“Truck is registered to a student at the community college. He was carjacked about the same time we pulled out of the parking lot and called it in. Guy hit him from behind, so he doesn’t have a description, but local LEOs are still talking to him. Kid’s fine but upset about his truck.”
So their original kidnapper had an accomplice. This operation was more coordinated than he’d suspected. Sam balled his fist and hit the side of the steering wheel.
Amy jumped but remained silent.
He’d have to be careful not to scare her any more than she probably already was, which meant he’d have to be careful what he said to Wainwright. Sam waited as cars turned left on the green light into the large shopping center parking lot. “We showed up at the right time to the college.”
“Looks like. When we descended en masse, he probably made the wise choice to keep himself hidden. Hayes is having our suspect from the college moved into interrogation now, trying to figure out who the partner is.”
In the rearview, the pickup followed Sam into the parking lot, while Wainwright got caught several cars behind him as the light cycled. Sam cruised up the broad center aisle with the pickup still two cars back. At a fork in the drive, Sam hooked a left away from the main lot into a deserted auxiliary lot closer to the road.
The pickup continued straight toward the mall.
Interesting. Far from bringing relief, the truck driver’s odd decision to break away amped Sam’s adrenaline. Their new friend knew something Sam and Wainwright didn’t. “He went his own way.”
“You’re thinking he’s either confident he won’t lose you and he’s trying to throw you off, or he’s got an accomplice who’s finally caught up and who’s got eyes on you so he’s free to move on.”
Sam slowed and eyed the cars on the other side of the parking lot. None seemed familiar. He took a second to glance at Amy, who was watching out the front window, her gaze fixed on nothing. She’d detached from the situation and seemed to be watching from a distance.
It might be for the best. According to her file and Edgecombe’s intel, she’d started having panic attacks when WITSEC faked her death in El Paso. It had been a concern the last time he’d had to pick her up. An attack at the wrong time could compromise everything. He knew all too well the coping mechanism she was using right now. Detach. Watch the world as though the whole thing was a movie. Don’t let emotions creep into the show.
Amy was doing all of that and more. Sam started to ask if she was okay, then thought better of it. The last thing he needed her to do was analyze her feelings before he could get her to a safe place to feel them.
“I’m in.” Wainwright’s voice cut through his thoughts. “I’m going to come around behind you and see if you’ve picked up a second tail, although there’s no one around you right now.”
“Keep an eye out for the first guy.” Sam didn’t like this. He swung back around toward the shopping mall’s entrance. If Wainwright didn’t pick up anything else, he was getting back on the highway double time and getting Amy as far from here as possible. Maybe, just maybe, their tail had figured out he was being followed and had abandoned pursuit.
At the end of an aisle close to the road, traffic was nonexistent and no cars obstructed his view. Sam stopped to check every direction and slipped through the cross aisle. Still no sign of the truck and no indication there was another car tailing him. “I’m heading back for the main road.”
“I’m going to drop in behind you and follow you out, but I’ve got a red coupe three aisles over from me trying to mix into the crowded part of the lot. He’s paralleling your moves.”
So there was another one and he was smart. He’d stayed close to the building where the parking lot was crowded, blending in with the rest of the cars. He glanced at the rearview and watched Wainwright’s car turn onto the row behind him and stop at the same intersection he’d just crossed. “Keep an eye on him. See if he follows.”
“Got it. No sign of the truck. I’m going to—” The screech of tires came from Sam’s earpiece and from across the parking lot at the same time. Metal crunched with a sickening finality.
Sam hit the brakes and turned to look over his shoulder as Amy screamed.
The pickup had appeared out of nowhere and broadsided Wainwright’s car, pushing him at full speed across the narrow intersection and into a light pole. The passenger side was smashed against the truck and the driver’s door curved around the pole.
“Wainwright!” Sam yelled for his partner.
Only silence answered.
Sam gunned the engine and spun the car to face the carnage as people raced toward the accident scene. Inside the pickup, the driver was slumped over the steering wheel. The airbag clearly hadn’t deployed.
His earpiece came to life. “I’m okay.” Wainwright was breathless but alive. “Get Amy out.”
Sam scanned the lot, searching for the red car. To his left, a blur of motion caught the low-hanging sun as the car hung a J-turn and aimed at them, roaring across the empty parking spaces, gaining speed and power.
This was a coordinated attack, and Sam was on his own.
Amy’s shoulder cracked against the window as Sam executed another sharp turn and floored the gas pedal, leaving her stomach somewhere behind them on the asphalt.
“Hold on.” Sam’s hands were tight on the wheel, his focus on what lay ahead of them. He was intense yet he radiated no stress, only a fierce sense of capability that left Amy with the overarching belief that she was safe. She was safe even inside of a car going way too fast for the empty section of parking lot they were currently speeding through.
There was a brief exchange between him and someone she couldn’t hear in his earpiece, but his words didn’t make sense to her until he said, “We’re going to make a lot of turns without warning.”
Amy pressed her back into the seat even farther than she had before. Her fingers ached around the grab handle above the door, but she didn’t let go. “Is Wainwright okay?”
“He’s okay. Fortunately for him, side airbags are a thing.”
Relief was temporary, flung aside as Sam threw the car into another turn away from the more crowded section of the parking lot.
She should have been panicking right now. Her brain should have already given way to adrenaline and fear, throwing her into a state of sheer terror. It had happened under less harrowing circumstances. An overcrowded store during the holiday season. A sharp sound during a movie. Simply waking up too suddenly in the middle of the night. Panic attacks had become a semi-regular occurrence since she’d fled her real life.
Flying across the parking lot as though they’d been fired out of a missile launcher, the only thing she felt was detachment, as though her body was buckled into the front seat but her mind was somewhere slightly to the left. She was two steps behind what was happening.
She braced herself against the dash with her free hand as Sam navigated the turn out of the shopping center and shot up the road toward the highway entrance. Numb detachment was another thing she was used to, a side effect of the anxiety that had hounded her since the night she realized WITSEC had killed the old Amy Brady and given rise to Amy Naylor. Since the moment she’d realized the person she’d been from birth was dead.
In essence, although she still lived and breathed, she’d died that day. No more job. No more friends. No more sports medicine degree. WITSEC had rewritten and recreated her degree. They had fabricated her past work experience to fit this new person, a community college professor teaching biology, which she had studied a bit while taking sports medicine. She couldn’t