A few minutes later, she heard sirens in the distance. The sound grew more distant as they drove away.
* * *
Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile hated it when he hovered over one of his subordinates. At the moment, he was hovering over Leslie. She’d spotted the car they were hunting.
Problem was, she’d spotted three cars identical in make and color to the one that should have been in the garage of the mountain lodge. Three had meandered past the gas station ten miles farther down the mountain. None had stopped. They had no license plate on any of them.
“Should I check farther up the mountains?” Mahomet asked.
Foile shook his head. “They’re heading back to town. On that I’d bet my pension.”
“Should we order a roadblock down the mountain?” Leslie asked.
Foile stared up at the lodge’s high wooden ceiling for a moment, estimating distance and time. He shook his head. “They’re already back in town. We should have, though, when we headed up here.”
“You know, sir,” Leslie said, “if either of those three cars are them, they must have seen us barrel past them as they left.”
“That thought has crossed my mind,” Foile said. “I’m getting real tired of being just a few steps behind those people. Real tired.”
“I’ve run a search on that car in town, sir,” Leslie said. Apparently, she was also tired of playing catch-up and had already done what he was about to order.
Foile gave the young woman a smile. “Talk to me.”
“Sorry, sir, but I don’t have a lot,” she said. “There are two samples of that car parked outside no-tell hotels. Their GPSes are off, and their license plates are screened. There are three examples of the car parked outside houses that have private security cameras. They also have shut down. I checked. All three of the houses have teenage daughters in the family.”
“So they likely have their boyfriends over and don’t want either one or both of their folks to know about it,” Foile said.
“Most likely,” Leslie admitted. “I’ve checked the hotel registers. They usually are paid in cash. No surprise, both of the cars are likely cash payers.”
“Do we want to knock down some doors?” Mahomet asked.
“We’ve bashed in our quota of doors for this week,” Foile said. His boss had gotten a complaint on that topic, one she’d only mentioned to him, though he suspected she’d taken a lot more heat. “No, have some agents drop by the office of those two hotels. Take pictures of the three. Ask the clerks if any of those cars belong to a threesome. That ought to add some excitement to their day.”
“I’m on it,” Mahomet said.
“Leslie, stay on that car. Have every surveillance camera in town set to scream if it catches sight of one of them.”
“I’ve already done that, sir. There are a lot of hits, and so far all of them are for cars with working GPS units and readable licenses. I think our princess has gone to ground, sir, or is staying on streets that aren’t covered by cameras.”
That proved true for a long, quiet afternoon as Foile and his team drove in from the mountains and settled back into their squad bay at the Bureau.
“Everyone makes a mistake,” Foile kept repeating, a mantra that had gotten him through a lot of hard chases. Then again, he’d never been chasing one of those damn Longknifes. Maybe she wasn’t going to make any mistakes.
He called Rick at Nuu House. No surprise, the two Marines sat blank-faced in separate rooms saying nothing at all. Not even their name, rank, and serial number.
Foile found himself cycling back to the thought that he’d gone to sleep on last night. Who would dare kill Kristine Longknife, Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy, Princess of United Society?
The Prime Minister had balked at sharing who that might be with a Bureau agent. What would a retired general, known for being trouble, have to say?
Foile fetched his hat and coat and headed out the door. He was just pulling to a stop at the ivy-covered old mansion known as Nuu House when Leslie called.
“We’ve found the car, in a lot behind a dive, the Sail Inn.”
“Any sign of the three?”
“No sir. They ate, paid in cash, and left. They used the phone to call a cab. We’re checking on any fares picked up there.”
“Get back to me as soon as you get anything.”
Foile had only gotten to the room General Trouble was being held in when his commlink buzzed again. “Tell me something good,” he said.
“Sorry, sir,” Leslie began. “I have nothing good here, sir. No cabs picked up anyone at the Sail Inn, sir. There are a batch of cards for town cars. We’ve already called all of them, but none had a pickup anywhere near there. At least none any are admitting to.”
Foile closed his eyes in frustration. Those three were once again ahead of him. Worst, he’d lost his last connection to them. He’d finally gotten the license number of their car, and it now sat in the back of a dive telling him nothing.
Where had they gone? Were they walking? The last thing Foile wanted to do was turn loose a bunch of beat cops with pictures of the Longknife princess. He might as well go straight to the media hounds himself with the story.
Besides, they intended to go someplace where they could get themselves killed. The quiet neighborhood where the Sail Inn stood wasn’t the right place for that. “Keep on it,” Foile told Leslie. “Try all the town-car places. I’ll bet you she found a card someplace else and called one that wasn’t up at the Sail Inn.”
“Yes, sir. That sounds like something she’d do. Where are you, sir?”
“I’m about to see if I can cause Trouble a little trouble.” And on that cryptic remark, Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile let himself into the room where the legendary war hero was silently doing battle and, damn it . . . winning . . . with the best the law had to muster.
32
They cruised the back streets. Officially, their story for the town-car driver was that Kris and Jack were newlyweds, and they’d just landed jobs and were dreaming about buying a house. The driver didn’t seem to buy the story but every ten or fifteen minutes, Jack would produce another twenty, and the guy kept driving.
Jack, at least, had drawn out a wad of cash before he started his walk on the outlaw side. Smart man. Kris thought that one of many good reasons to keep him around.
The streets they drove edged farther and farther toward the south, so when Penny reminded the two lovebirds that they better not be late for work their first day, it was only a short drive to Longknife Tower.
The driver let them out at the first checkpoint, pocketed his last two twenties, and seemed happy for the exchange.
“You the new hires?” an overweight man with sergeant stripes asked. They admitted they were, and he arranged for an electric cart to take them to the next checkpoint. There, a dizzy brunette took their vitals off their fake Identacards, photographed them for their new idents, and took their fingerprints.
OOPS, WHY DIDN’T ANY OF US THINK OF THAT? Kris thought to Nelly.
BECAUSE NONE OF YOU HAVE APPLIED FOR A JOB LATELY, Nelly shot back. DON’T WORRY, IF I CAN’T PULL THE WOOL OVER THE EYES OF THIS COMPUTER, YOU CAN SELL ME CHEAP AT A GARAGE SALE. BY THE WAY, KRIS, I’VE COLLECTED THREE COMPUTER CERTIFICATES. THIS ONE AND THE TWO BELONGING TO THE FAT GUY AND THIS GAL. IF I NEED TO GET ON THE NET, I’M ON.
True to Nelly’s promise, the computer raised no red flags and did not report that the troublemaking Princess Kristine Longknife and her trusted sidekicks had reported for minimum-wage jobs.
That security checkpoint passed, they were ushered into a room with two other new hires and sat down to watch their new-employee orientation. Kris listened with only one ear as they were told how wonderful their employer was and how grateful they should be that it was providing them with the absolute minimum benefits the law allowed. Then again, maybe the two strangers sitting with Kris didn’t know that her father’s government had passed laws requiring that no employer could offer less health insurance than the rent-a-cop company was offering. Or that the contributions the firm was making into their retirement was the standard social-security package. It was almost enough to make Kris wonder if her brother, Honovi, who had chosen to follow father into the family business of politics, hadn’t chosen the tougher career.