Chapter 12

Washington, D.C.

They slowly made their way off the plane, stuck in the moving mass of people, as Taylor tried to think through options. They had just stepped out of the plane and onto the Jetway when he saw his option.

Grabbing Bonnie’s hand, he yanked her after him, through the Jetway door and down the stairs. She pulled her hand free but saw his plan and ran after him as they hit the tarmac and sprinted down the length of the airport.

“Stay low,” he shouted as they ran behind the wheel of a nearby seven-forty-seven.

They sprinted from plane to plane, using them as cover to get as much distance as possible from their plane, even though it would be fairly obvious where they went. The flight attendants and a dozen passengers had seen them go out the side door.

Shouts, almost drowned out by the sound of the planes, told him their efforts had been in vain. A look back over his shoulder confirmed it. An agent in the typical suit and tie, whch was the uniform of most FBI agents, was standing in the open door of the Jetway, pointing in their direction.

“We need to get off the tarmac,” Taylor said, pulling Bonnie after him, veering toward the building, barely dodging a fuel truck that was driving past.

A baggage handler was standing near a door to the building with a security badge hanging off his vest.

“Sorry, man. National security,” Taylor said.

“Hey,” the guy said, reaching for Taylor, only to find himself on the ground as Bonnie kicked the back of his knee and pushed him, sending the man toppling to the ground.

Taylor swiped the guy’s badge in the card reader, yanking the door open as shouts erupted behind them. They tumbled inside, Taylor slamming it shut. Those following them would have to go around or find someone else with a badge. It wouldn’t slow them down for long, though.

Fluorescent lights flickered overhead as they found themselves in a narrow corridor.

“This way, I think,” Taylor said as he led them deeper into the bowels of the airport.

He honestly had no idea where he was going, but they needed to make it out fast. Solomon or whoever he’d sent was probably already calling for the airport police to start locking the place down.

They rounded a corner, coming face-to-face with a conveyor belt disappearing into the wall. A bunch of workers were standing near the bottom of it, putting bags onto the conveyor, which carried them away. Without hesitation, Taylor hoisted himself up.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Bonnie muttered.

“Move!” Taylor barked.

Bonnie scrambled onto the belt behind him. They crawled forward, the mechanical whine growing louder as they entered the chute.

The belt jerked to a stop almost as soon as they disappeared into the wall, probably because someone hit a stop button. Taylor continued to crawl on his hands and knees through the darkness toward a sliver of light he could see ahead of him, his shoulders scraping against the sides of the narrow passage.

Suddenly, light flooded his vision as he burst into the baggage claim area. The area was packed with people from the last few flights that had landed. Bonnie came out behind him. She looked around for a second as everyone stared at her, and then jumped off the conveyor and ran over to the fire alarm on the wall and pulled it.

“Fire! There’s a fire! Run!” she started screaming.

That broke everyone out of their surprise at seeing them, and maybe explained why two people came out on the baggage conveyor. The crowd of people screamed and began running for the exit.

Taylor jumped off the belt and grabbed Bonnie again, hauling her into the crowd that flowed toward the exit. The fire alarm was turned off before they even got to the sliding doors, but the civilians were already panicked and the alarm stopping didn’t stop the stampede.

A few officers were outside, but there were too many people for them to control and it had happened too suddenly. Cars were zooming by, nearly hitting pedestrians, people were shouting, and it was pure chaos.

Taylor looked back, mostly to see if any officers or agents had made it there, and saw some far back down the hallway that led to baggage claim and the door out to the street.

One of those agents was Whitaker, and the two locked eyes for a moment. He could read her look, silently pleading. Taylor felt a pang of regret, but there was no turning back now. He shook his head once.

She’d have to trust him.

Outside, cars idled in the pick-up lanes, drivers out of their cars trying to figure out what was happening and trying to find their loved ones in the chaos. Bonnie broke from him, running down the line of cars toward the one at the end of the line, with nothing in front of it, blocking it. The driver was a woman standing several steps away from the car, standing on her tiptoes, looking for someone.

