CHERUB: Maximum Security (23 page)

Lauren went to the fridge and passed out cans of soft drinks.

‘Are we staying or going?’ Curtis asked, as he sat on a kitchen chair drinking from his can.

‘Give me a minute to think,’ James said.

He was feeling the pressure. On James’ previous missions, he’d always had mission controllers or older agents close by. This time it was down to him to outsmart the entire Arizona police department.

James had an idea. He looked at Paula. ‘How big’s the trunk of your car?’

‘I don’t know,’ Paula said. ‘It’s a normal trunk …’

‘Could you fit someone in it?’

‘I guess. It’s pretty roomy when you take all my junk out.’

‘What are you thinking?’ Lauren asked.

‘I don’t think we can stick around here,’ James said.

Lauren nodded. ‘When the cops find that car, this trailer park is the first place they’ll come knocking, but there are bound to be roadblocks in our way somewhere between here and California.’

‘That’s why either me or Curtis has to go in the trunk,’ James said. ‘Paula can drive, with one of us in the front and one in the back next to the baby.’

‘That’s not a bad plan, bro’,’ Lauren nodded, as she realised it made sense. ‘We’d look like a family outing. The cops might just fall for it.’

‘Or they might look in the trunk and bust us,’ Curtis said.

Paula looked completely stressed out. ‘You want
me
to drive you past the police roadblocks?’

‘And on to Los Angeles.’

Paula rubbed her eye. ‘Assisting an escape, you know that’s serious jail time?’

‘Please, Paula,’ Lauren grovelled. ‘If my brother gets caught, he’ll go back to prison for the rest of his life.’

‘And what if the cops start shooting at us? What if my daughter gets hurt?’

‘Why are we asking her permission?’ Curtis said. ‘Stick the bloody shotgun in her back and make her do what she’s told.’

‘Because …’ James said, wrestling with the uncomfortable fact that Curtis had suggested the course of action that most desperate fugitives really would have taken.

‘What else
can
we do?’ Curtis asked. ‘If we leave her here we’ve got to tie her and the brat up so they don’t snitch.’

James hadn’t planned for any strangers to get tangled up in the escape, especially not taken hostage. He had three options and none of them were nice: tie Paula up and steal her car, make Paula drive them, or restrain Curtis and call John Jones to say that he’d decided to abandon the mission.

‘Listen,’ James said, looking at Paula. ‘I don’t want to go sticking a gun in your back, but if the cops get hold of Curtis and me, we’re dead meat. Once we get to LA, you can go to the cops and say we forced you to drive us. You won’t get punished … Hell, you’ll probably make few bucks selling your story to the newspapers.’

‘Either that or you tie us up?’ Paula said, nervously rocking her legs up and down.

James noticed a gaudy pink and white dress hanging on the door by the toilet.

‘You work in that ice-cream place down the road?’ James asked, deliberately ignoring Paula’s question. ‘How much does that pay?’

‘Six bucks an hour.’

‘Lauren,’ James said. ‘You grabbed John’s savings, didn’t you? What have we got?’

Lauren nodded. ‘There’s about four thousand bucks in the large backpack.’

‘I’ll give you half our money if you drive us,’ James said. ‘Think of all the ice cream you’d have to shovel to earn two thousand buckaroos. A thousand stays here in the trailer. You’ll get the other half in LA.’

Curtis was shaking his head. ‘Why are we doing this?’ he sneered. ‘Elwood kept saying you were a pussy.’

James angrily stepped up to Curtis and faced him off. ‘What use is Paula if she freaks out the second a cop shines a flashlight in her face? If I’d listened to you, we’d have already ended up getting shot to pieces after some stupid car chase.’

Lauren sat beside Paula on the couch and did a big sniffle. ‘Could you please help us?’ she begged. ‘My uncle beats me up so bad…
Please
don’t make me go back to him.’

