44


Jules turned casually, walked over to the theater, and slipped inside. She spotted Tess and Alex immediately. They were sitting at the edge of a row, with Tess on the aisle seat and Alex beside her, his face all lit up with wonder.

Jules crouched down beside her.

“There’s a couple of guys outside. I think they might be bad news.”

She looked at Tess, making sure the information sank in calmly, before adding, “We don’t have much time. There’s a chance they’re tracking you through your cell, so I need you to give it to me. I’m going to use it to lead them away from you.”

“But—”

“I spoke to Sean,” she insisted, keeping her tone calm and low. “It’s the safest option. Give me your phone.”

Tess took out her iPhone and passed it to her. Jules guessed that the novelist had been through her share of potentially lethal situations and probably knew that efficiency was often the key to survival.

“Stay here for ten more minutes,” she told Tess. “Then meet me by the exit of the lot where we parked.”

She handed Tess the keys to her car. Jules reckoned it would take Tess and Alex no more than ten minutes to walk to the parking lot they’d left it in. Once the three of them had regrouped they could drive straight onto Park Boulevard and slip away.

“Good luck,” Tess said, before putting her hand on Jules’s forearm. “And thanks.”

Jules nodded, then skulked back toward the doors.

She turned off the iPhone, slipped it into a pocket, then left the theater. She hated leaving Tess and Alex alone, but the risk of staying with them and being overpowered was even worse.

She emerged from the darkness into the brightness of the museum’s main exhibit area and scanned her immediate surroundings. The two hostiles were now over by an unusual, boomerang-shaped plane. If they were pros and they were tracking Tess’s iPhone, then they were going about it the right way—anticipating the movement of the target, but positioning themselves so they could change direction if they needed to. Staying close, but not too close.

More confirmation that they were what she suspected.

Using a group of museum visitors as cover, Jules ducked low and walked briskly toward the main entrance. She figured she had maybe half a minute or so before the hostiles knew they’d been made. GPS tracking was pretty good, but it wasn’t perfect. The signal had a massive bounce before it got to the phone company. Then there was the latency between the signal itself and whatever cell network the hostiles were using to track it. As long as she had the iPhone turned back on within thirty seconds, she’d buy herself the time she needed to put some distance between them, and the hostiles wouldn’t ever know they’d lost signal lock.

Jules left the museum by the main rotunda entrance and switched the iPhone back on. She ensured the slide-lock was active, then headed north toward the Museum of Art. The plaza was still heaving with summer-camp day-trippers, groups of tourists climbing in and out of buses, parents helping their toddlers out of SUVs, and lovers holding hands and carrying picnic baskets—all of them enjoying the gorgeous weather. Jules knew she couldn’t allow herself to walk any faster than an excited four-year-old, but she used every bit of cover available: gaggles of retirees, oversize vehicles, and families arguing over what they should see first. As she stepped onto the wide sidewalk that ran alongside the parking lanes, she joined a large group of tourists and allowed them to swallow her.

She tried to avoid looking back. The hostiles would certainly know what Alex looked like—they might even have a picture of Tess—but there was no way they knew Jules by sight. To pick out one four-year-old boy from a moving crowd wasn’t going to be easy for them. Jules just had to trust that the men wouldn’t notice they were following a false trail until it no longer mattered.

After another hundred yards, she ducked behind some trees, found cover, and peered back the way she’d come. Sure enough, the hostiles were following, eyes darting between the handheld and the large group of tourists moving slowly away from the museum.

As Jules worked her way through the trees and up the ramp toward the Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theatre, she saw the perfect move. Crawling at a snail’s pace heading away from the theater was an electric buggy carrying two elderly ladies. Emblazoned on the side of the cart were the words SAN DIEGO ZOO.

The zoo was all the way at the other end of the park, and the cart was obviously heading that way. Jules glanced back, assessed that she was out of sight of the hostiles, and sprinted up to the buggy.

She slowed right down when she reached it and caught the driver’s eye.

“Excuse me,” she asked, motioning for him to stop.

He hit the brake.

“Will you be coming back this way?” she asked him, smiling. “I’ve got my grandparents here and they could use a ride to the zoo.”

The buggy’s driver told her he’d come back for them in about twenty minutes. Jules thanked him and stepped aside, and as the buggy started up, she dropped Tess’s iPhone into one of its rear baskets, then ducked back into the cover of the trees and waited.

Barely twenty seconds later, the two hostiles passed within ten yards of her as they tracked the iPhone’s GPS signal. She stayed put and watched them, every nerve pulsing, then slipped out from her cover and started walking back.

After a few seconds, she glanced behind her and saw them rounding the curve. She was now out of their sight line. She jogged back toward the museum, her jog quickly turning into a sprint as she put more distance between her and them. Soon the Air and Space Museum was just a couple of hundred yards ahead of her, and she was about to take a pathway down to the lot where she’d left her car, along a service road that ran between two large administration buildings, when she stopped in her tracks.

There was a third hostile.

Another Latino, no more than thirty yards away, standing right at the edge of the lot, next to a black Chevy Tahoe SUV—the one she’d seen on the clip from the dead deputy’s in-car video. He also had a phone cord going up to his ear.

He turned around just as she noticed him, and for a split second they locked eyes, both of them knowing instantly that each had made the other. Which meant he’d probably guess that Tess and Alex weren’t where his compadres thought they were.

She had no way of calling Tess to warn her because her phone was by now halfway to the zoo.

Jules didn’t have time to think about it any further. All she knew was that she couldn’t let the bastard warn the others, and that if she drew her weapon, the situation would immediately spin out of control. So she did the only thing she could think of.

She threw her whole body forward and charged.

