Chapter 42
Lake
Multitasking wasn’t Gabriel Lake’s thing.
He stared at the screen of his laptop, balanced on the wheel of his Pontiac Aztek.
Then he looked ahead, down the street, at Julian Vanderpool’s building.
No movement from the building. Father and son had been inside for a couple of days now, along with his security team, hunkered down, running interference in the media.
Judging by the sheer volume of articles coming out of his newspapers, the coverage on the news programs on his network and the thousands of bots and trolls constantly running hate and conspiracy theories on social media, Vanessa Vanderpool was the most vilified woman in New York, a cold-blooded killer.
The headhunter, the trolls called her.
None of the principals he was watching had left that property in days.
He turned back to the laptop.
Now that he was ex-FBI, Lake didn’t have access to the same kind of databases as Bloch, so his online searches would be more generic.
So far, he was coming up short.
Too short.
No voter registration details for Molly Green.
No driver’s license issued by New York or any of the surrounding states.
No online presence on social media.
He was about to look up birth records when something caught his eye.
Movement from the Vanderpool home.
A huge man in a black leather jacket, gray jeans and black military boots.
He looked both ways, checking for cars before he crossed the street and that’s when Lake clocked it was Dekker.
Two of his goons with him. Smaller, but sharp-looking men.
The last two survivors from his unit. They hustled across the street, got into a blacked-out Mercedes SUV and Lake saw the taillights firing up.
He closed his laptop, placed it on the passenger seat and used the voice control on his phone to text Eddie and Bloch.
Dekker on the move. Two men with him. I’m following.
Turning the ignition key in the Aztek, the engine coughed, then coughed again and nothing happened. The starter motor turned over and over.
Lake swore, turned off the ignition, waited a moment.
The black Mercedes ahead of him pulled away.
He tried it again. This time determined.
‘Come on, baby. You know I love you,’ he said.
The Aztek sputtered into life, but it wasn’t sounding good. He selected drive, hit the gas and the engine backfired.
By now, the Mercedes had already made it through the lights and was speeding along the next block.
Lake swore and put his foot down, to little or no effect.
Neither the swearing nor the depression of the gas pedal seemed to make any appreciable difference.
Pressing the pedal all the way to the floor, the pitch of the engine increased and the Aztek seemed to find the next gear, and backfired again.
Still, he was moving. And the Mercedes was still in sight.
Lake bit his nails and drove, pushing the car as hard as he dared.
He told himself the car problems were probably a blessing.
When he was in the FBI, he had a habit of tailing cars way too close.
It was the anxiety in him. He didn’t want to lose his target.
No amount of coaching from the precision driving instructor helped.
Eventually, he was advised to take meds for the condition.
Lake ignored the advice. It was his anxiety that kept him sharp, made his brain tick along at high speed and made sure he never got into a situation he hadn’t already planned for in his catastrophic way of thinking.
The Mercedes pulled into what looked like a mechanics’ garage, stopping at the roller shutter doors. One of Dekker’s men got out, used a key to open the lock on the doors then rolled up the shutter. Dekker rolled the Merc inside and the goon followed, closing the doors behind him.
Lake pulled up twenty feet away, checked his location on the maps app on his phone. No way to follow them inside.
He would wait for them coming out.
It was a redbrick building in the Bronx, with steel shutters for windows and a faded hand-painted sign above the door advertising the old car-repair business.
Too bad they were no longer in business.
The Aztek probably needed a shit ton of work.
It had been running fine yesterday, but that was the way of old cars.
No telling when they might decide to stop functioning.
Lake thought this gave the car character.
And it was true – the Aztek had plenty of character – too bad it was a comedic character.
He bit his lip, kept the engine running. No way he was going to risk turning it off. It may never start again.
Lake watched the building, chewed his nails and let his heel bounce on the floor. It shook the car slightly, but not enough that anyone outside would see. No way he could go back to the laptop, not just yet. This needed his full attention.
As an agent, and now as a private investigator, of sorts, he was used to spending hours simply observing. Sitting and watching. Staying alert wasn’t a problem. Sleeping, that was a problem.
He checked his watch with difficulty. Hard to see it. The clock on the Aztek read two thirty in the morning, so that was no help. How long had he been waiting now? Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Maybe longer.
Give it more time.
He told himself he would wait another twenty.
He only managed five minutes before he reluctantly switched off the engine and got out of the car.
Leaving the engine running in a normal car and abandoning it in any major US city was tantamount to giving the car away.
He had thought hard about turning off the Aztek’s engine.
No one was likely to steal this car. And even if they did they probably wouldn’t get very far.
Still, it was his, and he needed it. So he took the keys with him and opened the trunk.
Slipped off his jacket, put on a ballistic vest, then his jacket back over the top.
He moved his Glock from his shoulder holster to a quick release on his belt, shut the trunk, locked the car to make sure the laptop was secure because it cost more than the vehicle, and crossed the street.
No way to see inside from this face of the building, so he ran around the corner and found a steel emergency exit door. Locked. He moved quicker now. On the opposite side of the building from where he’d parked, he found another roller shutter door that led directly onto the street. This one was up.
He went inside, cautiously. A single-story garage. Apart from the emergency exit, which he’d seen already, there was no staircase and no other way out of the building other than the roller shutter doors and a single door exit on this side.
The roller shutters were up. There was nothing else here apart from – the Mercedes.
He called Bloch.
‘I lost Dekker and his boys. I’m pretty sure they switched vehicles in a garage. The roller shutters on the opposite side of the building were up. Wherever they’re going, they didn’t have time to stop and close the doors. Are you still in the Hamptons?’
‘Yeah,’ said Bloch.
‘Any trouble there?’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost them. My car—’
He could almost hear Bloch’s eyes rolling in her head at the mention of the Aztek.
‘It happens. Don’t worry,’ said Bloch. ‘Eddie, Harry and Vanessa are safe in the courthouse. I’ve got a lawyer here from Vanderpool’s firm. He’s pissed, but I have it under control.’
‘Did he make a call to anyone since you’ve been there?’
Silence.
Then, ‘I’ll check,’ said Bloch.
‘Call me back,’ said Lake.