Unauthorized Access (31 page)

ROB WALKED OUT of 1 Centre Plaza after spending over an hour with the FBI sketch artist. Now his first item of business was to try to track down Tim. Rob had some tough questions to ask. He pulled Kirsten’s phone from his pocket and dialed Tim’s cell. When he didn’t get an answer he tried the apartment.

“He isn’t here,” Eldon said.

“Any idea when he’ll be back?” Rob asked.

“Couple of days.”

“He’s gone away somewhere?”

“Yep. Went out of here with a suitcase and a sleeping bag. Said he probably wouldn’t be back until Monday or Tuesday.”

Rob groaned inwardly. His luck was running true to form. “Did he say where he was going?”

Eldon grunted. “He doesn’t tell me anything these days if it doesn’t suit him. He was plenty happy about it, though. Packed himself up in a hurry and whizzed out the door with a big grin on his face. All he told me was he was going to pick up Lesley and they’d be out of town until the first of the week.”

Rob felt as if all the blood had suddenly drained from his head.

“They went away together?”

“Yup.”

A chill swept through Rob from head to toe. How could Lesley do this? A few days earlier she had thrown her arms around him and told him she’d be thrilled to marry him. Now she had run off for the weekend with Tim.

“You still there?” Eldon said.

“Yeah, sorry. Uh … I gotta go, Mr. Whitlock. Bye.”

Rob jammed his hands into his pockets and set off down the sidewalk toward the parking garage where he had left Kirsten’s car. He lurched along slowly, unable to put his full weight on his left knee.

How could he have been so wrong about both Tim
and
Lesley? Rob stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk when a horrible thought rushed in. Could something have been going on between the two of them for some time now?

“No way,” he said to no one in particular and started limping along again.

Or could it? The person being cheated on is always the last to know. How else could Lesley and Tim have gotten together so quickly after Rob’s troubles started? But if that were the case and if Tim had framed him, then …

No. Absolutely not. The thought that Lesley would go along with sabotaging her uncle’s bank and sending Rob to prison was just too much.

Still, things weren’t looking good. The threat of being abducted was keeping Rob away from the places where he normally spent his life. Add in the business of Lesley going away for the weekend and the score was two points for the bad guys, zilch for Rob. Except Rob was also on the hook for some prison time and the person he most wanted to talk to about it had just conveniently skipped out of town.

Rob made a snap decision to go after Tim and Lesley. He was tired of acting like a whipped dog. If they were going to stab him in the back, at least he’d have the satisfaction of forcing them to admit it to his face.

Who would know where they had gone? Sheila, probably. That’s where Lesley had been the last time Rob talked to her. But what if Sheila didn’t want to tell him? No doubt he was public enemy number one in the Dysart’s home right now. Rob decided his conversation with Sheila would stand a much better chance of working if it were face to face.

Rob arrived at Kirsten’s car. She needed it back by mid-afternoon, so he couldn’t take it out of town. Rob had an hour or so to get his own wheels back. That meant going home, which seemed risky, but then he couldn’t stay away forever.

He didn’t have to be stupid and unprepared about it, though. Rob left the parking garage and after a fifteen-minute drive he pulled up in front of a store. The sign across the storefront said
Mike’s Sport Shop,
and beneath that in even bigger letters:
GUNS.

* * *

Lesley swiveled as much as the seat belt would allow and tried to locate Leo among the jumble of overnight bags and pillows in the back seat of Tim’s Camaro. She didn’t have long to wait. Leo rocketed to the top of the back seat where he crouched in stark terror. Twenty claws gripped the upholstery for all they were worth.

“Maybe I should have left him home,” Lesley said. “He’s not used to being in a car.”

Tim’s smile looked a little forced.

“He’ll be fine,” Tim said. “He’ll have plenty of room to run around when we get to the cabin.”

They lapsed into silence. Lesley swallowed to try to relieve the dry mouth she had had ever since they left Boston. What if she was making the wrong choice? She took a deep breath and tried to relax as I-90 rolled by.

Then the smell hit. A pungent sourness pervaded the car’s interior, an odor that had
Leo
written all over it. Lesley whipped around in time to see the kitten in the final moments of a squat. She saw the last few drops of urine soak into the seat back.

“Oh, no,” she said.

Tim looked frantically in the rearview mirror for a clue as to what was happening in the rear seat. “Tell me he didn’t.”

“He peed on the seat,” she said.

Tim slammed the heel of one hand against the steering wheel. “Oh that’s just great.”

“I’m sorry,” Lesley said.

Tim caught himself when he saw the look of anxiety on Lesley’s face.

“I’ll clean it up,” she said. “I’m sure we can get the smell out if we do it quickly.”

The angry Tim disappeared in an instant.

“Hey,” he said in an offhand way, grinning now, “don’t worry about it. There’s a rest stop coming up soon. We’ll just soak it up. No big deal.”

Lesley smiled at him weakly.

“Great,” she said.

* * *

A folded metal security gate loomed to his right as Rob entered the gun shop. The cash register sat atop a long glass display case on his left. Pistols lay in great profusion within the case.

The sales clerk behind the counter wore a white dress shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His thinning hair was slicked straight back and the buttons of his shirt strained over his substantial belly. Rifles and shotguns of every description stood sentry in a long wooden rack on the wall behind his back.

“Help you?” the guy said.

“I want to buy a handgun,” Rob said.

The clerk spread his hands to indicate the choices available within the display case.

“What you see is what we got.”

The guns all looked the same to Rob. He checked out a few of the price tags attached by string to the trigger guards, which didn’t help much. They all seemed pricey.

“What do you recommend?” Rob said.

