“You’ve pushed me for the last time,” Hadley warned, getting out and yanking his briefcase off the seat. “You need to learn a few lessons when we get back.” Reining in his temper, Hadley glanced at Sandini, who was staring off into space, trying to look docile and deaf. “You have your list of errands, Sandini. Get them done and get back here. You,” he ordered Zack, “get your ass over to that grocery store across the street and find me some nice imported cheese and some fresh fruit, then stay in the car. I’ll be finished in an hour and a half. Have the car warm and running!”
Without waiting for a reply, Hadley started up the sidewalk. Behind him, the two men stood watching his back, waiting for him to enter the building. “What a prick,” Sandini said under his breath, then he turned to Zack. “This is it. Good luck.” He glanced up at the dark, snow-filled clouds. “This has all the makings of a real blizzard.”
Ignoring the weather problem, Zack said quickly, “You know what to do. Don’t deviate from the plan and don’t, for God’s sake, change your story. If you play it exactly the way I told you, you’ll come off like a hero instead of an accomplice.”
Something about Sandini’s lazy grin and preoccupied, restless stance alarmed the hell out of Zack. Clearly and succinctly he repeated the plan that they’d only been able to whisper about before now. “Dom, just do it the way we decided. Leave Hadley’s shopping list on the floor of the car. Do your errands for an hour, then tell the clerk in the store that you left your list in the car and can’t be sure you got everything. Tell her you have to get it, and come back here. The car will be locked.” As he spoke, Zack took the list from Sandini’s hand, tossed it on the floor on the passenger side, then he locked and closed the door. With an inner calm he didn’t feel, he took Sandini’s arm and propelled him firmly toward the corner.
Pickup trucks sped by as they waited for the light to turn green, then they crossed the street unhurriedly—two men who looked like ordinary Texans casually discussing the state of the economy or the next pro football game—except that they wore white pants and white jackets with the initials TDC stenciled in black across the backs. As they neared the curb, Zack continued under his breath, “When you get to the car and discover the door is locked, go across the street to the grocery store, look around a minute, then ask the clerks if they’ve seen anyone who looks like me. When they tell you they haven’t, go to the drugstore and the bookstore and ask if they’ve seen me. When they tell you no, head straight into that building and start opening doors, asking where the warden’s meeting is. Tell everyone you need to report a possible escape. The clerks in all the stores you went to earlier will verify your whole story, and since you’re going to alert the warden that I’m missing a half hour before he’d have come out here and discovered it himself, he’ll be convinced you’re as innocent as a baby. He’ll probably let you out early to attend Gina’s wedding.”
Sandini grinned and gave Zack a jaunty thumbs up instead of a more conspicuous solemn handshake. “Stop worrying about me and get going.” Zack nodded, turned, then turned back. “Sandini?” he said solemnly.
“Yeah, Zack?”
“I’m going to miss you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Give Mama my love. Tell your sisters they’ll always be my favorite leading ladies,” Zack added, then he turned and walked quickly away.
The grocery store was on the corner with a recessed entrance on the street facing the building Hadley was in and another one facing a side street. Forcing himself not to deviate from the plan, Zack walked into the main entrance. In case Hadley should be watching from the building, which he occasionally did, he lingered just inside the doors, unnoticed, and counted slowly to thirty.
Five minutes later, he was several blocks away, his prison jacket tucked under his arm, walking swiftly toward his first destination—the men’s room in the Phillips 66 Station on Court Street. His heart beating with suspense and dread, he crossed Court Street on a red light, dashing between a taxi and tow truck that had slowed to make a right turn, then he saw what he was looking for—a nondescript black coupe parked halfway down the block, with Illinois license plates. The car was still there, even though he was two days late getting to it.
With his head bent and his hands in his pockets, he slowed his pace to normal. The snow was beginning to fall in earnest as he strode past the red Corvette pulled up at the gas pumps, heading directly for the men’s room at the side of the station. He grasped the door knob and twisted it. It was locked! Resisting the urge to ram his shoulder into the door and try to break it down, he grabbed the knob and rattled it hard. An angry male voice shouted from inside, “Keep your pants on, buster. I’ll be out in a minute.”
