.”

“Okay. Let’s just please hurry.”

They watched him enter the plane. The engine started in a low whine, then leveled to a steady hum. Nick let himself relax slightly. Without a word, he pulled Alex to him and closed his eyes. This was the end, then. He wasn’t sure when they would be back, but it was a secondary concern now. The future was a blank, but at least they
had
a future.

“Nick . . .”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes still shut.

“Nick, what’s that?”

Nick looked over and felt his stomach plunge as if in free fall. Through the trees—was he imagining it? No—he could see the flash and glimmer of headlights. Whoever they were, they were coming fast.

Nick looked around wildly for cover. The shed was a concrete bunker with a single door. The larger building offered few places to hide. He saw one option.

“Come on!” he shouted, taking her hand and pulling her to the surrounding trees.

He was pulling Alex along so quickly she almost tripped. They reached the brush the moment the car broke into the clearing. It barreled toward the lot, then swerved wildly up to the plane. Two figures jumped out with guns in their hands.

“Oh God,” Nick whispered. He looked at Alex. “We have to split up.”

“Split up? Nick—”

“I’ll draw their fire. Try and lose yourself in the woods. You’ve got your gun, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“Go now, Alex.
Hurry.
”

She looked as if she were going to argue, but then she turned and ran off into the dark woods. Nick clenched his gun and found cover behind a thick tree. The gunmen were outside the plane now. Nick watched in horror as they pulled Bob out by the back of his shirt. Kragen quickly ducked into the plane. Malloy pushed the pilot to the ground, and a gunshot tore the night air.

Nick felt his hopes die. The flight out was about to become a shoot-out, if it could even be called that. The men had emerged from the toolshed and were scanning the trees with goggles, sweeping the perimeter of the airstrip. Nick raised his gun, ready to fire. Every second he could pin them down was another second for Alex to lose herself in the thick woodlands.

He squeezed off two rapid shots that succeeded only in making them duck. The response came in a furious flurry of shots. Nick shrank against the tree as splinters of bark flew around him. The tree was easily thick enough to serve as a shield, but the gunmen were moving forward now, firing as they advanced. Nick reached around the tree and blindly fired off another shot. He ducked back around and cursed. It had been too long since he had fired a gun. Even if he had been at his best, the pistol was no match for the hardware now raining down on him. He slid low against the tree. Two bullets left. He closed his eyes, and an image of his father, quick as a flashbulb, blinked through his head, and then he stood to fire off his final shots.

What he saw made him pause. A pair of beams, bright enough to hurt the eyes, was suddenly bathing the gunmen in searing white light, freezing them like stage actors. They turned from Nick and raised their weapons—a second too late. The car plowed into them, throwing both of them through the air like rag dolls. They landed in the dirt and rolled pitifully. The driver’s-side door flew open.

“Nick?”

Nick blinked, his mouth open. He wasn’t sure if he had really witnessed this.

“Nick!” came Alex’s voice again, frightened now.

He stepped out from behind the tree and ran out of the woods to her.

“Oh my God—
Nick
!”

They met and hugged in relief. The gunmen were on the ground and very still. The front grill of the car was cracked and twisted, and steam was billowing from the radiator.

“I made a run for it,” she panted, her hand on her chest. “They pinned you down and I ran for it.” She looked down at the two crumpled figures. “I think I killed them . . .”

Nick gave them a glance and frowned. He saw little chance in any human surviving an impact like that, not that he really cared. He walked up to them and sent their weapons skittering over the dirt with his foot. Then he remembered.

“Oh my God—the pilot!”

He ran to the plane. Bob was on his stomach, his eyes closed. A small trickle of blood was flowing from the side of his head.

“Oh God,” said Nick, stooping to him.

The eyes suddenly opened.

“Those guys gone?”

Nick stepped back, startled. “You’re . . . alive.”

The pilot pulled himself up and dabbed at a mark on his forehead. “Son of a bitch pistol-whipped me,” he said with a frown. “Blew out my damn eardrum with that shot. Said I was dead if I moved. What the hell were they after?”