Nick of Time (13 page)

“Of
murder
?”

“Of capital murder. That's what they call it. Opens the door for the death penalty.”

“So, you were convicted.”

“The trial didn't even last a whole day. The prosecution showed the video, my jerk-off public defender made a speech, and I was sentenced to twenty-five-to-life. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“Then, it was just like you see in the movies. They cuff your wrists to your waist, and your legs to each other, and then they put you on the bus to Hell. You can't imagine anything as awful as the Michigan state prison. It was like being thrown into a damn lion's den. Maximum security. Anyway, it took eight months to figure out how to get out of there, and I did.”

“How?”

He blushed. “You're not going to believe it.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, you know, I built up all these fancy plans on how I was going to get out. I thought about tunnels, and I was always looking for a hole in the fence or something where I could slip through, but nothing ever came of any of those. The place was just too tight.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I hid in a laundry basket.”

Nicki gaped.

“Yep, the biggest cliché of all, and I just did it on a whim. Nobody was tending this laundry cart, so I climbed in under a bunch of dirty underwear and uniforms, and they rolled me right out into the truck.”

“They didn't see you when they unloaded it?”

“They don't unload it!” Brad laughed as he said it. “That was the biggest surprise of all. They just roll the cart into the back of the truck and drive off. How stupid is that?”

“What about security at the gate?”

“I heard the guard ask if they'd ever left the truck unattended, and the driver lied. It was amazing. After all that planning, all I had to do was lie down and they took me right out. That was five months ago.”

Nicki closed her eyes tightly as she tried to process it all. “So, you really are a fugitive.”

Another laugh. “Well, yeah.”

“I just—Wow.” She thought a moment more. “But you still haven't told me—”

“Oh,” Brad interrupted, realizing that he'd never gotten to her question. “Through all the bad times in the joint, I swear to God, the image that I kept thinking about—the one that kept playing itself over and over again in my head—was of you and that stupid glass of milk. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's the God's honest truth.”

Nicki giggled.

“I think you had a crush on me.”

Nicki's shade of red went beyond mere blush, to something closer to scarlet.

Brad leaned a little closer to her on the bed. “I think you wanted me to kiss you, didn't you?”

Nicki allowed herself to nod.

“Well, I wanted to kiss you, too.”

“That's twisted,” Nicki teased. “I was only twelve.”

“You didn't think you were twelve,” Brad laughed. “You thought you were twenty-three. But I kept my hands—and my lips—to myself.”

He moved a little closer, and Nicki leaned in to meet him.

“So, you actually thought of me?” she baited.

“Every night.”

“I probably don't want to know the details.”

“I bet you can guess them.”

Nicki saw the contour of his erection growing under his robe and looked away. The fluttery feeling returned, but it was somehow different.

“Would you mind if I kissed you now?” Brad asked.

Nicki thought she said yes, but she wasn't sure. This was the fantasy. Right here, this was it. The kiss she'd been waiting for her whole life.

Their lips touched. A rush of heat raced from her head to the farthest reaches of her fingers and toes. It was a gentle kiss—her first—not the sloppy, tongue-tangled mess that she'd seen in the hallways of school, but rather a light, beautiful thing, exactly as she'd always dreamed that a kiss from Brad would be. He cupped her face in his hands as their tongues touched, and Nicki found herself being lowered gently backward onto the still-made king-size bed.

Nicki's mind reeled as her body surged with energy. She felt his hand move from her jaw, ever so gently tracing a line under her robe and toward her breast. She tensed.

“Relax,” he whispered.

Her robe started to pull away from her body, and she realized that he was going to
see
her. All of her. He'd see the ugly body and then he'd know the truth of the mistake he'd made asking her here.

“I want the lights off,” she said.

“But I want to see.”

“Please.”

Brad stood from the bed and glided to the light switch on the bedroom wall. He pressed it and the room went dark, save for the trapezoidal patch of light that spilled onto the carpet through the half-open bathroom door. Nicki watched as he walked back to her, a towering silhouette. He shrugged his shoulders and his bathrobe slipped away.