The occupant of the men’s room finally emerged several minutes later, yanked open the door, looked around at the empty area outside the building, and then headed for the red Corvette at the pumps. Behind him, Zack moved out from the cover of the dumpster, went into the men’s room, and carefully locked the door behind him, all his attention fastened on the overflowing trash can inside it. If anyone had emptied it in the last two days, his luck had just run out.
Grabbing it he turned it over. A few paper towels and beer cans came loose. He shook it again and loosened a deluge of refuse, and then—from the very bottom—two nylon duffel bags tumbled out onto the grimy linoleum floor with a satisfying thud. He yanked open the first bag with one hand and started unbuttoning his prison shirt with his other. That bag yielded up a pair of jeans in his size, a nondescript black sweater, an ordinary denim jacket, boots in his size, and a pair of aviator sunglasses. The other bag contained a map of Colorado with his route highlighted in red, a typewritten list of directions to his ultimate destination—a secluded house deep in the Colorado mountains—two thick, brown envelopes, a .45-calibre automatic pistol, a box of shells, a switchblade, and a set of car keys that he knew would fit into the ignition of the black coupe across the street. The switchblade surprised him. Evidently, Sandini didn’t think the well-dressed, escaped convict should be without one.
Mentally ticking off the precious seconds, Zack stripped off his clothes, pulled on the new ones, then he stuffed the old ones into one of the duffel bags and refilled the trash can with the debris from the floor. Vanishing, without leaving a trace or clue about how he’d done it, was vital to his future safety. He opened the thick envelopes and checked the contents: The first contained $25,000 in unmarked twenty-dollar bills and a passport in the name of Alan Aldrich; the second contained an assortment of prepaid airline tickets to various cities, some of them in the name of Alan Aldrich, others in different names that he could use when and if the authorities discovered the alias he was using. Showing his face at an airport was a risk Zack had to avoid taking until things cooled down. Right now, he was pinning most of his hopes on a plan that he had conceived and directed as best he could from a prison cell, using the expensive expertise of some of Sandini’s contacts who’d supposedly hired someone who could be mistaken for Zack—a man who was waiting in a Detroit hotel for Zack’s phone call. Once he got it, he would rent a car in the name of Benedict Jones and cross the border into Canada at Windsor later tonight.
If the police fell for the scam, then the massive manhunt they were bound to unleash would be centered in Canada, not here, leaving Zack able to head for Mexico and then South America when the search for him lost some of its momentum.
Privately, Zack had grave doubts the diversion would work for long or that he’d ever reach his first destination before he was killed. But none of that mattered right now. At the moment, all that mattered was that he was temporarily free and that he was practically on his way to the Texas-Oklahoma border, ninety miles to the north. If he made it that far without being apprehended, he might be able to make it across the narrow Oklahoma Panhandle, a distance of only thirty-five miles, to the Colorado border. In Colorado, somewhere high in the mountains, was his first destination—a secluded house deep in the woods that, he had long ago been assur
ed, he could use for a “hideaway” whenever he wished.
Between now and then, all he had to worry about was crossing the borders of two states, getting to the safety of that house without being observed by anyone, and, once there, controlling his impatience while he waited until the initial furor over his escape died down so that he could embark on the second stage of his plan.
He picked up the pistol, rammed a full clip into it, checked the safety, and put the gun in his jacket pocket along with a fistful of twenty-dollar bills, then he grabbed the duffel bags and car keys and opened the door. He was going to make it, he was on his way.
He rounded the corner of the building and stepped off the curb, heading toward his car, then he stopped dead, momentarily unable to believe his eyes. The tow truck he’d passed when he crossed the street on his way toward the service station a few minutes ago was pulling away. Hanging from its winch was a black coupe with Illinois plates.
