The Fugitive Factor Page 8

  “Not without you,” Aiden said firmly.

  “Yes, without me. If that’s what it takes.”

  “No,” he repeated. “We’re in this together. Deal with it.”

  “I was dealing with it!” she stormed. “I was ready to take my lumps for the family. But don’t you see? We’re both trapped now! This place is crawling with police!”

  “Yeah, how about that, Meg? You were ready to slice a cop!”

  “Not a cop!” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Hairless Joe.”

  “Hairless Joe?” Aiden pulled up short. “What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “He’s here!”

  He stared at her in disbelief. “But — ” There were a dozen reasons why that made no sense at all.

  “I just saw him in the parking lot,” Meg insisted.

  “Hairless Joe? Our Hairless Joe? You’re positive?”

  “I never forget a psycho. He’s tracking us, Aiden! He must have found out I was with the Brookline police. That’s why you shouldn’t be here. Now the two of us are in danger!”

  “Not for long,” Aiden grunted with determination.

  “That’s easy for you to say. You can just waltz out the way you waltzed in. I’m a prisoner here. My only ticket out is with J. Edgar Giraffe.”

  He stiffened. “Harris? He’s coming for you?”

  Meg shrugged miserably. “Him or someone just like him. What difference does it make? Either way, I’m not leaving unless it’s on the arm of some cop.” She frowned at the look of inspired purpose on her brother’s face. “What?”

  And then she followed his gaze into the closet.

  The uniforms! Aiden was going to dress himself up as a police officer and try to march her straight out the front door.

  It was brilliant — or possibly very, very stupid. But one thing was clear to Meg. It was their only chance.

  She joined him at the closet, searching for a set of dress blues to fit Aiden’s slender frame.

  “This one feels okay.” He pulled the papers of Frank Lindenauer’s motor vehicle file out of his pants and stuffed them in the jacket pocket.

  “What’s that?” Meg asked.

  “I’ll explain later.” He felt around for the buttons and found them on the wrong side. “Wait a minute — this is a woman’s uniform!”

  “It’s not my fault you’re a beanpole.” Meg drew the slacks off the hanger and handed them over. “Hurry up. Hairless Joe could be here any minute.”

  Aiden scrambled out of his khakis and pulled on the striped trousers. They were a little short, but not obviously so.

  Meg fastened the high military collar, pulling it up to conceal his polo shirt. “Nice mustache, incidentally,” she told him. “Looks like somebody glued a caterpillar to your face.”

  He was irritable. “It was more convincing before you put that door through my sinuses. It wasn’t meant for soaking up blood.”

  “Hold still.” She got down to her knees and painted his white socks and sneakers with black shoe polish. It wasn’t perfect — not by a long shot. But with any luck, nobody would be examining his feet.

  “Ready?” Aiden breathed.

  She nodded nervously. “Shouldn’t I be handcuffed or something?”

  “Here.” He brought her wrists gently together and draped a Brookline PD windbreaker over them. “Stay close to me. And look under arrest.”

  As they stepped out of the crash pad, Meg glanced back at the piece of paper she had placed on the pillow of the folding cot.

  “What’s that?” her brother asked.

  “Nothing.” She closed the door behind them. “Let’s go.”

  Aiden marched his sister down the corridor, his face carved from granite. It was an expression he had witnessed on others more times than he cared to remember — the humorless, impassive expression of a policeman escorting a manacled Mom or Dad. After all the Falconer family had been through, the effort of playing captor made him sick.

  Too much thinking! he scolded himself. Getting out was all that mattered.

  The third floor was still deserted, but the stairs were another story. They passed an officer on the first flight down, and two more on the next. The experience of being looked over by three cops was like an interrogation by enemy spies. But to Aiden’s amazement, nobody stopped the escaping siblings. One of the officers even wished Aiden a grunted “Welcome aboard.”

  He thinks I’m a new recruit!

  They reached the ground level and turned down the central hallway. Okay — barely a football field to go. But it was a teeming, chaotic hundred yards that confronted them. At least eighty people lay between the Falconers and the exit, half of them police personnel.

