She saw me,” Jack said into his phone.
“Then go now!” Chuck shouted.
Jack put away the cell as he darted across the street, making the American mistake of checking left instead of right. Two cars slammed on their brakes, and Jack narrowly missed mention in tomorrow’s paper under the headline “Death by Mini Cooper.” Shada and the girl flew out of the restaurant and ran in the opposite direction, headed down a side street. Shada covered the city block in no time, but the girl seemed to be struggling to keep up.
Damn, that woman can run.
“Shada, stop!” he shouted. It felt like the fiasco at Carpenter’s Arms all over again, only this time he knew the area-he was glad he’d studied his map-and he knew that she was headed for the Tower Hill Tube Station.
Shada was in full stride, and as they made a hard left down another street, Jack could hear her yelling at the girl to keep up. Then the girl went down in the shadows beneath the overpass. Shada kept going. The girl had fallen, and Shada just left her.
Or did Shada push her down?
The girl was still on the sidewalk, holding her ankle, when Jack caught up with her.
“Are you okay?”
“Leave me alone!” she shouted. She got up slowly, then nearly fell over again when she put weight on that ankle.
Jack glanced ahead, beyond the darkness of the overpass. Shada was out of sight, long gone-with the cash. Jack hated to think what might happen to Vince without the ransom, but he couldn’t let a teenage girl go back to the Dark.
“Let me help you.”
“No!”
She was panic-stricken, and Jack tried his most soothing voice. “You’re safe now. Stay with me.”
“Leave me alone!”
Jack looked around for help and saw that they were right in front of a place called Pitcher amp; Piano, which, to a jet-lagged attorney from Miami, sounded like a law firm. “I’m going to take you inside here and call the police.”
“No!”
“You’ve been brainwashed by-”
Her punch to his chest took Jack’s breath away. “I’m not brainwashed,” she shouted, “and I can’t call the police!”
“Yes, you can.”
“If I’m not back with the money in ten minutes, he’ll kill me!”
“He has to find you to kill you!”
“No, he doesn’t!” she shouted.
“Just let me-”
Her scream was deafening-long and shrill, like the cry of a mortally wounded animal, and the fact that they were beneath an overpass made it even louder. A man came running out of Pitcher amp; Piano-it was a bar, not a law firm-and grabbed Jack.
“Let go of her!” the man shouted.
“I’m trying to help her.”
“I said, Let go!”
He took a swing at Jack, but Jack deflected it. Jack managed to keep a tight grip on the girl’s coat, but she only encouraged her Good Samaritan.
“Help! Get him away from me!”
The man was smaller than Jack, but the girl’s plea gave him added strength. He pulled Jack to the ground, and the girl broke free. The two men rolled on the sidewalk, and the speed with which the girl ran away-right through the pain in her ankle-left no doubt that her life was on the line. Hers and Vince’s. Jack pushed the man aside, jumped up from the sidewalk, and chased after the girl.
“Stop!”
She flagged a taxi to the curb. Jack was still a hundred feet away, but the thought of the girl getting away in a taxi made him kick into a higher gear. He had his cell phone in hand and was trying to dial the police, but that was impossible while running at full speed. He closed the gap quickly-that ankle was really bothering her-and she was almost within reach when the man from Pitcher amp; Piano tackled him from behind. Momentum carried them all the way to the taxi, and Jack reached for the girl’s ankle as she yanked the car door open. The man knocked Jack’s arm aside, and the girl jumped into the taxi.
“No!” Jack shouted, but the door was swinging shut, and the girl would soon be on her way to God only knew where. Jack was still on the ground, the man was on top of him, and he couldn’t stop the door from closing. In a split-second decision, Jack tossed his cell phone onto the floor in the back of the cab.
The door slammed shut, and the cab pulled away.
“Sorry, pal,” Jack said as he swung at the man’s jaw. The blow stunned the poor fellow, and it was enough to discourage him from giving chase as Jack hurried down the street in pursuit of the girl’s taxi. He dug the cell phone from Reza out of his coat pocket as he ran, stopped for a second to dial Chuck, and took off running again.
“You have spyware on my cell, right?” said Jack.
“Well…”
“It’s okay, Reza told me as much this morning!”
The black taxi was well ahead of him, but in the light of dawn it was still in sight. Jack talked fast as he raced down the sidewalk. “I tossed my phone into the back of the cab.”
“What cab?”
“I lost Shada, but the girl’s in a taxi with my cell phone. Follow that GPS signal and she’ll lead you right to the Dark.”
“Where are you?”
Jack stopped to catch his breath. He could smell the River Thames. “Tower of England,” he said, parroting that numbskull at the DLR Station. The lack of sleep was catching up with him, and he knew that chasing a moving vehicle on foot just wasn’t going to work.
“I’ll grab a cab,” he said. “I want you to call the police and tell them exactly where that GPS signal is headed.”
“Will do,” said Chuck.
Jack spotted a taxi approaching from the opposite direction. He jumped out into the street, and the cab screeched to a halt to avoid hitting him. The driver rolled down the window, primed to give Jack a good tongue-lashing, but Jack’s mouth was already running as he opened the rear door on the driver’s side.
“I need to follow that cab about fifty meters ahead of-”
Jack stopped himself, having gotten a better look at the driver. It was the same cabbie from the Tower Hotel who just yesterday-it seemed much longer-had helped Jack tail Vince’s cab to the Carpenter’s Arms.
“You gotta be kidding me,” said Jack, still holding the door open.
“Again? This is getting a bit strange, mate,” the driver said, and the rear door slammed shut with the force of the taxi pulling away.
“Damn it!”
Up ahead, the traffic light changed, and Jack saw the girl’s taxi pull away. Hopefully Chuck was tracking it, but GPS wasn’t exactly golden in one of the most tunneled cities in the world. Jack had to keep up. Several cars flew by, ignoring Jack’s attempts to flag one down. Jack dug a handful of bills from his wallet and waved them at a boy on a bicycle.
“I’ll give you two hundred pounds for your bike!”
The kid stopped. “Are you joking?”
“No joke. Here, take it.”
The boy got off his bike, smiling as he grabbed the money. “Ta very much.”
Jack pedaled off in pursuit of the taxi, hoping like hell for a major traffic jam ahead.