When he crashed into the hood of the car, it screeched to a halt. The driver yelled at him.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Kevin ran around to the driver’s door. “Please, sir, you’ve got to help me. These two guys are after me. They say they’re the police, but they’re not.”
The driver, along with the other passengers, stared at him incredulously. Through the window, Kevin could see Barnett approaching the Jeep.
He knew he must have sounded as if he were raving, so he tried to calm his voice. Still, he must have sounded like a lunatic. “Please let me in!”
“Freeze!” Barnett was pointing a gun at him from the front of the Jeep. He circled slowly around, keeping the gun trained on Kevin.
With his left hand, Barnett withdrew a wallet from his jacket and flashed a badge at the occupants. “Virginia State Police. This man’s wanted for car theft.”
“He’s lying!” Kevin said. “Look at his badge. He’s not a policeman.”
The Jeep’s passengers, however, were not about to question a policeman apprehending a crazed criminal. Especially when the cop was holding a gun. They said nothing.
“That car alarm you hear,” Barnett said, “was the result of this suspect attempting to break in to a vehicle. We caught him in the act, and now he’s trying to get away.”
Kaplan stopped the Taurus in front of the Jeep and got out. He walked around, pulling handcuffs from his pocket.
Kevin knew it was no use trying to get help from these people. He didn’t resist as Kaplan pushed him against the Jeep, patted him down, handcuffed him, and led him to the car. Barnett rounded the car to get in. In the distance, Kevin heard sirens.
“You’re not going to wait for the Blacksburg police, Barnett?” Kevin said, sneering the name.
Kaplan shoved Kevin into the back seat. The man who had called himself Barnett six days ago slammed the door and looked back at Kevin from the front seat, his hollow gray eyes smiling. “Allow me to introduce myself, Mr. Hamilton. My name is David Lobec.”
Erica bounded down the staircase two steps at a time. To get the police’s attention quickly, she’d told them that somebody had been shot in the commuter parking lot during a fight. When she was convinced that the police were coming, she hung up and ran for the stairs, stopping only to retrieve her mace from the lab.
She got to the first floor and burst into the hallway, her lungs burning. She ran through the outer door, squinting as she stepped into the sun, and stopped.
To her right, the Jeep was slowly moving toward the main campus.. To her left, the flashing lights of a police car were visible cresting the hill. She quickly scanned the rest of the parking lot, but there was no sign of the brown Taurus.
They were gone.
CHAPTER 31
Kevin was driven to Ted Ishio’s house, where they met a man named Vernon Francowiak. He was sickened when he saw how the house had been trashed in their search for the notebook. They waited at the house for thirty minutes, enough time for the cops to have left the commuter lot. Then the four of them returned to the university.
While Franco, as Bern had called him, waited with the car, Bern and Lobec led Kevin to Jacobson Hall’s fifth floor. With every step, he prayed that Erica had taken the diamond specimen and left.
“Here it is,” Bern said as they approached the lab. He looked at the number on the door. “This is the lab.”
“The key, Mr. Hamilton,” Lobec said, holding out his hand.
“I don’t have it.”
Lobec nodded at Bern, who patted him down more thoroughly than when they had first caught him. Kevin was almost getting used to the process.
After a minute, Bern shrugged. “He’s clean.”
“Miss Jensen must have it. No matter.” Lobec withdrew a small kit from his pocket and took out two small slivers of metal. He inserted both into the lab’s deadbolt, and within twenty seconds he twisted the handle opening the lab.
Kevin was impressed. Still, he was nervous, and he didn’t want to let them think they had him scared. He tried to lighten up the situation. “That was fast. You must get locked out of your house a lot.”
“I’m glad you can still see the humor in this, Mr. Hamilton. Mr. Bern, wait outside while we look around the laboratory.”
Followed by Lobec, who had his gun drawn, Kevin entered the lab and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that it was deserted. Erica’s purse was gone, and some papers were strewn on the floor near where it had been. He paid no attention to the experimental equipment, but Lobec walked directly to it.
Lobec first inspected the laser, then peered inside the chamber. “It appears that your purchase from LuminOptics was not wasted. The laser is still warm to the touch.”
Kevin’s stomach sank. Lobec realized what they had done.
“It appears Miss Jensen took the diamond with her.” Lobec turned away from the chamber and looked at Kevin. “You warned her. How?”
A grin spread across Kevin’s face. He shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lobec said. “I don’t think there’s any point in searching the laboratory. Even in her hurry, Miss Jensen wouldn’t have left the notebook. And we don’t want to dawdle in case she has called the police again. We should, however, check Mr. Ishio’s office to be sure she isn’t still here.”
A search of Ted’s office revealed nothing more than that Erica had left in a hurry. She’d still had the presence of mind to lock both doors, though the gesture had been futile.
Inside the office, Lobec looked out at the parking lot below. “I see. She observed our chase from here. Although I’m surprised it took her so long to notify the police, she certainly reacted swiftly in escaping. Curious.”
Once they were back in the Taurus, Lobec said, “I think it’s safe to assume Miss Jensen is no longer in Blacksburg.”
“What do we do now?” asked Bern from his seat beside Kevin. “She’s got the notebook.”
“Yes,” Lobec said, training his steel gray eyes on Kevin, “but we have something equally valuable.”
The Taurus headed straight to the Roanoke airport where Kevin and his three captors got on the most luxurious jet he had ever seen. His hands were cuffed behind him the entire time, but he was otherwise unrestrained. The plane trip lasted less than an hour. Even though he wasn’t sure of their final destination because the window next to him was closed, the angle of the sun through the other windows of the plane indicated a north-easterly direction. At a hanger in an airport he couldn’t identify, he was put into another car. As they exited the airport, he saw a sign confirming his suspicions. Dulles Airport, Washington.
Thirty minutes from Dulles, after a drive through lush horse farms and rolling farmland, the car turned into a long drive shielded from the afternoon sun by elms and oaks. It wound for what seemed like a mile and then the arbor opened to reveal a stunning white plantation-style mansion. The paint gleamed on the huge columns and stately frontispiece, indicating a recent restoration. Kevin noted with discomfort that his entourage had made no attempt to disguise their route or even provide him with a blindfold. He knew exactly where they were and how to get back. Which meant they intended to kill him.
Lobec took him out of the car, released his handcuffs, and led him up the front steps into a marble-floored foyer. Large doors on each side flanked a spiral staircase straight out of Gone with the Wind. Lobec pointed to the door on the right. Kevin walked into a library with delicate Persian carpeting and handsome leather furniture. Few books lined the cherry shelving, which were instead filled with mementos and awards.