Deadlock Read online

  Two cars and a bus passed on the cross street ahead of her, but no vehicles turned in. She saw no pedestrians until she herself became one, walking upright and purposeful. The cold night air raked itself over her arms and legs, cut through her thin blouse. Her breath plumed out in front of her. Soon enough she’d be on the shuttle, then in the airport.

  For a few minutes she was alone in the shelter. She thought of Dillon and Macie hunkered down in the XTerra seats, peering over the dash at Hutch’s Honda. As courageous as Dillon was, she knew he had to be scared. She hoped that Macie’s presence helped him be brave. She was another person to help bear his burden, but also she was someone he could protect.

  He was like Hutch that way; maybe he got it from Hutch: he was at his best when doing for others, especially when that doing entailed protecting. But the longer those children sat in the car, watching for Hutch, jumping at the slightest sound, the more frayed their nerves would become. She hoped that didn’t translate into doing something foolish.

  In her own frazzled state she imagined all those foolish things: returning for another shot at seeing Logan in the van; sneaking to Hutch’s car to find out just what the heck it was those men had put under it; untying Michael for whatever reason. In her mind, none of those scenarios ended well.

  What was she doing, leaving the kids alone? There were killers fewer than a hundred yards from them, a bomb closer than that.

  Just stand up and walk back, she thought. Well, walk, crouch, and crawl back.

  They could figure out another way to warn Hutch. But how? Nothing was sure. Even leaving the kids in the car and going to the airport wasn’t sure, but it seemed the most sure of everything she could think of doing.

  She could get both Dillon and Macie to watch the other side of the terminal. Then both of them would be in peril. And what if Hutch slipped them anyway? No one would be at the car for a final chance at keeping him away from the explosion.

  They could leave a note or write something on the Honda. That would be an invitation for the bad guys to come get them. Besides, they could just remove the message, and it was a bomb, for crying out loud: they’d just set it off while Hutch was standing next to it, reading the message.

  They could call the cops, but doing that with Logan in the bad guys’ possession felt wrong. There could be a shoot-out, and Logan would be caught in the middle, maybe used as a shield. Or they could hurt him in retaliation.

  She sat erect, clamped her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes. What they had decided to do was the best plan.

  She put the phrase on a continuous loop in her head: this is best, this is best. . . .

  A lady’s heels clacked on the pavement, coming toward her. The low rumble of a wheeled suitcase joined the sound. It was a soundtrack to accompany the early-rising, hardworking traveler. The woman clacked her way through a pool of light. She was trim, well dressed, professional. Laura and she were from different planets.

  Laura had never regretted the life she had, being a schoolteacher in a tiny, rugged town. She enjoyed being so intimate with nature and being part of a community small enough that everyone felt like family. But at that moment she would have given anything not to be herself, not to be the woman who had to decide between putting children in the path of killers and letting a good friend die.

  The woman strode up to the shelter. Her smiled greeting changed to a puzzled frown as she took in Laura’s bird’s-nest hair and crawling-through- the-parking-lot knees.

  Don’t ever play poker, lady, Laura thought, forcing a tight smile. You give away too many of your thoughts.

  Trying for nonchalance, Laura brought her hand to her hair. Yep, a bird’s nest. She tugged out a few snarls before giving up. She’d buy a brush in the airport and clean up a bit. Not that she cared about appearances all that much, but looking the way she did would draw attention. She brushed her hands over her scraped and dirty knees.

  “Hey!”

  She looked up to see the security guard from earlier—Charlie, she remembered. He was scowling at her from his cruiser.

  “Where are your kids?” he said.

  “They, uh . . .” She pushed her bangs off her forehead, felt the tangles. “We couldn’t find my husband’s car, so I took them home and came back.”

  His eyebrows worked like agitated caterpillars as he thought it through. “You still haven’t found it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Where’s your car?”

  She started to wave toward it, then gestured in the opposite direction. “Over there, somewhere. I figured I’d have a better chance to find it if I walked.”

  “Looks like you been crawling.”

  She smiled down at her knees. She shrugged. “A little.”

  “Where’s your coat?”

  She smiled at him. “With my purse.”

  “So what’re you doing now? Taking the shuttle?”

  “I thought I’d go get a coffee or something. Take a break.”

  He gestured with his head. “Why don’t you hop in? I’ll give you a ride.”

  She frowned.

  He laughed. “You don’t have to,” he said. “I don’t have the authority to make you. I’m just your average, everyday rent-a-cop. Don’t even pack a gun.”

  She stood and absently brushed herself off. The woman with the clackity heels sat on the bench, eyeing Laura with what may have been disgust. Laura straightened her spine and walked around to the other side of the car. Charlie leaned over to open the door for her. She sat and immediately appreciated the car’s warmth.

  Charlie pushed a button to raise his window. He dropped the car into drive, and they pulled away from the shelter.

  “So, the airport?” Charlie said.

  “Yeah, anywhere’s fine. Thanks.”

