her collar when he mentioned it to her then, he had hoped that they would detain the woman as Serena had told them that Pandora did with Sophie.
Agent Prince was staring into Thomas’ blank expression. “Thank you for your time, Miss Harmon. We have your card. Someone will be in contact with you if we feel the need to take any further statements from your client.”
Outside Lindsey had walked a still stunned Thomas past the security checkpoint that led out of the courthouse and into an impressive courtyard of vegetation and color. It did stink of smoke and there was the all too familiar haze in the chilly afternoon air. Thomas pulled Sophie closer to his bosom and ducked his head inside of his jacket against a series of quick gust of wind.
Lindsey had her cigarette going and waved it at him in a goodbye. She had received a call on her cell on their walkout that delayed any erotic plans they may have tried to engage in, at least for now. He watched her drive off without before clicking her seat belt.
Thomas latched his own seat belt and was working out the details of an impossible task of securing an eight pound dog in the passenger side one when he noted again how the foot traffic picked up with agents storming out of the building.
He heard the sirens of first responders in the distance. If his ears didn’t betray him he thought he could hear a helicopter…and when he glanced towards Fletcher Street, he could see the bird circling around in search of something.
What is all of this mischief? He asked himself while he gave Sophie’s ear a gentle squeeze and felt his heart sink. What have you done now, Serena?
And then he saw Agent Tabitha Blue.
She was legging it for her vehicle in the parking lot as well. She wasn’t wearing the near panic look of the other agent’s; her expression was more of a subtle focus of singular intensity. He locked Sophie in the car and rushed to greet her before she sat in her Ford.
“Agent Blue,” He asked, pissed that he could be this winded with only a quick sprint across the street. “What in the hell is going on? What’s happened?”
Agent Blue measured her response for a moment. And then she must have decided that telling a civilian, even this civilian wouldn’t violate some type of protocol that she was under.
“While we were interviewing you, Serena Tennyson told our resident Clinical Phycologist, Dr. Hicks-Dupree that she wouldn’t live long enough to be prosecuted for her crimes against the citizens of Atlanta for the 411 attacks.” She said. “It looks as she was right after all.”
Thomas felt a lump growing in his throat. Sophie barked at a steady hilt at both of them from across the street.
“What do you mean?” Thomas asked, though he didn’t need to exercise his brilliant investigative skills to deduct the possibilities…or the possibility of what happened.
“The brass was concerned that someone may make an attempt on her life when we moved her from here to the DC area in the morning, so Sheridan came up with the idea to decrease those odds by transporting her out today to lessen that risk.”
“Go on, Agent Blue,”
“Shots rang out during the second leg of her transportation route.” Agent Blue said her overbite clear enough that Thomas Pepper could see her entire upper gum. “It looks as if your little girlfriend is dead.”
Chris
“Serena’s gone.” Angel said after she exited her Land Rover. One other vehicle worked its breaks pulling in a space behind her. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was a bustle of activity with a matrix of blue and red lights traveling in all directions.
“Damn.” Special Agent Christopher Prince said. She limped towards him after rounding the SUV from the front side. He felt a tingle of nerves in his neck when she fully entered his line of sight. “Are you alright—“
The doctor peered down at the red blotches on her blouse’s tail and her trousers and waved him off, the blood belonging to someone else. A rat faced agent who Chris knew but couldn’t put a name to face limped towards the curve as well. Chris noted that fact was news in itself, because the man usually moved about with the careful precision of a Siamese cat—and the blood caked on his bicep and thigh was his own. Chris slammed the passenger side door of the car he’d bummed a ride in and they dodged afternoon traffic to an area of seclusion so the other two could fill him in. He was breathing heavily by the time they’d reached a spot clear of congestion and where they could hear one another without shouting. After this is all over, Chris swore, I’m going to drop these extra pounds.
“Do we have an official time of death?” He asked the agent that he now remembered as Everett, Jimmy Everett.
But it was Angel who shook her head with some emphasis, grabbed both of his wrists and shook them. “You’re not hearing me, Christopher.” She cocked a brow and her big brown eyes looked hazel in the bright sunlight. “Serena’s gone. She’d disappeared. She’s vanished without a trace.”
