THE RECOIL FROM the shotgun was still tingling in his hands as Livermore walked from the canyon. He could still see McKnight’s face, could still feel the moment, that shotgun pointed at his chest. The power he’d felt, knowing he could end his life with one slight movement of his finger.
But of course he hadn’t. It wasn’t time for that yet.
Not for McKnight.
He found his pack where he had hidden it behind a thick juniper bush. The fabric was the exact color of the brown-red rocks around it. You could stand five feet away and not see it. Livermore pushed his way through the bush and pulled it out, zipped it open and took out the hacksaw that was inside. Priority number one, cut his hands free. That took a minute. Priority number two, cut the shackles on his legs, increase his mobility. Another minute. Then he was on the move. He ducked into another side canyon and took off the orange jumpsuit. Priority number three. He put on the hiking clothes—the shorts, the shirt, the boots. He put on the baseball cap and stuffed the orange jumpsuit in a plastic bag, left that behind as he looped the pack around his back and kept walking. Five minutes out of the canyon and he already looked like just another hiker, out on the trail on a perfect February day in Arizona.
Priority number four, he took out the metal bottle of water from the pack and drained it. It was warm, but his body needed hydration. He’d get fresh water soon enough.
That left priority number five.
He walked up the hill through the barren red rocks, taking a quick look behind him now and then, just to make sure McKnight wasn’t following him. He saw a thin haze of smoke still rising from the canyon, this place he had taken so much care to choose, a couple miles down the trail from the end of the abandoned road, next to a mine that hadn’t been used in years. He had known the explosives would still be intact, even after several days. The weather was dry, and he’d packed them just right. He had known the angles would be correct, and that he would have enough time to get himself safely onto the ground. Above all, he had known that the wiring would perform exactly as designed, and that the battery-powered jammer would activate in time to transmit on a broad spectrum of radio frequencies, temporarily overwhelming the service on any two-way radios nearby. And of course on any cell phone, because a cell phone is nothing but another kind of radio.
He kept walking. When he got to the road, he took it northeast, walking a little over a mile and a half to the old junkyard just outside of Bagdad. It was a graveyard of old vehicles, all stored out here in the dry weather for parts. He picked his way through the ancient Fords and Chevys, and the occasional piece of copper-mining equipment, until he came to the SUV on the far edge of the yard. It was pulled in between two panel trucks, so you had to know exactly where to find it. And even if you did, you’d see that it was covered with decades’ worth of dust and sand. You’d walk right by and probably never give this vehicle another thought.
But Livermore found the key in the tailpipe, opened up the back hatch, and pulled out the broom. He climbed onto the top and started brushing off the sand he had poured on the vehicle himself. Then he opened the driver’s-side door. It didn’t look like an old vehicle once you got inside, because of course it wasn’t. The thing barely had thirty thousand miles on it. A Nissan Pathfinder, from Japan, of course—a land where the designers knew enough to let robotic arms, machines that Livermore himself had helped design, build their vehicles with a care and a precision that no human being could ever match. Bought with cash, never registered, the Pathfinder had a pair of stolen Arizona plates from a vehicle that was up on blocks behind a barn, the registration tab still current, but the plates unlikely to be noticed missing anytime soon.
Livermore popped the hood, reconnected the battery, and started it up. Then he cranked the wipers to push off the last of the sand on the windshield, put the vehicle in gear, and drove out of the yard.
When he hit the road, he went south for a few miles. At that point, he could have turned west and driven to Las Vegas. That would have been three and a half hours. An obvious choice. Too obvious, because everybody runs to Vegas. The lights call to you from the desert. Come and get lost here. Anyone looking at a map would choose that as the first place to look for him—and there was really only one road to Vegas, US 93 all the way. They’d be all over it.
Flagstaff, on the other hand, was about the same distance to the east, with three different ways to get there. The superior choice for a superior mind.
So of course he wasn’t going there, either.
When you have a mind that is beyond superior, you go in the last direction anyone would expect. That was why he was driving directly back toward Phoenix, but not before looping around to the east so he could come in from a new direction.
He settled in for the drive, already thinking about where he’d eat that night. Real food, after all of those hours spent in the Fourth Avenue Jail, his first and only experience having a metal tray slid through an opening in cell bars.
Livermore’s pack was on the passenger’s seat next to him. Inside was ten thousand dollars in cash, another change of clothes, his laptop, his cell phone with a charger, a set of ropes, and his Walther PPS semiautomatic with a box of nine-millimeter shells.
There were more supplies in the back of the vehicle, the things he’d packed several days ago. More ammunition for the pistol. More clothes. Two five-gallon cans of gasoline, sealed tight to prevent any fumes. A large plastic box filled with electronic components. Another plastic box filled with explosive material.
Because he needed to be ready for anything.
He turned on the AM radio, started scanning the dial for the news reports. An escaped fugitive is on the run, six foot two, with long, light brown hair. Armed and dangerous. A two-million-dollar reward for anyone who provides information leading to his capture.
Free less than an hour, Livermore thought, and I’m already worth two million dollars.
As he drove, he kept his mind busy by working through the odds. After another day, then another week of being free, of doing whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted to do it to, how high could that number go?
Finally, his mind settled on the last part of his plan. Almost an afterthought, the diversion he had set up to make sure the FBI and everyone else would stay busy looking in exactly the wrong direction.
They’d all be off chasing a ghost, leaving him alone with Alex McKnight.