The Memory Collector Part 46

"Fat chance."

The Tahoe had power but steered like a fridge-freezer. The shears veered back and forth, dagger points swinging near her wrist.

"Don't watch me, watch the road," Misty said.

"Mom warned me about driving with scissors."

"I'm a nurse. If I slit your wrist, I'll stick on a Little Mermaid Band-Aid and give you a lollipop."

"I'm a shrink. If you slit my wrist, I'll have to section myself."

Calder's headlights swelled in the rearview mirror, blinding white.

"We have to get to the airport main terminal and surround ourselves with cops," Jo said.

"Freeway. Eight-eighty, entrance is up ahead."

Jo could see the overpa.s.s a quarter-mile down the road. From there, getting to the main terminals by freeway would take five minutes.

"No time."

Ahead she saw one of the side streets that led to the private aviation terminals. She slammed on the brakes and slid around the corner. Misty lurched against the dashboard.

"Sorry."

Jo didn't know she could push her foot so hard against the gas pedal. She didn't know if they were going to make it. She boomed past a darkened business park. Misty jammed the scissors under the zip tie around Jo's right wrist, squeezed the grip with both hands, and snapped the plastic.

The gate to the airfield lay dead ahead at the end of the street.

She held the wheel steady. "Scissors."

Misty handed them to her.

"Murdock put his phone on the dash. Look on the floor," Jo said.

Driving with her left hand, Jo worked the blades around the plastic cuff and snapped it. Misty fumbled around and came up with the phone. Peripherally Jo saw her squinting at the display, dialing a number. She was near tears. Ducking low, Misty put the phone to her ear and peered around the seat to look out the back window.

"Ian's not answering."

In the rearview mirror Jo saw the pickup take the turn onto the side road badly. It overcorrected and ran toward the curb, splashing water from the gutter. Kanan had a rifle in his arms.

"Seth, you okay?" Misty called.

No answer.

Misty raised her head. "Seth?"

"Mom... I'm hurt."

"Jesus." Misty scrambled between the seats and dived into the far back.

Jo looked at the speedometer. She was going eighty-five. Her eyes jinked to the mirror, trying to see the boy. All she saw, through a back window peppered with bullet holes, were Calder's headlights.

She looked ahead. The Tahoe swallowed ground, speeding toward the airfield gate. Beyond it were the cherry-red lights of the airfield.

Okay, now. "Hang on."

She braced herself. The gate was a simple swing-arm, painted red and white, with a control pad on the driver's side to swipe the field pa.s.s. She didn't know if it was wood or steel, whether it would splinter when she hit it or come through the windshield at sixty-five miles per hour.

She hit it going ninety. Metal shrieked. The gate clanged out of her way, flinging sparks like a sharpening wheel, and she drove onto the airfield ap.r.o.n.

"Is Seth hit?" she said.

Misty's voice came back, screwed down tight. "Shoulder, through and through."

Jo hurtled past a corporate aviation terminal, plush and brightly lit. Its plate-gla.s.s windows overlooked the runways, but she couldn't see anybody moving around inside. She drove past parked cars and past parked single-engine planes.

Surely Calder wouldn't follow her. She couldn't. Even she wasn't crazy enough to conduct a running gun battle on an active runway at a major metropolitan airport. Jo looked in the mirror.

Kanan saw the Tahoe smash aside the airfield gate like it was a spatula. He held on to the rifle and braced against the sunroof. He felt the pickup slow.

He leaned down and looked at Riva. "Follow them."

She looked up in shock. "No."

"Go, d.a.m.n it."

"Out onto the airfield? That's insane."

Why was she looking at him like that? Why did she suddenly seem to think everything was screwed? She slowed the truck even further, approaching the broken gate, and looked around.

In the distance, on the tarmac outside a private hangar, he saw the Chira-Sayf corporate jet. The stairs were down, the lights on. It was being prepped for a flight.

He reached behind his back and pulled out the HK pistol jammed in the waistband of his jeans. Left-handed, he aimed it down at Riva's head.

"The people who killed my family are not getting away. Drive."

Staring in the rearview mirror, Jo willed the headlights of the pickup to turn around and disappear. The truck was falling behind. It hadn't come through the gate onto the airfield.

With a burst of speed, it accelerated.

"G.o.d, they're following," she said. "I can't believe it."

Kanan wouldn't so recklessly chase people he thought had kidnapped his family, even if he thought they were close to getting away, would he?

No. He would chase people he thought had killed his family.

He would kill them. He would lose himself to avenge Seth and Misty. He would go crazy.