  Meg had never seemed younger — or more terrified. Aiden grimaced from the effort of maintaining his cop face. Ahead lay only peril, but there was no turning back.

  They began to walk through the milling crowd. Blue uniforms were all around them, jostling their elbows and shoulders. They did not stop, did not even dare to turn their heads to the left or right. At one moment, the windbreaker slipped from Meg’s wrists, revealing that she wore no handcuffs. Aiden shrugged the jacket back into place before anybody noticed.

  Fifty yards …

  No celebration — not yet. But we’re making it. Nobody’s giving us a second glance.

  The thought had barely crossed Aiden’s mind when someone did give them a second glance. In fact, the man stared at them so hard that his eyes nearly shot sparks.

  He was in plainclothes like a detective, with a police badge clipped to his shirt pocket.

  But this was no detective.

  Aiden made the identification in an instant, just as Meg had done. The broad, muscular frame, the shiny bald dome, the ferocious expression …

  He was looking at Hairless Joe.

  He heard Meg gasp, and chomped down hard on the inside of his cheek to contain his own reaction.

  The dilemma tore him in two. They had to get away. But the cops would be all over Meg if she tried to run. They were caught — at the mercy of this man who had tracked them from Vermont, who had shot Miguel Reyes, who had already tried to murder them once before.

  Immobilized by fate, overpowered by dread, they could only wait for their enemy to attack.

  Why doesn’t he just do it? Aiden wondered through his agony. He’s got us cornered!

  The answer was obvious: A crowded police station wasn’t exactly the best place in the world for a homicide.

  He’s just as stuck as we are!

  The very same cops who threatened the Falconers’ freedom were probably also the only reason they were still alive.

  Summoning every particle of courage in his exhausted soul, Aiden took another step toward the door. Meg shot him an astounded look but walked along with him. Hairless Joe followed but dared not strike. Anger and malice oozed from every pore on the assassin’s bald head. No words passed between them, but the messages of threat and defiance were coming thick and fast, and with impact.

  This isn’t happening. This is a dream. They were wading through wall-to-wall people, pushing past cops. Hairless Joe was three feet behind them. He couldn’t make a move on them here, but as soon as they were out in the street, they were fair game. They could fight, but Aiden knew they didn’t stand a chance against this killer.

  They were beyond the desk now, and the crowd was beginning to thin out. The front door was only twenty feet away. Hairless Joe pushed between an elderly couple to keep pace. His hand brushed against the back of Aiden’s police blazer.

  Aiden recoiled from the touch as if he’d been splashed with acid. The touch of a man who wanted him dead …

  If there’s a time to run, it’s right now!

  But Hairless Joe was too close.

  What they needed was a head start. Sixty seconds, even thirty. But what could they do without bringing an entire station full of cops down on Meg?

  Then it hit him: Use the cops as a weapon.

  He shoved Meg t
oward the exit, spun around, and made a big show of waving both arms in the direction of the enemy. At the top of his lungs he bellowed, “Gun!!!”

  What happened next was a series of split-second actions. Like compass needles drawn to magnetic north, every officer within earshot wheeled toward the source of the disturbance. A few may have noticed that the stocky bald man was wearing a badge, but most saw a uniformed cop pointing at a noncop, warning that the outsider had a firearm.

  Hairless Joe disappeared beneath a barrage of flying blue bodies. Aiden was never sure exactly how many officers flung themselves on top of the bewildered assassin. The instant the ruckus began, he grabbed his sister and hauled her out the door.

  They were in full flight along the busy sidewalk, dodging pedestrians and baby carriages. But it was still rush hour. Heavy traffic stopped them at the first intersection.

  Meg regarded her brother in pop-eyed respect. “That,” she panted, “was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”

  Aiden picked his way between idling vehicles. “Keep moving! Pretty soon they’re going to realize Hairless Joe has a badge!”