Then he was with her again on the bed, so close, kissing her mouth, her jaw, her neck. Nothing happened the way it did in the movies or in the trashy books she'd read. There was no grunting and fumbling, no tearing of fabric. His touch was like a breeze, barely palpable, but undeniable. Nicki's heart hammered a timpani beat as she allowed him to explore her, his eyes reflecting dim flashes of light as he looked at her.

“Relax,” he said again, his voice barely audible. He caressed her left breast, and when his fingers found the nipple, her breath caught in her throat. It was as if he was somehow charged with electricity; his fingers introduced sparks that rewired her brain. She'd never felt like this before: confused, frightened, and oh, my God, so turned on. The mattress moved as he shifted his position and she closed her eyes. The terry cloth pulled away, and her breast felt the hotness of his breath. She gave a gentle yelp as he pulled it into her mouth.

“Are you okay?”

Nicki tried to control her breathing. “Yes,” she whispered.
Oh, God, yes.

Brad moved closer still, rolling his body just so, until the fullness of his erection was pressed against her thigh. The tip of his tongue drew circles around her nipple as his fingers found her hand and moved it south, past her belly and on down to his penis. It felt wet and slippery at first touch, and she pulled her hand away.

“It's okay,” Brad whispered. There was amusement in his voice. “Just rest your hand there. You don't have to do anything.”

Nicki relaxed and let him guide her hand back down. What she found surprised her. Certainly, she'd heard of hard-ons and boners and erections, even seen a few, although always in the form of distended trousers. From as early as junior high school, it was great sport to say things to boys that would make their dicks go stiff, just to see the lengths they'd go to hide the obvious. But bulging pants or even the pictures in the health books didn't prepare her for the reality of what things felt like. Brad's penis felt smoother, more fragile, than she'd expected, and the testicles—the balls—weren't really balls at all, but more like, well, nuts. As she fondled him, Brad let out a little groan and his hips started to move in a kind of undulating, circular motion.

She yelped again as his finger found her belly button, and she could feel him smiling. His hand worked its way
down there
and she felt his fingers pressing against her. It was wonderful, and her hips began to match the swirling, grinding motion of his. As she counted the rhythm of her pounding heart, she realized that for this brief moment, it was no longer regulated by her disease, but by the passion that swelled inside her.

Brad's hand moved again . . .

“No!” she said, a little too loudly, and she rolled away from him and sat up.

“What's wrong?” he gasped. He might have been angry, or maybe only startled. It was hard to tell in the dark.

“I don't want to do this,” she said. As she pulled her robe closed around her, she wiped the stickiness from her hand.

“Honest to God, I'll be gentle,” Brad promised, and he moved closer again.

“No!” She said it more forcefully this time, and she stood. “I don't want to do this.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't want to.”

“But
why
?”

Even in the darkness, she could tell that she'd hurt his feelings. She turned so that she could better see his silhouette in the blackness. “It's not you, okay? I swear to God, it's not you. Jesus, I can't count the number of times we've made love in my head.”

“What, then?”

Nicki didn't want to answer. She knew how stupid it would sound. “It's my mother,” she said, finally.

“Excuse me?” Brad's laugh came reflexively.

Nicki hugged herself and stood, stepping away from the bed. “I made her a promise, okay? It was probably a stupid thing to do, but when she was in the hospital, I promised her that I would save my virginity for just the right guy—the guy I love more than anyone else in the world.”

“And I'm not him?” Brad's tone was hard to read without seeing his eyes.

“I don't know,” Nicki confessed. “How can I know for sure?”

With a huge, frustrated sigh, Brad stood and gathered his robe from the floor.

“Are you mad?” Nicki asked.

He made a sound that might have been a growl. “Mad? No. Horny and frustrated, but not mad.” He walked to her and kissed her on the forehead. “What's to be mad about?”

“I'm sorry I'm such a prude.”

“We've got a long trip ahead of us, Nicki. All I have to do is convince you that I'm the guy.” He took a step toward the door.

