The Victim (65 page)

She pressed down on the accelerator, closing the gap. As he came to Le Jeune and made a right, she figured out where he was headed.

He didn’t waste any time, did he?

That was fine with her. Vindicated, she smiled, caressing the cold steel barrel of the Taurus .45 resting on the passenger seat.

CHAPTER 77

Anton cut across two lanes of traffic on the Dolphin Expressway, exiting in the lane designated for Miami International Airport. An inbound cargo plane lumbered in, its navigation lights shining through the late day haze rolling in off the Everglades. Anton followed the traffic loop off the Expressway. He rounded the curve, staying in the departures lane. Congestion formed as a mass of cars slowed entering the terminals. Anton veered off toward the long-term parking garages. There were two, the Dolphin Garage and the Flamingo Garage, not to mention an array of premiere valet services and off-site park-and-rides.

They could have been anywhere. That’s if they were even here.

Anton punched for a ticket and the gate went up. He zigzagged the steep incline, pulling into the concrete parking garage. There must have been hundreds of cars parked side-by-side. Travelers lugged rolling suitcases across the pavement, taking hectic strides, guided by the fear of a missed flight. He shifted into low gear, gliding up the ramp to the next level, sweeping his gaze upon both rows of cars. In an instant he spotted three black Mercedes ML 350s. Was she still driving that car?

Echoing in the concrete enclosure, he heard the whine of outbound turbines. Lola and Charley could have been on that flight.

He floored it, rounding a tight corner too fast, tires squealing. A whitish glaze spilled down the ramp leading to the rooftop; he squinted as he drove out of the dark garage into the light. Atop the roof of the parking garage it seemed as through a thousand cars were parked, the makes and models indecipherable.

He stopped short in the middle of an aisle. An impatient woman in a sporty Acura honked and swerved around him. He opened the door and got out, shielding his eyes as he scanned the rooftop for any signs of a Mercedes SUV. Must have been a dozen. He braced his hands on the open windowsill, trying to figure out what to do. Sweat rolled down his forehead, into his eyes.

The sound of a sports car engine buzzed by, the pitch rising as the car whipped around the parked Lexus. He felt the draft on his face as the car sped by, trailed by a suction of air.

He turned and looked. A yellow Porsche Boxster.

Anton got in his car and followed, losing sight as the Porsche took the corner quickly. Anton followed. The black ragtop was up but Anton was able to see the back of the driver’s head through the back window. The driver’s neck was bowed as if he was looking at something in his lap. Texting, perhaps.

Anton let off the gas, putting some distance between himself and the Porsche.
It couldn’t have been Bryan, could it?

The Porsche turned down an aisle, pulled in to what appeared to be one of the only available spots in the entire structure.

A black Mercedes ML 350 was right beside it.

“
No fucking way,” he muttered under his breath.

Anton illegally parked his Lexus at the end of the aisle beneath a security lamp.

He reached into the backseat, jamming his hand into his unzipped suitcase. He felt the plastic handle of the box and tugged it out from under the pile of wadded-up clothes. He placed it on his lap and unsnapped it. His Colt Anaconda rested against a bed of foam padding. He picked it up, ejected the cylinder, and dropped six .44 magnum rounds into each chamber.

He flicked his wrist, snapping the cylinder back into place.

“
Before all else, be armed.”

He got out of the car, tucked the .44 into his pants, and pulled his jacket over the exposed grip. He jogged across the parking lot toward the Mercedes, watching the driver-side door open. Thin legs wrapped in skin-tight jeans emerged, black leather boots with three-inch heels. Anton drew the gun from his waist and took aim, taking a bent-leg stance to brace himself for the recoil. As she got out of the car, unaware of her surroundings, he lined her up in his sights, center mass.

“
Give me back my daughter.”

He didn’t yell or lose his cool. He was calm, uncharacteristically so, surprising even him. From a distance of about fifteen feet his soft voice would normally be unheard, but she recognized it, turned her head, her stare meeting the bore of a massive handgun.

The shock widened her eyes, caused her to lose her grip on her purse, which fell to her feet. She opened her mouth, as if on instinct, but no words came out.

“
Lola?” Holding his aim, he sidestepped, right over left, getting out from behind the obstruction of her car’s bulky backend. He stopped behind the smaller Porsche, able to take a clear unhindered shot above the sport car’s low roof. “Give me back my daughter. Now.”

The Porsche engine trilled at full RPMs, the tires spinning before the clutch popped and shifted into reverse. The backend struck Anton’s legs, flopping him chin first onto the trunk. The driver hit the brakes, the momentum flinging Anton like dead weight, the back of his head smacking the pavement hard. The Porsche lurched forward, stopped, and reversed again, nearly missing Anton as he gator-rolled out of the way.

Anton rose to his feet. He could feel his heart throbbing in the knot forming on the back of his head. He steadied himself on weak knees, staring down the front-end of the Boxster. The driver was revving the engine.

Bryan.

He hit the gas and Anton jumped, rolling up onto the hood and crashing into the windshield. The glass spiderwebbed and crumpled in. The car stopped and Anton slid off the hood, landing on his side. He brushed off the bits of broken glass. Blood seeped through his sleeve. He pulled back a tear in his shirt with his finger, revealing a deep cut along his shoulder.

He struggled to stand but he lost his footing. He had taken that spill off the hood too hard, fractured something. The Porsche reeled back in a quick reverse, lining up dead even with him, engine rumbling as if ready to charge.