She raced past hangars and private jets along the ap.r.o.n. Obviously, pitifully, there was no security on this side of the airport. She swept by the Chira-Sayf jet. In the distance, across the taxiway, beyond the dark slash of the active runways, were the commercial terminals.

She checked the mirror again. Calder was behind her on the ap.r.o.n and gaining.

Sat.u.r.day they die. But Ian Kanan had lost the ability to know what day it was.

"Misty, he thinks you're dead."

"Oh, G.o.d," Misty said. "We have to do something."

The airfield was a void between the Tahoe and safety. The runways were more than two miles long. The terminals were almost half a mile away. Attempting to cross to them would knock How nuts? out of the park.

The white landing lights of a descending airliner lit the sky. The jet screamed over the runway threshold and touched down. It roared past at well over a hundred miles per hour, thrust reversers roaring.

Behind her, the headlights of the pickup brightened. She inhaled. Throwing the wheel, she cut across an access ramp and toward the west runway.

The pickup followed.

Jo drove straight across the runway. Her hair was standing on end. She crossed the center line, lit to psychedelic primary colors by a trail of green and red lights. She pinned her gaze on the terminals.

Checking in. No ticket, no identification. I didn't pack my bags myself, I'm carrying a full tank of gasoline, a bunch of bullets, and did not put my hair gel or any other s.h.i.t in a clear plastic bag. Ready or not, here we crazy-a.s.s come.

She cleared the runway and ran onto the dirt. The wheel juddered in her hands. The pickup followed.

She could think of only one more option. "He'll stop shooting if he knows you're alive."

In the mirror Misty's face stretched with tension. "What's wrong with him?"

"He loves you. He's a warrior."

Misty shook her head. "Why did you tell Murdock that after five minutes, Ian's memory would be wiped clean?"

"He has a head injury. His memory is affected."

Misty said nothing, just absorbed it. "Seth, stay down."

She got to her knees, spread her arms wide, and pressed her hands against the back window, right in his sights.

The gla.s.s in the tailgate was salted with bullet holes. Jo had no idea whether Kanan could see, much less identify, his wife through the blistered white mess of the rear window.

Misty pressed her hands to the gla.s.s, cruciform, turned to a silhouette by the white glare of Riva's headlights.

Jesus, what trust. Tears sprang to Jo's eyes. Misty held her position. The pickup kept coming.

"Mom... are you okay?" Seth said.

Ahead, the terminals loomed brighter. Jo bounced across the dirt. The lights of the east runway grew sharper, like an electrified fence.

She looked to the right. And saw a jet accelerating down the runway toward her, halfway through its takeoff roll.

Kanan leaned forward and snugged the stock of the rifle against his shoulder. The pickup bounced over the bare dirt between the runways. Around him he heard the rising whine of turbofan engines.

The pickup's headlights caught the back window of the Tahoe and veered away again.

Somebody was in the back.

"Riva," he shouted into the wind.

The tailgate window was frosted white with bullet holes, but a woman was kneeling there, both hands pressed to the gla.s.s.

"Shoot her," Riva yelled.

The noise and wind and mayhem faded away. With a clarity that made the night vanish like smoke, he saw the lifeline of a hand he had held for fifteen years. He saw the eyes he looked into at night before he fell asleep.

He swung the barrel of the rifle aside. "It's Misty."

"You're seeing things."

He blinked the wind from his eyes, looked again at the Tahoe, and knew Riva was right. He couldn't identify Misty's palms or a brief gaze from this far away, under these conditions, even with his brain rewired and hyperperceptive.

But he knew that n.o.body but Misty would step up and put herself in his crosshairs.

"It's her. She's alive. Break off."

The truck kept barreling onward. What the h.e.l.l was going on?

"Riva?"

He ducked down inside the cab, bringing the rifle with him.

Riva gave him a crazed look.

"Break off," he said.

White light swarmed over the cab. He turned. Grabbed the seat belt. He watched the jet roll down the runway.

Holy G.o.d, it was a 757.

Jesus, I hate flying. For two years Jo had avoided aircraft at all costs. She had forfeited her frequent-flyer miles. She had thrown out her copy of Catch Me If You Can. And still one of the d.a.m.ned things was headed straight for her. She pushed the pedal to the firewall and blew onto the runway. She heard the jet's turbine engines howling.

She tore across the runway. The white lights of the jet rotated skyward. The nose lifted. Its landing gear hung below the fuselage like talons. She drove onto the dirt and kept going. The jet howled behind her, wheels lifting off the runway.