Hellbent

Candy McClure pointed at the gunman, clearly issuing an admonition, and he lightened his grip on the boy. The freelancers kept David between them, hustling him away. An instant later the frame was as empty and serene as before.

The snatch-and-go had taken six seconds.

Evan looked at Joey across the console. “Seems like they want to keep him.”

“Or kill him off site.”

“No,” Evan said. “You saw the way Orphan V spoke to that guy. Van Sciver wants the kid unharmed.”

“Or she does. She might have to duke it out with Van Sciver.”

“She can be convincing,” Evan said.

Joey read something in his face and let the point drop. She leaned over, bringing up a freeze-frame of the men standing on both sides of the window before the break-in. Reference points littered their heads, a digital overlay.

“I go with Panasonic FacePro Facial Recognition,” she said. “It’s the best. Two for two.”

“Two for two?”

“Fast and accurate. They use it at SFO.”

“When do we get the results?”

“We have them.”

Another window, another revelation. The two men, identified as Paul Delmonico and Shane Shea. Delmonico was the one who’d jimmied the window and Shea the gunman. Shea had a bony build, his forehead prominent, the grooves of his cranial bones pronounced on his shiny bald skull. Their records had recently been classified top secret, which put their backgrounds and training out of reach for the time being. Evan figured they were dishonorably discharged recon marines, Van Sciver’s favorite source of renewable muscle. For now Evan and Joey had faces and names, and that was all they needed.

Next Joey pulled up a United Airlines itinerary she had unearthed. “They came in on a flight this morning from Alabama.”

“Where Van Sciver killed Orphan C.” And where Jack had plowed into the dirt from sixteen thousand feet.

“Right. And they rented this at the airport.” Click. “A black Suburban. I know, inventive, right? License plate VBK-5976.”

She paused to check if he was impressed.

He was.

“The same credit card was used to get another matching Suburban, license plate TLY-9443. So I’m thinking four men.”

“Looks like it,” Evan said.

“You know what ALPR is?” she asked.

“Automated license-plate recognition,” Evan said, relieved to be back on familiar turf. “Police cruisers have sensors embedded in the light bars that scan the plates of all surrounding vehicles. They can swallow numbers eight lanes across on cars going in either direction up to eighty miles per hour. They process the plates for outstanding warrants in real time and store them for posterity.”

“Gold star for the old guy,” Joey said. “I already input the licenses into the ALPR system and coded the system to send me and only me an alert when one of the light-bar sensors picks up either Suburban. We’re gonna use Virginia’s Finest to track down these guys for us.” Her grin took on a devious cast. “In more ways than one.”

Evan followed her gaze up the street to the courthouse. It was a beautiful Colonial Revival building — weathered brick, white columns, hipped roof. A trickle of men and women scurried across the front lawn, some black, some white, some in suits, others in overalls, each of them moving with a sense of purpose. A sign in front read CRIMINAL GENERAL DISTRICT COURT.

“Oh,” Evan said. “Oh.”

Already Joey was pulling up the courthouse’s private Wi-Fi network reserved for judges, DAs, and clerks. Hashkiller’s 131-billion-password dictionary required only twenty-seven seconds to get her on. The Records Management System took two and a half minutes. And then there it was before them on the screen, glowing like a holy relic.

A bench warrant.

Evan and Joey smiled at each other.

“First move,” Joey said. “Get the bad guys off the street. Or at least the two we have names for.”

“You’re kind of a genius.”

“I agree with everything but the ‘kind of.’” She wiggled her fingers in glee and then typed in a phony case record.

If the cops brought in the men, red-tape confusion would tangle them up for days.

“What should we have them arrested for?” Joey asked. “Homegrown terrorism is always good, gets the local constabulary all hot and bothered.”

“Terrorism?” Evan said. “Delmonico and Shea?”

“You have a point.”

“Let’s make them pedophiles,” Evan said.

She typed, her smile growing broader as she warmed to the idea. “And prison escapees.”

“Who are also wanted for killing a police officer.”

“That is so the best hat trick,” she said. “It’s like making a list for Santa.”

She finished filling out the arrest warrant, issued a statewide BOLO, and fed the forms into the legal and law-enforcement machinery of greater Richmond.

Then she held up her palm.

He slapped it.

51 Push a Little More

Candy’s back was on fire, but she granted her skin no concessions when on a mission. She refused to scratch it, even resisted tugging at her shirt so the fabric would rub against the ruinous flesh and soothe the burn. Candy had pulled Van Sciver into the hall of the safe house to talk to him privately.