Pit Stop (3 page)

Garber's expression clouded, then morphed from confusion to concern. “Yes, she does, but—why?”

Reilly handed him back his phone. “Call her.”

KELLY COULDN'T TAKE HER EYES
off the man.

When you're a kid, everyone tells you to be wary of strangers. She was old enough now to realize anyone could present a threat, but when she was younger, she imagined strangers as evil-looking people. Long, pointy noses, devil ears. Thick eyebrows and bad teeth.

This man just looked like an ordinary person. He could have been someone her dad worked with, one of his crew that built and fixed houses.

But there was something about the eyes. They were cold.

Worse than cold. They were dead.

When the man glanced over at her, and she looked into those eyes, she thought about when her dad took her to the Central Park Zoo on one of their trips into the city. She and her dad did everything together since her mom had died. She remembered the reptile exhibit, and how when they looked through the glass, you couldn't tell if they were really looking at you or not.

Creepy eyes.

She noticed something else about him, too. He kept touching that cylinder, the thing that looked like a narrow Thermos, that was tucked between his thigh and the center console.

Kelly was thinking about that when the sound of her own cell phone made her jump. It was in her small purse, which was on the seat beside her.

“That you?” Kristoff asked, his head snapping right.

“Yeah.” She took out the phone, looked at it, saw that it was her dad. She couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to her to call him before now, but she was so scared, she wasn't thinking straight.

“Well,” Kristoff said, “you better answer it.”

She did. “Dad! A man stole the truck! I'm in the truck!”

Glen said, “I know, sweetheart. I'm with a . . . I'm with a policeman. We're following you. Are you okay? Has he hurt you?”

Kelly glanced at the man. “He hit my arm when I tried to take out the key. But it doesn't hurt that much.”

“Honey, everything's going to be okay. We just have to figure out how—”

“Give me the phone,” Kristoff said to Kelly. When she hesitated, his eyes narrowed and his voice dropped an octave. “Now.”

Kelly handed it over. Kristoff put it to his ear and said, “You're the kid's dad?”

“No,” said Reilly. “It was. Now it's me.”

Kristoff smiled. “That's you in that little wagon behind me, isn't it? The Vega? Those things didn't run when they were new forty years ago. Unless it's got a rocket launcher on it, I think you're screwed.”

“Let the kid go, Faustus. Keep the truck but let the kid out.”

Kristoff chuckled. “I think when I hit you in the head you suffered some kind of brain damage.”

“You pull over, and I'll pull over at the same time. There'll be half a mile between us. Let the kid out. I'll drop her dad off. Then it'll just be you and me. We don't need a whole lot of collateral damage here.”

That prompted a second chuckle from Kristoff. “Seriously? The collateral damage I had in mind amounts to a lot more than one little girl.” He leaned harder on the accelerator. “You're getting smaller in my rearview. You're gonna have to pedal harder.”

The Ford edged up toward eighty-five. The truck cleared a stand of trees, and parked there, tucked in behind them, was a state police car.

Kelly whipped her head around to see the car as they sped past
it, then said to the man, “I think he had radar. You're gonna get a ticket,” with a hint of satisfaction, like he was
really
in trouble now.

“Son of a bitch,” Kristoff said, tossing the phone into a tray in the console. He glanced in his mirror. The police car was shooting out of its hiding spot and hitting the highway, back tires drifting.

Siren on, lights flashing.

IN THE VEGA, REILLY SAID
, “Son of a bitch.”

“What?” Garber said. “He's got the cops after him. Isn't that a good thing?”

Reilly said nothing.

“LOOKS LIKE WE'RE GOING TO
have some fun,” Kristoff said.

The cruiser was one of those souped-up Crown Vics, an Interceptor. Kristoff knew he could outrun Reilly's commandeered Vega, but the cruiser was another matter.

It was gaining on him. Gaining on him fast.

He couldn't outrun it, and he couldn't outhandle it. But one thing this Ford had over the Crown Vic was bulk.