  He drove into the exit lane. The barrier arm went up as he approached. He waved at the woman in the booth. At that hour the traffic was light, allowing him to pull right out onto Pena Boulevard.

  He glanced at Laura. He said, “You want to tell me what’s really going on?”

  She held her hands in her lap and watched her thumbs take turns rubbing each other. She shook her head.

  He said, “If I go back there and cruise around a bit, am I going to find your car . . . and your kids?”

  She snapped her face toward him. His eyes were sad.

  She said, “It’s a long story. If you could just . . . give us till morning, we’ll get out of your hair.”

  “Honey, you got a husband what’s beating on you, the kids? You trying to get away?”

  She made her expression flat. All those wrinkles on his face. She thought each one could tell a story.

  “I’m no dummy,” he said. “I may not have the best job in the world, made a few wrong turns, but I been around enough to know what’s what.”

  She didn’t trust herself to say anything.

  He continued: “’Member what we said before? You do what you gotta do. You figure out what that is and get yourself outta my little corner of the universe. Not that I don’t like having you, but it’s no place to spend time, no place for kids. Or pretty ladies.” He smiled.

  His teeth were perfect.

  “You get yourself away, go back to your family. Whoever said ‘you can never go home again’ didn’t know nothing. He was probably a jerk, and nobody liked him. You’re not a jerk, are you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t either.” He pulled to the curb in front of the Frontier Airlines counters. He tugged a wallet out of his back pocket. “You need a little gettin’-away money? I don’t have much, but—”

  She bit her lip, watching him finger through the bills. After getting gas and food, she had about a hundred left from the money she’d taken off Michael. She hoped Hutch would have some. She touched his arm.

  “No, thank you.”

  “You got a place to go?”

  “We’re working on it,” she said.

  “The kids, they eat lately? Going to b
e able to eat today?”

  “Got that covered.” She pulled her lower lip into her mouth. “About the kids . . .”

  “Don’t worry, they don’t need some old stranger scaring them. And they gotta know their mom’s handling things. That’s important.”

  She wanted to tell him, No, no, please check on them, sit with them, protect them. But she realized his presence at the XTerra would most likely catch their pursuers’ eye, and another brick from the kiln of good intentions would settle into the road to hell.

  She said, “You’re a good man, Charlie. I’m Laura, by the way.”

  “Nice to know you, Laura.” His eyes turned to gaze through the windshield. “You know,” he said, “been through my own hard times. One thing I can say. They make life interesting, make fantastic stories to tell your grandkids.” He smiled at her.

  She nodded.

  “Now,” he said, “go make things right.”

  “I intend to.” She gave him a firm nod and climbed out. He drove away slowly, those rotating amber lights looking to her like waving hands.

  FORTY-SIX

  It seemed that every airline had flights coming from Seattle. She went to the Frontier counter, hoping for information that would narrow the possibilities. Instead, the clerk told her that in addition to the direct flights, it was also a popular layover route: “The departure city could be listed as Cleveland, Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Ontario, Chicago, or LA,” the clerk said. “It would help if you knew the airline.”

  As she had feared, the gates for the various Seattle-serving airlines were split between East Terminal and West Terminal, so passengers from the Emerald City would pour into two separate areas of the airport. Each terminal boasted its own baggage claim, elevators, exits, parking garages. There was no single place for Laura to observe all the travelers moving through the airport. Catching Hutch was pure hit-or-miss.

  She picked up a white paging telephone. “I’d like to page John . . . no, make it for David Ryder.” He was the friend whose quote Hutch kept on his office wall.

  “To meet you, ma’am?” the male voice said.

  “Yes. Which door is the farthest north?”

  “What level?”

  “Where do people catch shuttles to the off-airport parking lots?”

  “Level five, same as baggage claim.”

  “That one then.”

  “In Terminal West, the northernmost door on that level is 502.”

  It was six thirty in the morning—still dark outside, but not for long. More people were in the airport than when she’d arrived forty minutes earlier. The attack on the house had occurred shortly after eight the night before. Laura could hardly believe they’d been on the run only ten hours. It felt like days.

  She reached door number 502—stenciled within a red circle on the glass—without hearing the page she’d left for Hutch.

  Come on, people. How difficult can it be?

  She stepped close to the sliding door, and it opened. Another door lay beyond a sort of airlock. She walked to the outside door and stepped onto a wide sidewalk next to a drive where shuttles, limos, and taxicabs waited. The sidewalk ran the length of the building, about three hundred yards. She marched toward the far end. At the last door, she entered the terminal and went to the matching door on the east side of the terminal. Everything on that side of the building was a mirror image of the other side. Getting lost there would be a nightmare. Before she’d completed the first lap around the airport, she heard the page. Among a string of other names came, “Mr. Ryder, Mr. David Ryder, please pick up a white paging telephone.”

  Yes, Mr. Ryder, she thought. Pick up the phone! Please!

