Lauren sat beside Paula on the couch and did a big sniffle. ‘Could you please help us?’ she begged. ‘My uncle beats me up so bad… Please don’t make me go back to him.’
Paula’s expression altered completely when she heard this. She looked towards Lauren and smiled gently. ‘My step-dad knocked me into the hospital when I was about your age.’
‘You know how it feels then,’ Lauren sniffed, trowelling on the waterworks and feeling guilty about the way she was manipulating Paula.
Paula reluctantly looked up at James, who was standing over her. ‘I got problems, and two thousand bucks can fix most of ’em.’
25. LUCK
Curtis volunteered to ride in the trunk. James couldn’t predict his mood: one minute Curtis was bright and cooperative, the next he was suicidal. Kids who haven’t been through CHERUB-style training usually have difficulty handling dangerous situations, but Curtis didn’t seem up to any kind of stress and James was getting worried. If they made it to Los Angeles, they’d be relying on him to keep his head together and make contact with associates of his mother.
It was 4:30 a.m. when they hit a big roadblock, a mile shy of the border with California. Five police cars blocked the left-hand lanes and a long snake of rear lights merged slowly into the single remaining lane. More police cars were parked on the opposite side of the road, with pursuit drivers ready to give chase and a helicopter circling overhead. James knew the chopper would pack a heat-sensitive camera, able to detect anyone who tried to bail out of a car and cut through the desert.
Considering what they were putting her through, Paula was keeping her head together. Lauren sat next to her in the front, pretending to sleep. James was in the back with a hoodie pulled over his skinhead and Paula’s three-year-old daughter, Holly, was dead to the world in the child seat next to him.
It took a quarter of an hour to crawl to the front of the queue. Every car got a cursory glance, as cops shone a torch inside and fired a couple of quick questions at the driver. Most cars were waved on, but any that looked suspicious were told to pull into a second line for a detailed inspection. This roadside check involved everyone getting out of the car and having their ID run through the police computer, while the inside of the car was thoroughly searched.
James knew it would all be over if they got picked for inspection. With Paula behind the wheel and thirty well-armed cops in the vicinity, any attempt to escape would be short and bloody.
Paula opened her window as she rolled up alongside a cop.
‘Licence, registration, ma’am.’
The cop glanced at the documents, while another walked around the car shining a flashlight inside.
‘Are these your children?’
‘The little girl in the back is my daughter. These two are my brother and sister.’
The other cop knocked on the window beside James’ head. ‘Let’s have a look at you, son.’
James rolled down the window and got a blast of the flashlight in his face.
‘How old are you?’ the cop asked.
‘Thirteen,’ James said.
‘Would you pull that hood down for me?’
James’ heart banged as he slid the hoodie down, revealing the half centimetre of bristles on his head.
The cop looked at his colleague. ‘Got a blond skinhead here; about the right age too.’
The other cop leaned in beside Paula. ‘I’m sorry, Miss, but I’m gonna have to ask you to join that queue over to your left for an inspection.’
James silently mouthed a string of curses. He just hoped John found a way to pull him out before he got hauled back to Arizona Max. Paula rolled forward a single car-length to join the tail of the inspection line. Lauren glanced over her shoulder at James with a resigned look.
‘We gave it our best shot,’ James shrugged. ‘I’m sorry we put you through this for nothing, Paula. Tell the cops we threatened to hurt Holly if you didn’t help us.’
‘How much extra time will they give you for escaping?’ Paula asked, sounding as if she genuinely cared.
‘Enough,’ James said. ‘Five, ten years, maybe.’
‘You don’t seem like no criminal,’ Paula said sympathetically. ‘At least, I’ve known a few and you seem far too nice a guy to have gotten yourself in so much trouble.’
All their heads snapped around as a cop thumped on the metal roof above them. The next car in line had been ordered to pull over, but the inspection queue hadn’t moved up and there wasn’t room for it to join without blocking the traffic that was being waved through.
