No Escape (7 page)

Still, he looked peeved, like Peter was an annoyance he’d prefer not to deal with, a piece of gum he’d just discovered stuck to his heel. He was probably in his thirties, dark hair cropped short, cold gray eyes. “Let him up,” the guy said.

Peter felt the pressure release. He got to his feet, trying to hide the shakiness. His back ached where the knee had pushed on it. He tried to sound confident when he said, “Get the hell out of my house, or I’ll call the cops.”

The man in the suit eyed him. After a beat, he said, “You’re the son.”

His voice creeped Peter out; it was completely flat and toneless. Disinterested.

“I’m going to say it one more time. Get out.” Peter went to the phone on the desk and picked up the receiver. Held his breath the whole time, waiting for them to stop him.

The suit appeared amused. “There won’t be a dial tone. We cut the line.”

Peter pressed the on button to double-check. He was right; there was no dial tone. He went for his cell phone, which was tucked in his pocket—hopefully it hadn’t been damaged when they threw him to the ground.

But the suit held up a hand to stop him. “That signal is being jammed, too.”

Jamming a cell signal was no mean feat—as far as he knew, it required the kind of military equipment only governments could afford. Peter left his phone in his pocket. “Who are you?”

“Is anyone else in the house?” the suit asked.

Peter opened his mouth to answer, but paused. Lying seemed like a bad idea. Besides, they were searching the rest of the house so they probably already knew. “No, I’m alone.”

“And this is your computer?” As the suit approached the desk, Peter eased to the other side, keeping it between them. The guy didn’t seem to notice. He flipped it open, and glanced up when it came out of hibernation. “Password?” he asked, looking at Peter.

Peter drew himself up and tried to sound defiant as he said, “No way I’m telling you that.”

The guy shrugged. He unplugged the power cable and started to leave the room, the computer tucked under his arm.

“Hey, wait!” Peter said. “You can’t take that!”

“I just did,” the guy said without turning back.

Peter went after him. The others just watched as he passed them and followed the guy into the hall. The suit was walking briskly, like he had somewhere to be. “That’s mine. You steal it, I’ll call the cops.”

The suit stopped walking. He turned to face Peter, his expression grave. “You won’t do that.”

“Why not?”

The suit’s eyes narrowed. “Because if you do, we’ll come back. And next time we’ll take you,” he said, a note of menace in his voice.

Peter paused at that. It was just a computer, and it was automatically backed up to an external server. Still, the way the guy was acting bothered the hell out of him; like he had the right to do this, and Peter was the one in the wrong. “My folks are going to go nuts when they hear about this,” he said.

The suit smiled. “Give Bob and Priscilla my best. And tell your father to call me at his earliest convenience.”

It took Peter a second to recover from the fact that this guy seemed to know his parents, and well, from the sound of it. “Who are you?”

“My name is Mason,” he said. “Someone will be by shortly to repair the front door.”

Without breaking stride, he marched out the door and into the night.

“I told you, this is a private facility.”

“Yes, sir, I heard you. But we got a call about a fire here, and we’re not leaving without checking it out.”

Crouched beneath a boat trailer fifty feet away, Noa watched two men argue loudly at the entrance to the boatyard. A fire truck was parked in front of the open gate. The sirens had been turned off but the lights still spun, carving a steady red swath through the scene. The rest of the firefighters stood back, watching their chief argue with a security guard.

“Who called it in?”

“The harbormaster.”

“Well, he was wrong.”

“All due respect, we don’t need clearance.” The chief’s eyes narrowed. “We’re the Boston Fire Department. That gives us the right.”

“I’m under strict orders here.” The guard tugged at his shirt collar, as if it were slowly choking him. “I can’t let anyone in.”

“When we get called somewhere, we go. It’s a boatyard, not a nuclear power plant. So what’s the problem?”

“Do you even see a fire?” The security guard gestured behind himself.

The fire chief looked past his shoulder, then snorted. “Yeah, actually, I do.”

The guard pivoted. Halfway through the boatyard an oily plume of dark smoke was rising.

Noa exhaled hard, relieved. If the truck had driven away without coming inside, any hope of escape would have gone with it. She’d waited for the truck to arrive before lighting an improvised fuse: a couple of strung-together candlewicks that led to a stack of oily rags. It was the best she could manage with the limited supplies on the boat.

As soon as the fuse started smoking, the remaining guards went nuts, practically tripping over one another in their haste to track down the source. They tore past the boat a few aisles away, where she’d taken shelter. Noa waited until it sounded like most of them were gone, then ran as quickly as possible toward the red lights. And now it looked like her plan had worked—the first part of it, at least.

The guard turned back to find the chief grinning at him. “So you guys got this handled, or you want us in there? ’Cause I’m looking at about a billion dollars’ worth of boats that are about to become kindling. Then it’ll jump to those warehouses, and you’re gonna want to break out the marshmallows.”

At the mention of the warehouses, the guard blanched white. He stalked a few feet away and jabbered into a radio. A minute later he came back and waved the fire truck in.

The chief issued a cheery wave to the guard as the truck drove past. The guard closed the gate, then watched the truck turn down the main aisle. Hands on his hips, shoulders tensed, he muttered to himself. Then he ducked back inside the small hut at the entrance.

Noa stayed low, bent double as she followed the truck from a few aisles over. She’d spotted cameras on either side of the gate, four of them aimed to cover the entrance on both sides. So just strolling past was out of the question, even if she managed to distract the guard. And someone had to be watching the gate; it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out this was her escape plan.

