Middle Of Nowhere

   Gaynes popped the passenger door open. Boldt watched as she entered the mall's vast parking lot. A moment later she looked like just another person walking from a parked car toward the mall. To his right, Boldt saw passengers disembark the 67. He studied body types, tortured by the agonizingly long stream of people—until finally he spotted Samway among them. To his relief she still carried the package. They had guessed right. Gaynes would call it gambling—he might never live this down.

   He looked on as Gaynes made visual contact with the mark from a hundred yards away and quickened her pace accordingly. Keeping an eye on Samway, Gaynes made it into the mall ahead of the young woman, a position where marks seldom thought to look. Russ Lee and Jilly Hu pulled up on the far side of the mall, announcing their position to Boldt over the radio.

   Boldt felt his stomach knot. A mall. The crush of a thousand shoppers. The perfect place to either disappear, make a drop, or spot a tail. All Flek had to do was watch from an upper balcony to see if anyone was following Samway.

   Jilly Hu had been used in the coffee shop. Shoswitz sent Lee into the mall as backup for Gaynes, on strict instructions to keep use of his cell phone to a minimum, and then only in believable situations, fearing the phone might catch Flek's eye.

   Five minutes passed in relative silence. Agony. Six. Boldt's throat stung of heartburn. Ten. Shoswitz wondered aloud over the radio if they should risk sending Hu in to assist. Boldt suggested not. "It's Gaynes, Captain." His only explanation of his confidence. Twelve minutes. He felt ready to go in there himself.

   Fourteen minutes. Boldt's cell phone rang. He let out a long breath. It was Bobbie Gaynes.

   "She's moving again, L.T."

   "Where?"

   "West side. You should have her . . . right . . . now."

   "Got her." Boldt saw Samway push through the wall of doors. She seemed struck by the warm air.

   "Get this, she bought herself a thong swimsuit. You suppose she deducts those things off her taxes?" She added, "What now? I don't want to stick out."

   "We see who picks her up," he answered.

   The area surrounding the mall was not a place for pedestrians; cars were the preferred mode of transport. Samway wasn't headed for a car, as it turned out, but the sidewalk beyond. If Gaynes followed she would be easily spotted. The same applied to Danny Lincoln, who had arrived on the scene, riding his bike, only moments before. The unmarked cars were a possibility, but not a good one.

   Gaynes made for Boldt's van. Lee reported in, having returned to the Ford. Boldt's team collectively held their breath.

   Samway walked behind the mall and north on Fifth Avenue NE, where Lee and Hu made visual contact. She crossed Northgate Way with the light and walked west. Boldt and Gaynes sat in the front seat listening as Lee reported the woman's progress. Gaynes caught sight of her briefly and pointed far off into the distance.

   Boldt looked past the interstate, worried there might be a car waiting, worried it was about to get ugly. "The motel," he said to Gaynes, as he noticed the tower and sign placed to advertise on the highway.

   "You think?"

   "Flek takes a room near the mall. It gives him access to public transportation, a lot of cover if he needs it— the mall being so close, the interstate in his front yard. Flek is inside that motel watching her approach from a window."

   Shoswitz barked an order for Lee to follow. Boldt cut in and suspended the order—overriding a captain. "Send Lincoln on the bike," he said. "Flek is watching. She's heading to that motel."

C H A P T E R

39

She was inside the motel.

       Following the resolution of the sickout, Special Operations—Special Ops—continued under the command of Patrick Mulwright, a forty-something binge drinker, part Irish, part Native American, who looked about sixty. The man's two different- colored eyes—one green, one almost brown—lent him a crazed, mongrel look that forewarned of his disposition. Boldt and Mulwright's histories went back too far, overlapped too much, which happened in any organization, but was particularly difficult in a police department where lives depended on reaction and response time.