She stopped and shook her head. “Are you crazy, Casper? What are you doing in that car? Surveillance is supposed to be covert. That means nobody is supposed to notice you.”
Her brother smirked. “Spoken by the tuba player of the Wilmington Wowzabelles?”
“Wasn’t I right? Didn’t the tuba totally draw them in?” She slid inside the car and had barely closed the door before Casper gunned the motor and took off. “Your timing couldn’t be worse. I lost the Cahills. The GPS is all wonky. Satellite problems – it keeps going in and out.”
Savagely, Cheyenne ripped off her dark wig and took the pins out of her long blond hair. She shook it and it cascaded down past her shoulders. Then she tossed her glasses out the window and popped out the dark lenses. She tilted the mirror and drank in the sight of her own baby blue eyes. She was herself again. Immediately, she felt calmer.
“I’m getting kind of sick of dancing to V-One’s tune,” she brooded. “And having V-Two breathing down our necks all the time, waiting for us to make a mistake.”
“Word. And now you’ve played right into it. We might get dropped from the Council of Six.”
Who’s we, bro? Cheyenne wanted to say. I’m the one in the Council. You don’t even have a number anymore.
But she couldn’t say it. She still needed her brother.
“Now it’s going to take us even more time to climb up the ladder,” Casper continued.
She looked out the window as the picturesque streets of Lucerne slipped by. Streets with fancy stores with things in them that cost a lot. Things she wanted and deserved.
A plan was forming in her mind. “It doesn’t have to take more time,” she said. “Not if we’re proactive.”
A small smile began on Casper’s lips. “Oh, sister-friend. I know that tone. What are you thinking?”
“If you want something, you take it,” Cheyenne said, repeating what the two siblings had told each other from the beginning of their lives in crime. Back when their parents robbed banks, pulled scams, dragged them all over the country. Cheyenne and Casper had added Internet scams to the family’s crimes, and they’d pulled in more than they’d ever dreamed. Soon they were known in the criminal underworld. And to the FBI and the police departments of various states. So when the Vespers came calling, Casper and Cheyenne were only too glad to ditch their parents (now serving twenty-five years to life) and join up with V-1. Now they weren’t just criminals – they were master criminals, linked into a global network.
And she wasn’t going to give that up for anybody.
“He thinks the Cahills can find what he’s looking for,” she said, tilting the mirror again to check out her image. “But what if we find it first?”
The driver checked out Dan and Amy in the rearview mirror. It was the second time he’d done it in less than a minute.
Dan’s fingers drummed nervously on the leather upholstery. He took out his cell phone and wrote a text to Amy.
DRIVER CHECKING US OUT. WHY?
Amy responded in seconds.
NOTICED IT TOO. WE SHOULD BAIL.
Casually, Dan pretended to adjust his backpack. Meanwhile, he looked over his shoulder. A sedan slipped in and out of traffic behind them. It speeded up to avoid a tram.
A tail? Or just an aggressive driver?
They were driving along the Reuss River now. Lucerne looked like a mashup of Zurich and Geneva and Zermatt to Dan – picturesque and impossibly clean, the streets full of law-abiding citizens. Wide, curving streets, buildings painted in pale colors. Everything looked fresh and pretty. It made him nervous. What he needed was a narrow, dirty alley to hide in.
Amy began to cough. She bent over.
“Amy? Are you okay?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.
“Driver!” Dan called. “Pull over!”
The driver pulled over. Amy tumbled out, followed by Dan. She bent over, but her eyes swept the roadway.
“The dark blue car …”
“I know.”
Amy wheeled and ran, Dan close behind her. He heard honking horns, and he looked behind them. The dark blue car squealed to a stop at the curb.
“They’re coming!” he told Amy.
They turned down a side street, then another. Dan could see that Amy was struggling. His sister could barely walk in high heels, let alone run.
The road curved, and suddenly they were at the river again. It was a crisp fall day, and people were strolling along the walkway. Dan and Amy weaved through the crowd, trying to put distance between themselves and whoever had been in the dark blue car.
“Dan,” Amy called, “I twisted my ankle!”
She limped behind him. Dan saw something ahead, a crowd of tourists listening to a guide in front of a wooden covered bridge that spanned the river.
“Just a few feet more,” he said. “Hurry.”
They melted into the crowd.
“One of the most famous landmarks in Lucerne, the Chapel Bridge, or Kapellbrucke, is the oldest wooden bridge in Europe… .”
Dan nudged Amy. They skirted the tourists and began to walk across the bridge. Clomp, clomp … their footsteps echoed underneath the wooden roof.
“Are you okay?” he whispered to Amy.
“I can make it. I just need to sit down soon.”
“Okay. When we cross the river, we’ll stop.”
Clomp, clomp … their footsteps mingled with the sound of the tourists entering the bridge behind them.
One pair of footsteps was walking faster than the others.
Dan stiffened. He pressed Amy’s arm, and they moved a bit faster.
Clompclomp. Clompclomp.
And the footsteps behind them moved faster.
Clompclompclomp.