“What?”
Angel glanced over her shoulder at Everett and gave him the floor.
“A half a dozen shots rang out in rapid progression.” Agent Everett winced in pain and put pressure on his wounded leg. “At least one of the shots appeared to strike the subject, Serena Tennyson, on her temple. One shot each killed all four of her female escorts to either side of her. Either a group of snipers had their timing down to a tee or there is one hell of a single shooter out there.”
Chris concentrated on the first part of the other man’s sentence. “You said that the shot appeared to hit her?”
“Yea, I was getting to that, sir.”
Everett and Angel shared a look until she finally planted a hand on each hip and cocked her brow at him. “Tell him, Jimmy.”
“Yea, Agent Everett,” Chris said. “Tell me.”
“In the chaotic mess that ensued we got a call out to the paramedics. Man, I got to tell you, I ain’t ever seen so many people scrambling in 50 different directions—at least since President Sweet got killed in Houston. Anyway, as soon as we put Tennyson inside the ambulance I felt a stinger in my arm here and one in my upper leg. “Everett pulled a rag out of trousers and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He grimaced in pain, this spasm worse than the first one. Chris reached a hand out to help him, but the older man waves him off with one of his rat hands.
“I’ll live.” He said. “Anyway, I look up and my own piece is in my ear and I hear the voice of a man, Agent Feller, a guy I’ve worked with years telling me that I don’t have to die here like the others. He told me to get down, then stay down and I would live long enough to tell my grandchildren about this day, about Deliverance. I woke up…I don’t know, maybe 10 or 15 minutes later with some pretty ass blonde treating my wounds. My gun was lying next to me; I guess he left it there after he bashed me over the head with it.”
Pandora had struck at the heart of the FBI again.
Angel took her hands off of her hips and told the two men what she knew. A court reporter had been shot minutes after Serena walked out of her arraignment to get the ball rolling. Yea, Pandora used that distraction to throw us off our guards. She then said that an APD Deputy who was assigned for secondary support was shot in the back of the head and killed. Pandora went out of their way to strike behind where Serena was leaving a trail.
Agent Everett added that he guessed that Serena had her people lined up in strategic points all along her escape routes. It was going to be difficult to concentrate on retrieving her if you were ducking and dodging gunfire or potential gunfire.
Chris had heard on one of the deputy’s radios that a car that had appeared to have been stolen had driven up three floors at top speeds, dodging other parked cars and some civilian foot traffic. Chris hadn’t known what to make of that news at that time and still was trying to put the puzzle piece in place even now. Everett didn’t make that process any easier when he picked up where he left off, saying that Serena fled down the seven floors to ground level where two more deputies were found dead.
Why would she flee by driving up in the garage only to take longer to
reach an intended spot by running back down?
Agent Christopher Prince let the puzzle hang there unsolved and peered as far as his vision would allow him down Martin Luther King Jr, thankful that the usual smoky haze had cleared, at least for now. I’ll take that as a good sign of things to come. King fed into the busy side street of Piedmont, which crossed Peachtree and led to both I 75 and I 85. If she made it to either interstate it was no telling how far she could have driven by now.
Chris’ cell phone, the one he reserved for bureau business only buzzed in his pocket.
Sheridan:
“Agent Prince, I don’t know how she got this far, this fast, but Tennyson’s been spotted heading northwest along Centennial Olympic Park Drive in a Carolina blue van. You would have thought she would be smart enough to pick a more anonymous color for her getaway vehicle. I am in a copter. We are in hot pursuit.”
Chris asked, “Is she driving?”
“It looks as if she has a male escort, but that is unconfirmed.” Sheridan said with some apprehension. Chris knew how much it pained the man to speculate. “Tell Dr. Hicks-Dupree that she was right. I should have listened to her.”
Chris disconnected from the call without questioning Angel about whatever conversation she had with Sheridan, but it must have been a doozy. Sheridan gave compliments nearly as often as he speculated on events transpiring in cases.
“You did listen to me, Sheridan,” Angel was hugging her shoulders and speaking in a low voice. “We were convinced that Pandora had committed their selves to a rescue operation for Serena’s scheduled move tomorrow morning. So we upped it up to today to minimize the risk.”