Bonnie slid over the closed trunk and stiff-armed the woman as she turned around to the open driver’s door, sending her flying back into the street as people pushed past her, almost trampling her in their flight to get away.

Taylor wasn’t sure he approved, but they didn’t have much choice. They had to get out of the airport before it was locked down. He jumped into the passenger seat just as Bonnie put the car in drive and hit the gas.

They sped away, dodging other cars and people. Bonnie drove like a maniac, getting around the gates and out to the freeway, half the time in the wrong lane, narrowly avoiding other cars.

It worked, though. Within minutes, they were out of the airport and pulling up onto the freeway. She didn’t keep them on it for long, taking the very next exit that led into what looked like a business area.

The airport was still busy with the last planes unloading for the night, but most of the other streets were fairly empty, which didn’t work in their favor.

“We need to ditch this car,” Taylor said.

The woman would have told the first cop she saw. It would take maybe five minutes for Whitaker to figure out what car he was in, know the plates, and put out a BOLO.

“I know,” Bonnie said, almost annoyed with the backseat driving.

She turned down a main thoroughfare that led somewhere into the city, and then made several more turns. Taylor wasn’t sure what she was looking for. He would have gone for some kind of parking structure or apartment complex, but she seemed to be heading toward a more commercial area.

She must have found what she was looking for because she pulled into a darkened strip mall with two cars still sitting in the parking lot, pulling next to a small, very nondescript older sedan.

“Let’s go,” she said, getting out and going over to the sedan.

She had the door open in seconds and was in the driver’s seat by the time Taylor was in, and she already had it hotwired. It was very impressive.

“Where to now?” Bonnie asked.

“We head to the meet. It’s the only place we know where they’re gonna be. Then, we find my daughter.”

They kept their heads down and headed in the other direction, choosing to take the Capitol Beltway around the city rather than go in the direction they came from. Bonnie was good. She kept the car a few miles per hour above the speed limit, so that she didn’t stand out from other cars, but also was unlikely to get pulled over. She did nothing erratic and nothing to draw attention to them.

Now, they just had to get to the address. Taylor finally had a chance to plug the address they sent him into his phone and look it up.

“Take a left at exit nine,” Taylor said.

“Where exactly are we headed?”

“It’s some kind of industrial area. Lots of warehouses,” Taylor said, pulling up information on the address. “We’re headed for one of them, although the map says it’s permanently closed.”

“Makes sense. A good place for a meet-up like this. Big space but indoors so not a lot of eyes, but in a place that gets a lot of traffic.”

“Probably not this late.”

“No, probably not,” Bonnie agreed. “But they’re improvising, and this is probably a location they’ve used and scoped out before.”

Taylor started looking to see if he could find some kind of layout of the site when a call came in. He wouldn’t have needed caller ID to know who it was.

“What the hell are you doing?” Whitaker demanded as soon as he connected.

“I can explain...”

“I sure hope so. Director Solomon is livid. He’s ordered a full-scale manhunt for both of you. You just ran off with a goddamn assassin.”

“You need to get him to call it off. Now.”

“And why would he listen to me? He’s not going to accept my judgment when it comes to you. We’ve burned that bridge enough times, it’s not coming back.”

“They have Kara,” Taylor said.

The line went silent for a moment.

When she spoke again, Whitaker’s tone was completely different. “What do you mean, they have Kara?”

“They have kidnapped Kara. They want to trade her for Bonnie.”

“Who has Kara?”

“Richard Ellsworth.”

“The Senator?” Whitaker asked, both confused and shocked.

“Yes. He hired Bonnie to kill a guy named Darryl Casall, who apparently was looking like he was going to beat him.

There was a pause on the line. “Darryl Casall had a heart attack, Taylor.”

“Yeah, courtesy of Bonnie. She switched out his medication.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yes. Unfortunately for her, she accidentally found out who hired her, and Ellsworth didn’t like the exposure. He brought in a Chechen PMC and bought the local Caracas police to deal with her. We managed to deal with that, but Ellsworth clearly figured out who I was because I had a text waiting for me when I landed with a picture of Kara tied up and surrounded by armed men. They want me to trade her for Bonnie.”