Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [137]
“One heck of a time to stop for a muffin,” Chuck said.
Jack continued up Minories, weaving his way through pedestrians as he struggled to see beyond the big green lettering on the restaurant window. The charcoal sky was ebbing toward a lighter shade of gray. The end of eighteen hours without sunlight was near, and any additional light was helpful.
“It doesn’t look like she’s ordering food. She’s definitely buying something, though.”
A bus stopped in front of him, blocking Jack’s view.
“Buying what?” asked Chuck.
Jack hurried beyond the bus, and the few steps forward gave him a clear line of sight into the restaurant. “She’s buying aluminum foil, I think. A whole roll of it.”
“And paying whatever price the clerk names, no doubt—and it’s still a bargain, when you consider that the payoff is a quarter million pounds.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Wrapping her backpack in all that foil will shut down the GPS. That bitch is stealing the ransom!”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Tower Hill Tube Station is about a hundred yards from you. If she gets underground, she can go just about anywhere, and if the money is wrapped in foil, I’ll have no way of knowing where she pops up.”
Jack’s grip on the phone tightened. “I’m asking you a question: What do you want me to do?”
“Grab her!”
Chapter Seventy-six
Shada tucked the roll of foil in her backpack, careful not to let the salesclerk see all that cash inside.
“We have cellophane wrap as well,” the clerk said as he stuffed the fifty-pound note into his pocket.
“Next time,” Shada said. The chances were exactly one in five hundred that she’d just solved her microchip problem, but the foil would shore up those odds. She’d wrap the remaining 499 notes once they were underground. “Let’s go,” she said, and the girl followed her to the door.
“By the way,” asked Shada, “what should I call you?”
“Call me what he calls me: McKenna.”
Shada stopped cold. Had it not been for Jack Swyteck, Shada might never have found out about the teenage girl in the cellar. It had been a sickening realization this morning that the girl in the cellar was the same girl she’d met on the Internet and unwittingly brought into Habib’s web. Hearing now that he called her “McKenna” was more than sickening. It was Shada’s worst fear realized.
She stepped away from the door, found a spot at the counter facing the window, and hit REDIAL on the girl’s cell. Habib answered, and Shada talked fast.
“I have the foil,” she said. “We’re a stone’s throw from the Tower Hill Station. Tell me where to get off the train.”
“First stop on the District Line. Aldgate East. About three minutes.”
Shada was about to answer, then stopped. Through the plate-glass window, she could see all the way across the street. A streetlight enhanced the light of dawn, and the man standing at the bus stop looked just like the guy on the train wearing the black cap. Shada tightened her stare, and even from this distance, it made him look away nervously. There was no doubt in her mind.
That’s Swyteck.
“It might take me a little longer than three minutes.”
She tucked away the phone and grabbed the girl by the elbow. “Let’s go,” she said as they moved quickly toward the other exit.
Chapter Seventy-seven
She saw me,” Jack said into his phone.
“Then go now!” Chuck shouted.
Jack put away the cell as he darted across the street, making the American mistake of checking left instead of right. Two cars slammed on their brakes, and Jack narrowly missed mention in tomorrow’s paper under the headline “Death by Mini Cooper.” Shada and the girl flew out of the restaurant and ran in the opposite direction, headed down a side street. Shada covered the city block in no time, but the girl seemed to be struggling to keep up.
Damn, that woman can run.
“Shada, stop!” he shouted. It felt like the fiasco at Carpenter’s Arms all over again, only this time he knew the area—he was glad he