  She crossed through the building and again exited through door 502. She turned left and headed for the other end. As she went, she gave a second’s worth of scrutiny to each person she passed.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  “Look that way,” Dillon said, pointing to their right, down the aisle.

  “I was!” Macie snapped.

  She was crouched in the passenger seat. Dillon was behind the steering wheel. He had his sneakers back on and pressed into the top edge of the seat. His knees were bent and pressing against the wheel.

  She rotated her head back and forth, causing her ponytails to fly out from her head. She said, “I can turn my head sometimes, you know.”

  “I’ve got this side covered,” Dillon said.

  “Why do you get to watch the Honda, and I have to stare down toward nothing?” she whined. “It’s my car.”

  “It’s Hutch’s.”

  “That makes it mine.”

  “Anyway,” Dillon said, “he’s going to come from that way, so you can see him first.”

  “Not unless he comes around.” She waved her finger, illustrating her point. “He could go straight up the aisle from one of the entrances, like we did, then take the back road to this aisle and his car. Then you’d see him first.”

  “See? You said his car.”

  They’d been on the lookout for Hutch for over an hour. It wasn’t easy work. When people appeared—either getting off a shuttle or walking from somewhere else in the lot—their hearts would jump, and they’d almost strain their eyes trying to identify Hutch in the darkness. The pools of light from streetlights, too few and far between, actually made it worse. Their eyes couldn’t adjust to the night. Then there were the shadows, which seemed to always shift and move because of headlights from the main road to the airport. The vigil in general and the false alarms in specific were getting to both of them.

  “His car because he drives it. It’s my car too.”

  “He’s not going to come from behind,” Dillon said. He sighed. “If my mom doesn’t find him at the airport, he’ll take a shuttle. They’ve all been coming up the aisle from the front.” He pointed. “That way.”

  “You think you’re so smart,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “Logan says there’s nothing special about you,” she said. “You think there is, but there isn’t.”

  “I don’t think that,” Dillon said.

  “What about my dad?”

  “Hutch is special.” He gave her a mean look. He shouldn’t have to defend Hutch to his own daughter.

  “No, my dad thinks you’re special. He said so. But Logan says you’re not.”

  Dillon stared at the Honda. “Logan doesn’t know me.” He thought for a moment. “I don’t know why he doesn’t like me. I like him all right.”

  “See, you don’t know everything,” she said. “Logan doesn’t like you because Dad does. I heard the two of them talking about it.”

  Dillon frowned. “That’s just stupid.”

  Silence fell over them. Dillon scanned the area around the Honda. Macie kept her head turned the other way.

  She said, “Do you love my dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s not your dad.”

  It took him a moment to reply. “He saved my life. He was nice to me.”

  The sky was starting to lighten. It was like someone was blotting away the inky night, making it white again. It was a long cleanup job. In Fiddler Falls, night’s blackness didn’t so much fade away as got pushed away, first by a deep purple, then a bright red.

  Right now, Dillon didn’t care how the sun made its appearance, just that it did. He felt fingers graze his arm.

  Macie was staring at him. A tear had streaked down her cheek. “I’m sorry I said that, about what Logan thinks.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I think you’re special.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m glad you love my dad.”

  Dillon turned back to the area of the parking lot he was responsible for watching. He vowed not to coach her in the art of watching for her dad. Even if she looked away, her peripheral vision would catch someone walking into it. He’d spotted a lot of animals in the forest when he was looking away.

  When
Macie spoke again, Dillon jumped.

  “Why are those men after us?”

  “’Cause Hutch wants to put that rich guy in jail. He’s . . . I don’t know . . . after him.”

  “So why doesn’t he stop?”

  “Maybe he will now.”

  “Then maybe those men will stop coming after us, stop trying to kill my dad, if that’s what they’re doing.”

  “What, just stop? As in go away, and we never see them again?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  The voice came from the rear of the SUV: “Because that’s not what they do.”

  They spun in their seats. Dillon’s knee tapped the horn, giving audible expression to their surprise. Michael was sitting up in the cargo area. His eyes, catching the brightening light of day, appeared keen and alert.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Hutch hurried through the jetway. He pushed past other disembarking passengers, tossing out apologies as he went. “Excuse me . . . sorry . . .”

  Home, finally.

  He pulled the mobile phone out of his pocket and pushed a button to turn it on. As he jogged for the trams to the terminal, he watched the phone slowly come online.

  Come on, come on!

  When it chimed and a bar graph appeared, showing signal strength, he dialed Larry’s number.

  “Did she call?” he said when Larry answered.

  “What time is it?”

  “Don’t tell me you fell asleep!”

  “Only a little. Your call woke me up. No, no, she didn’t call. Where are you?”

  “I’m in town, I’m home.”

  “Hutch, this came in last night,” Larry said. “Nichols is dead.

  They found his body in a motel room in a place called Pinedale, California. They’re thinking suicide, but it’s still under investigation.”