Paula’s expression altered completely when she heard this. She looked towards Lauren and smiled gently. ‘My step-dad knocked me into the hospital when I was about your age.’

‘You know how it feels then,’ Lauren sniffed, trowelling on the waterworks and feeling guilty about the way she was manipulating Paula.

Paula reluctantly looked up at James, who was standing over her. ‘I got problems, and two thousand bucks can fix most of ’em.’

Curtis volunteered to ride in the trunk. James couldn’t predict his mood: one minute Curtis was bright and cooperative, the next he was suicidal. Kids who haven’t been through CHERUB-style training usually have difficulty handling dangerous situations, but Curtis didn’t seem up to any kind of stress and James was getting worried. If they made it to Los Angeles, they’d be relying on him to keep his head together and make contact with associates of his mother.

It was 4:30 a.m. when they hit a big roadblock, a mile shy of the border with California. Five police cars blocked the left-hand lanes and a long snake of rear lights merged slowly into the single remaining lane. More police cars were parked on the opposite side of the road, with pursuit drivers ready to give chase and a helicopter circling overhead. James knew the chopper would pack a heat-sensitive camera, able to detect anyone who tried to bail out of a car and cut through the desert.

Considering what they were putting her through, Paula was keeping her head together. Lauren sat next to her in the front, pretending to sleep. James was in the back with a hoodie pulled over his skinhead and Paula’s three-year-old daughter, Holly, was dead to the world in the child seat next to him.

It took a quarter of an hour to crawl to the front of the queue. Every car got a cursory glance, as cops shone a torch inside and fired a couple of quick questions at the driver. Most cars were waved on, but any that looked suspicious were told to pull into a second line for a detailed inspection. This roadside check involved everyone getting out of the car and having their ID run through the police computer, while the inside of the car was thoroughly searched.

James knew it would all be over if they got picked for inspection. With Paula behind the wheel and thirty well-armed cops in the vicinity, any attempt to escape would be short and bloody.

Paula opened her window as she rolled up alongside a cop.

‘Licence, registration, ma’am.’

The cop glanced at the documents, while another walked around the car shining a flashlight inside.

‘Are these your children?’

‘The little girl in the back is my daughter. These two are my brother and sister.’

The other cop knocked on the window beside James’ head. ‘Let’s have a look at you, son.’

James rolled down the window and got a blast of the flashlight in his face.

‘How old are you?’ the cop asked.

‘Thirteen,’ James said.

‘Would you pull that hood down for me?’

James’ heart banged as he slid the hoodie down, revealing the half centimetre of bristles on his head.

The cop looked at his colleague. ‘Got a blond skinhead here; about the right age too.’

The other cop leaned in beside Paula. ‘I’m sorry, Miss, but I’m gonna have to ask you to join that queue over to your left for an inspection.’

James silently mouthed a string of curses. He just hoped John found a way to pull him out before he got hauled back to Arizona Max. Paula rolled forward a single car-length to join the tail of the inspection line. Lauren glanced over her shoulder at James with a resigned look.

‘We gave it our best shot,’ James shrugged. ‘I’m sorry we put you through this for nothing, Paula. Tell the cops we threatened to hurt Holly if you didn’t help us.’

‘How much extra time will they give you for escaping?’ Paula asked, sounding as if she genuinely cared.

‘Enough,’ James said. ‘Five, ten years, maybe.’

‘You don’t seem like no criminal,’ Paula said sympathetically. ‘At least, I’ve known a few and you seem far too nice a guy to have gotten yourself in so much trouble.’

All their heads snapped around as a cop thumped on the metal roof above them. The next car in line had been ordered to pull over, but the inspection queue hadn’t moved up and there wasn’t room for it to join without blocking the traffic that was being waved through.

Paula reopened her window as the cop crouched down beside the car. ‘We got too many cars backed up here,’ he explained. ‘I’m gonna let you guys pass through. You seem pretty harmless to me.’