“You want it for competition or home defense?”

“Defense, I guess.”

The clerk gave Rob an understanding smile. “You’re not much into guns, I take it.”

“I just need something basic.”

“No problem.”

The clerk moved to his left, unlocked one section of the case and pulled out a gun.

“This .38 automatic is a good value,” he said. “It’s compact in case you need to carry it. Comes with a ten-shot magazine and a lifetime warranty. It’s even made right here in the good old U. S. of A. Try it.”

Rob took it and aimed at an imaginary figure at the rear of the store. He liked the heft of the thing right away.

“Best of all,” the clerk said, “it’s on special right now.”

“Sold,” Rob said. He set the handgun on the counter.

“What kind of ammunition you want with that?”

“Whatever works.”

“Okay.” The clerk set a box next to the gun. “That it?”

Rob nodded.

“You got your permit with you?” the clerk said.

Rob looked at him in confusion. “What permit?”

“In this state you have to apply for a permit before you can purchase a firearm.” He pulled the pistol and ammunition off the counter. “I take it you don’t have one.”

“No, I … didn’t know I needed one.”

“Happens all the time. But hey, you can come back after you get it. I’ll even give you the same sale price. Here, I’ve got the application if you want to fill one out. Usually only takes a few weeks to get the permit.”

He slid a paper form in front of Rob along with a pen.

“But I haven’t got time to—”

“Unless you’re under indictment,” the clerk said in a joking tone, “or have a warrant out for your arrest, that sort of thing. But I’m guessing that doesn’t apply to you.”

Rob’s face flushed with realization. He wasn’t used to thinking of himself as a criminal.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
O
NE

LANDRY FINISHED RELIEVING himself, then emptied the wide-mouthed bottle out the door of the Taurus and screwed the top back on. Pulling out a bottle of water, he held his hands out the door and poured some over them. It was the best he could do for sanitation under the circumstances.

The makeshift toilet facility and the supply of food and water he had packed into the car made it possible for him to watch Rob’s apartment building for days if need be. The two major obstacles were boredom and the need for sleep. Landry had plenty of practice dealing with both.

He shifted in the seat to relieve the discomfort of the holster in the small of his back. The spare gun that normally resided in the holster lay on the seat beside his regular nine-mil, but the empty holster was still a minor annoyance.

His cell phone warbled.

“Yeah?” he said.

“It’s me. She’s on the move.”

Landry had assigned Doug Gourley to watch Kirsten Glanville’s apartment.

“She driving?” Landry said.

“Walking. You want me to follow her or keep watching her place?”

“Either way’s a gamble. Donovan could show up while you’re trailing her. Or she could be going to meet him.”

“That’s why I called you.”

“Follow her,” Landry said, “and call me when you know where she’s going.”

“I’ll have to hoof it,” Gourley said. “She’s moving too slowly to crawl along behind her in a car. She’d be bound to notice.”

“Your call. Just don’t blow it like that idiot you had watching Whitlock’s place.”

“Not a chance. I’ll get back to you.”

Landry tossed the phone on the passenger seat. No use getting too excited about it. The girl was probably on her way to some corner store for a loaf of bread. He settled back into boredom management mode.

* * *

Rob pulled out of the Sunoco station at the agreed-upon time and started driving west on Beacon Street. He kept it just below the speed limit, a leisurely pace so he could look around but not so slow as to attract attention. Before long he spotted Kirsten up ahead, walking away from him.

There were several other pedestrians going in both directions on each side of the street. None of them seemed to be paying any particular attention to Kirsten, at least not that Rob could tell. He cruised by her and continued a few blocks further, where he turned and started eastward for another drive-by. Nobody seemed to be following Kirsten, so a block further on he turned around again, then pulled up to the curb beside her. She hopped in the car and Rob sped back into traffic immediately.

“I didn’t see anybody,” he said.

Rob could see the strain around Kirsten’s eyes.

“Me either,” she said.

“Did you find it?”

Kirsten opened her handbag and pulled out a short-barreled revolver. “It was right where I thought it would be, at the back of my closet. I had almost forgotten it was there.”

Rob raised a skeptical eyebrow. “That’s a hard thing to forget.”

“I only have it because of my Dad,” she said. “He insisted on giving it to me when I moved to the big city.”

“I’m glad he did,” Rob said without taking his eyes off the road. “Is it loaded?”

“No, but I brought the bullets.”

She set the pistol on the floor mat, then took a small box from her purse and showed it to him.

“That’s good,” he said.

They drove in silence for a time. Rob tried not to think of what might be waiting for him at his apartment. The afternoon sun streamed in the Saturn’s windows as they wound their way along Commonwealth Avenue. The warmth did nothing to lift his spirits.

“I’m going to drop myself off a couple of blocks from my place,” he said. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“Why?”

“So I can sneak in the back way, in case there’s someone waiting for me.”

The worry lines deepened between Kirsten’s eyes. “If you say so,” she said.

Rob pulled the car over to the side of the street.

“This’ll do,” he said. He picked up the revolver. After loading it, he stuck the gun in the waistband of his pants and let his sweatshirt hide the stock. The box with the remaining bullets went in his pants pocket.

He took a deep breath and looked at Kirsten.

“Thanks for everything,” he said.

She pressed her lips together and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.

“Be careful,” she said.

* * *

Landry tapped the steering wheel with one index finger as he listened to his cell phone.

“I was too far away to see who was in the car,” Gourley said, “or to get a license number for that matter.”

“Damn,” Landry said. “I bet it was him.”

“You want me to go back and keep an eye on her place?”

“Might as well. All we can do is watch and—”