11:11 P.M.
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
PIKE MARKET NEIGHBORHOOD
Having repeatedly pushed the button on the panel that corresponded with Dryden Barnes’ apartment number, Devlin and Randall exited the building’s entryway and stepped onto a raised deck just outside the door. Steps to their left and right went to ground level.
Devlin glanced around at the small parking lot located behind the housing structure. “I don’t see a truck matching the description Faith sent us.”
“Me neither. He might be at a bar or something at this late hour.”
She eyed him. “Or another poker room, handing out hundreds.”
Coming from the agents’ three o’clock, from around the corner of the building, headlights lit up cars parked in the lot on the marshals’ one o’clock.
Devlin and Randall turned toward the sound of the approaching vehicle.
A light blue truck came into view. It made two sharp lefts and stopped in the middle of the lot, its headlights shining on the back bumper of the Chrysler 300S parked thirty feet in front of the agents and a flight of stairs down.
A head and left arm emerged from the driver side window. “Hey!” A man addressed Devlin and Randall while pointing at the vehicle ahead of him. “Is that yours? If it is, then move it. That’s my spot.”
Devlin’s gaze alternated a couple times from her phone to the twenty-something man sporting light-colored hair, a goatee, and a squared-off jaw. “It’s him. It’s Barnes.”
Randall grabbed the wooden handrail in front of him and leaned forward a few inches. “Dryden Barnes? We need to—”
The man froze, his eyes growing wider in the beam from an overhead security light.
Randall spotted the look he had seen many times while working for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He’s going to...
The man ducked back into the cab.
Its tires squealing, the truck lurched backward.
“He’s bolting.” Randall rocked away from the railing then reversed course and vaulted into the air, throwing both legs over the horizontal barrier, and propelling his body into space.
Devlin ran down the stairs to her right.
Landing in a flower bed, narrowly missing a blooming rhododendron, Randall tucked, rolled, sprang to his feet, and sprinted for the fleeing truck, leaving behind a patch of decimated marigolds. He ran by the driver’s side of the agents’ rental car, smacking a key ring onto the hood, before shouting over his right shoulder. “Take the car, Jess. I’m going after him.”
The four-door Toyota Tacoma surged forward while pitching to its left.
Randall cut to his right and came up on the vehicle’s starboard side. “U.S. Marshals!” His arms pumping, he ran alongside the four-by-four. “Pull over!”
Barnes jerked the steering wheel right.
The truck followed suit.
Randall slapped the approaching rear window and veered right. Five strides later, he faced forward, and his eyes grew bigger.
Three feet away, the first of two metal-framed, wood-slatted park benches sat end-to-end on the sidewalk outside the apartment building, a circular steel waste receptacle centered in the four-foot gap in between the two pieces of outdoor furniture.
The Toyota inched closer.
He jumped onto the first six-foot-long, green-and-brown bench.
The Tacoma side-swiped the pew’s metal trim.
Sparks rising near his feet, the deputy marshal hopped onto the backrest and leaped to his right.
The right-rear corner of the vehicle clipped the seating and sent it flying into the air end over end.
Tumbling to his right across a plush swath of grass, Randall came to rest on his backside. A tick later, he trundled back the way he had come, onto his belly, and covered his head.
The metal-and-wood seat crashed down beside him, slid sideways, and rolled a few times before stopping when one of its legs caught on the sidewalk.
The Toyota’s tires screeched, as the ride peeled out of the parking lot.
His heart pounding in his chest, Randall lowered his hands and lifted his head to spy the bench, and the three-foot-long gouge it had left in the pristine lawn, before he caught a glimpse of the escaping truck’s brake lights. He clenched his jaw and made two fists. “You son-of—”
A car skidded to a halt on his nine o’clock, its passenger door swinging open a tick later.
Her right arm outstretched, her upper body sprawled over the center console, “Are you on leave, or do you,” Devlin leaned back and sat upright in the driver’s seat, “want in on this?”
He clambered to his feet, poured himself into the Chrysler, and slammed the door.
Flashing the rental’s headlights, she eased into traffic, squeezed between two opposing cars, and stomped on the gas pedal.
Horns honked, and the two drivers cast obscene gestures.
Randall affixed his safety belt and went to work brushing grass and dirt from his black jeans and jacket. “I’m fine in case you’re wondering.”
“I know. I saw the whole thing.” Speeding by the Seattle Museum on her left, Devlin twitched the steering wheel left and right to bypass a Chevy Volt tootling along in the outside lane. “If that bench had hit you, I would’ve called the paramedics.”
He teetered left and right before craning his head and pointing. “He’s turning.”
“I see it.”
Randall faced her. “But would you have still gone after him?”
“Of course, I would have.”
“Huh.” He turned toward the windshield. “Glad to know where my health and well-being rank on your list of priorities.”
The driver tossed her passenger a quick grin then made a right onto Spring Street before wrenching the wheel back and forth to avoid a head-on collision. “This is a one-way street.”
Randall gripped his door and the center console, as the Chrysler raced along a downward-sloping roadway. “And we’re not going the right way.”
She negotiated her way around another potential crash.
He stuck out his finger. “He just turned left at that next intersection.”
With cross traffic stopped, Devlin made a sharp left onto Western.
The car’s rear end fishtailed outward, nearly clipping a couple trash cans next to a lamp post before straightening out.
Two streets down, the Tacoma turned left onto Marion.
Devlin took the same route then banked right, onto First Avenue again, to continue the chase. “You can’t lose me that easy, Bubby.”
Randall gave her a sideways glance.
She noticed. “What?”
“Bubby? Isn’t that slang for booby...as in,” he paused, “boobies?”
“Really? I thought,” frowning, she swerved into oncoming traffic, zipped around a motorcycle, crossed back over the center line, and accelerated, “I thought it meant buddy...or fellow.”
Having dug heels into the floorboard and lifted his butt into the air at the sight of approaching headlights thirty feet ahead of the Chrysler’s front bumper, Randall now lowered himself into his seat again. “I think,” he let out the gulp of air he had taken, “I think you’re thinking of bub.”
She tipped her head from side to side, “Close enough” before shrugging in the next instant. “Besides, isn’t everything slang for boobies these days?”
Pursing his lips, he nodded twice at the Toyota they were gaining on. “They do seem to get more than their fair share of attention.” A moment passed. “Not saying that’s a bad thing, mind you.”
“No. No.” Sarcasm in her tone, her eyes glued to the truck’s taillights, Devlin shook her head once and let a thin grin come and go. “Of course, not.”
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