“Damn,” Was all Chris could add to that.
Angel went on and quickly summarized the first part of her conversation with Sheridan. The doctor told Chris about the several oddities in Serena’s behavior after her interview with her this morning. Chris had attended part of that meeting before he and Blue left to meet with Thomas Pepper.
“I understand all that, Angel.” Chris said after he let his old friend have her say, and for the first time he got a whiff of her. You can’t leave that stuff alone can you, Doc. “Maybe I’m just missing you or Sheridan’s point about something. None of this tells me how you knew she would try to escape?”
“I didn’t, Christopher, not really.” Angel said. “She kept going on about the coming escalation of tensions between Pandora and A House in Chains, about where are our children. I just guessed that it was all too big for her to just sit it out.
Two paramedics arrived and sat Agent Everett down and begin to treat the man’s wounds. Chris and Angel wave their goodbyes to him and hop into Angel’s rental, Chris planting his big ass in the Land Cruisers driver side seat, thankful for the space. Before Angel can slam her heavy door shut, his cell phone buzzes in his pocket again.
“What?” Chris yelled into the receiver. “That can’t be right.”
After they lock their seatbelts in place, he begins high tailing it in a northern to northwesterly direction. Angel pokes her lips out at him wondering what was said. He shakes his head and hits up Sheridan on the speed dial.
“Negative, Prince.” Sheridan said. “You’re information is in error. I’m still riding shotgun in the helicopter as we speak. I have a confirmed visual of the fugitive. There are half a dozen APD and three or four of our own people who are in a high speed pursuit of Serena and her companion as we speak. In fact, all mentioned have just crossed the Andrew Young Parkway.”
“That’s impossible, sir. I’ve just received verification that she’s on Magnum Street near Chapel Road, being slowed considerably by traffic.” Chris smiled over at Angel. “Thank God for the general snarl of metro traffic and specifically for The Atlanta Marathon that’s underway today. I should be in visual range of her in 15 minutes.”
Sheridan wasn’t convinced. “You’re Intel is wrong, Prince. I’m looking through my binoculars right now. The fugitive has the same red hair, the same orange jumpsuit.” He paused and Chris could only guess that he found something in that vehicle that got even more of his attention. “She’s picked up some sunglasses along the way, probably lifted them off a deputy that her people killed during her escape.”
“Why don’t we catch both of these people to be sure?”
“You’re on, Prince,” In his mind’s eye, Chris could feel the other man’s smile, albeit a brief one, through the line. “Looser buys a steak.”
In the minute after he disconnects Special Agent Christopher gets two calls:
He scanned the face of his personal cell. It is Doctor Phelps, his personal physician calling him again. Damn, this man has lousy timing. So far he had called him when he was still a captive inside of the Fox Theatre during the siege, called him again an hour earlier when he and Blue were playing tag interviewing Thomas Pepper, and now he was ringing him up at this inopportune time.
Chris lets the phone ring itself out without answering.
Almost immediately after his personal phone stopped its chiming, his business line buzzed in his pocket again. Angel reached over and quickly helped him hook up his Bluetooth and the speaker.
It was Tabitha Blue:
“I’m a little busy, Tabitha.” He darted around a Volkswagen that stopped in the middle of the street. “What’s up?”
“Put what you’re doing down and get your ass over to Baker Street near the Hyatt Regency.” Blue said. “I’ve got Parson’s with me, Witten in a car in front of me and Whitehead tailgating to freaking close behind. We’re closing in on Tennyson. She’s driving a stolen Mercedes Benz.” And she rattled off the license plate number, Blue being Blue.
Angel looked at Chris. “How could that be?”
Chris answered his old friend only by hitting the gas, maneuvering around several cars, the pressure mounting in his head and his gut. He only had the slightest error in driving to make and an innocent civilian could be killed with this light tank he was driving at 80 and 90 miles per hour.
The car that had been described to him, an older model Buick Impala, was now in his line of site. The pressures in both his head and gut ceased to exist as his adrenaline kicked in, the feeling that only people who did this type of work would understand. He swung in, making the slightest adjustment on his route, and fit the Big Land Cruiser right in behind Serena.