  They scrambled through the cars, ignoring the honking of horns and the curses of frustrated motorists. Trapped in the gap between a taxi and a station wagon, flanked by trucks on both sides, Aiden threw up his hands in frustration. “We’re sorry!” he bellowed. “Give us a break!”

  To his surprise, the horns and shouts ceased abruptly, and the drivers inched forward to clear a path for him.

  “Your uniform!” Meg supplied, trailing behind him. “They think you’re a cop!”

  They hit the sidewalk running. Aiden’s chest burned, but he didn’t let up, pouring all available energy into the effort to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the police station.

  Suddenly, Meg grabbed his arm and squeezed hard enough to splinter bone.

  “Aiden,” she gasped. “Look!”

  All Aiden could see was a line of cars pulling out after the green light. “What?”

  She pointed. “The red Hummer.”

  Glaring out over the wheel were the malevolent features of Hairless Joe. The Falconers’ head start — their one advantage — had already evaporated.

  Aiden gulped. “I didn’t think he’d get out of there so fast!”

  Meg twirled around frantically. There were no side streets to duck down, no alleys or parking garages. They were hemmed in by the city of Brookline.

  Horns sounded as the H-2 cut off the other vehicles and accelerated toward them.

  “Let’s get out of here!” cried Meg.

  But Aiden stepped right out into the path of the speeding Hummer.

  “Aiden — what are you doing?”

  A freeway exit ramp bottlenecked with the road just past the intersection. An endless line of vehicles stood there, waiting impatiently to merge. Aiden stuck two fingers in his mouth and emitted an earsplitting whistle. Moving his other hand in a circular motion, he waved the stopped traffic forward.

  “Come on!” his sister urged. “This is no time to play policeman!”

  He windmilled his arms, drawing cars onto the street, as the Hummer closed in on him. The rage in Hairless Joe’s eyes was visible now. The man understood what Aiden was trying to do and was determined to stop him.

  “Aiden — ” Meg warned.

  Her brother was busy directing a massive tractor trailer onto the road. It was enormous — a semi pulling a fifty-foot flatbed loaded with stacked logs. Its turning radius was too wide, and it lurched to a halt, blocking all four lanes of traffic.

  In that awful instant, Aiden realized two things:

  1. He had succeeded in shutting down the entire street, and

  2. He hadn’t left himself enough time to get out of the Hummer’s path.

  His eyes widened in horror as its cowcatcher screamed toward him at sixty miles per hour.

  “Oof!”

  Meg hit him in the ribs with a diving tackle worthy of an NFL highlight film. She knocked him backward off his feet and fell over him. They tumbled, somersaulting one on top of the other along the pavement.

  Hairless Joe stomped on the brakes, but it was too late. The Hummer slammed into the trailer’s steel mass. The front of the H-2 crumpled with a sickening crunch. Steam poured out from under the hood.

  The next thing Aiden knew, he and Meg were flat on their backs in the road, and thousand-pound logs were toppling off the damaged transport four feet above them. Without thinking, he clamped his arms around his sister and rolled the two of them under the trailer. There they cowered as a twenty-ton load of wood deposited itself on the streets of Brookline, Massachusetts.

  There were cries and shouts and the sounds of car doors as motorists rushed to the spot of the collision. When the booming of falling timber finally ceased, the Falconers scrambled out from under the truck, shaken but, amazingly, unhurt.

  Total chaos reigned. Vehicles clogged the roadway around the accident, parked at all angles. Between them were scattered dozens of logs, some of them forty feet long. The driver of the semi was out of the cab, trying to get to Hairless Joe, who was dazed and bleeding into the deflated airbag behind the wheel of the accordioned Hummer. Horns sounded from all directions, a symphony of discord.

  “Hey, there’s a cop!” a motorist shouted at Aiden. “Call an ambulance!”

  The witness later told the police of the inexplicable behavior of the officer on the scene. Instead of offering assistance or calling for backup, the patrolman straightened his crooked mustache and grabbed his companion, a young girl. Without a word to the many onlookers, the two of them fled, sprinting down the road as if pursued by a pack of vicious wolves.

