The Loch Ness Legacy (23 page)

Alexa spun around, scanning the area around the car park. Her eyes settled on a Range Rover idling on the street. There was no mistaking the woman sitting in the passenger seat.

Marlo Dunham.

She stared back at Alexa with utter contempt, then spoke something over her shoulder. Two men burst from the SUV, guns drawn, and ran toward them.

“Shit,” Alexa hissed.

If they chased Grant and Alexa into the building, Ashburn and his students would be caught in the crossfire and might be killed before the police could arrive. She and Grant had to get away from the others and put some distance between them.

Alexa pocketed the phone without bothering to hang up, scrambled into the black go-kart, and switched the power on. She hoped Ashburn’s students had been as good with the execution as they had been with the design.

“Call the police!” she yelled at Ashburn, who was stunned at her sudden action. When he didn’t move, she pointed at the running assailants and shouted even louder. “Now!”

He turned heel and ducked into the lab, herding Lawrence, who had arrived with the helmet.

Alexa snapped the harness together. Grant, still belted into his low go-kart, craned to see what had alarmed her.

“Dunham’s men,” she said to him. “Follow me.”

She mashed the accelerator, and the go-kart rocketed forward. She twisted the wheel to head for the gate opposite from where Dunham’s SUV was. The kart pirouetted like it was on toe shoes, and Alexa zipped under the barrier while bullets carved divots in the asphalt.

She peeked back. Grant got the message and wasn’t far behind her.

Unfortunately, two of Dunham’s men got the same idea and jumped into the green and yellow karts. Before she even turned the corner, they were in hot pursuit.

No matter how hard he stood on the gas, Grant couldn’t keep up with Alexa, who had to continually slow down for him to catch up. It was really a simple matter of physics. Their go-karts had the same horsepower, but he outweighed her by over a hundred pounds. He could feel the inertia slowing him every time they made a turn, and it was letting the lighter men behind them close the gap.

Grant was impressed by Alexa’s skill and fearlessness. Tyler must have taught her a few driving tricks because she didn’t show any hesitation darting around cars, drawing honks from the normally polite British drivers. The only problem she had was remembering to drive on the left. Twice she swerved into oncoming traffic, which might not have ended well for the tiny go-kart.

Grant struggled to set himself in a better driving position, but it was no use. Although the kart could handle his weight, his wide shoulders spilled out from the molded seat, making him lean forward. The suspension had no give, which meant that every seam, bump, and crack in the road was transferred directly to his pelvis, causing him to grimace in pain. Without the helmet, his eyes watered as he squinted to see through the wind, and there was nothing he could do to avoid bugs and the stench of auto exhaust fumes that were at nose level.

An engine roared behind Grant. A look over his shoulder revealed the black Range Rover coming up on him. It wasn’t nearly as nimble as the kart, but its top speed was far higher. If they spent much longer on the main road, it would flatten him.

Alexa turned and saw the same thing. Grant pointed to a side alley ahead of them that wasn’t wide enough for the SUV. The Range Rover was so close now that the sound of the V8 was deafening.

Alexa juked left, and the go-kart threaded through concrete pylons placed to prevent vehicles from using the pedestrian walkway. Grant followed and nicked the bumper, causing the wheels to skid sideways. The Range Rover kept going down the street, but the green and yellow go-karts followed them.

The cobblestone surface made the go-kart buck like a bronco. Without horns, they couldn’t beep at the pedestrians sauntering through the shopping arcade. Alexa’s shouts of warning were the only thing keeping bystanders from getting run down.

They shot out of the arcade and into the street, cars screeching and spinning to a halt as they blasted through the traffic. Out of the corner of his eye, Grant caught a glimpse of the Range Rover pacing them on a parallel street. He’d seen an earpiece on one of the pursuers, so Grant assumed he was in cell-phone contact with Dunham, giving her their position.

They needed to thin the number of their opponents.

They flashed into another narrow shopping arcade. Dumbfounded faces in shop windows whizzed by. Grant shouted Alexa’s name. When she turned, he motioned for her to let him catch up. She slowed and he pulled even with her.

