The Getaway (Sam Archer 2) (30 page)

They arrived on one of the floors. The doors slid open and they walked out. One of the men had a makeshift splint and gauze holding a broken nose in place, and as they moved down the corridor, he winced from the pain it was causing him. They saw the hotel room door ahead, and the two men slowed, mov
ing forward quietly and slowly.

Fifteen yards.

Ten yards.

Five.

They arrived outside the door.

They checked either side, making sure no one was around, then both pulled out their pistols, pulling the top-slides back halfway to make sure a round was in the chamber of each weapon.

One of them, a man with red hair, ha
d a key-card in his right hand.

He eased it into the slot and the door clicked, a light on the panel flicking green. In the next moment, he pushed down the handle and the two of them burst into the room, pistols up and ready to fire.

But no one was inside.

It was empty.

The man with the splint ran forward and checked the balcony whilst the man with red hair looked in the bathroom.

‘Shit,’ he said, as the man with the broken nose re-entered the room from the sliding doors. ‘They aren’t here.’

‘I can see that, dumbass,’ the other man said. He looked around and saw that there was an overnight bag here, a solitary black suit hanging on a hanger in the closet. One man had been staying here, travelling light. ‘Shit. Gerrard told me this was his room.’

‘Maybe they’re somewhere else in the hotel,’ the other man suggested.

‘Nah, they won’t have come back here. Katic has probably found somewhere for them to stay, with a friend or something.’

He swore.

‘We need to find them. They start talking to people in D.C , we’re screwed.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ O’Hara said.

Siletti pulled a phone from his pocket and pushed
Redial
, lifting it to his ear. The call connected.

‘Did you find them?’
a voice said.

‘No. They weren’t here.’

Pause.

‘This isn’t good. If you two go down, that might implicate me. T
hat would make me very unhappy.
’

‘I understand.’

‘You’d better pray you find them before the cops do.’

‘Understood.’

The call ended. Siletti looked over at his partner.

‘He’s pissed.’

‘No wonder.’

‘He said if we don’t find them, he’s going to come for us.’

There was a pause. The two men looked at the empty room for a moment longer, then Siletti cursed, blood staining the gauze in his nostrils, caking his moustache.

‘Screw this. Let’s get
the hell out of here,’ he said.

The two men slotted their pistols back in their holsters and strode out of the hotel room.

Seventeen floors below the two men, Archer closed the door to 21 G quietly behind him and pulled the latch over. The door to the bathroom was open, the mirror steamed up, the
bath
tub empty, and he saw that Jessie was curled up in bed, fast asleep, exhausted but freshly bathed, the scary events of the evening temporarily forgotten. The shootout at the apartment had terrified her, but nothing that some velvet lies couldn’t fix. In the car on the way here, Katic had played down the attack, saying it was a training exercise from work, and although sceptical at first, the girl had believed it with the conviction that her mother
was
all-powerful, indestructible, the greatest person in the world.

Archer moved back into the room quietly, so as not to wake up Jessie, and stretched, taking off his coat and laying it over a chair. He pulled the pistol from the pocket and held it in his hand, cold, hard metallic reassurance. Everywhere he went tonight, the Sig was coming too. Jessie was asleep so he didn’t need to hide it. He saw that Katic was outside on the balcony, sat in one of the white chairs, facing
Times Square
. He moved out to join her.

She
started
as he opened the screen door and quickly reached for the pistol on her hip instinctively, but relaxed and smiled when she saw it was him. He stepped out, shutting t
he door quietly behind him.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’

‘Mind if I join you?’

She shook her head and he too
k a seat near her at the table.

There was a pause. Down below they could hear the constant hum and activity of
Times Square
. They were facing the east side, and if he sat up straight, Archer could see the tops of some of the billboards, illuminated in the night.

‘I spoke to my boss, back in the
UK
. He’s going to call me back.’

She nodded. ‘Good.’

Together, the two of them looked out over the city. The bright lights. The dark shapes of the buildings. The odd figure in windows far ahe
ad, going about their business.

‘I’m sorry ab
out your husband,’ Archer said.

‘Yeah. Me too.’

‘How did he die?’

‘Cancer.’

She
paused.

‘He was only twenty six. We met the week after I left high school back in
Chicago
.’ Pause. ‘You’d have liked him. He was calm. Mature. Kind. Jessie was unexpected to say the least, but he never complained about it once. Never left my side. After she was born, when other guys his age were out partying, he stayed inside looking after her and me. She absolutely worshipped him.’

‘Is Katic his name?’

She shook her head.

‘Mine. We got married a couple years ago, but I couldn’t keep his name after he died. It was too hard. A constant reminder.’

‘Katic. Is that Croatian?’

She shook her head. ‘Serbian. Third generation. Family moved here after the war.’

Archer nodded and leaned back. Both of them looked out over the city in silence.

‘They’re out there right now, looking for us,’ Katic said. ‘The cops want you for the Garden heist. Farrell wants you because you abandoned him and his team and took their money. Siletti and O’Hara want us because we know about everything they’d done.’

She shook her head.

‘I thought there were rules, you know? Two separate sides. Cops and robbers. We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys. They do bad things, we chase them and try to stop them. But that’s not the case, is it?’

