When she came to, the car was parked on a quiet side street, which meant Colenso had managed to get the car back on the road. Dimly, she could hear the sound of a siren in the distance.
Colenso climbed out, then reached in and pulled her across the driver’s-side seat. “If you’re awake, you can walk. If you don’t walk, I’ll shoot you now. We’re close enough.”
Apart from the glow of the motel light and the residential houses clustered around it, the street was pitch-black. Colenso—or Fischer—had taken out the street lighting. Hope surged. Her money was on Fischer.
His fingers bit into her upper arm as he pulled her out of the car. He kept a tight grip on her arm as they walked.
Taylor scanned the street. It appeared to be empty but, from the conversations she’d overheard, she knew Colenso had at least three men staking out the meeting, and probably more.
Keeping to the shadows, they turned into the parking lot.
Deliberately, Taylor dragged her feet. “How’s your schedule?”
“We’re on time. Hold out your hands.” He jabbed the barrel of the gun in her throat, unlocked the cuffs and put them in his pocket. “Talk again and I’ll shoot.”
As they passed motel units with vehicles parked outside, her gaze was automatically drawn by a gray truck. There was no mud spattering the wheel rims or toolbox fitted to the rear of the cab. It wasn’t Fischer’s truck, but it was the same model and the same color. Her heart sped up as she skimmed the rest of the vehicles parked outside the units. They were mostly sedans, with the odd SUV just for variety. At a guess, the sedans belonged to the motel’s business clients, the SUVs to tourists on holiday. The truck, a no-nonsense workhorse of a vehicle, stood out like a sore thumb.
As they got closer, she noticed the plate. It was a rental, and suddenly she was certain Fischer had placed it there. He had rented the same model truck that he owned and parked it outside the motel unit as a signal.
Movement flickered in the unit opposite where the truck was parked. Colenso’s head whipped around. A series of detonations filled the air with thick, choking smoke. Time seemed to slow, freeze. A door was flung open and metal glinted. Simultaneously, a dark figure flowed up from one of the small gardens separating the units. “Taylor, down.”
Fischer.
Colenso’s hand came up. He was already firing, his grip viselike as he pulled her back toward him, using her as a shield.
Smoke swirled, stinging her eyes. The air stank of cordite. Fischer was down. Raw panic exploded, a fierce sense of disbelief. A dark shadow appeared next to Colenso, then a second. His men, she realized.
She heard the roar of a powerful engine and headlights cut through the smoke. A van braked to a halt; the passenger-side door slid open. A burst of gunfire split the air; one of Colenso’s men went down. Colenso jerked her toward the van. The change in direction gave her the momentum she needed. Instead of pulling away, she surged toward the opening. As Colenso stumbled, off balance, she spun, grabbed the hand holding the gun and used her momentum to slam it against the side of the van.
Colenso grunted. The gun skittered across the asphalt. Tearing free of his grip, she flung herself clear.
“Bitch.”
The door slammed as she pushed to her feet. The van accelerated out onto the road, fishtailed and shunted aside a vehicle blocking the exit. Gunfire erupted, the sharp thud of rounds hitting metal punctuating the roar of the engine as the van disappeared from sight.
She picked up the gun Colenso had used—her gun—and stumbled over to Fischer. He was sprawled on his back. For a heart-stopping moment she thought he was dead, even though she knew he had to be wearing body armor.
Relief poured through her as he wrenched at the Velcro fastenings of the Kevlar vest he was wearing and sucked in a breath. Colenso’s sustained firing had knocked him over, but the ceramic plates in his vest had taken the brunt of the impact. He was winded and bruised, but otherwise unharmed.
Fischer spoke rapidly into a mike, bringing himself up to speed with the search for Colenso. When a dark shadow—one of his men—melted out of the trees, he pulled her to her feet, retrieved his automatic weapon, and urged her out onto the street and into the rear of a van similar to the one Colenso had used.
Fischer leaned in the door. “Bridges is staying with you.”
Bridges, the dark shadow, stepped into the van and closed the door. He pulled off his balaclava and held out his hand. “You can call me Matt.”
She shook his hand. Young, fit, a Southern accent and very short hair. At a guess, ex-Navy.
She stared in the direction Fischer had gone. “What happened to Shaw and Tate?”
The warmth in Bridges’s expression evaporated. “Shaw’s in recovery, Tate’s on life support. We’ll know in a few hours.”
Within twenty minutes, several of Portland’s police cruisers had blocked off the street and a news crew had arrived. The last of Fischer’s team, which for this operation had included a number of FBI agents, their faces blanked out by balaclavas, had piled into a second van and left. Fischer, a balaclava now in place courtesy of the camera crew, had wrapped up the formalities with the Portland PD. Colenso’s men, the five that had been caught, had been charged with attempted murder, resisting arrest and a number of weapons offences, and had been taken to the Portland police station for processing. Since two had criminal records and one had a warrant out for his arrest, the likelihood that any of them would be released on bail was slim.
The operation had been high risk, and only partially successful. Taylor had survived, but Colenso had managed to slip the net.
Visibility deteriorated as a heavy, cold rain set in. The news crew left, frustrated by the weather and the lack of action. The van door slid open, but this time it wasn’t Fischer. Dana Jones, followed by Jack, climbed in out of the rain.
Taylor’s throat closed up. Of all the things she hadn’t expected to happen, this was at the top of the list. The meeting could only have been arranged by Fischer; no one else had the pull and the nerve.
Dana hugged Taylor, the pressure fierce. “Fischer’s given us five minutes, then we have a rendezvous with a chopper at an airfield just outside of Portland.”
That, at least, made sense. With Jack’s past, Fischer would want to avoid the airport itself, because the press would be staking it out, expecting at least some of the personnel, maybe even the prisoners, to fly out from there. “Where to?”
Dana sat next to Taylor, keeping a firm grip on her hand.
Jack took an adjacent seat. “Florida.”
Taylor glanced at Dana. “You’re going with him?”
Her expression was wary. “For a couple of weeks. Maybe. I need some time out.”
The van door slid open again. Fischer pulled off his balaclava. “Time to go.”
Dana hugged her again. “Stay in touch. You’ve got my number.”
A vehicle pulled up next to the van. Dana and Jack ducked into the rear passenger seats. Seconds later, Fischer motioned for Taylor to step out.
The rain had eased to a filmy mist that wreathed the sidewalk and trailed across the road. The crowd of onlookers that had gathered to watch the show had thinned, driven off by the rain and the fact that for the past hour, nothing of any note had happened.
Fischer dug in his pocket for a set of keys and depressed a locking mechanism. Ahead a vehicle beeped and lit up. Taylor recognized the gray truck that had been parked in at the motel. Fischer must have moved it out to the road, which made sense, because the motel was still choked with police cruisers and sealed off from traffic.
Climbing into the truck felt like going home, which didn’t make any kind of sense, since it was a rental, and nothing about Fischer should represent “home.”
Fischer pulled out from the curb. She studied the houses flashing by. A lone highway sign indicated they were heading west, not south—the direction she had expected him to take. “Where are we going?”
“Vermont. Cold Peak is about two hours away.”
The sense that Fischer wasn’t playing by the rules intensified. He had liaised with the Portland PD and the Bureau, but if he was following procedure he should have joined his men for the debriefing. “What’s going on?” The question was rhetorical. She already knew they were out on a limb; she just had to understand why.
His gaze connected with hers, hot and edgy and undeniably male. Question answered.
“Burdett will have your head on a platter.”
“It’ll be worth it.”
He handed her his cell phone. “If you want out, all you have to do is put a call through to Burdett.”
Taylor set the phone back down.