“I have an idea!” he yelled over the wind. “Remember those concrete pylons?”

“Yeah.”

“Let the guy behind us catch up.”

“What?”

“We’ll herd him.”

Alexa gave him a confused glance at first, but then lit up and nodded.

“One! Two! Three!”

At the same time, they hit their brakes and went to either side of the arcade, Grant barely missing chairs at an outdoor café. The green go-kart nearly raced past them, but he slowed to keep from overshooting. Grant gunned the engine and yanked the wheel over, aiming for the green go-kart like he was in a high-speed bumper car. He rapped the side of the kart, sending it careening sideways into Alexa, who bumped him back.

The steering wheel was so jittery that it required both hands to use, which was why neither of the men in the pursuing karts had taken a shot at them. Driving with only one hand would be suicide. But now that he was boxed in, the grinning man between them went for his pistol, thinking he had the perfect opportunity. He lowered his arm to take a bead on Grant, never noticing that they were reaching the end of the arcade.

Three short concrete pylons blocked the entrance, and the gunman was headed straight for the center one. Grant wrenched his wheel to the side, and Alexa did the same. Both of them missed the pylons by inches.

The gunman wasn’t so lucky.

He hit the pylon head-on at forty miles an hour. Worse, he hadn’t taken time to latch his harness. The go-kart jolted to a stop, but the gunman flew into the air, his arms pinwheeling as he tumbled. He landed head first on the asphalt, and his body rolled through the street like a ragdoll before coming to rest.

They were out of arcades, so Alexa turned left onto the road. Grant had become disoriented in the winding alleys, but he recognized the boulevard as Trumpington Street, the same road where the department of engineering was located. If they followed it back south, they would return to the lab where surely the police would be by now.

“Keep going straight!” he shouted. Alexa raised a thumb in response.

The Range Rover blew out of a side street and nearly ran Grant over. He turned sharply and slammed on the brakes to keep from going through the front door of a tea shop. The yellow go-kart whooshed by him, intent on getting to Alexa. Dunham must have been aware that she was the key to finding the Loch Ness monster. Without her, their plans would be destroyed, not to mention the grief her death would cause Tyler.

Watching the Range Rover and go-kart converge on her, Grant was consumed by an overwhelming sense of protectiveness at the danger Alexa faced. He’d lost a woman close to him before. He wasn’t going through that again.

Grant focused his entire being on catching up with them. He stood on the gas and willed the go-kart to go faster. Alexa was weaving all over the road in attempt to shake her pursuers, which gave Grant the slim hope that he could make up the distance.

The man in the go-kart pulled next to Alexa and grabbed for her in a bid to take her hand off the wheel. He was only able to latch onto her purse strap instead. He pulled hard, and Alexa leaned awkwardly to the right. A parked car two hundred yards down the road had to be his target. If he steered her into it, she’d be killed, seatbelt or not.

Alexa shrugged out of the strap as her purse was ripped away from her. She regained control but had no room to maneuver with his kart in the way. The Range Rover was now next to the yellow kart, and Dunham had the window unrolled. She waved for the man to throw her the purse.

All of this distracted them from Grant’s pursuit. He was right behind the yellow go-kart and rammed it with his right front bumper just as the man tossed the purse up. Dunham caught it, but the action had required the man to take his hand off the wheel.

Grant’s nudge was enough to push the man’s kart sideways under the rear wheel of the Range Rover, crushing the go-kart. Its driver screamed for an instant and went silent.

At the last moment, Alexa was able to dodge and missed the parked car by inches.

The Range Rover pulled up to finish the job, Dunham brandishing her own pistol through the open window, but without warning Alexa threw the go-kart into a hard right turn and Grant followed. They raced through a gate labeled The Fitzwilliam Museum. The entryway was far too narrow for the SUV to follow. The driver kept going instead of stopping, no doubt scared off by the sound of sirens now ringing throughout the town.

Alexa circled around in the opposite direction and came to a stop next to the museum entrance. She threw off her belts and sprang wildly from her seat as if she were planning to take off at a sprint. Grant exited the go-kart and stopped her, pulling her to him.