Through the shattered windshield Anton could see Bryan smiling.

The grille glimmered like angry teeth. Bryan floored it. Anton brought his hands in front of his face, as if that could do any good. He just didn’t want to watch.

A shot rang out like a thunderclap. A big round, some serious horsepower on it. It hit Bryan dead on, just above the left ear. A blast of bone splinters and brain matter splattered on the headrest. He lolled forward, slumping over the steering wheel. His leaden foot on the gas, the driverless Porsche came to an abrupt stop, crashing into a Nissan.

Anton rose to his feet. Standing beside the open driver-side door of a late-model Camry, Vicki Brandt held a black semiautomatic handgun in her outstretched arms. She said nothing as she stared cathartically at Bryan, dead behind the wheel. The front-end of the Boxster was mashed into the bumper of some unsuspecting traveler’s parked Nissan Altima. The rear-end collision had forced the Nissan into the concrete half-wall. The morning on the Beeline flashed in Anton’s mind, the phantom smell of gasoline burning his eyes.

He looked at Bryan, slumped over the steering wheel, his chin awkwardly caught while his body tried to pull him down. Blood spatter stained the seats and shattered windshield. Foam stuffing sprouted from the hole in the headrest where the bullet had traveled upon blowing out the back of Bryan’s skull.

It didn’t take much to piece it together.

Anton limped two steps forward. He looked down at his hands, realizing he had dropped his gun. Strangely, he didn’t think he needed it anymore.

“
He was in on it, wasn’t he, Lola?”

Before she could answer, the Doppler wail of sirens grew closer. The trounce of heavy tires cleared each level of the garage until four white Suburbans bearing the Department of Homeland Security seal on their doors came racing down the aisles. They braked hard, doors fanning open, DHS agents in olive drab and kevlar crouched behind them, sighting in full-auto AR-15s.

Little red beads danced on Vicki Brandt’s chest.

Anton realized she was still holding the gun.

“
Ma’am, put the weapon down!” A grave voice ordered through a PA system. Emergency strobes flickered through the Suburbans’ grilles.

Vicki knelt down and slid the gun across the ground. She stood calmly and raised her hands above her head. Anton did the same, just in case.

A DHS helicopter loomed over the edge of the garage, climbing high enough to sweep its beam across the roof. A thousand cars glinted in the searchlight. The chopper made wide circles around its beam, centered on the crashed Porsche. The rotors sliced through the still air.

Lola dropped her purse and climbed onto the half wall, standing with her heels no less than two inches from a five-story drop. The chopper adjusted its position. The beam shined around her like an unearthly halo.

“
Ma’am, please get down from there!” The PA voice said, redirecting its attention. Anton took a cautious step forward, his palms facing forward in submission.

“
Hey, listen!” he shouted above the noise of the rotors. “It’s over, Lola! You got what you wanted. I came clean, right? Even in the end, you still surprised me. Here, I thought you were using Bryan. I guess he wasn’t the one calling the shots in his case. You were.”

She held out her hands and bent her knees for balance, trying to stabilize herself against the heavy winds blowing off the rotors. She looked over her shoulder, examining the ground five stories below. A crowd had begun to gather, gazing up at the woman on the ledge, shooting video on their phones.

Tears welled in her eyes. “You have no idea what we went through! What all of us went through!” She glanced over her shoulder once more, turning away quickly. It was a long way down. “We were supposed to leave. Me and Kelsie and Evan! I was gonna go first. They were gonna follow. They didn’t have families. They could have just up and left and no one would have known. Me? My disappearance had to be explained.”

“
I know it did. That’s where Osvaldo Garcia came in. You used the same tactic with Bryan.” Anton pointed to Vicki, standing behind him, arms raised. “You knew about Vicki and used it against me as I represented Bryan. You knew about Garcia’s past. You knew a convicted sex offender would be the prime suspect in the disappearance of an eighteen-year-old girl. What you didn’t count on was that the feds would trick him into confessing and the guy would get life. You didn’t give a crap what happened to him, legally that is. You just needed people to suspect that he was involved.”

“
I never meant for it to go that far.”

Anton took another step. “Maybe. But once he was charged, you didn’t do much to stop it. Your mother lied under oath, told prosecutors the same thing she told police four days before Garcia was arrested. You went missing on March 12th. Your uncle, Frank? He and his biker buddies intimidated that motel owner, the one who claimed to have seen you in the days before your ‘killer’ was caught. Got him to lie on the stand, too. We know that’s a lie, Lola. Your missing persons poster was two years old. You looked nothing like you had when the picture was taken yet he ID’d you anyway.”

“
This isn’t fair! We were supposed to leave! You killed them!”

“
I take full responsibility for what I did. You know that. They were driving back from dropping Garcia off in the national park. You were on a plane to Phoenix at that point with Frank. You made it to Mexico but Frank got flagged. What was the plan? Kelsie and Evan were going to meet you in Mexico?”

She said nothing.

“
But you came back when you found out they were dead. That’s how you figured things out. Since the missing persons poster depicted an entirely different person, you were able to hide out in plain sight. Nobody knew you were the same girl who was murdered in the forest. But your mother still testified at Osvaldo’s trial. That motel owner did as well. Even though you were back in town and alive and well, they still did it.”

She wiped her eyes. “It was the least she could do for me.”

Anton nodded. “I figured that much.”

The PA voice said, “Ma’am. Please step down off that ledge.”

She looked up, shielding her eyes from the Suburban’s high beams.