Gone Too Far (31 page)

“Everything ready?” Max asked.

“Yes, sir,” Alyssa said. “Just about. We expect Sam to show up in approximately fifteen minutes.”

“Good,” Max said.

“I’m not entirely sure this rates a
good
just yet,” she told him as she led Jules into the back of the Dunkin’ Donuts, into the single seat ladies’ room. She set the gym bag down on the floor. “His showing up isn’t the same as my apprehending him. He’s no fool.”

“Yes, I’m well aware of that.”

Alyssa locked the door behind them. “We’re going to be waiting for him, here in the store,” she told him. “When I approach him, I’m going to tell him not to run, that he’s not being taken into custody, that he’s got those forty-eight hours that I promised him before we bring him in.”

“Alyssa, promise him anything.” He sounded exhausted. “Just get him in here.”

“In forty-eight hours,” she repeated, but Max had already hung up. “Take off your clothes,” she ordered Jules.

“Why is it, lately, that only
women
want me to take off my clothes?”

“Please, Jules,” she begged him as she pulled her second-nicest suit out of her bag. “We have three minutes to do this. I have to get into place before Sam gets here.”

“Sam.” Jules yanked off his jacket and shirt and stripped out of his pants, his eyes sympathetic. “Sweetie, are you sure you want to do this? I mean, no one’s going to blame you if you just get into your car and drive north—all the way back to D.C. Take a few weeks off—”

“And for the rest of my life regret not doing something while I had the chance?”

“Why do you want to help Sam Starrett clean up his mess?” Jules countered. “And you know I love him dearly, Alyssa, but it is
his
mess.”

“You can’t blame him for terrorists targeting his wife,” she said.

“Actually, I can,” Jules said. “Considering if he hadn’t had the wrong wife, he wouldn’t be in this situation right now.”

Alyssa shook her head. “I didn’t want to marry him. I wouldn’t have married him.”

“Yeah, you can pretend that if you want, but I know you. You were so ready to get his name tattooed on your ass.”

“Just hurry up,” she told him.

Jules sighed. “This is going to be catastrophically bad, isn’t it? But what I can’t figure out is, which will be worse? If you fail or if you succeed?”

He opened his cell phone.

It was Alyssa, of course.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Got some information for me?” he asked. “You know, in the spirit of convincing me to meet you somewhere and take advantage of that fifty-three hours of amnesty?”

“It’s forty-eight hours and fifty-two minutes now,” she told him. “The clock started when I first made the offer.”

“That’s fair,” Sam said, pulling out into traffic, about twelve cars behind Beth Weiss’s Focus. He could let her get that far ahead, because the nearest traffic light was way down the road. If someone was following her, watching for him, he wanted to be far enough back.

“Sam.” Alyssa’s voice was husky with urgency. “Meet me. Right now. You name the place, I’ll be there. We can set it up so that you feel safe. I’m willing to do whatever you want me to do. Your rules. Max isn’t a part of this. This is just between you and me. He gave you forty-eight hours—but he didn’t say I had to tell him where we are. We’ll call in for information. You know that we’ll find Mary Lou and Haley much faster if we work together—”

“You remember that motel we stayed in?” he said, cutting her off. “Go there and get room two-fourteen.”

“Why not just meet in the parking lot?”

“Leave your side arm on your left front tire,” he told her. “And your keys locked in the car, on the passenger’s side floor.”

Up ahead, Beth’s blue Focus was signaling to make a left into the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. Way to go, Beth.

“When you get in the room, take off your clothes and cuff yourself to a chair. They had those chairs with the arms that were attached, remember?”

“Sam—”

“You said my rules.”

Alyssa was silent. He drove past the Dunkin’ Donuts, signaling to make a left into the parking lot for a paint store that was two blocks down. He’d drop Kyle here, ditch the car, then head into the parking lot for the twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart that was across the street. He would stand just inside the door of the department store and still have a clear view of the Dunkin’ Donuts, while he waited for a cab.

From that vantage point, he could see all the way into the little doughnut shop. With its big windows, it was like looking into a fish bowl. Last night he’d been able to take an inventory and had noticed that they were running low on glazed doughnuts. He’d be able to see anything that went on in there.

“Yes to the keys, no to the weapon on the wheel,” Alyssa told him. “You know I can’t leave it somewhere where it might fall into the wrong hands. I’ll leave the curtains open in the room and my side arm on the bed, where you can see it through the window—and where you can see me, too, in the chair. Clothes on.”

“If you leave your clothes on, I’ll have to search you,” he pointed out.

“Yeah,” she said, with what sounded like genuine amusement in her voice. “That’s why you wanted me to take off my clothes. So you wouldn’t have to search me.”

“Hey, I figured it was worth a try.”

“It’ll take me about fifteen minutes to get there,” she told him.

“You’re serious,” he said.

“Yes. Please be there.” She hung up.

No way was she serious. Although, damn, she sounded sincere.

Fifteen minutes . . .

First things first. If Kyle, here, walked into the doughnut shop and back out again without getting arrested, he’d think about taking a spin past that motel.

Sam turned to the kid. “Show time. Keep the hat pulled down over your face and your hands out of the pockets of your jacket. That’s important. Hands in view at all times, all right? Just walk in there and stand in the line at the counter.”

“Is someone going to shoot me?” Kyle asked. “Thinking that I’m you?”

“No,” Sam said. “Not if you keep your hands out of the jacket.”

“Who are you?” For the first time all morning there was actually a flicker of life in his eyes.