“Are you leaving?”

He looked back at her. She could see his smile, even in the dark. “You need your rest, and I think it's probably best if I sleep in the living room. I'll see you in the morning.”

“I'm sorry,” Nicki whined.

“No,” he said, with a firmness in his voice that she hadn't heard before. “Don't apologize. I made assumptions that I shouldn't have. That's my fault, not yours. I'm the one who should apologize.” He walked as he spoke, heading for the bedroom door and the living room beyond. He paused at the threshold. “I'm sorry, Nicki,” he said. “Really. Good night.”

Nicki heard the door click as Brad closed it behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Thirteen

W
arren turned on the overhead light and smacked Carter's shoulder hard enough to hurt. “Carter, wake up. We've got a lead.”

Carter didn't even know that he'd drifted off. He came awake groggy and confused. “What? Where?” He checked his watch. 3:04
A.M.

“The Ritz-Carlton at Mason's Corner.” Carter's eyes cleared enough to see that Warren was wearing boxer shorts and a Nike T-shirt. “I just got the call from a patrol unit who got a hit off the picture we sent around.”

“Nicki is there?” Carter asked. It seemed almost too simple.

“We're leaving in two minutes to find out.”

* * *

Brad needed a drink. And a cold shower. Jesus, what had he been thinking? He never should have moved so far so quickly. But after such a long stretch without being close to a woman, nature was a tough beast to tame. He thought about that as he re-dressed in his khakis and polo shirt, being particularly careful as he zipped his trousers.

He hated the look he saw in her face after he walked into the bathroom. At first, it was shock—he'd expected that—but then it looked like fear, and that was when he should have left her alone. He'd thought that she would get a kick out of seeing him parade naked in front of her. In their e-mails, she'd told him how she used to fantasize about that when she was watching him mow the lawn.

A part of him wondered if it had been a mistake to tell her so much about his past. Maybe he should have made something up that wouldn't have made him look like such a criminal.

No, he decided, that would have been a mistake. There'd been too many lies in his life, told by too many people, and he had way too many sins on his soul as it was.

When Brad saw that clerk in the gas station fall with a bullet through his head, he knew that he'd crossed a line from which there was no return. He understood that every good thing he'd ever done in his life had become meaningless. It had all been wiped out at a muzzle velocity of a thousand feet per second. As he watched the lights go out in that kid's eyes, he realized that he really did care.

And because of what he'd done, nobody would ever care back.

Except for Nicki Janssen. She was the single exception. Back when he was in prison, lying on his bunk at night, listening to the sounds of men snoring and fighting and jerking off, he used to imagine what Nicki would look like as the years passed. In his mind, she'd become a cheerleader, or maybe even a model. So beautiful a girl had to grow up to be a beautiful woman. She
had
to.

After his escape, when he had five states under his belt and he felt that the heat of the search had cooled a little, the first thing he set out to do was find Nicki. He never dreamed that the Internet would make it so simple. Once they started up their dialogue, he discovered the good deed that might balance the accounts for his soul.

He'd find a way to make her final days livable, while doing the same for himself. There was one certainty that they faced together: that neither of them would likely see another Christmas—Nicki because her body would kill her, and Brad because he knew how pitiful the odds were of staying ahead of the law in the long run. When they caught him, he would die; he would see to that. He'd never allow himself to be taken back to jail.

This knowledge of impending death was liberating in its own way. It took all the pressure off living. With a future that you could measure in a thimble, and a past that didn't matter anymore, he and Nicki were left with only the present, and the freedom that brought made his head swim.

When he was dressed, Brad stopped at the minibar long enough to slip two miniature bottles of scotch into his pocket. That done, he opened and closed the door to the suite as quietly as he could, and slipped out into the hallway, checking to make sure that he'd remembered the plastic card key.

What were the chances that the bar might still be open at this hour? At three-thirty in the morning, not likely. Still, he needed a walk in the fresh air. Ever since he'd stepped clear of those concrete walls, he couldn't get enough fresh air. Even the palatial digs of the Governor's Suite seemed too small and stuffy for him. And on top of all that, he had to do something to distract himself from the pressure in his crotch.