  * * *

  It was almost noon by the time Agent Harris dragged himself up the stairs outside the twelfth precinct house. It was not the flight from Florida that had made him late. What a traffic jam! His taxi had sat at a dead stop for two hours with the meter running while he ran out of coffee, watching a hydraulic crane shuddering under Paul Bunyan–size logs.

  Nothing was ever easy where those Falconer kids were concerned.

  At least it was done — for Margaret, anyway. Her days as a fugitive were over.

  A short, pudgy man with a fuzzy, not-quite-full beard hurried up the steps. He froze when he recognized Harris, whose towering stature made him difficult to miss.

  “Agent Harris,” greeted Jeffrey Adler, deputy director of the Department of Juvenile Corrections.

  Harris skipped the amenities. “Margaret Falconer is not a criminal.”

  “Tell that to the people she and her brother have robbed this past week,” Adler said sharply.

  “And we didn’t push them to it,” Harris retorted. “Sending them to a prison farm.”

  “Which they burned to the ground,” the deputy director reminded him.

  “I’ll fight you for jurisdiction.”

  Adler smiled thinly. “That’s good. At least you recognize that I’m the one who has it.”

  Glaring at each other, they entered the building. Harris pressed the advantage of his much longer stride, beating Adler to the desk sergeant. He flashed his badge. “Harris, FBI. I’m here to pick up Margaret Falconer.”

  The man grimaced. “A little late, aren’t you?”

  “I hit traffic. Somebody played pickup sticks with a redwood forest out there.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” said the sergeant. “The Falconer girl’s gone.”

  “Gone?” repeated Harris. “Gone where? Who with?”

  “With her brother, we think. Dressed himself as a cop and walked her right out that door.”

  Harris’s face turned an unhealthy shade of purple. “And you just let them go? Aiden Falconer’s a fifteen-year-old kid!”

  The man was offended. “Take it easy. We’ll get them back.”

  “You didn’t notice when they strolled six feet in front of your desk,” Harris growled. “What makes you think you’ll find them now?”

  “We’ve
put out an APB. In Boston, too.”

  “It should be all of Massachusetts!” Harris raged. “And surrounding states!”

  “That’s next,” the desk sergeant assured him.

  “It should be now!” He turned, fuming, to Adler. “She’s gone.”

  “Gone? How?”

  “Escaped!” Harris’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Prisoners do that sometimes. For some crazy reason, they don’t like going to jail!”

  Adler faced the desk sergeant. “Are there any leads?”

  The man shrugged. “Just the letter.”

  Harris pounced on this. “She left a letter?”

  “But it didn’t give us anything we could use. It wasn’t really about her.”

  The FBI agent stared at the Brookline officer. “Then what was it about? A thank-you note for your hospitality?”

  “She and her brother were holed up at the Royal Bostonian, a posh hotel in the city,” he explained. “There have been a lot of high-profile robberies over there. Boston PD didn’t have a clue. She put us on to a man using his daughter as a cat burglar. Gave us all the details — that the kid was being forced to steal against her will.”

  “You mean,” Harris was bug-eyed, “that while Margaret Falconer was in this precinct house, in custody, under lock and key — she solved a crime?”

  The man seemed a little miffed. “City cops took all the credit — they grabbed up the dad an hour ago.” He smiled slightly. “But — yeah. Nice little piece of detective work. She even supplied the address of the guy who was fencing the goods.”

  Adler was becoming impatient. “This is all very interesting, but that’s my prisoner you’ve allowed to escape.”

  “And you are?” prompted the desk sergeant.

  “Jeffrey Adler. Department of Juvenile Corrections.”

  The man regarded him in alarm. “You’re not Adler!”

  “I assure you that I am.”

  “But he was here! He had a badge — Adler from federal Juvenile. He came for the Falconer kid. The whole thing happened right under his nose!”

  Harris jumped in. “Describe him.”

  The desk sergeant shrugged. “Big guy. Bald. You wouldn’t believe what those kids did to him.”