Archer shook his head.

‘No, it’s not.’

‘Suddenly it makes sense. Siletti and O’Hara were always reluctant. Complaining. Bitching about the pay. Siletti pissed about getting sent up here, O’Hara for not getting Gerrard’s role in the squad. I got so caught up in tailing Gerrard that I never stopped to look at those two. Now he, Parker and Lock are all dead.’

‘It’s not your fault. Don’t feel that way. You never could have known any of this was going to happen.’

Silence.

Katic shook her head, leani
ng back, looking up at the sky.

‘Parker had been Siletti’s partner for over a year. The kid never hurt a fly. Yet he shoots him in the back of the head. Executed. Like he committed war-crimes or something. The same probably happened to Lock and Gerrard. They interacted with these men. Spent time together. Ate food. Rode in the same cars. How the hell could they turn around and just murder them like that?’

Archer
stayed silent as Katic sighed.

The noise of
Times Square
below filled the silence that followed

‘You’re a cop in the
UK
, right?’ she asked, turning to him.

‘That’s right.’

‘Have you ever been double-crossed?’

He no
dded.

‘Once.’

She saw the look on his face and decided not to pursue it.

There was a pause.

‘It’s a horrible feeling,’ she said. ‘I still don’t get why they would do it. I can’t get my head around it.’

‘One reason. Money. I guess being in Bank Robbery, the two of them had been around a lot of cash. You said Siletti came from the Finance office too, back in D.C. Around all that money, every day, yet being unable to ever get your hands on any of it. Having to nod and smile as you get a monthly cheque that is a fraction of the amount of cash you deal with every day.’

Silence.

‘Your father talked about you, you know.’

Archer looked over at her.

‘When?’

‘We grabbed a coffee two weeks ago, three or four days before he died. He’d been tailing Parker, to make sure he was on our side, and had pulled his files from the database in D.C. Parker was a big high-school football player at a prep school upstate. Played quarterback. Your dad read it in the file and said he reminded him of you. Apparently you used to play soccer.’

Archer smiled, and nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

She turned to him. ‘He had a lot of regrets, you know. I could see that in his body language when he spoke about you. I don’t know what happened between you, but his eyes lit up when he mentioned you that one time. Then his expression changed. He seemed sad. He tried to hide
it, but I could see it.’

She paused.

‘I’m guessing he did something to screw up. Maybe a lot of things. I don’t know what he did, but I could tell that he regretted it and losing touch with you.’

Archer stayed silent, looking at
her.

Suddenly, the cell phone rang in his pocket. Pulling his attention from Katic, he lifted it out of his pocket and pushed
Answer
.

‘Hello?’

‘It
’s me,’
Cobb said. ‘
Good news.’

‘I spoke to Sanderson,’
Cobb said.
‘He’s on his way to you already from D.C. He’ll be there before morning.’

‘Great. How did he take the news?’

‘He was shocked, but he wasn’t surprised. Seems the FBI team in New York has been under review for quite some time. Their closure numbers are so bad, everyone in the entire organisation had noticed. Sanderson is an Assistant Director. All he needs to do is make one phone call and an entire division from D.C will be on their way up to help you all out. You can trust him, Arch. He’s an old friend.’

‘Great. Thank you, sir.’

‘How are you holding up?’

‘Yeah, I’m OK.’

‘The woman and the child?’

Archer looked at Katic. ‘They’re OK too.’

‘Just hang on till morning, son. Sanderson will take it from there. He believed everything I told him, everything that you told me. When he realised who your father was, that was enough to convince him. Seems he had a very good reputation over there.’

There was a pause.

‘I need to go. But call me if the shit hits the fan again. Do you have a gun?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sleep with it in your hand. Clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The call ended. He turned to Katic, who was looking
at him, her brown eyes hopeful.

‘We’re in business,’ he said. ‘A guy called Sanderson is on his way from the capital. He’s an Assistant Director. He wants to talk to me first hand, then it looks like he’s going to get us some back up.’

‘Great,’ she said. ‘That’s good news.’

There was a paus
e. Then she rose and stretched.

‘I’m spent. I’m going to hit the hay,’ she said.

Archer nodded. She walked past him, brushing his shoulder as she passed. He smelt her perfume.

He didn’t move as she continued on past him and re-entered the hotel room, sliding the door shut quietly behind her and leaving him out there alone.

Archer sat out on the balcony for another thirty minutes, thinking things through. Then he quietly entered the room. Katic and the girl were asleep in the bed. There was a couch straight ahead of him that looked inviting. He stacked up two cushions on the end closest to th
e window and sat on the middle.

Suddenly, he realised that he’d left his cell phone on. Siletti and O’Hara would be prowling the streets down below, but he knew the kind of equipment they would have access to back in their offices at
Federal
Plaza
. He didn’t fancy getting triangulated by the cell phone’s signal. Back in
London
, he’d seen Nikki do the exact same thing, and she could find someone in less than a minute using the technology. He unclipped the back panel of the phone quietly so as not to wake Katic and the girl, then pulled out the battery. He thought for a moment, then rose and tiptoed across the room and did the same with Katic’s phone, layi
ng it back gently on the table.