She saw his eyes narrow and his head pull back with a look that was somewhere between amusement and disbelief a split second before she slammed into him with her right arm bent tight against the front of her body, crushing him against the side of the Tahoe, forcing the air from his chest and breaking three ribs before using the tail end of her momentum to shove him to the ground.

She fell on top of him and scrambled to get her cuffs out while trying to keep him pinned down, but he was too strong for her. He spun her arm back and caught her across the shoulder, then twisted on himself and shoved her back viciously against the car, her head thudding heavily against its door and jarring her vision. Her eyes recovered just in time to catch an unmistakable flash of steel as the enforcer pulled a vicious-looking stiletto from his left boot.

She dove at him again, clamping her left hand around the hostile’s wrist while she jerked the heel of her right hand full force into his nose. He grunted with pain and momentarily lowered the blade before flicking it right back at her stomach. He was stronger than she anticipated, and Jules knew she wouldn’t get much more of a chance to survive the fight.

She kicked the knife arm away and threw herself at it with both hands, smashing it against the tarmac, but the enforcer refused to relinquish his grip on the knife. He lashed out with his right knee, catching Jules in the kidney full force. She allowed the momentum to topple her from him, but held onto his right wrist with both hands as she rolled off him and onto the ground. He went with her, trying to maneuver his weight on top of her, but with a final surge of adrenaline she twisted his arm around and used all her body weight to spin the blade around and drive it into his midsection.

His eyes shot open and he gasped heavily as Jules rolled him right over her and flat onto his back. Not wanting to take any chances, she pulled out her Glock and slammed it into the side of his head, knocking him out cold. She patted him down, pocketed his phone and his stainless steel handgun before throwing a pair of cuffs on him as an added safety. She pushed back to her feet and noticed several tourists staring at her with expressions ranging from terror to You go, girl.

“FBI,” she shouted as she flashed her badge to them. “Stay back. This man is dangerous.” She quickly pulled out her phone and called it in, asking the dispatcher to radio local PD and get them to send as many uniforms as they can to the lot.

Her entire body was sizzling with trepidation. Tess and Alex were in serious danger. She couldn’t be sure how much the guy she took out had told his compadres, but she had to assume they now suspected they’d been duped, and that Tess and Alex could be closer to where Jules was. She charged off to meet them and was heading toward the lot when she glimpsed the two hostiles entering the parking lot at the north end. They hadn’t seen her, but they knew where their buddy was and they’d soon find him. She turned and sprinted down the service road toward the parking lot and saw her gray SUV immediately, sitting across the lot, by the exit.

Jules was moving as fast as she could, weaving through people, trying to make it to the car before they saw her. She skirted around the lot’s south side, throwing looks over her shoulder every couple of seconds—then saw one of the enforcers spot her and alert his buddy.

The two men were moving now, coming fast, drawing their guns as they cut across the lot to intercept her.

She pulled out her weapon as several rounds sliced through the air and whistled past her. A couple of kids who were climbing back into their family car started screaming as a nearby windshield shattered, and the lot turned to mayhem with people yelling and taking cover. Jules was leveling her gun at the lead killer, looking for a clear shot, when, to the right, a black-and-white drove into the lot. The hostiles saw it, too, and as one of them slowed to fire at it, Jules stopped, crouched and let off five shots in quick succession, missing him but forcing him to take cover behind the corner of the building on the west side of the service road.

The other kept going, staying low, ducking for cover behind successive cars, heading straight for the lot’s exit—and the Ford Explorer.

Jules’s body ignited with alarm.

She bolted forward again as the black-and-white screeched to a halt. Two SDPD cops jumped out and went to take up positions behind their car, but the driver was hit and dropped to the ground before he could make it. Without coming to full halt, Jules took aim at the hostile who had taken down the cop, but there were civilians all around the lot and she couldn’t fire. She had to keep going. The hostile heading for Tess was still rushing down the side of the lot, closing fast on the parked SUV.

Jules looked right and left. There was no way she was going to get to Tess first. Not without running straight into to the hostile’s path.

The hostile was now beelining for the car—he seemed to know Tess and Alex were in it, possibly because Tess wasn’t in a parking spot but waiting by the exit. As their trajectories converged on the Explorer, Jules saw him train his gun on it—but she couldn’t shoot at him, not with all the people and parked cars between them.

Instead, she veered right and leapt up onto the hood of a parked car, climbing quickly onto its roof, where she could get a clearer shot at the man. She lined him up, gripping her gun with both hands, about to pull the trigger when shots cut the air past her from the right, from the shooter farther back. A round grazed her shoulder, throwing her off balance, and she fell off the roof and hit the asphalt hard, her gun skittering out of her fingers.

The shooter she’d tried to take out was now barely twenty yards away from her and charging in for the kill.

Jules was on her hands and knees, looking for her gun, eyes darting from under the cars and back to catch glimpses of the killer closing in, seeing a wicked grin creep over his face as he anticipated the kill—then she heard a wild screech from behind her and turned to see the Explorer lurching backward, wheels spinning, coming right at her.

She rolled out of its way as it drew level with her, its tires squealing as it slewed to a stop.

She didn’t need an embossed invitation.

She pulled the back door open and leapt inside.

“Go!” she yelled.

Tess threw the car into gear and floored the gas, and as they blew out of the exit, Jules caught a glimpse of the receding gunman who was already pulling back and disappearing into the crowd.

As Tess swung onto Park Boulevard and pulled away from the park, Jules knew the area would soon be crawling with cops. They’d deal with the shooters. Still, she wasn’t sure she’d made the right call. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself as she wondered about it.

Either way, Alex and Tess were safe.

That had to count for something.

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