“They’re gone! They’re gone. We’re safe. Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” she said, gulping in breaths as if she’d run a marathon. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

Grant smiled at her. “That was some amazing driving back there. You could be a pro.”

“Tyler taught me well.”

“Who knew he was good at something?”

“They took my purse.”

“I know. I couldn’t get to it in time. We’ll get you a new passport and phone in London.”

“It’s not that.”

Grant looked at her in confusion and then realized what she meant before she uttered it.

“They’ve got the book,” Alexa said. “Marlo Dunham now knows what we know.”

It was eight p.m. by the time Victor Zim and Hank Pryor filed off the P&O ferry at Dover with the other foot passengers. Using the fake passports provided by Dunham, they didn’t have any trouble getting through British customs.

Zim’s original plan had been to drop into the Versailles estate using a helicopter, but since his only chopper pilot died over Lake Shannon in Washington, he took a page from Locke and hijacked a float plane instead. Pryor, an experienced aircraft pilot, was able to fly it without much trouble before they abandoned it at a local lake to make their final getaway.

Leaving Norm Lonegan behind to be questioned by the French police didn’t bother Zim. He was a hired gun and didn’t know anything useful about their upcoming plans. And Lyle Ponder, bringing a bomb back into the plane without knowing it, deserved to be thrown out and blown up.

Pryor was the big concern. The former airplane engineer from Kansas was Zim’s greatest asset. If he were killed or taken by the cops, they’d lose their electrical genius and pilot. He wasn’t going to be able to assist in any fight and was barely passable with a weapon, but his prowess with machines had made Zim’s prison escape possible. The remote-controlled helicopter and quadcopters were works of art.

However, once this was all over, he wouldn’t mind saying goodbye to the twerp. He was an arrogant pain in the ass.

“I still think we should have stayed to kill them,” Pryor said as they walked to the pick-up area.

“For such a smart guy, you’re pretty stupid sometimes,” Zim said. “Locke and Cohen had already sent the message to his sister and Westfield. That’s how they found the book. If we had stayed, we would have gotten ourselves caught or killed for nothing.”

“But they’re telling the police everything. I’m surprised we didn’t get nabbed on the ferry.”

“I’m surprised, too. In Calais you were sweating like a pig.”

“This entire mission is now in jeopardy. They’re edging closer to getting what they need for the antidote. If they find it, then months of work will go down the drain.”

“Pryor, if you don’t stop your whining, I’ll kick your face in. We’ll see how well you can blubber through a set of broken teeth.”

“You can’t,” Pryor said, defiant. “You need me.”

Zim stared at him as they continued walking. “I don’t need anyone that much. You’ve known me long enough. Do I sound like I’m bluffing?”

Pryor opened his mouth, then closed it.

“Good,” Zim said.

The black Range Rover was in the pickup lane. Dunham nodded at them as they got in, and the driver pulled away.

“Nice job in France,” Dunham said from the front seat, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Two men lost, huh?”

“Yeah, you did so much better in Cambridge.”

“At least I got the book.”

“Do you know if they read it?”

“It looks like they did and bookmarked a page about a taxidermist named John Edmonstone. I know where we have to go.”

“How?”

“Laroche. He had me bid on two stag heads that were found in Glasgow last year. They were being sold during an estate sale. Laroche had me do some research and found that each of them was inscribed with the initials ‘J.E.’,
and they were presented as gifts to the prince to be hung at Balmoral. When the Scots realized they’d once been owned by Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, they were declared important historical objects, the stags presumably shot by the prince himself. They were taken off the market by the government so they could be put on display. One of them could be the stag head referred to in this account. Once we get access to them, it’s a simple matter of destroying what we find inside. Then this is over.”

“And we can all go our separate ways,” Pryor said.

“Thank God for that,” Zim said.

“Look,” Dunham said. “I’m not happy about this alliance either, but we’re stuck with each other. You’ll both get your money as promised, and then I never want to see you again.”

“No problem. But you better not stiff us. It’s going to take a ton of cash to live on the run.”