Maybe Kristoff could run it off the road. But he'd have to let it catch him first.

Kelly was twisted around in her seat, watching the cruiser close the distance.

“You better pull over,” she told him. “You're gonna get a
huge
ticket. And he's going to put you in jail for stealing my dad's truck.”

“Shut up.”

The cruiser was coming up in the passing lane, siren continuing to wail. When it was only a car length behind, the officer behind the wheel was pointing to the shoulder, ordering Kristoff to pull over.

Kristoff hit the brakes. Once, hard.

The Interceptor was suddenly alongside.

Which was when Kristoff cranked the wheel suddenly to the left, ramming the pickup truck's front fender into the cruiser.

The Interceptor swerved over to the left shoulder, the left wheels rolling over the rounded edge. At that point, the driver couldn't right it, couldn't regain control and get the car back onto the pavement.

The cruiser barreled into the grassy median, spun around twice before coming to a halt in a spray of dirt and dust and grass.

Kristoff was looking in the driver's door mirror, smiling. “I think your dad's gonna be pissed about his fender,” he said, and glanced over at Kelly.

He didn't like what he saw.

Kelly was holding the cylinder. While Kristoff had been occupied with the cruiser, she'd reached over the console and grabbed it.

Now she was clutching it in her right hand, holding it up by the open window.

“Let me out,” Kelly said. “And give my dad back his truck.”

“CHRIST!”

Half a mile back, Glen Garber's heart imploded as he watched the police cruiser's high-speed tussle with his pickup truck. He watched helplessly, his fingers squeezing the armrest until all the blood had rushed out of them, as the cars collided—then he breathed out as the cruiser spun off to the side and disappeared in a cloud of dust in the median.

He glanced left at Reilly, who was also fixated on the drama up ahead. “You need to call your people and get them to back off. You can't put Kelly at risk with another face-off like that. This
guy—what was it you called him, Faustus?—he's not gonna give up lightly, is he?”

“I didn't expect him to.”

Glen pointed angrily at the phone. “Then call your people. They need to steer clear of him. We've got a phone link into him, we can speak to him. Negotiate. I don't know, just—no more of this
Fast and Furious
bullshit. My kid's in that truck.”

Reilly peeled his eyes off the receding pickup truck long enough to take in Garber's scowling face, then stared ahead again and nodded.

“I'll send out an alert. Make sure no one engages him. But we can't just let him ride off into the sunset. Even if he does let your daughter go. We need to make both things happen. We need to get her back, but we also need to grab him.”

“Why?” Garber shot back. “Kelly's the only thing that matters here. Even if he gets away, you'll find him again. You guys always do.”

“It's not that simple.”

“It is for me. We get Kelly back. Priority one, remember? Then you use your drones and your keyword surveillance and facial recognition software and all the other tricks you guys have these days and you go in and grab him.
After
I have my daughter back.”

Reilly grimaced. He hated moments like this. He wanted to say something to get this man to understand the seriousness of the matter, the utterly unthinkable consequences that might well occur if his quarry were to get away. But he couldn't tell him everything. Not when it was that classified. Not when security protocols dictated who could know the truth and who couldn't.

Garber seemed to read his hesitation, as he pressed on. “Who is this guy? And what kind of a name is Faustus? I mean, Christ, it sounds like something Stan Lee dreamed up.”

“I wish it was,” Reilly said.

“So who is he?”

Reilly weighed his words carefully. “He's a guy with a grudge. A really big grudge. And right now, he's got the means to get himself some serious payback.”

Garber went quiet for a second, then said, “A grudge? Against who?”

Reilly slid a glance across at him. “Everyone.”

UP AHEAD, KRISTOFF HAD TO
fight to yank his eyes off the canister in the girl's hands and make sure he kept the truck on the road. That damn girl—after everything he'd been through, after everything he'd done to get to where he was now, even if it was in the middle of nowhere, far from the nearest big city where he could unleash the demon he'd risked everything to get his hands on—she had it in her power to ruin it all.