The elevator took him to the ground floor. As the door opened on the lobby, he stepped out onto the polished floor. The place seemed busier than he would have expected for so late an hour. Not crowded by any stretch, there were still six or seven people clustered near the front desk, and a couple more milling about the main entrance at street level. Two of the men near the front doors were cops, dressed in gray and black polyester uniforms. They didn't seem to be looking at anything in particular, yet they seemed to be a bit on edge.

Something wasn't right here. Of the people who weren't in uniforms, all were fully dressed in a way that didn't jibe with the hour. Three in the morning is the end of anybody's work day, yet these guys all looked fresh. One wore a well-tailored suit, and he stood with his hands on his hips, talking with someone behind the front desk. When he turned at just the right angle, Brad caught of flash of steel on the man's belt.

He was a cop, too.

Holy shit, they were all cops, and they were clearly waiting for something. Or some
one.

Okay, don't panic,
he told himself, but the panic didn't listen. They couldn't possibly have caught up with him this quickly. They couldn't have traced the credit card—not yet, anyway—nor could they have traced the car. It was too soon. Vinnie Campanella was just learning to find his way around a foreign country, for heaven's sake. He should be too busy to be worried about a robbery that happened the day before and an ocean away.

Nicki swore she'd followed the instructions he'd given her. She said she'd paid only cash and kept a low profile.

Yet, here they were, and what were the chances that there'd be more than one cop-magnet staying in the hotel tonight?

The answer came a moment later, as activity beyond the glass doors drew everyone's attention to the front of the building. Just from the way people snapped to, Brad got the impression that the person they'd been waiting for had arrived. Maybe this was just the protection detail for some visiting dignitary.

One of the uniformed cops opened the door for a man who looked like he was probably a cop, but who walked like he needed rest. Two steps behind, he saw a face that looked vaguely familiar to him.

It took only a few seconds for him to recognize the second man as Carter Janssen.

* * *

Carter was impressed by the level of deference shown to Warren Michaels as he passed his troops. He sensed in them a great desire to please, tinged with just a touch of fear about getting on his wrong side. They hadn't taken five steps into the lobby when a well-dressed man stepped forward to greet them. Carter's first instinct told him that the guy had to be the manager of the hotel, but then he saw the badge clipped to his belt.

Warren took care of the brusque introductions. “Sergeant Jed Hackner, Counselor Carter Janssen.” The men shook hands even as Warren continued to speak. “What do we know?”

Hackner said, “Not enough. The clerk says that he recognized the face on the news as a guest in the hotel, but that he doesn't know the guy's name.”

“Are we talking about the eleven o'clock news?” Warren asked, incredulous. “Why are we just hearing about it now?”

“They rebroadcast the news at two-thirty. That's when the guy caught it.”

Warren led the way to the front desk, where a clerk in a gray vest looked scared to death standing next to an older woman who bore a striking resemblance to Queen Elizabeth. “This is Missy Thompson, the night manager,” Hackner said, introducing the woman. “And this is Gary Vaughan.” Nodding to Warren, he added, “This is Lieutenant Michaels, my boss, and Carter Janssen, the father of one of the people we're looking for.”

No one bothered to shake hands. “Which one of you saw our fugitives?” Warren asked.

Gary raised his hand sheepishly. “That was me,” he said. “I just saw them for a few seconds. It was late. They were all dressed up.”

“Dressed up?” Carter asked.

“Yeah, tuxedo and gown, like they'd been to a dance or something. I assumed they were at the big ball we had tonight. Some society of cops.” For an instant, Gary looked worried that that last part might have offended someone.

Warren looked to Carter. “That make sense to you?”

“Not a lick.”

“There are two Wards registered in the hotel,” Jed Hackner explained, “and one Dougherty.”

“Your storm troopers woke those people up,” said Missy Thompson. “They were the wrong people, of course, but that didn't seem to bother any of you.”