For several seconds, Zack stood there, immobilized, watching it sway through traffic. Behind him, he heard one of the gas station attendants shout to the other, “I told you that car’d been abandoned. It’s been sitting there for three days.”
Their voices snapped Zack’s brain out of its temporary paralysis. He could either go back into the men’s room, change into his prison clothes, leave everything behind, and try to reschedule everything for another time or he could improvise now. The choice was really no choice at all. He wasn’t going back to prison; he’d rather be dead. Once he remembered that, he did the only thing he could think of—he dashed toward the corner, looking for the only other sure means of getting out of town. A bus was coming down the street. After snatching a discarded newspaper from a trash container, he flagged the bus down and climbed aboard. Holding the newspaper in front of his face as if intent on an article, he made his way down the aisle, past a horde of college students chattering about the next football game, to the back of the bus. For twenty agonizingly slow minutes, the bus lumbered through traffic, belching out fumes and passengers at nearly every corner, then it swung to the right onto a highway that led toward the interstate. By the time the interstate came into view, the passengers had thinned down to a half-dozen rowdy college students, and all of those got up to leave when what seemed to be a favorite beer joint/roadhouse came into view.
Zack had no choice; he left with them via the rear doors and began walking toward the intersection a mile ahead where he knew the interstate on ramp and the access road all joined with the highway. Hitchhiking was his only option, and that option would only be good for a maximum of thirty minutes. Once Hadley realized he was gone, every cop in a fifty-mile radius would be looking for him and focusing their attention on any hitchhiker on the road.
Snow clung to his hair and swirled around his feet as he bent his head into the wind. Several trucks roared past him, the drivers ignoring his upraised thumb, and he fought down a panicky premonition of impending doom. Traffic was heavy on the highway, but everybody was evidently in a hurry to reach their destination before the storm struck, and they weren’t stopping for anything. Up ahead at the intersection was an old-fashioned gas station/cafe with two cars in the large parking lot—a blue Blazer and a brown station wagon. Carrying his duffel bags, he walked up the driveway and when he passed the cafe, he glanced carefully through the large front window at the occupants. There was a lone woman in one booth and a mother with two young children in the other. He swore under his breath because both cars belonged to women, and they weren’t likely to pick up hitchhikers. Without slowing his pace, Zack continued toward the end of the building, where their two cars were parked, wondering if the keys were in the ignitions. Even if they were, he knew it was insanity to steal one of those cars because he’d have to drive it right past the front window of the cafe in order to get out of the parking lot. If he did that, whoever owned the car would have the cops on the phone, describing him and his vehicle, before he got out of the damned parking lot. What’s more, from up here, they could see which way he went on the interstate. Maybe he could try to bribe one of the women in the cafe to give him a ride when she came out.
If money didn’t persuade her to agree, he had a gun that could convince her. Christ! There had to be a better way to get out of here than that.
In front of him and below, trucks roared down the interstate making miniblizzards with their wheels. He glanced at his watch. Nearly an hour had passed since Hadley had gone into his meeting. He didn’t dare try hitchhiking on that interstate any more. He’d be visible down there from the overpass for a mile. If Sandini had followed instructions, Hadley would be sounding an alert to the local cops in about five minutes. As if his thought had caused it to happen, a local sheriff’s car suddenly appeared on the overpass, slowed down, then turned into the cafe’s parking lot fifty yards away from Zack’s hiding spot, coming toward him.
Instinctively, Zack crouched down, pretending that he was inspecting the tire on the Blazer, and then inspiration struck—too late perhaps, but maybe not. Yanking the switchblade out of the duffel bag, he rammed it into the side of the Blazer’s tire, ducking to one side to avoid the explosion of air. From the corner of his eye, he watched the patrol car glide to a stop behind him. Instead of demanding to know what Zack was doing loitering around the cafe with duffel bags, the local sheriff rolled down his car window and drew the obvious conclusion. “Looks like you got a flat there—”
“Sure as hell,” Zack agreed, slapping the side of the tire, careful not to look over his shoulder. “My wife tried to warn me this tire had a leak—” The rest of his words were drowned out by the sudden frantic squawking of the police radio, and without another word, the cop wheeled the patrol car into a screeching turn, accelerated sharply, and roared out of the parking lot with its siren wailing. A moment later, Zack heard more sirens coming from every direction, and then he saw the patrol cars racing across the overpass, their warning lights revolving.