Paula reopened her window as the cop crouched down beside the car. ‘We got too many cars backed up here,’ he explained. ‘I’m gonna let you guys pass through. You seem pretty harmless to me.’
‘I’ve never been called harmless before,’ Paula grinned sweetly, ‘but I’ll settle for it if it gets me to LA before the little lady in the back wakes up.’
‘You have a safe journey, now,’ the cop smiled, as Paula backed up, making enough space to pull out of the queue.
With the traffic being filtered through one car at a time, the three lanes heading towards California were deserted.
Lauren looked back at James and gasped. ‘That was too close.’
James grinned. ‘Way too close.’
*
They pulled up at a McDonalds fifty miles into California. Lauren went inside and bought some breakfast. James checked no one was around, before letting Curtis out of the trunk. Once he’d walked the cramp out of his legs, Curtis faced the sunrise over the desert and stretched out his arms.
‘Beautiful,’ he said, turning around and slapping James on the back as he pulled him into a hug. ‘You were so cool, man. I’m sorry I messed up last night … When my head goes dark like that, I act like a total dick.’
‘Glad Lauren didn’t put bullets in the magnum now?’
Curtis smirked. ‘Your sister must be my guardian angel, or something.’
Lauren came around the side of the restaurant holding a cardboard tray of drinks and two brown paper bags stuffed with food. Curtis snatched one of the bags and took out a muffin.
‘Double sausage and egg,’ Curtis said, tearing out a massive bite. ‘I love these, man. It’s been a year since I had one of these. Mmm … This is sooooooo good.’
James left Curtis to eulogise over his McMuffin and leaned in the back of the car to speak with Paula. Holly had woken up grumpy and Paula sat next to her daughter, trying to persuade her to eat something.
‘You did us a big favour back there,’ James said. ‘I owe you one.’
‘You owe me a thousand,’ Paula said, only half joking.
James nodded. ‘As soon as we get to LA; you’ve got my word on that.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a thousand dollars in one go,’ Paula said. ‘When I was a little girl, I always wanted to go to Disneyland and stay in a real hotel, but we were as poor as dirt. When I drop you guys off, I’m gonna drive Holly up there. It’s only thirty miles.’
‘Sounds fun,’ James smiled, ‘but it’s better if you call the cops first. You don’t want to get in trouble for helping us and they’ll hardly believe your story if you head off to Disneyland.’
Paula looked a little crushed. ‘I guess you’re right.’
‘You don’t have to tell the cops about the money, though,’ James said. ‘Drive out there in a week’s time, or something.’
With Paula and Curtis both happy, James felt more at ease than he’d done for ages. He was miffed when Lauren broke the mood.
‘We better get moving,’ she said. ‘We might have got past one roadblock, but that doesn’t mean the cops have stopped searching for us.’
*
They caught the morning rush hour when they reached the outskirts of Los Angeles, ending up in fourteen lanes of solid traffic, crawling along at walking pace. When they hit a downward slope, there was a vista of tens of thousands of cars packed in close formation, with sunlight reflecting off the windscr
eens. After fighting their way out of the sparsely populated desert, it was a relief to be sitting in one anonymous car amidst thousands.
They had to find a place to split from Paula. Lauren picked out a route to Hollywood on the map, because it was the only place in town that she’d heard of. They wound up at a grey mall on Hollywood Boulevard called Showbiz Stores. It was 10 a.m. and James couldn’t help getting a little buzz when he spotted the famous Hollywood sign on a hill in the distance.
They parked in an underground lot beneath the mall. James walked around to the back of the car and counted a thousand dollars out of the backpack, before slinging it over his shoulder. Paula grabbed Holly and they took an elevator up to the food court on the top level. James got everyone drinks and an ice cream for Holly.
He passed the thousand dollars under the table to Paula as he spoke. ‘We passed a taxi rank on the way inside. You sit here and finish your drink. Give us twenty minutes or so to get away, then cover yourself by calling the cops before you do anything else. OK?’
