The Memory Collector (47 page)

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Authors: Meg Gardiner

BOOK: The Memory Collector
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“No.”
“You’re sure—”
“Misty and Seth are dead.
Shoot
.”
She was practically screaming. He straightened. Through the wind and the night, he raised his weapon.
Jo raced through a red light. Trees and office buildings swept past under the streetlights.
Vance shouted, “Call Riva and tell her to stop this. Negotiate.”
Talk about denial. “I can’t reach the phone. Cut me loose.”
“How’d she get such good aim?”
“She has a shooter. Cut me loose.”
Misty said, “Seth, keep your head low.”
Seth piped in. “Who’s shooting? Is Murdock . . . is he . . . where’s Dad?”
Jo said, “Vance, help me or we’ll all die.”
The hard marble sound slapped through the Tahoe again.
Vance screamed. “It’s Kanan, isn’t it? He’s got a gun and he’s—Riva warned us about him and . . . ohh, God.”
“It’s Ian? Are you nuts?” Misty said.
How nuts, and what kind?
“The live kind, and pray we stay that way,” Jo said.
Above the trees in the sky ahead, a descending jetliner approached the airport perimeter fence, landing lights blazing. More jets were lined up on approach behind it.
Seth said, “Why is Dad shooting at us?”
Jo knew why. “He doesn’t know you’re in the car.”
“He’s
shooting
at us?” Seth said.
“He knows you’ve been kidnapped. He’s trying to rescue you.”
Misty gaped at Jo, her mouth slowly opening.
Seth said, “I knew Dad would come and get us.”
Kanan would never deliberately harm his family. If Jo was certain of anything, it was that. He would put himself on the line for his wife and son. He would kill to defend them.
And he wouldn’t riddle their kidnappers with bullets before they told him where his family was. He might kill them, though, if he thought his family had been rescued.
She was never going to outrun Kanan. She might outrun the pickup, but not a high-powered rifle. Through trees and industrial buildings she saw the runways and the blazing lights of the airport’s commercial terminals. At the airport were armed San Jose cops and maybe some quick-witted young national guardsmen standing watch. She had to get there.
“Misty. What did Ian do in the army?”
Jo glanced in the mirror. Misty was lying low, trying to hold Seth below the tailgate window.
Her eyes were flinty. “He was a scout sniper.”
He definitely might kill the kidnappers if he thought his family had been rescued.
Voice rising, Misty cried, “Seth, keep down.”
With a splintering, liquid
crack,
a bullet hit the back window.
38
T
he marble sound spit through the Tahoe. The plastic around the stereo splintered, sprayed, and hit Jo’s right arm. She flinched but couldn’t pull her hands from the wheel.
She was a target in a shooting gallery. Let’s play cowboys and psychiatrists.
From the floor behind her came a dribble of curses, Vance’s sniveling plea to a stunted and foul little god. When the dust flew through the vehicle, he screamed.
His arm came up, waving his pistol. “Drive faster, bitch.”
“Then cut me loose,” Jo shouted again.
She raced down Coleman and burned past another car. Maybe they’d call 911. But even if they did, and even if the police responded within a minute, a bullet needed only a second to do its work.
Like a berserk rat, Vance scrambled into the front passenger seat and grabbed for the door handle. His jeans were falling down on his skinny butt. He clawed at the handle. Got it open. The wind rushed in. Then, with a piggy squeal, he launched himself out, kicking off the driver’s seat like a swimmer off the blocks, clouting Jo in the face with his shoe.
Her head snapped sideways. Stars flared in her eyes. The Tahoe’s back wheels rolled over an obstacle. It felt like hitting a log, or Snoop Clodd.
Misty clambered into the front passenger seat. In her right hand she held a pair of scissors. The blades were long, sharp, and bloody.
“You stabbed him?” Jo said.
“In the ass.”
Affection bubbled in Jo’s chest. “Please, be my best friend.”
Hunching low, Misty reached across the car with the scissors and tried to cut the zip ties that bound Jo to the steering wheel.
“Hold still,” she said.
“Fat chance.”
The Tahoe had power but steered like a fridge-freezer. The shears veered back and forth, dagger points swinging near her wrist.
“Don’t watch me, watch the road,” Misty said.
“Mom
warned
me about driving with scissors.”
“I’m a nurse. If I slit your wrist, I’ll stick on a Little Mermaid Band-Aid and give you a lollipop.”
“I’m a shrink. If you slit my wrist, I’ll have to section myself.”
Calder’s headlights swelled in the rearview mirror, blinding white.
“We have to get to the airport main terminal and surround ourselves with cops,” Jo said.
