Stolen Prey

ya,” Lucas said, and he was out the door. As soon as he was out of sight, he jogged down the corridor and around the corner, and outside to the parking lot to the truck. From the door pocket, he retrieved his own prepaid cell phone and punched in the first of the numbers he’d taken from Kline’s prepaid cell phone when he searched Kline’s apartment. When Sanderson appeared at the emergency room door a moment later, he tapped the “call” icon. A phone rang, but she made no move to answer it.
    He punched in a second number and, as she walked up to her car, let it ring. Nothing. He put in the third number, and on the fourth ring, a man answered with a soft southern accent.
    “Hello?”
    “I must have the wrong number,” Lucas said. “Is this Jimmy?”
    “No, this ain’t Jimmy,” the man said, with an amused chuckle. “This is the custodian who just took Jimmy’s phone out of the trash can at Newark airport.”
    “I’ll have to kick Jimmy’s ass,” Lucas said.
    “What do you want me to do with the phone?” the custodian asked.
    “Keep it,” Lucas said. “It’s a prepay. When it runs out, you can pay for more.”
    S ANDERSON WAS in her car, backing out of the parking space, but one thing that Lucas knew, as sure as sin and taxes, was that if somebody called a woman on a cell phone, she’d answer it. Or at least look at it. Was it possible she really wasn’t part of the Kline-Turicek-Gold Buyer phone circle?
    She took a left onto the road, heading down to I-35, and he followed, several cars back. She drove slowly across the Cities, all the way to her apartment, into her parking garage, and out of sight.
    “Goddamnit,” Lucas said aloud.
    Was it possible that she really was innocent?
    No, he decided. It wasn’t. He did a U-turn and headed back home.
    E DIE A LBITIS got into town just before midnight. She’d tried calling Turicek fifteen times on her second phone, hadn’t gotten an answer. As the plane rolled across the tarmac at MSP, she tried Sanderson. Sanderson, she thought, was probably theweak link in the whole chain, the one most likely to cough them up. She’d talked to Turicek about it, and he’d suggested that she probably wouldn’t screw up and talk until he and Albitis were safely in their respective bolt-holes in Lithuania, Ukraine, or Georgia. That had changed now, with all the attention from the cops.
    She tried to get Turicek, failed, knew she couldn’t get Kline, who was still in the hospital and apparently didn’t have his prepaid phone with him, and so she went to Sanderson, who’d just walked in the door when she called, the phone ringing from where she’d left it, on the floor next to the living room couch.
    “Yes?”
    “It’s me,” Albitis said. They didn’t use names on the phone.
    “Oh, my God, have you heard?” Sanderson cried.
    “Heard what?”
    “Ivan’s dead.”
    “What?” Albitis freaked; if it hadn’t been for her lap belt, she might have leaped out of the airplane seat.
    Sanderson told her about it, and Albitis listened, openmouthed, as they taxied up to the Jetway.
    “All right,” Albitis said. “I’ll call you back in five minutes. I have to think.”
    It wasn’t so much that she had to think, but she couldn’t talk with the guy in the next seat leaning over her. Once inside the terminal, she found an empty space next to a window and called Sanderson back. She said, “Okay, you’ve got this cop threatening you. That means he suspects, but he doesn’t
know
. He’s got no proof, or he already would have popped you. If you and Jacob keep your mouths shut, you’ll be okay.”
    “I’m sitting here shaking like a leaf,” Sanderson said. “Youshould have seen poor Ivan’s head. There was hardly any skin left on it. Like his nose had almost been scraped off.”
    “Okay, okay, I don’t want to hear that,” Albitis said. “I really don’t.”
    “I had to
look
at it.”
    “Enough. I’m going to the office to pick up today’s packages. I’ll sleep there, on the floor. The last of the packages come in tomorrow. I’ll pick them up, and then, we’ll just wait. We’ll have all the gold, and the cops’ll have no clue. We’ll split it up, and we’re done.”
    “Will you call me?”
    “I’ll call you three times a day…. Anything you hear, call me, but only on the cold phone, okay? Only on the cold phone. They’re probably monitoring your cell.”
    “Oh, God, this agent said I’m going to prison for life, I’m an