“What’s so funny about that?” Parkowski demanded.
“I forget just how big the government is sometimes,” her boyfriend explained. “If the shooters on the pier were in cahoots with the government somehow, it’d take a dozen people to get through all of the layers needed to get down to the local cops. And that takes time, which means we have a chance to get out of this.”
“And if they’re not part of the government?” Parkowski asked. “I have a hard time believing that the U.S. government would indiscriminately murder people in broad daylight.”
“We’ll come to that if we have to,” her boyfriend said. “Right now, let’s just get out of here.”
He deftly pulled out of the parking spot and started driving north toward his friend’s apartment.
They stuck to the residential streets rather than the main thoroughfares of Ardmore Avenue and CR-1. The drive was silent; DePresti focused on driving while Parkowski kept an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.
She had a sick feeling in her stomach. Whatever had happened back there was her fault. If she hadn’t been so invested in figuring out what Bronze Knot was, her boss and all of those innocent people at the pier would still be alive.
“If I remember correctly, his apartment complex is off of this street,” DePresti said as he made a left onto a two-lane street.
She saw a black, late-model Chevy SUV with dark tinted windows parked alongside the street in front of a house in the opposite direction that she and DePresti were traveling. Parkowski couldn’t put a finger on why she felt a sense of danger, but the car had its lights on and engine running; seemingly just sitting and waiting for someone.
“Mike, don’t pull in,” she told her boyfriend.
“What?” DePresti asked. They were almost at the turn-in for the apartment complex, the only one on the street.
“Keep driving,” she repeated, “Something’s wrong.”
“Ok.” He increased his speed slightly and drove past the apartment’s entrance.
She turned around in her seat. The SUV had pulled out of its spot towards them.
“We’re being followed,” she told DePresti.
“Fuck,” he said, rolling through the stop sign at the end of the street and making a right to go towards CR-1. “That’s not good.”
“We should have switched cars,” Parkowski said, realizing their error. “Or stolen one.”
DePresti didn’t respond.
“What do we do now?”
“We lose them.”
He got onto CR-1 going north, the famed Pacific Coast Highway, which had lighter traffic than expected at this time of day.
Parkowski turned around and looked again. The black SUV was still there, two or three cars behind them, and if her eyes weren’t deceiving her, there was another SUV, the same make, model, and color, coming up from the south.
“I think we’ve got another tail,” Parkowski said to DePresti.
“Fuck,” he said again. “Just keeps getting better and better.”
“Can you lose them?”
“I think so,” he replied. “But, if we do, where do we go? Is there anywhere we can go? Or are we just going to be on the run until we get caught or forgotten about?”
“Can we go back east?” Parkowski wondered aloud. “That’s where both of our families are; they can help hide us somewhere until this all dies down.” If it dies down, she thought but didn’t say.
“Maybe?” DePresti said. “I think long-term that’s a good strategy. But man, there’s a lot of stuff I think we’ll have to do first.”
“Like what?”
“Like, Grace, I’m in the military, and they’re going to expect me to show up to work tomorrow,” DePresti said. “Otherwise, I’m AWOL. I’m going to have to figure out a plan to explain why I won’t be there.”
“Oh.”
“And they’ll expect you at work at Aering, too,” DePresti continued as he made a left onto Rosecrans, now heading west towards the Pacific. “We’ll have to figure out that one too.”
The two SUVs still followed them. “Both of them turned with us,” Parkowski said.
He nodded. The huge Chevron refinery was on their right as they drove down the avenue. Traffic was starting to pick up as they got closer to Los Angeles International Airport. “Keep track of them.”
“What are you trying to do?” Parkowski asked.
“I’m trying to get to the airport and lose them in the mess there,” her boyfriend responded. “And if that doesn’t work, get on the freeways and try to get rid of our tails there.”
Parkowski almost asked him why he was going away from the airport — CR-1 going north would have taken them right to the airport terminals — but realized why when DePresti made a right going north on Vista del Mar. The road here was almost completely empty, giving them a lot more room to maneuver, while CR-1 became bumper-to-bumper as it neared LAX.
Unfortunately, that also gave the pursuing vehicles more room too.
“They’re gaining on us,” Parkowski said, a hint of panic in her voice.
DePresti didn’t respond, rather, he gunned his Subaru’s engine and barely made it through a yellow light.
The two SUVs kept coming.
They managed to get through another yellow light just twenty yards ahead. The chase had moved to the city El Segundo as they traveled north. DePresti made a right at Imperial Highway, just south of the Blue Butterfly Preserve, and headed east towards the airport.
Parkowski watched as both of the SUVs made the same turn and continued their pursuit.
After driving down that road for a few minutes, there was trouble — a huge accident and police response just before the left turn to go under the runways at LAX going north. The road was blocked.
“Well, shit,” DePresti said. “There goes that plan.”
“What do we do now?”
“Did you ever meet Andrew Chang?”
Parkowski thought for a moment. “No, but the name is familiar.” She knew that DePresti had mentioned it at some point, but couldn’t remember in relation to what.
“I used to work with him at Space Systems Command,” DePresti said as they stopped at a red light. The SUVs were a dozen cars behind them, stuck in the snarl of traffic as well. “We were in the same units twice, in both launch and space superiority. Chang got out of the military and bought a spread out in the Barstow area where he works remotely for some LA-based defense contractor. I’ve never been there, but I’ve talked to him a few times since he moved. I think that might be a good place to hide out.”
“But, if I remember the conversation correctly,” Parkowski argued, “he’s kind of crazy, right?”
“Yes, but right now that’s what we need,” DePresti replied.
She flipped around to check the SUVs, then back to the front. “What do you mean?”
“He’s paranoid about being tracked online and in person, both about the federal government as well as large corporations,” he explained as he drove. “I think he’s completely off of the power grid, and any kind of internet connection that he has is likely untraceable. Chang probably has a lot of supplies and other things that might be of help to us as well.”
Parkowski nodded — she didn’t have any good arguments. Or a better plan, for that manner.
They were almost at the I-105 onramp, just before the Aering Space Systems facility where this had all begun. She checked back again. Somehow, the two SUVs had covered the ground between them much quicker than she had anticipated.
“Shit, they’re here,” Parkowski said.
“What?”
“They’re almost on top of us,” she said as they stopped at a red light just before the onramp.
She turned around and saw one of the SUVs, the closer one, draw its window down. A submachine gun, the same one used by the shooters on the pier, appeared. Any doubt she had that the two groups were related — or even one and the same — evaporated.