The authorities, Zack knew, were now aware that an escaped convict was on the loose. The hunt had begun.
Inside the cafe, Julie finished her coffee and groped in her purse for money to pay the check. Her visit with Mr. Vernon had gotten her more than she’d expected, including an invitation to spend more time with his wife and him that she hadn’t been able to refuse. She had a five-hour drive in front of her, longer with all this snow, but she had a fat check in her purse and enough excitement about that to make the miles fly past. She glanced at her watch, picked up the thermos she’d brought in from the car to be filled with coffee, smiled at the children eating with their mother in the adjoining booth, and walked up to the cash register to pay her bill.
As she emerged from the building, she stopped in surprise as a squad car suddenly made a frantic U-turn in front of her, turned on its siren, then shot out of the parking lot onto the highway, its rear end fishtailing in the thin blanket of snow. Distracted by that, she didn’t notice the dark-haired man squatting beside the rear wheel of her car on the driver’s side until she almost stumbled over him. He stood up abruptly, towering over her from a height of about 6’2”, and she took a startled, cautious step backward, her voice shaky with alarm and suspicion. “What are you doing there?” she demanded, frowning at her own image as it was reflected back at her from the silvery lenses of his aviator sunglasses.
Zack actually managed a semblance of a smile because his mind had finally started working, and he now knew exactly how he was going to get her to offer him a ride. Imagination and the ability to improvise had been two of his biggest assets as a director. Nodding toward her rear tire, which was very obviously flat, he said, “I’m planning to change your tire for you if you have a jack.”
Julie’s breath came out in a rush of chagrin. “I’m sorry for being so rude, but you startled me. I was watching that squad car tearing out of here.”
“That was Joe Loomis, a local constable,” Zack improvised smoothly, deliberately making it sound as if the cop was a friend of his. “Joe got another call and
had to leave, or he’d have given me a hand with your tire.”
Julie’s fears were completely allayed, and she smiled at him. “This is very kind of you,” she said, opening the tailgate of the Blazer and looking for a jack. “This is my brother’s car. The jack is somewhere in here, but I’m not sure where.”
“There,” Zack said, quickly locating the jack and taking it out. “This will only take a few minutes,” he added. He was in a hurry, but no longer fighting down panic. The woman already thought he was friendly with the local sheriff, so she’d naturally think he was trustworthy, and after he changed her tire, she’d owe him a ride. Once they were on the road, the police wouldn’t give them a second glance because they’d be looking for a man who was traveling alone. For now, if anyone noticed him, he would appear to be an ordinary husband changing a tire while his wife looked on. “Where are you headed?” he asked her, using the jack.
“East toward Dallas for a long way and then south,” Julie said, admiring his easy skill with the heavy vehicle. He had an unusually nice voice, uncommonly deep and smooth, and a strong, square jawline. His hair was dark brown and very thick, but poorly cut, and she wondered idly what he looked like without the concealing barrier of those reflective sunglasses. Very handsome, she decided, but it wasn’t his good looks that kept drawing her eyes back to his profile, it was something else, something illusive that she couldn’t pinpoint. Julie shrugged the feeling off, and cradling the thermos in her arm, she embarked on polite conversation. “Do you work around here?”
“Not any more. I was supposed to start a new job tomorrow, but I have to be there by seven in the morning or they’ll give it to someone else.” He finished jacking the car up and began loosening the lug bolts on the tire, then he nodded toward the nylon duffel bags that Julie hadn’t seen before because they had somehow gotten shoved under her car. “A friend of mine was supposed to pick me up here two hours ago and give me a ride part of the way,” he added, “but I guess something happened and he isn’t going to make it.”