“One of the good guys,” Sam told him.

The kid snorted. “Yeah, right.” He pulled the hat down and got out of the car. “Something tells me it would’ve been easier just to suck your dick.”

“Maybe for you, but not for me,” Sam said.

“Still no sign that Starrett is following.”

Yeah, like they’d be able to spot him. Did they really think finding him was going to be
that
easy?

Sam Starrett was beyond good. He’d told her once that one of the keys to remaining invisible while following someone was to detach emotionally. Emotional energy gave the people being followed that sixth sense tingle at the back of their neck, that feeling that someone was watching them.

She tried to do the same now as she watched for him. No emotional attachment. No emotion at all . . .

Alyssa knew Sam well enough to know he wouldn’t look the way she’d expect him to look, and he wouldn’t be where she’d expect him to be.

It was a complicated game they were playing. He
knew
she was looking for him. But she knew
he
knew she was looking for him, and likewise, he knew
she
knew
he
knew, etc. etc. etc., ad nauseam.

It came down to both of them trying to second-guess each other. Would he do the obvious, simply because she’d expect him
not
to do the obvious? Or . . .?

Please God, don’t let him show up here at all. Please let him already be back at that Motel Six they’d stayed at their first night here in Gainesville. Please let him be ready to trust her.

Surely he’d figured out that both the desk clerk he’d talked to at the Sunset Motel and the roommate had given up information about Beth Weiss far too easily.

Surely he knew that the FBI had found and questioned Beth in Orlando, that they were using her as bait to reel him in.

“When he shows,” Alyssa said into her radio, “
if
he shows, I’m the one who approaches him, is that clear? No one so much as moves an inch.”

“We’ve got him,” one of the Gainesville agents said, excitement in his voice. “Heading across the parking lot.”

Alyssa looked. The height was right and so was the hair, but . . . That wasn’t Sam. She opened her mouth to tell them to hold off, to keep out of sight, that this was somebody wearing Sam’s baseball cap, someone he’d sent in to test the waters, or maybe even to be a decoy. He’d pulled that particular hat trick on her before.

He was watching to see what would happen. And what he needed to see was Hat Guy go up to the counter, order a doughnut, and walk back out—unapproached. Alyssa, after all, was supposed to be over at that motel, cuffing herself to a chair.

After Hat Guy walked away, Sam would wait a few more minutes, and then come out of wherever he was hiding. He’d be far less careful, and she’d finally be able to spot him and—

“Hold off,” she said. “We don’t know that’s him. Let’s make sure we have a positive ID. And remember,
I
approach him.”

“He’s getting closer!”

“Jules, stay out of sight,” Alyssa ordered into her microphone. “Everyone stay in place. That’s not—”

Max’s voice cut her off. “Take him down.”

“What?”
she said. “What are you
doing
?”

“I’m sorry, Alyssa. The deal was only good if Starrett took it right away.”

“I’m still negotiating the deal! Max, you’re not even here! Shit!” How could he give that order from hundreds of miles away? As Alyssa watched, twenty agents stormed Sam’s decoy, taking him down, pressing his face against the asphalt. “Oh,
shit!
”

“Sorry,” Max said again, sounding anything but.

Alyssa took off the radio headset, flinging it down as she turned and spotted . . . Sam’s hiding place. Had to be. She knew where he was and where he was going to go—out the back door. Now all she had to do was get there first. She ran for her car.

As he watched, Kyle’s baseball cap came off, and Alyssa reacted. Yeah, that’s right, sweet thing. It wasn’t him.

They were spending an awful lot of time and energy searching for him, when they should have been looking for Mary Lou and Haley.

Okay, it was definitely time to go, while Alyssa was still caught up asking Kyle all kinds of questions about Sam. He could practically hear the kid’s answers. Short hair styled and blown dry, clean shaven, dark pants and a white shirt with the collar open. Tweed sports jacket. Sam had never owned a tweed sports jacket before, not in his entire life.

Kyle pointed down the street, toward the lot where Sam had left the car. Good boy. Of course, Sam didn’t own a tweed jacket anymore. It was now sitting, abandoned, in a shopping cart in aisle 14.

He headed for the rear of the store, toward the delivery bays that exited into the back parking lot, purposely taking the aisle that featured hair care products. He grabbed a bottle of goo or gel or what-the-fuck from the shelf and squeezed some into his hand as he walked. He set the bottle down on a shelf with some disposable diapers, rubbed his hands together, and used the goop to slick his hair down and back from his face.

He’d replaced the tweed with the dark suit jacket that matched the pants and put on a rather anemic-looking yellow tie with gray flecks. It was the opposite of a power tie. It was a “don’t notice me” tie.

When he caught sight of himself in a mirror, he realized that he could have walked out the front door. No way, not in a million years, would anyone recognize him. Not even Alyssa Locke.

He wiped his hands clean on a dish towel as he crossed through housewares, and then there he was, at the door marked “Employees only.” He slowed down and stopped, pretending to look at a rack of little boys’ bathing suits as he made sure there was no one around to challenge him when he went through that door.

There were two shoppers nearby, one an elderly black woman in a housedress that didn’t cover her swollen ankles, and the other a woman or maybe even a short man in baggy jeans and an oversized shirt and a knit skull cap. They were together, talking about inflation, so Sam started toward the door, but then the androgynous one turned toward him, and—

Holy fuck, it was Alyssa Locke. She’d handcuffed him to her before he could even tell his feet to run.

“Hey, Sam. Nice tie,” she said, then yanked him through that back door.