Paula nodded as she took the money.
‘Can I trust you?’ James asked.
Paula smiled. ‘If it works out, you can send me a postcard.’
‘Remember,’ James said, ‘if the cops hear about the money, they’ll take it off you. But they’re trained to sniff out lies, so you’ve got to tell the truth about everything else.’
‘OK.’
James drained his mug of hot chocolate and tousled Holly’s hair as he pushed back his chair.
Curtis smiled at Paula. ‘Sorry about last night.’
Lauren, Curtis and James scrambled quickly down two escalators to the ground floor. They strode through a corridor of upmarket shops and stepped outdoors near the head of the taxi rank.
James looked at Curtis. ‘You’ve lived in LA: where’s a good place to go? Somewhere three kids won’t stand out and you can make your phonecalls?’
‘Santa Monica beach,’ Curtis said, without a millisecond’s thought.
The cab journey was a fifteen-mile ride down Sunset Boulevard, passing through Beverly Hills on the way to the beachfront. James and Lauren stepped out to a scene that reminded them of their mum taking them on a daytrip to Brighton five years earlier: there was an old-fashioned pier with a funfair at the end and wooden decking along the seafront. The palm trees, restaurants and lavish beachfront hotels gave off a glimmer of serious money.
‘This is the kind of place where I’ll live when I’m a millionaire,’ Lauren said.
James smiled. ‘How are you planning on becoming a millionaire?’
‘Pop star, successful businesswoman … Possibly both.’
Once the cab pulled away, they stood in a line looking out at the waves crashing in the distance.
‘My mom had a beachfront house down the road in Venice,’ Curtis explained. ‘My first elementary school was a few miles up that hill over there. Even after we left, we’d come back here for a few weeks most summers.’
‘It looks nice,’ James said. ‘But we can’t hang around; you’ve got calls to make.’
‘Call,’ Curtis said. ‘Just one.’
James looked surprised. ‘You said you had to find some numbers. I thought it was going to take a while.’
‘No offence, James,’ Curtis said, ‘but I had to feed you a line. I couldn’t totally trust you until I knew this escape was for real. When I was living with my mom, there was always a chance something would go wrong while I was out at school or something. Wherever we stayed, there was always a backup plan.’
‘So who are you planning to call?’ James asked.
‘When Paula goes to the police, they’ll track that cab down and ask the driver where he took us, so I couldn’t go direct to my dad over in Pasadena. This little diversion to Santa Monica should throw the pigs off the scent.’
‘Your dad,’ James gasped.
According to the background information James and Lauren had read before the mission, Curtis claimed to have no idea who his father was and neither did the FBI.
Curtis nodded. ‘I’ve only met him a few times, but he’s the one guy in town who’ll definitely know how to get in touch with my mom.’
26. TECHNOLOGY
The FBI team were following the kids’ movements by tracking the signal from a cellphone in Lauren’s shorts. While Curtis made his call, Lauren pretended that she needed to use one of the beachfront toilets. She locked herself in a stall, grabbed the tiny flip-phone and speed-dialled the FBI office in Phoenix. She told Theo their exact location and about Curtis’ revelation that his father lived somewhere nearby.
John Jones and Marvin Teller had landed in LA a couple of hours earlier and were at the airport awaiting developments. A second FBI team was using the cellphone signal to shadow James and Lauren’s movements, at a distance of around half a mile.
While Curtis and Lauren were making their phonecalls, James popped fifty cents into a newspaper rack and took out an LA Gazette. The pictures of Curtis on the front page looked fine, but someone on Marvin Teller’s team must have got inside James’ criminal file and doctored the picture taken at Phoenix courthouse, because it barely looked like him.
James read the accompanying story:
The three kids sat on a bench at the edge of the beach reading the newspaper, until a limousine Curtis had ordered on his father’s account stopped at the kerb. It took them on an hour-long freeway ride to a business park in Pasadena, on the eastern outskirts of the city.
