Storm Prey

a street, and another one ... ran past a house, jumped a fence, collided with a birdfeeder, vaulted another fence in a right-angle turn, ran along a hedge and a garage.
    And there was Jill MacBride, getting into her minivan.
    Mack hit her in the back, and she screamed but he lifted her with brute strength across the driver’s seat, picked up the keys she’d used to open the van’s door, and shoved the keys in the ignition and slammed the door and screamed at her, “Shut up, shut up, shut up . . .” and backed out of the driveway. Ten seconds later, he was down the block and around the corner. In his rearview mirror, he saw a man sprint across the end of the street, running in the wrong direction.
    The woman was sobbing, and she cried, “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me,” and Joe Mack took a long breath and said, “I’m running from the cops. I’ve got a gun. Fuck with me and I’ll kill you in one second.” He didn’t have a gun, but he was scared enough that he sounded as though he might. MacBride stayed in the foot well.
    She was half upside down, her purse on the floor under Joe Mack’s feet. He picked it up, dug through it, stuck her wallet in his pocket. He’d need the money The van rolled up to a red light. He ignored it—no traffic coming—and made a left turn and headed west, then a right, and another left, and he was on Highway 13 headed west again, toward the airport.
    He had to think, but couldn’t seem to. He couldn’t go outside or he’d freeze. He saw the airport sign.
     
     
    THEY GOT a ticket and parked in the top of the parking structure. Joe Mack said, “Get out of there and get in the back.”
    MacBride clambered out of the foot well and between the two seats and into the back, and Joe Mack said, “Lay down,” and then, “I’m gonna go outside and make a call so you can’t hear it. If you stick your head up, or try to get out, I’ll chase you down and kill your ass. If you stay here, you’ll be okay. You understand what I’m telling you?”
    “Yes...”
    Joe Mack got out of the van and took his cell phone out of his pocket and called Lyle Mack. When Lyle answered, Joe said, “Jesus Christ, I’m in fuckin’ big trouble, man.”
    He told Lyle what had happened: “They know everything. They know about the haircut. They got me.”
    “So you kidnapped a fuckin’ woman, you fuckin’ idiot?” Lyle was screaming at him. “They might have been bullshitting you, but now they got you for kidnapping.”
    “I didn’t kidnap her. She’s right in the van, she’s right here, she’s fine, I’m gonna let her go,” Joe Mack said.
    “Don’t do a fuckin’ thing,” Lyle Mack said. “Stay right there and keep her with you. I’m gonna call Cappy and have him pick you up. Then I gotta call the cops.”
    “What for?”
    “To turn you in, you dumb shit. If I don’t turn you in, they’ll get me, too. I’ll call them and tell them you called me, but I won’t tell them where you’re at.”
    “What about me?”
    “Like you said the other day—you’re headed for Mexico. Or Panama. You’re gone, man.”
     
     
    LYLE MACK, hurrying, not thinking, dug his clean phone out of the pocket of his old army uniform in a back closet and called Caprice Garner. “I can do that, but it’ll cost you another five grand,” Cappy said, when Lyle Mack explained the situation. Cappy was out test-driving his new van.
    “Five grand. That’s fine. But I’m gonna have to owe it to you. We’ve got all that stuff we took out of the pharmacy, that’s worth way more than five grand. But you’ll have to be patient.”
    “Hey, I’ll wait,” Cappy said. “For a while, anyway.”
    “Deal,” Lyle Mack said. He put the clean phone in his pocket and called his lawyer on the house phone. They talked for two minutes, and then the lawyer said, “I don’t want to hear any more right now. Wait till the thing has settled down, then come see me.”
    That didn’t help. He started to pace: he felt caged, like an animal. Joe Mack might have finished them off.
     
     
    JOE MACK sat in the van and talked with MacBride: “Look, I don’t want to hurt you, and I won’t. But the cops are ... framing me. I took off. I freaked out and grabbed you, which I know I shouldn’t have done, but now I’m in trouble for that.”
    “I won’t testify against you, if you let me go,” MacBride said.
    Joe Mack wasn’t the sharpest knife in the dishwasher, but he knew she was lying the moment the words