“You'd rather have a couple of murderers running loose in your hotel?” Jed asked, obviously not for the first time.

“My daughter is not a murderer,” Carter said. “Let's not get that tidbit confused, okay?”

Jed looked embarrassed. “Of course. We did talk with the Wards, though, and with Dougherty, and none of them were our guy.”

“They must have registered under a pseudonym,” Carter said. “How many Smiths and Joneses are registered?”

The night manager turned red. “You are
not
going to randomly interrupt people in their sleep on some wild goose chase. I agreed to cooperate, but this is ridiculous.”

“He's a mur-der-er,” Jed said, emphasizing the syllables as if she were hard of hearing.

“Then catch him,” she said. “But do it without waking the whole hotel.”

“We can get a warrant,” Jed said.

“Then do it.”

Warren stepped into the fray. “Look, folks, let's not get all pissy, okay? Ms. Thompson, we're not trying to make life difficult for you. Honestly, we're not. And Jed, we can't just go room to room, waking up everybody on the off chance that our guy is here.” He turned to Gary. “On a scale of one to ten, ten being absolute certainty, how sure are you that the guy you saw is the guy on the news?”

Again, the attention made the kid shift from one foot to the other. “I don't know. Seven, maybe?”

Warren shook his head. “We need more than that. Who was working the desk this afternoon? Who would have checked them in?”

Pleased by her nominal victory over Jed Hackner, the night manager nearly smiled as she walked to the computer screen and tapped the keys. “What time are we talking about?”

“I'm guessing about five o'clock,” Carter said.

“Okay, well, that shift started at four, and that would have been either Sam Shockley or Patrick Barney.” She looked up for the screen and asked Warren, “Do you want to call them?”

Warren smiled. “You read my mind.”

Carter noted with some amusement that the manager didn't think twice about waking fellow employees. What a peach. “There's got to be something we can do in the short term,” Carter said. “How about people who paid with cash? Can you track that down through the computer?”

Missy Thompson returned her gaze to the computer screen and resumed her tapping. “I can pull up the information, but I'm not going to let you wake those people up, either. There are a thousand perfectly legitimate reasons why people pay in cash. You can't just assume—”

Warren showed his palm in a gesture for silence. “Ms. Thompson, please. I assure you that we don't want to bother people any more than they want to be bothered. But under the circumstances, we have a right to know who is here in the hotel, and we have the right to sort that information by whatever parameters we wish. It's your business if you wish to obstruct justice, but it's mine is to arrest you if that's your choice. Now, please. The clock is ticking. Decide which way you'd like it to be.”

Missy Thompson looked as if she'd been slapped. Warren answered her look with a smile, and she went back to her keyboard.

Warren turned to Carter. “If push comes to shove, we can get officers stationed at all the exits in the morning, and watch every person who passes by. There are also security tapes.”

Carter did his best to look interested, but this snail's pace was killing him. With his daughter's life in the balance, he really didn't give a rat's ass about constitutional protections. If he had to pound on every door himself, he was—

“Hey, now, this is interesting,” said Missy Thompson.

All eyes turned toward her.

“Well, I can't actually sort by cash payments, per se, but I can separate out by different credit card companies, and then whatever is left would be cash, check, money order, that sort of thing.”

Carter and Warren exchanged glances. How was this interesting?

“Well, here in the Visa accounts, I see a note in the file where a Vincent Campanella called to allow his son to check in without showing a credit card. Something about the boy not being trustworthy. But he did allow the son—named Bradley, here—to charge any and all expenses to his room.”

Okay, so it was interesting, after all. Carter and Warren led a parade of cops around the end of the counter to get a look at the computer screen.

“Can you call up the file?” Carter asked.

Missy's fingers flew on the keys, and an instant later, there was the voluminous file. “Oh, wow,” she said. “They
have
been busy. Goodness gracious, look at all the room charges.”

Carter had to squint to see that far. He pointed to the screen. “Does that say tuxedo?”

* * *