“Detective Aziz.”
“You can tell him we have the whole thing on tape. See if he can meet us.”
“You know where she’s going?”
“My guess is Dulles Airport. They support private chartered international flights. She said she wasn’t going commercial.”
“Okay, so what? I’m going to call Aziz and tell him to go to the airfield? And we’re just going to hope we get to the airfield before her? What if Aziz doesn’t get my message in time? We can’t stop her.”
“I don’t think she’ll make it to Dulles. I put a small slit in each of her back tires.” Paula shoots me a look as she merges onto Clara Barton. “A little risky, I know. Which is why we need to follow her. I figure she’ll be stopping on the side of the road in about twenty minutes. Let’s make sure she has company, huh?”
“You slashed her tires?”
“‘Slashed’ is a very violent word. A penknife, real quick, in and out.” She takes a hand off the wheel and makes a stabbing gesture.
“You know that her tire could blow on the highway, right?”
“I had to do something,” Paula says. “I think you should call the detective.”
Finn dials Aziz’s number and lets out a groan when the call goes straight to voicemail. He leaves a brief message, explaining what happened with Jo, and how they are tracking her now as she drives on the Dulles Access Road, a dedicated highway that leads to the airport.
They drive in tense silence for a few minutes, exiting onto the Beltway and then taking the Dulles Access Road. Finn thinks about the world of memories Autumn’s laptop contains and how badly he wants it. There was a time, a few months ago, when the ache of losing her was so sharp that he might have considered making a deal to get it back. That was during the winter, when it felt like something inside of him had curled up and withered. But as much as he wants to see those videos and pictures, to read Autumn’s novel in progress, he wants to see justice done even more. He glances at Paula’s phone in his lap only to see that the dot has stopped moving.
“She’s stopping,” Finn says. “On the side of the access road, where the toll road veers away.”
“Can you send the detective a screenshot of that?”
A few minutes later, they come upon two cars pulled over on the right shoulder of the highway. As they slow down, Finn recognizes Jo’s SUV but not the white Kia parked behind it. As Paula pulls up, he sees the Uber sticker in the window.
“She’s getting an Uber to the airport,” he says, unbuckling his seat belt. “You stop the driver. I’ll get Jo.”
He gets out and jogs past the Uber to where Jo is leaning against her car, on the phone, while an older man, presumably the Uber driver, pulls suitcases from her trunk.
From behind him, Finn can hear Paula call, “Sir! Sir!” as she approaches the back of the SUV.
Jo cranes her neck to look at Paula and then focuses on Finn, who is only a few feet away. They lock eyes for a moment, and then Jo takes off running, climbing up the grassy embankment that separates the two highways. “What the…” Finn mumbles to himself.
“Go!” Paula shouts. “Get her! I’m calling nine-one-one.”
Finn takes off after Jo. She’s surprisingly fast, but then he knows she spends hours at the gym and has run several marathons, which he most decidedly has not. She runs on the grass against traffic, back toward where the two highways diverged. Cars whiz by at sixty miles an hour. Finn follows, his legs burning, the oncoming traffic whooshing by. Jo is getting closer to the V formed by the split highways. She’ll be trapped. But suddenly she jerks left and sprints across the toll road, dodging cars. Finn holds still as horns blare, only able to half look, sure he is about to hear the crunch of metal hitting flesh and bone.It’s suicide, he thinks.She’d rather die than get caught.
But he doesn’t hear a crash.
And when he looks for her, he sees that Jo has made it across the highway and is heading toward a cement parking lot. He recognizes the sign from here.KISS & RIDE. The DC area is filled with them, parking lots adjacent to Metro stops.
He almost laughs when he realizes she thinks she can get to the Metro and still get to the airport to catch her plane. His pulse quickens as he assesses the cars rushing toward him.After this Chevy Suburban, he thinks,I have a small window. As soon as the massive black car passes, he lunges onto the asphalt and runs across, using every ounce of energy he has. Fueled byadrenaline, he keeps going when he hits the other side, racing through the parking lot, the sound of car horns muffled in his ears by the rushing of blood. He’s halfway up the stairs to the Metro station when he sees her pass through the turnstile. Finn races up the rest of the stairs just as an approaching train enters the station. As he reaches the top step, Jo looks back at him and then at the train as it comes to a full stop. He catapults over the turnstile and onto the platform as the train doors open. Jo steps through the open doors of a Metro car and Finn lunges, throwing his body in the air, arms outstretched.
He makes contact, and together they thud to the floor of the Metro car, her body breaking his fall. He drags her back onto the platform as she screams. The only other person on the train is an older woman who looks up at them and then quickly back at her phone. The doors shut and the train pulls out, leaving them alone on the platform.
Jo lets out a cry of agony, but he stays half on top of her as she lies on the platform, her cheek flat against the hard concrete.
“Get off me!” she screams, her arms flailing as she tries to wriggle free from him. He sits up, putting one knee on her back to keep her down.
“You’re hurting me,” she moans.
Finn hesitates. Here is the moment when he could hurt the person who hurt him. A knee in the back is nothing compared to being shot, to the pain Autumn felt that night. Why should he show Jo any mercy? But he is already letting his knee up a little.I’m not like you, he thinks,I don’t enjoy hurting people.
“I’ll pay you anything,” she says, gasping. “Anything you want. Name your price. I can give you the kind of money that will change your life. Millions.”