The black Mercedes pulled up in the parking lot outside a cube-shaped office building clad in reflective black glass. The corporate logo over the automatic door was a fighter plane with Etienne Defence Consultancy written above it. The security guard sitting behind his plinth looked rather surprised by the three grubby kids walking towards reception. He was powerfully built, more like a nightclub bouncer than the middle-aged men who usually sit in the entrances of office buildings.
Curtis rested his elbows on the high counter. ‘Call extension five-five-three and tell Mr Etienne that Curtis is on his way to see him.’
Curtis stepped towards the elevator, but the guard called him back.
‘Don’t move one more step, boy,’ the guard said firmly. He picked up the phone behind his desk and dialled five-five-three.
The guard had a brief conversation.
‘Looks like you’re wanted,’ the guard said, beckoning the kids towards the elevator doors with his beefy hand.
The guard swiped a security pass through the elevator control panel and hopped out of the car before the door closed. They went directly to the fifth floor, exiting into a large reception area, where they were greeted by a middle-aged lady in a grey business suit.
Curtis smiled as the woman swept him into her arms. ‘Hey, Margaret.’
‘You’ve grown,’ Margaret said. ‘You must have been nine or ten the last time I saw you … I’m afraid your father is away at a conference in Boston, but he saw the reports on the television news and sent a message to say there was a chance you’d end up here.’
James looked around at the fancy halogen lighting and the abstract paintings on the walls. He didn’t have a clue what a defence consultancy did, but if its owner was Curtis’ dad, it surely had some connection with Jane Oxford.
‘It will take me some time to organise your documentation and arrange air transportation to somewhere safe. In the meantime, the three of you can use Mr Etienne’s shower and put on clean clothes. I’ll arrange for lunch to be delivered if you’re hungry.’
Mr Etienne could have lived in his office if he’d wanted to. As well as the workspace, with a massive desk and a row of Bloomberg financial information screens on the wall, there was a bathroom, a lounge area with massive sofas and even a room off to the side containing a bed and a wardrobe full of suits.
After the kids had taken turns showering, Margaret brought in a selection of delivery menus from nearby restaurants. They settled on an upmarket hamburger joint.
James tucked away a st
eak sandwich with a side of onion rings, followed by a chocolate dessert for two, which he managed by himself after Lauren said she was full. CHERUB kept James on a tight fitness regime so he usually avoided pigging out, but after a week of prison food he reckoned he deserved a treat.
Curtis turned on the TV in the lounge and they switched to a local news channel. There was only a tiny bit about the escape at the end of each half-hourly bulletin. Lauren snuggled up beside James in her clean T-shirt and shorts and was soon fast asleep.
James had been too stressed to feel tired while he’d been on the run, but now his belly was full and he’d calmed down, he realised he’d barely slept in the last fifty hours. He closed his eyes and drifted off.
27. COUNTRY
By the time the kids woke up, Margaret had driven out to a local mall and bought each of them a new set of clothes for their onward journey. It was a sensible precaution, because the cops investigating the escape would have made attempts to identify the clothing that the kids had taken with them.
James and Curtis both got tracksuits and trainers, but Lauren got a white dress, pink canvas deck shoes and a sparkly silver headband. Her scowl could have melted a steel bar. The last time Lauren had worn a dress, she’d been a seven-year-old bridesmaid and she’d deliberately trailed it through mud to get out of wearing it.
‘You’ll look so pretty,’ James said, howling with laughter as soon as Margaret and Curtis were out of earshot.
‘One more word,’ Lauren said angrily, wagging her finger in his face. ‘One more word and I’ll deck you.’
‘Quite the little princess.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Lauren gasped, anxiously looking around at the carpet. ‘Where are my dirty shorts?’
James shrugged. ‘Looks like Margaret took them away while we were asleep.’