Sirens started in the distance, and then John Barber turned and drew down on a car that slowed behind them.
It was a shiny black Mercedes-Benz, a small elderly couple in it, staring over at them with wide eyes.
Just a couple of curious onlookers, Gannon thought, waving and smiling as he lowered his own rifle. The old guy wisely peeled out.
“It’s you,” the bloody blond-haired guy in the passenger seat of the wrecked Jeep said with a funny accent.
“Dude, didn’t I tell you?” Gannon said.
“This him?” John Barber said. “The sniper?”
“This is him,” Gannon said as he reached in over the assassin and picked up the dropped phone between his feet.
“Look, John. There’s a map and a blip on it moving near the highway. It’s tracking Novak. Has to be. This ain’t over. Let’s go.”
“One second,” John Barber said as he stepped up to the window. “I want to say goodbye to our friend.”
Barber leaned in until his face was an inch from Westergaard’s bullet-nicked ear.
“How’s it feel, fella?” John Barber whispered to the killer. “Hell’s gates are gaping wide-open for you. Excited? How’s it feel to bathe in your own blood?”
He watched as the assassin reached for a water bottle in the drink holder.
“This what you’re looking for? Thirsty, are you?” John Barber said as he reached in and took it out.
He uncapped it and offered it to him, but just as Westergaard was about to take it, he dumped it out onto the street before chucking it into the weeds.
“I’m sure my brother was thirsty, too,” he said. “You give him a drink?”
“C’mon, John. Let’s go,” Gannon said.
“Help me,” Westergaard said.
“Help who?” Barber said.
“I have money,” the killer said.
“I’m sure you do,” Barber said. “You’d pay it now, too, wouldn’t you? But there ain’t nothing gonna stop what you got coming, fella. Not all the money in the world.”
The sirens were getting closer now.
“We need to move, John. For real,” Gannon said.
“But he’s got money, Mike. What do you think? They got a cash machine in hell?”
“Of course. There’s plenty of them. All you’d ever want,” Gannon said as he pulled John Barber away.
“But what sucks,” Gannon said as he patted the dying killer on the cheek goodbye, “is that the stores are always closed.”
They found a late 2000s Mercury Sable parked on a suburban street two blocks in from where they’d left the crashed Jeep and shot-up Cadillac.
“Do we have to?” Kit said, glancing over at a nice little house on the corner as Gannon removed a hammer from his kit bag.
“Desperate times,” Gannon said as he smashed in the window and opened its door and sat down. He took out a big screwdriver and used it to chisel off the ignition lock. Then he slid the screwdriver into the steering column and turned the car over with a roar.
“Desperate measures,” he said.
Gannon let John Barber in behind the wheel, and they all piled in, and John peeled out onto the road. They headed west, running red lights following the Novak blip on the phone screen. It showed that the Range Rover already had a nice head start up the 101 Bayshore Parkway.
When they finally made it to the four-lane highway’s on-ramp off North Shoreline Boulevard, they saw that Novak was already far to the north past Redwood City, moving quick.
“They seem to be heading into San Francisco,” Kit said.
They were still about five minutes behind around San Mateo when Kit saw the blip exit the highway.
“Exit 422,” Kit said, checking her other phone. “Shit, that’s the airport exit. Oh, no. They really are going to try to get him out. They’re heading to San Fran International.”