Chapter 6 - The Parking Garage

They left through the diner's kitchen. The cook didn't ask questions; he just pointed toward the alley and said, "Go before the black car circles around."

Teresa drove. June sat up front with her phone held to the windshield, recording the sedan that pulled out behind them. Mara lay across the back seat with the recorder under her jacket.

"Two turns," June said. "Still behind us."

"Maybe they want coffee," Teresa muttered.

"At sixty miles an hour?"

Teresa swung into a hospital parking garage, hoping the security booth would scare their tail. The booth was empty. The sedan followed down one level, then another. Tires shrieked on concrete.

"That's Blake Soren," Mara said when she saw the driver's profile under the overhead lights. "Celeste's security chief."

"Wonderful," June said. "A paid psycho with good insurance."

Teresa stopped beside a fire door. They scrambled out. Mara planted her crutch under her right arm and moved as fast as her sore leg allowed. Pain burned through her socket. She kept moving.

Blake came around the corner. "Give me the box, Ms. Flores. Nobody needs to get hurt."

"Then stop chasing us!" Teresa shouted.

He reached inside his jacket. Mara couldn't see a gun, and she had no intention of waiting to find out. She struck the red fire-alarm lever with the metal tip of her crutch.

A siren exploded through the garage. Exit lights flashed along the stairwell. June yanked open the emergency exit, and the three women pushed through into the ambulance loading area.

An orderly stared.

"Call security," Mara told him. "A man is following us."

They reached the street and boarded a night bus before Blake emerged. Mara laughed once, breathlessly. Of all the vehicles to save them, it had to be a bus.

Teresa wasn't laughing. She opened the recorder and inspected its memory card.

"It's still here," she said. "But there's something else on the recording."

She scrolled past the argument with Celeste. A man's voice came through, low and commanding.

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Mara's stomach dropped. The voice belonged to Victor Voss.