‘I’ve never been called harmless before,’ Paula grinned sweetly, ‘but I’ll settle for it if it gets me to LA before the little lady in the back wakes up.’

‘You have a safe journey, now,’ the cop smiled, as Paula backed up, making enough space to pull out of the queue.

With the traffic being filtered through one car at a time, the three lanes heading towards California were deserted.

Lauren looked back at James and gasped. ‘That was
too
close.’

James grinned. ‘
Way
too close.’

*

They pulled up at a McDonalds fifty miles into California. Lauren went inside and bought some breakfast. James checked no one was around, before letting Curtis out of the trunk. Once he’d walked the cramp out of his legs, Curtis faced the sunrise over the desert and stretched out his arms.

‘Beautiful,’ he said, turning around and slapping James on the back as he pulled him into a hug. ‘You were
so
cool, man. I’m sorry I messed up last night … When my head goes dark like that, I act like a total dick.’

‘Glad Lauren didn’t put bullets in the magnum now?’

Curtis smirked. ‘Your sister must be my guardian angel, or something.’

Lauren came around the side of the restaurant holding a cardboard tray of drinks and two brown paper bags stuffed with food. Curtis snatched one of the bags and took out a muffin.

‘Double sausage and egg,’ Curtis said, tearing out a massive bite. ‘I love these, man. It’s been a year since I had one of these.
Mmm
… This is
sooooooo
good.’

James left Curtis to eulogise over his McMuffin and leaned in the back of the car to speak with Paula. Holly had woken up grumpy and Paula sat next to her daughter, trying to persuade her to eat something.

‘You did us a big favour back there,’ James said. ‘I owe you one.’

‘You
owe
me a thousand,’ Paula said, only half joking.

James nodded. ‘As soon as we get to LA; you’ve got my word on that.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a thousand dollars in one go,’ Paula said. ‘When I was a little girl, I always wanted to go to Disneyland and stay in a real hotel, but we were as poor as dirt. When I drop you guys off, I’m gonna drive Holly up there. It’s only thirty miles.’

‘Sounds fun,’ James smiled, ‘but it’s better if you call the cops first. You don’t want to get in trouble for helping us and they’ll hardly believe your story if you head off to Disneyland.’

Paula looked a little crushed. ‘I guess you’re right.’

‘You don’t have to tell the cops about the money, though,’ James said. ‘Drive out there in a week’s time, or something.’

With Paula and Curtis both happy, James felt more at ease than he’d done for ages. He was miffed when Lauren broke the mood.

‘We better get moving,’ she said. ‘We might have got past one roadblock, but that doesn’t mean the cops have stopped searching for us.’

*

They caught the morning rush hour when they reached the outskirts of Los Angeles, ending up in fourteen lanes of solid traffic, crawling along at walking pace. When they hit a downward slope, there was a vista of tens of thousands of cars packed in close formation, with sunlight reflecting off the windscreens. After fighting their way out of the sparsely populated desert, it was a relief to be sitting in one anonymous car amidst thousands.

They had to find a place to split from Paula. Lauren picked out a route to Hollywood on the map, because it was the only place in town that she’d heard of. They wound up at a grey mall on Hollywood Boulevard called Showbiz Stores. It was 10 a.m. and James couldn’t help getting a little buzz when he spotted the famous Hollywood sign on a hill in the distance.

They parked in an underground lot beneath the mall. James walked around to the back of the car and counted a thousand dollars out of the backpack, before slinging it over his shoulder. Paula grabbed Holly and they took an elevator up to the food court on the top level. James got everyone drinks and an ice cream for Holly.

He passed the thousand dollars under the table to Paula as he spoke. ‘We passed a taxi rank on the way inside. You sit here and finish your drink. Give us twenty minutes or so to get away, then cover yourself by calling the cops before you do anything else. OK?’

Paula nodded as she took the money.

‘Can I trust you?’ James asked.