“That can’t be, Tabitha,” Chris finally told his partner. She’d been quiet herself, their own pursuit of…whoever, tightening her focus. “I’m on her tail right now.”
“Shit,”
“What is it, what’s wrong,” Chris said to his dash board. “Talk to me, Agent Blue.”
Chris stole a look at Angel then focused on the rear headlights of the Buick in front his trying to escape his pursuit. He guessed he was wrong about only people in his line of work getting that adrenaline rush. I see that Clinical Psychologist get it as well. In fact his old friend appeared to be having the time of her life.
“Sorry Chris, Tennyson struck another vehicle and blew a tire.” Blue said at last. “She’s one lucky, bitch though. The way that car banked, she should have flipped it over. Damn, she’s out. Tennyson is out of the Mercedes and is on foot. I’ve got to go, Prince. I’ve got to—“
“Tabitha, wait,” Chris was greeted a click and then the long tone of a dead line. He found solace in Angel’s company. “Damn, Angel, what is going on? It’s like we’re chasing ghost, like we’re after a fleet full of fugitives.”
Another call comes in on his business line.
Agent Sheridan:
“Prince, Agent Prince, can you hear me?”
The line went dead. Angel find’s Sheridan’s number for him and hit’s the speed dial again...and then a third time. They were getting nothing but a garbled signal for their efforts, damned cell phones.
“Prince, are you there?”
“Sheridan,” Chris had thought the last connection had been severed. “We got a bad cell. Sheridan—“
The other man said, “Stop yelli
ng, Prince. I can hear you. Listen, my suspect went head on with a civilian in a F150. I think both drivers are dead, but Tennyson is one tough hombre, though. She’s out of her car…wobbling, but on her feet. Several APD squad cars are dodging a pile up the wreck caused and are closing in. Wait…now she’s running again—“
Prince made another sharp turn of Northside Avenue staying on his suspect’s heels. “Somebody’s playing games, Sheridan. I’ve talked with Agent Blue. She’s miles away from either of our pursuits and claims that she has Serena in her sights as well.”
If his superior heard Chris last transmission he’d acknowledged it in silence. Chris gave both of then the necessary time and space to fully focus on what transpiring in both of their theatre of operations in real time.
“Those half a dozen squad cars I was telling you about have quit fighting to drive through the log jam.” Sheridan announced as if he were doing play by play. “They are out of their cars and are continuing the pursuit on foot. She’s injured. She won’t escape us now.”
Chris watched as their Serena caused one civilian and one taxi driver to hit one another while evading the collision with her Buick. He didn’t think that the wreck caused an immediate fatality, but he couldn’t be certain. Angel nearly stood up to get a better view of it as they left the accident behind them.
“Hold on,” He warned her.
He banked again, to the left this time, shadowing her car’s movements and heard both vehicles’ tires screech in loud protest.
“Watch out, Chris,” Angel said and grabbed onto his arm for dear life.
Chris used all of his training, his timing, his strength in his right arm…and a bit of luck to avoid a clan of pedestrians who had just peeled off a sidewalk. He straightened the rental back out and pounded the gas as he had lost ground on Serena, but had her Buick still well in his sight.
“Watch out for what, Dr. Hicks-Dupree,” Blue said through the speaker. In all of the commotion and near fatal crash, Angel must have dialed Tabitha. He sat straight up in his seat, checked on Angel who had lost some of her coloring, and adjusted the mirrors more to his liking. In one of those mirrors he could see the pedestrians who almost lost their lives throwing their fists in the area, their mouths moving in what Chris thought were swears and curses.
“Blue,” He said. “What’s your status?”
“Tennyson bolted for an old, abandoned beauty shop. She’s surrounded. I should have something positive to report—“
This time Chris heard the cell beep. He told his partner to hold that thought.
Sheridan: “Goddamn,” He said. “Agent Prince, are you there?”
“I’m here, sir, tell me you got her.”
“Yea,” He said, but his lack of enthusiasm spelled trouble. Chris just knew it. “I’m on the ground now. Yea, we got something, alright, we got a goddamned body