“Luke!” Megan yelled.
The throaty roar of engines at full throttle reached his ears before the sound of the screeching tires. Luke jerked his head around and saw a small cavalry of cars through the rear window.
Groff grabbed the handhold above the passenger window and glanced back at the unit behind them as his driver accelerated into the turn and their car hurtled around the corner. The Bronco came up on them as soon as they completed the turn, and Groff’s driver had to do a controlled spin to avoid the SUV.
Three plain blue sedans were already braking behind the Bronco and three-man teams jumped from each vehicle with automatic weapons in hand.
Groff lunged from his car with his semiautomatic in a two-hand grip, sweeping his gun sight across the Bronco’s windshield. A black-helmeted officer at the SUV’s rear plunged his rifle butt through the back window while detectives standing at the forward doors broke through the side windows.
A moment later the men were staring at Groff, the question showing on their faces.
The lieutenant lowered his gun, reholstered it, then slammed the Bronco’s hood with his fist.
“Goddammit! Where is he?”
They were two blocks from University Children’s and driving south, away from the hospital, when the small herd of police cars screamed past the 1970s Ford Maverick that Luke had stolen from the poodle woman’s garage. Megan was at the wheel, while he and Frankie lay across the backseat.
Luke had decided to abandon their SUV after spotting Calderon, having learned what he needed from his reconnaissance. His enemy was garrisoned inside the hospital.
Calderon had broken off their phone connection just as the black-and-whites raced by their car. When Luke retrieved the stored number and dialed it, no one answered.
Their latest car was the ugliest mint-green he’d ever seen. Luke had wanted to switch vehicles before some vigilant patrol cop ran their plates. He hadn’t counted on trading his Bronco for the automotive equivalent of a peacock.
The question now turning in his mind was, how had the police found him?
However they had done it, it wouldn’t be long before they knew about the poodle woman’s car. They were probably already cordoning off the side streets around the hospital and searching the area. As soon as the woman returned home and reported the theft, the police would have the make, model, and license number of their car.
“Drive a few more blocks, then stop the car and let me out,” he said.
As though reading his thoughts, Megan said, “You can’t go back to the hospital now.”
“I don’t have a choice,” he said. “After you drop me off, drive a few more blocks. Then ditch the car and take care of Frankie.”
“You’ll never get inside the hospital,” she said. “The police are probably swarming the place by now.”
“I’ll find a way in.”
“Wait,” Megan said. “There’s another way to do this.”
61
The helicopter operations of the L.A. Sheriff’s Department’s were located at Long Beach Airport, tucked away on a small plot of land about a half mile from the airport terminal.
It was 5:17 P.M. and the sun had already set when Megan pulled into the parking lot that the Sheriff’s Aero Bureau shared with a helicopter tour company. The place looked the same as Luke remembered it from his time as a member of Search & Rescue, including the security cameras mounted atop each of the installation’s three buildings. The only addition was a chain-link fence topped with coiled razor wire that ran between each of the buildings.
He turned and looked at Megan, trying to decide if he was expecting too much of her.
“You know what to do?” he asked.
“This was my idea, remember?”
She was right; the basic idea was hers. After breaking into Megan’s street-level apartment through a rear window and retrieving her hospital ID, she had called in a prescription to a Walgreens pharmacy for phenylephrine eye drops, hoping that no one would recognize the name or face of the woman who had made a fleeting appearance on local TV channels several days earlier.
No one did. While at the pharmacy, she also picked up gauze, white tape, a pair of scissors, and, reluctantly, a box of vintage “safety” razor blades that Luke insisted were necessary for their plan to work.
After Megan parked and turned off the engine, Luke stared across the parking lot at the Aero Bureau’s main entrance. On the other side of glass double doors, a deputy was sitting at the front reception desk. The rims of video monitors fed by the exterior security cameras showed above the lip of the chest-high countertop.
“Remember what I told you about the security monitors,” Luke said. “You have to draw their attention away from the monitors or they’ll spot me.”
She nodded.
“Okay, let’s do it,” he said.
Frankie looked nervously between them.
“This won’t hurt,” Megan said to the boy. “Lean back and open your eyes as wide as you can.” She unscrewed the bottle top with an attached eyedropper and instilled three drops of phenylephrine into the boy’s right eye.
Luke held open the boy’s eyelid and watched the pupil dilate while Megan went to work with the scissors, cutting away a small, ragged tuft of hair from the side of Frankie’s scalp.
Luke tightened his hand into a fist until his veins corded with blood, then turned away and used the razor blade to make a neat one-inch incision along his forearm.
Blood poured from the wound. “Put his head on my lap,” he said to Megan.
Luke clenched his fist and a sheet of blood oozed over his arm, falling onto the left side of Frankie’s scalp. Within a minute the boy’s head was soaked in blood.
“I starting to feel si—” Frankie retched.
“Sorry,” Luke said.
The boy wiped his mouth with a sleeve. “Me no sorry. I help you, then you help me stay in America, yes?”
Luke tried to smile at the boy, but the dishonor he felt for stoking Frankie’s false dream held down the corners of his mouth.
“I’ll try,” he said while looking at Megan, who didn’t look up from taping gauze over his arm.
When she was done, Luke draped his hand around her wrist and squeezed gently.
“Time to go,” he said.
Megan didn’t hesitate. She was out of the car and running toward the entrance before Luke had opened the door on his side of the vehicle.
He tapped Frankie’s shoulder and grabbed two of the car’s floor mats as he got out of the car. Luke ducked behind the hood of a pickup twenty feet from the Maverick just as Megan threw open the entry doors.
It was a brightly lit room, and the uniformed deputy at the front desk hadn’t seemed to notice Megan approaching the building in the dark. When the doors swung open, he jumped from his chair.
Megan was shaking her arms wildly and pointing with both arms toward the parking lot. The jet engines of a landing plane drowned out her screams, which made the melodrama appear like a silent movie.
The deputy was already coming around a long countertop when Megan raced out the door. A second deputy charged through a door at the back of the room and followed them only as far as the entrance, where he stopped and swept the parking lot with his eyes. His right hand rested on a holstered automatic.
As soon as Megan and the deputy reached the car, the man shouted back to his colleague at the entrance, telling him to get the paramedics.
Luke had to scale the chain-link fence, which was in plain view of anyone standing in the parking lot. He couldn’t move until they carried Frankie inside the building. Their plan would fall apart if the paramedics decided to work on the boy outside, at the car.
Megan started wailing incoherently. The deputy looked between Frankie and her as if he couldn’t decide whom to give his attention to at that moment. Her glance shifted to the entrance, and Luke’s gaze followed. A man and a woman wearing green flight suits and carrying red tackle boxes charged out the front doors. Paramedics.