Authors: Meg Gardiner

The Memory Collector (45 page)

BOOK: The Memory Collector

11.23Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads

“What do I do now?” Jo said.

Murdock shifted and exhaled. “You wait.”

Kanan kept the truck idling at the curb and surveilled the area. Traffic on Coleman Avenue was sporadic. Three hundred eighty-five meters to the east, an American Airlines 757 taxied into takeoff position. Two hundred forty-five meters north, in the parking lot of a commercial building, two parked cars sat cold and empty.

A tap on the passenger window startled him.

He turned, and anger washed over him. Then confusion. “Riva?”

He unlocked the door. She jumped in the cab.

“What happened to you?” he said.

She touched a hand to the blistered red burn mark on her forehead. “Accident.”

She was breathing fast and her pupils were dilated. She leaned too close and put a hand on his arm.

“This is it.” Her hand was hot. “I’m scared.”

“It?”

Confusion clouded her face. “Yes—Ian, I called you. What—”

“The exchange?”

“Yes, of course. I don’t—”

“What did the kidnappers say? Just tell me. We get Misty and Seth back, and then I’ll explain everything.”

“I don’t—Ian, please . . .”

He pulled his arm away from her. “I don’t think we have any time left. What do I need to do?”

She lowered her hand to her lap but kept looking at him like he was a drug, a hit of crack she wanted.

A look of hurt and self-restraint came over her. She got out her phone. “We tell them we’re here.”

Jo was wound like a countersunk screw. The zip ties cut into her wrists. The SUV idled like a disgruntled bear.

Murdock’s phone rang. He put it to his ear, listened, and said, “Got it.”

He climbed over the center console, slid his sausage body into the front passenger seat, and pointed ahead. “Drive up to the next block and cut back over to Coleman.” He put the SUV in gear. “Slow and steady, chickie.”

She drove slowly up the side street.

Chaos was the world’s great leveler. It entered lives with neither forethought nor purpose and cut like a scythe through the dreams and plans of everybody it touched. For years she had convinced herself that this truth must be acknowledged. And now that chaos was here, hell if she was going to accept it.

She knew she couldn’t control the chaos. But she could try to control what happened to her and the Kanan family. She could try to get them all out of this.

She glanced in the rearview mirror. She saw Misty’s eyes staring back, deeply frightened. And determined.

The red digital clock on the dashboard read 10:17. She drove up a block, turned left, crossed through another darkened business park, and turned left again onto the broad sweep of Coleman Avenue.

“Pull over,” Murdock said.

She stopped at the curb facing south. “The stuff that Kanan’s going to exchange is extremely volatile. Nobody should be around it. And especially not at an airport.”

“Shut it,” Murdock said.

Vance said, “What if she’s telling the truth?”

“I said, shut it. All of you.” Murdock straightened and stared out the windshield. “Here we go.”

Several hundred yards down the road, parked facing them on the other side, was the pickup truck. It sat, headlights bright, idling.

Kanan peered up Coleman Avenue. An SUV had turned this way from a side street and pulled to the curb several hundred meters away. It looked like a Chira-Sayf corporate SUV, one of those brawny vehicles his brother loved and trusted.

He forced his eyes to focus. He forced his mind to concentrate. He forced his heart to still.

The SUV was a blue Chevy Tahoe. Misty’s Tahoe. It held his family.

Hold on to that,
he told himself. He was seconds away. He could almost touch them, almost feel Misty in his arms, hear Seth calling his name. They were real, they were there, they were coming home.
Hold on to it.

Riva rustled through his backpack. “Where is it?”

“The computer battery.”

She took it out, weighed it in her hand. And she smiled. It looked like joy. Like victory.

“Ian,” she said.

He looked at her.

“What did the kidnappers tell you before you went to Africa?” she said.

“That I had till Saturday to get the sample of Slick for them, or my family wouldn’t survive.”

“Do you know what day it is?” she said.

He searched, found nothing but blank space. “No.”

She leaned toward him an inch. “It’s Sunday.”

“What?”

She took a pen from her pocket, a fat black Sharpie, and pulled off the cap.

His pulse soared. “What are you talking about? If it’s Sunday, and I didn’t turn Slick over . . .”

She took his arm and pushed his sleeve up. Words were written on his forearm.

Christ. His heart thundered. Riva pressed the Sharpie to his skin and began to write.

The thunder filled his head like water roaring over falls. Those words . . . it wasn’t . . . no . . .

He grabbed the pen from Riva and jerked his arm away. He looked again at the Tahoe parked at the curb up the road. It held his family.
Hold on to that thought
.

Wrong, Riva was wrong,
this
was wrong.

A pimped-out Honda rushed past, low-profile tires and mag wheels shining, hip-hop bass booming from the speakers. The smell of the ink was sharp and intoxicating and cleared his head.

He was behind the wheel of a truck. He had a pen in his hand. Words

“Ian ,”someo ne said. He was behind the wheel of a truck. He had a pen in his hand. Words were written on his flesh.

He turned his head. Riva Calder was in the passenger seat of Nico Diaz’s tricked-out pickup.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

He looked at his arm. His world crashed down around him.

Saturday they died.

J
o watched out the windshield. Her heart was hammering.

Down Coleman Avenue, the pickup truck idled at the curb, headlights glaring. Murdock hung up the phone.

“Riva’s all set. Hang on. We do this and everybody goes home. Five minutes.”

But the other car didn’t move. Jo’s stomach twisted tighter.

All set.
That meant Kanan had to have Slick with him.

Jo tried to put it together. Kanan didn’t know that Calder was behind everything. She had, until tonight, managed to stay in the background. If he was willing to sit in the pickup talking to her, he must think she was an innocent colleague, helping him out of a desperate situation.

Calder knew her plan was near ruin. Unless she was in denial or remarkably stupid, she would see only one option left: to flee. And she wasn’t stupid. She was ruthless. She was going to run. And she wouldn’t run without Slick.

And she would want as clean a getaway as possible. Her accomplices, Murdock and Vance, were not top-shelf conspirators. They struck Jo as opportunists and cowards. They didn’t strike her as men who would stay silent and go down for Riva Calder. If the police caught them, they would flip for a deal.

Riva had to know that. So what was she going to do about it?

“Oh, my God,” she said.

Calder planned to climb aboard Chira-Sayf’s company plane and fly to freedom. She wanted to take two things with her. And those were not Sausage and Scrambled Eggs, mouth-breathing in the Tahoe with Jo. They were Slick and Ian Kanan.

In the pickup truck down the road, Calder had them both.

Her magic getaway carpet was loaded with Jet A and waiting on the far side of the airport perimeter fence. With sickening clarity, Jo heard Riva telling Murdock,
I’ll give you the field pass when I come back.

She didn’t plan to come back. She planned to split and cheat her partners out of their share of the profits.

“Murdock, this is bad,” Jo said. “There’s no good reason for Riva to sit there in the pickup. Something’s squirrelly.”

“You made a mess of my evening, that’s what’s squirrelly.”

“She’s going to run, and she doesn’t want to leave witnesses.” Because she wanted to give herself a head start. Because she hated Misty. “Put the car in gear. I want to be able to get out of here.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Jo turned to him. “Murdock, she’s going to double-cross you.”