The Tin Man (9 page)

He turned on her with a scathing
glare. “As if what? Go ahead, Thea. Don’t pull any punches. What were you going to say? That I act as if I don’t give a rat’s arse?”

“I’m sure you do,” she said,
obviously backpedaling.

“You’re damn right I do
,” he bellowed in earnest. “But what would you have me do? Sit around licking my wounds and feeling sorry for myself? If I do that, they’ve beaten me. Can’t you see that? And if I let them win, all those good, innocent people will have died in vain.” He licked his lips, preparing to lob a grenade in her lap. “And you won’t get the best story of your career.”

The
scorching gaze she shot his way turned his balls to dehydrated figs. “Is that why you think I’m here? For the fucking story?”

“Why else?”
he asked, shrugging.

She folded her arms
gruffly across her chest, shifted in her seat, and looked out the window. He could feel the fury radiating off of her in waves.

He drove on, feeling
vindicated, but holding his tongue. The cool night wind coming through the busted-out window felt good on his face. He was tired and it looked as though it might be some time before he got the chance of sleep. He took a drag before letting the breeze take the exhaled smoke and excess ash. Thea’s silence was deafening.

“W
as it something I said?”

“
Bite me.”

Brilliant.
He’d hit a nerve. Maybe she’d think twice before giving him more of her sanctimonious Shite.

* * * *

Quinn Davidson, publisher of the
New York News
, dashed across the roof of the parking garage. Icy rain bombarding, he sank his gloved hands deeper into the pockets of his camelhair overcoat. A jumbo jet, heading toward LaGuardia, passed over just as he reached his car—a sleek new Jaguar hybrid sports coupe. He barely noticed the airliner’s roaring engines; he was still too caught up in the unsettling conversation he’d just had with Milo Osbourne, his counterpart at Golden Age Media, Inc.

“Some hot-shot take-over artist has snapped up a controlling bloc of shares,”
Osbourne had blurted as soon as he returned his call. “Please, Quinn. I’m desperate. I need you and Titan to come in as my White Knight.”

Pull his fat from the fire, in other words. The Black Knight,
Osbourne claimed, was hell-bent on ruining him. He sounded distraught, which was understandable. It was common knowledge that Golden Age, a family legacy, was the unscrupulous old fart’s
raison d’être
.

Davidson never cared much for
Osbourne—or his tactics. It galled him no end the way Osbourne deliberately skewed the news to manipulate rather than inform public opinion. Still, perhaps this was opportunity knocking—a chance to set Osbourne on the path toward journalistic integrity. In the end, Davidson agreed to meet later to iron out the details of the deal, including how to clear the regulatory hurdles. Given the newspapers they owned between them, a merger would create a monopoly even the bribe-blinded attorney general couldn’t ignore.

“Don’t worry about that,”
Osbourne assured him. “The watchdogs are being muzzled.”

Before the meeting, Davidson was heading home to take his kids trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, as he did every year. After putting them to bed, he and Diana—-his wife of twelve years
—would enjoy a romantic dinner for two. The thought of her then, still so beautiful at fifty-three, filled him with warmth. They might be an old married couple now, but they were just as much in love today as they’d been on their honeymoon.  

The parking deck, he noticed then, was darker than usual. Had some of the security lights burned out? Ever vigilant about safety and liability, he glanced around, noting with dismay that some of them had been broken. That was when he noticed the van parked several spaces away from his Jag. It was black and the windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see inside. There was an airbrushed image on the side of what looked like a bearded (and naked) Greek God
—was it Zeus?—wielding a thunderbolt. There were words underneath. He strained to make them out.
Tartarus Taxi.
How odd. Tartarus, he knew from his Harvard days, was the purgatorial pit of torture reserved for the worst offenders in classical mythology.

He felt a fleeting amusement.
Some of the guys from the mailroom no doubt passing around a joint. He wasn’t going to bust them—he had toked his share back in the day—but why had the night guard let them into the executive lot?

Scowling with disapproval, he glanced over his shoulder toward the booth, but his view was obscured by the sleet, now coming down in silver sheets. Damp and shivering, he moved more quickly toward his car, pulling his overcoat tighter around his body. He twirled at the sound of footsteps, freezing in fear when a figure emerged from the shadows. He had on a tan trench coat, hands buried deep in the pockets, and wore outdated sideburns and a shaggy, side-parted haircut. Davidson caught a whiff of something. Was the man wearing women’s perfume?

The stranger stopped fewer than ten feet away, but said nothing.

“Who are you?” the CEO demanded, meeting dark eyes. “What do you want?”

“I am Mr. Wint,” the man said in an accent that sounded Russian or maybe Czech.

“What do you want?” Davidson asked again, fear cracking his voice.

Wint pulled a pistol from his coat pocket. Davidson staggered backward in mortal terror. He thought about running, but there was nowhere to take cover apart from his car, and something told him he’d never make it that far. Dissolving into panic, he shrank backward, put his hands out defensively, and started stammering. “Please. Don’t. I’m begging you. I have a family. A wife and kids.”

“Bully for you
.”

The bullet struck Davidson
in the chest, knocking him back. He fell hard on the wet concrete, numb with shock, limbs twitching. The wound seared like a red-hot poker. A crimson circle spread like an inkblot on the front of his starched white shirt.

Wint
knelt beside him. Something glinted in his hand. A box cutter. It hurt like hell when it pierced the flesh of Davidson’s forehead, but he was too far gone to protest. As Wint sliced, blood streamed into the publisher’s eyes. He closed them, flashing on his family. They’d be trick-or-treating without him from now on.