On the other side of the gate, she’d seen a long strip of pavement stretching off into the distance. The road was lined by parking lots ensconced in high fences. After about a half mile, the pavement jigged right.

That was a lot of ground to cover. And she wouldn’t be able to make it without being seen: It was wide open, with nothing to hide behind.

Luckily, the cameras were pointed down. Bearing that in mind, she’d developed a backup plan.

Night had fallen, and the dark sweatshirt and sweatpants made it easier for her to move freely. Noa zigzagged through the boats, keeping her eyes and ears peeled for pursuers. Most seemed to have slunk back to the warehouses when the fire department responded. Having a few dozen security guards for a boatyard would probably have raised some eyebrows, she thought with a snort.

The truck stopped. Peering beneath the nearest boat, Noa watched the firefighters scramble toward the burning yacht. The fire had developed nicely—she could feel the heat of it from here, and bits of black ash swept past on the wind. A long white hose unraveled, bouncing off the blacktop as the firefighters dragged it forward at a trot.

One stayed with the truck. His focus was directed toward where the rest of his battalion had disappeared. They must have signaled him, because he suddenly deftly spun a wheel, turning the water on. The long white hose went taut.

Noa watched him, her anxiety growing. She’d hoped the firefighters would leave the truck unattended; it hadn’t occurred to her that one might stay close by. To execute her plan, she needed to get past him.

She’d already considered approaching the firefighters directly to ask for help. But that would open the door to a whole host of other problems she wasn’t ready to deal with. They’d call in Children’s Services, and Noa would be stuck dealing with social workers, judges, and cops again. No matter what had happened to her, she refused to get sucked back into the system after devoting so much effort to escaping it.

Of course, if she couldn’t manage to get out of this boatyard …

There had to be a way. Noa frowned, thinking. She still had the rest of the matches, tucked in the front pouch of her sweatshirt. Maybe another fire?

As she was digging for them, there was a sudden call from the yacht.

The firefighter’s head jerked up. “I’ll be right there!” he called out. He flipped open one of the panels set in the side of the truck, extracted something, and trotted off toward his companions.

Noa hesitated, but just for a second. No knowing how long he’d be gone, and the fire would surely be extinguished soon. She edged out from the shelter of the boat she’d been hiding behind and made her way toward the main aisle.

It seemed clear. She peered in both directions, but couldn’t make out anything except the shadows of firefighters cloaked in a wreath of dwindling smoke about a hundred feet away.
Now or never
, she told herself, drawing a deep breath.

Staying on the ball of her injured foot, she raced for the side of the truck. Awkwardly, she scrambled up the ladder mounted on the side and landed hard on top. She pressed herself flat against the roof. Panting, she strained her ears, listening for any indication that she’d been spotted.

A minute passed, then another. Nothing.

It felt like an eternity, but probably only fifteen minutes went by before she heard the chief say, “Wrap it up, folks.”

Noa lay still as they packed up their truck, chattering the whole time about what a jerk-off the guard had been. She prayed they wouldn’t have to put anything on top. Minutes passed. Finally the engine roared to life, gears whining as the truck jerked back toward the gate, going in reverse down the main aisle.

A metal beam ran the length of the roof on either side of her. Noa braced her hands and feet against it, holding on tight. Her right foot throbbed in protest where she’d cut it, but she gritted her teeth against the pain. If they accelerated sharply or went too fast, she’d be sent flying.

At last the truck cleared the gate, concertina wire retreating in the distance. Hopefully the cameras had been directed too low to catch a shot of her as they lurched past.

After a slow three-point turn, the truck faced down the road. They were driving at a leisurely pace, clearly not in any hurry now that they were headed back. As they hit the right turn, the truck slowed. Noa seized the opportunity to roll off the back. Her foot protested, sending a shock of pain all the way up her calf. The sensation knocked her off her feet, and for a second she lay in the middle of the road, curled in a ball.

The truck slowly eased out of sight. Summoning her last reserve of strength, Noa forced herself to get up and break into a trot, following it. A couple hundred yards away, the truck stopped at an intersection. The light turned green and it hooked right, joining the sweep of cars driving back to the city. Noa ran as fast as she could until she reached the road, listening the whole time for a car coming up behind her. Once there, she turned right and jogged a few more blocks before stopping. Looking up, she got her bearings. She knew this intersection; there was a T stop about a mile away.

She pulled the hood up, shading her face, and tucked her hands into the sweatshirt pouch. Shoulders hunched against the cold, Noa crossed the street and started limping toward the station.

Peter paced across his father’s office: five steps forward to the shelves filled with decorative leather-bound books, then five back to the desk where his computer had sat ten minutes earlier. He didn’t know what to do.

The rest of the guys in black had left with Mason. No one seemed particularly concerned about him once they took his computer, and he’d discovered why pretty quickly. The landline into the house had been sliced, and so had the cable, incapacitating the network. Not a huge deal—he had a satellite hookup. But after getting that set up on his father’s computer, Peter realized he didn’t even know who to contact.

He’d dug out his cell phone; there was a signal again, so they must have stopped jamming it. More than anything he wanted to talk to his parents. The familiarity with which Mason had said their names freaked him out, and Peter was suddenly convinced that something terrible must have happened to them. He’d already called three times, but neither of them was picking up, which was a really bad sign. Priscilla and Bob were never without their phones. Peter always joked that they’d be taking calls during the apocalypse. They walked around all day with Bluetooth devices jutting out of their ears. Half the time Peter would think they were talking to him, only to realize after a few sentences that they were actually engaged in a work conversation. It was one of the things he really hated about them.