“Freeway. Eight-eighty, entrance is up ahead.”
Jo could see the overpass a quarter-mile down the road. From there, getting to the main terminals by freeway would take five minutes.
“No time.”
Ahead she saw one of the side streets that led to the private aviation terminals. She slammed on the brakes and slid around the corner. Misty lurched against the dashboard.
“Sorry.”
Jo didn’t know she could push her foot so hard against the gas pedal. She didn’t know if they were going to make it. She boomed past a darkened business park. Misty jammed the scissors under the zip tie around Jo’s right wrist, squeezed the grip with both hands, and snapped the plastic.
The gate to the airfield lay dead ahead at the end of the street.
She held the wheel steady. “Scissors.”
Misty handed them to her.
“Murdock put his phone on the dash. Look on the floor,” Jo said.
Driving with her left hand, Jo worked the blades around the plastic cuff and snapped it. Misty fumbled around and came up with the phone. Peripherally Jo saw her squinting at the display, dialing a number. She was near tears. Ducking low, Misty put the phone to her ear and peered around the seat to look out the back window.
“Ian’s not answering.”
In the rearview mirror Jo saw the pickup take the turn onto the side road badly. It overcorrected and ran toward the curb, splashing water from the gutter. Kanan had a rifle in his arms.
“Seth, you okay?” Misty called.
No answer.
Misty raised her head. “Seth?”
“Mom . . . I’m hurt.”
“Jesus.” Misty scrambled between the seats and dived into the far back.
Jo looked at the speedometer. She was going eighty-five. Her eyes jinked to the mirror, trying to see the boy. All she saw, through a back window peppered with bullet holes, were Calder’s headlights.
She looked ahead. The Tahoe swallowed ground, speeding toward the airfield gate. Beyond it were the cherry-red lights of the airfield.
Okay,
now.
“Hang on.”
She braced herself. The gate was a simple swing-arm, painted red and white, with a control pad on the driver’s side to swipe the field pass. She didn’t know if it was wood or steel, whether it would splinter when she hit it or come through the windshield at sixty-five miles per hour.
She hit it going ninety. Metal shrieked. The gate clanged out of her way, flinging sparks like a sharpening wheel, and she drove onto the airfield apron.
“Is Seth hit?” she said.
Misty’s voice came back, screwed down tight. “Shoulder, through and through.”
Jo hurtled past a corporate aviation terminal, plush and brightly lit. Its plate-glass windows overlooked the runways, but she couldn’t see anybody moving around inside. She drove past parked cars and past parked single-engine planes.
Surely Calder wouldn’t follow her. She couldn’t. Even she wasn’t crazy enough to conduct a running gun battle on an active runway at a major metropolitan airport. Jo looked in the mirror.
Kanan saw the Tahoe smash aside the airfield gate like it was a spatula. He held on to the rifle and braced against the sunroof. He felt the pickup slow.
He leaned down and looked at Riva. “Follow them.”
She looked up in shock. “No.”
“Go, damn it.”
“Out onto the airfield? That’s insane.”
Why was she looking at him like that? Why did she suddenly seem to think everything was screwed? She slowed the truck even further, approaching the broken gate, and looked around.
In the distance, on the tarmac outside a private hangar, he saw the Chira-Sayf corporate jet. The stairs were down, the lights on. It was being prepped for a flight.
He reached behind his back and pulled out the HK pistol jammed in the waistband of his jeans. Left-handed, he aimed it down at Riva’s head.
“The people who killed my family are not getting away. Drive.”
Staring in the rearview mirror, Jo willed the headlights of the pickup to turn around and disappear. The truck was falling behind. It hadn’t come through the gate onto the airfield.
With a burst of speed, it accelerated.
“God, they’re following,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”
Kanan wouldn’t so recklessly chase people he thought had kidnapped his family, even if he thought they were close to getting away, would he?
No. He would chase people he thought had killed his family.
He would kill them. He would lose himself to avenge Seth and Misty. He would go crazy.
She raced past hangars and private jets along the apron. Obviously, pitifully, there was no security on this side of the airport. She swept by the Chira-Sayf jet. In the distance, across the taxiway, beyond the dark slash of the active runways, were the commercial terminals.
She checked the mirror again. Calder was behind her on the apron and gaining.

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