“Why?” he
rasped through encroaching darkness.

Rather than answer,
Wint reached inside Davidson’s camelhair coat, removed his cell phone, and placed a call.

“Are we almost there?” Buchanan flicked a glance toward Thea, still gazing out the window in stony silence. “I’m so knackered I can barely see straight.”

It had been more than an hour since they argued
and the tension between them was still as thick as Scots oats.

“Do you want me to drive?”
she asked. The words were friendly enough, but her tone sure wasn’t.

“That depends
,” he said. “How much farther do we have to go?”

“
We should be getting close.”

He glanced at the rear-view mirror, expecting at any moment to see the
killers. The road ahead was an endless stretch of asphalt—one long drag strip with nowhere to hide. He looked at the gas gauge. It was almost full. He hoped to hell, when the time came, the Land Rover could outrun whatever vehicle might be in hot pursuit.

“You
should get off the main highway,” she told him, “and go in the back way.”

Buchanan
, scoffing, made a quick survey of the surrounding scenery. It was pitch black out and there was nothing as far as the eye could see but trees, their leaves trembling in the wind.

“Are you telling me this
isn’t
a back road?”

“It m
ight look remote,” she said, still facing the window, “but trust me, this is the interstate.”

“
There’s a road atlas in the pocket behind your seat,” he informed her. “Have a look and tell me where to go.”

“I don’t need a map to do that,” she
remarked, smirking as she twisted around to retrieve the map book.

He flipped on the
reading light as she set it on her lap and began thumbing through. A tractor-trailer thundered past on the other side of the metal guardrail. A big green sign sprang up on the right. Its iridescent white letters read:

Coatesville

1 mile

“There’s an
off-ramp coming up, should I take it?”

S
he studied the map, finger tracing the line of the roadway. “That should take us toward Wagontown, so, yeah, go ahead and get off.”

He put on the turn si
gnal and moved over, taking the off-ramp, which dropped them onto a two-lane highway. Houses with sprawling, manicured lawns and split-rail fences sprang up on either side of the road. Wee farms with rambling pastures and pristine houses zoomed by on both sides.

As he sailed past a speed-limit sign, he checked the speedometer. The maximum speed was
forty-five and he was doing sixty. Reflexively, he eased his foot off the gas and tapped the brake, slowing to fifty. A few minutes later, he came up behind a car pulling a horse trailer. When he crossed the double-yellow line to pass it, Thea shot him a dirty look.

“That’s illegal.”

Her tone was superior. Buchanan rolled his eyes, but bit back the insult burning on his tongue.

They passed a school, a church, more farms, towering grain silos,
rows of mailboxes posted by the side of the road, awaiting word from the outside world. The trees vanished. A low bank of dark hills appeared on the horizon. He glanced again in the rearview mirror, jolting when he saw a car coming up fast behind them with the headlamps off.

“Shit.”

“What?”

“There’s someone
back there.”

Out of the edge of his eye, he saw her pick up her purse and pull out her gun.
Clutching it, she twisted around to look out the rear.

“It’s a Mustang, I think
,” she told him. “Late model.”

“Can you see
anyone?”

“
It’s too dark,” she said, “but they’re gaining on us—rapidly.”

He
tightened his grip on the wheel and hit the gas. The car surged forward. He checked the mirror again. Fuck. They, too, had sped up. He pressed the accelerator to the floor. The Mustang pursued, narrowing the gap. They flew past a sign. White Horse. Another fucking farming town.

They were pushing
ninety and the Mustang was still hot on their tail. Farmhouses, barns, and pastures whizzed past in a blur. A police cruiser went by in the opposite direction, then hung a screeching U-turn. Buchanan floored it. The Mustang vanished instantly. Red and blue lights started flashing in the mirror accompanied by a wailing siren.

“What are you doing?”
Thea screamed. “We’ll be arrested.”

“Would you rather be s
hot?”

Whatever she said next, he didn’t hear. His mind was racing, his
gaze darting from the speedometer to the mirror. The cop was gaining. The needle, shimmying, was pushing to the left. He was sweating bullets. His knuckles were white on the wheel. His mouth felt like a sock.

“What about the guns?”
Her voice was frantic.

“Take mine,” he said, “and stash both of them under the seat.
”

He wasn’t about to shoot a cop. And he’d rather not give
the cop a reason to shoot him.

“But
—”

“
Just do it,” he barked.

S
he leaned in and plucked the Glock off his lap. The next moment, she had the window down and was leaning out. He heard the blast, then skidding tires. He checked the mirror. The cruiser was spinning. He watched as it jumped the shoulder and rolled.

“Jesus
wept,” he bellowed. “Are you mad?”

“Shut up and drive.”

What the bloody hell was she thinking? Now every state trooper in Pennsylvania would be looking for them—along with the Arabs in the Ford.

“I’ve got a plan,” she
told him.

“
Aye, well,” he said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “I’m glad to hear it. Because I thought you were just being rash.”

He
eased off the gas to a cruising speed of eighty. He could hear nothing but the drone of the engine. He desperately wanted a cigarette, but didn’t dare. He had to be ready for anything, which meant keeping both hands free.

“Give me back my gun
,” he demanded.

When she set it on his lap, he caught a whiff of her
hair, which had a pleasant honeysuckle smell that made him think of Kelsey. Rage reared up inside him like a wild stallion. He began to hope he would get another shot at the men in the Mustang. He wanted them dead in the worst way, wanted them to pay for what they had done.