Collision(19)

“Ben . . .” But she went silent and Ben walked away from her. They went back into the room.

“Sit your ass down,” Kidwell said.

Ben sat. He looked again at Vochek, who lingered in the doorway.

“I’ll check what you say. But you consider what’s going to happen to you if you’ve lied to me. Think long and hard about it, Ben. Knock on the door if there’s anything else you want to share to save us time.”

Kidwell got up and turned out the lights and walked out. Vochek gave Ben a backward glance. The door clanged shut behind them, killing the soft envelope of light from the hallway, and Ben sat in total darkness.

"He’s soft,” Kidwell said as Vochek sat down at the laptop. “He’ll do exactly what we expect. Deny, plead for a lawyer, but when he gets confronted with more evidence, he’ll crack.”

“I’m not so sure,” she said.

“Why?”

“Here’s the hole in all this mess. Ben strikes me as an intelligent guy, and he barely tried to cover his tracks.”

“People are idiots. Or so arrogant they think they won’t get caught,” Kidwell said. “I want to find every link between him and Adam Reynolds. Find this Sparta Consulting that rented the office for him, see how Forsberg’s tied to it. I want to know everything Forsberg’s done or bought or who he’s talked to in the past few days.”

She opened her laptop, saw a new e-mail from their office in Houston titled “FORSBERG REPORT.” She opened it and scanned it and said, “Norman. Read this.” Her throat went dry.

Norman Kidwell leaned close, read the e-mail, and smiled. “Goodness. Mr. Innocent here left out a key detail.”





6

The kidnappers’ van suddenly powered into high speed along FM Road 2222, a winding snake of pavement cut into the side of limestone cliffs.

They spotted me, Pilgrim knew.

The van dipped and wove through traffic, rocketing along the curving road.

Pilgrim stayed with them, whipping around a minivan and a Porsche to narrow his distance from the van. The kidnappers had not waited to see how their compatriots had fared after the barrage of gunshots at the lake house. Which meant they either assumed Pilgrim was a dead man or they had orders not to look back. Getting Teach away must be their priority.

If he could grab her back, he could end this nightmare.

His eyes stung—blood running into his eyebrow and eye. His body ached like he’d been beaten with pipes.

Cars peeled out of the pathway of the van as the driver rode the horn, powering through a red light, missing by inches a honking Lexus, sideswiping a BMW, sending it into a spin. Pilgrim dodged both of the cars, stayed close to the van.

The van roared up the incline, sparks flying from a swipe against the guardrail. The van overcompensated, veering into oncoming traffic and then easing back just in time to avoid a head-on with a pickup truck full of high school students. Pilgrim could see the teenagers’ O-shaped mouths, their faces contorted in screams as the van missed them by a hair.

End this now. Pilgrim powered his BMW up close to the passenger side.

The spiky-haired blond leaned out the passenger window and opened fire with a shotgun; Pilgrim dropped back. The hail of pellets pocked the windshield.

The van skittered back into the wrong lane and wove like a drunken dancer to avoid three cars. Pilgrim saw the disbelieving faces of the drivers, all heading back to suburban comfort after an extra-long day of pushing paper or making phone calls or chained to e-mails, death suddenly inches from them, as he tried to give the van room to maneuver.

An empty stretch of road lay ahead; there must be a red light on the other side of the hill, stopping the flow of cars. Pilgrim thumbed down the passenger window, floored the BMW past the van, spun across the empty asphalt so he straddled the lanes. He aimed his gun at the van’s front tires and fired through the open window. Flashes of bullets sparking against the tire cover and bumper told him he’d missed. He was hurting, his arm wasn’t steady.

The van plowed past him, the spiky blond leaning past the driver and leveling fire into the front of the BMW. Pilgrim ducked as the windshield shattered. He sat up as the van passed and floored the car, trying to catch up, but he felt one of the damaged tires part from the rim and he overcorrected as the road curved. The crippled BMW smashed through a railing onto a sharply sloping hill, sliding thirty feet downward in a dust of limestone scrabble and hammering into the cedars lining a landscaped backyard.

He blinked. Broken glass littered his hair and his lap; the passenger door was crumpled by a tree. The engine died. He opened his door, clambered to his feet.

He was unhurt, but the BMW was undriveable.