Chasing Gold Read online

  “Coming to you now,” Crouch said. “We’re already across Constitution.”

  Alicia had been here before and had studied the mall’s pathways and surrounding roads. Ahead lay Madison Drive, a one-way street, but it was dissected by 12th, 13th and 14th Street and then Jefferson. One thing was plain — they had to have an escape vehicle close by. Alicia broke cover again, now racing after the two thieves and broadcasting her intentions across the comms system. Russo was at her side, keeping pace. Crouch and the others were just a few minutes behind. The male thief — Cutler — glanced back and spotted them.

  A gun appeared in his spare hand, which he discharged randomly into the skies. Still, Alicia had to take cover. A stray bullet could kill as easily as a targeted one. When the man stumbled and focused again on running, she took off in hot pursuit. Now the female — Terri — looked around and tried to increase her pace.

  They ran with their burden along a tree-lined path, jumped over a low wall and then raced through a gate. They were on a sidewalk now, streetlamps glaring down, where traffic moved along slowly, and some vehicles were parked up. Alicia fully expected them to make a beeline for one of the vans, but the thieves only chose the nearest sidewalk and kept on running.

  Behind, the gunfire continued, increasing in sheer volume now as more authorities arrived. Alicia could see and hear two helicopters approaching the scene, one a police chopper and the other adorned with the logo of a local news channel. She shook her head as the chopper drifted closer.

  “Why would they think—”

  Before she finished, the gunmen behind started firing at the chopper. Alicia saw sparks and then glass smashed. Before she could see any more the thief ahead again turned, struggling now with the weight of the object he carried. Again, he fired. Again, the bullets shot wide, smashing car fenders and a windshield. Alicia dived to the floor, scraping her arms, and rolled against a car.

  “You got a gun, Russo?”

  “Nope, you?”

  “ ’Course I bloody haven’t. I only arrived an hour ago. You’ve been here — what? Best part of three hours?”

  “Nah, we got here just before you.”

  “Crap.”

  “You wouldn’t shoot him in the back anyway.”

  “The way he keeps trying to kill me — I just might.”

  Russo looked over the fender of a car. “I think he’s trying to miss us. They’re warning shots. His aim can’t be that bad.”

  It was a fair point. “Let’s ask him, shall we? Whilst we dangle him upside down off a three-story building.”

  “Only three stories?” Russo glanced over as he started to move off again. “You must be mellowing.”

  Alicia wondered if that were true. Her life had certainly undergone changes through the last five years, mostly for the better. The friends they had lost along the way still lived in their hearts, but the deaths of close ones changed a person. Alicia guessed it depended on their personality, their character, as to how they dealt with it. She knew Zack Healey would never truly die, for she remembered him every day.

  They jumped up from behind the car and started to close the gap again. The thieves were about one hundred paces ahead now, still running hard with their load, still checking all directions to make sure they were free. Alicia saw pedestrians here and there, some gathering because of the noise at the mall and the overhead choppers, but others just out for the night. She checked on Crouch’s position.

  “I can see you anywhere. Don’t stop though.” He was panting.

  “Do you have a bloody gun?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Ah, thank crap for that. Hurry the fuck up will you. We need to find a safe place to shoot and slow these assholes down.”

  “Just keep them in sight.”

  Alicia ran harder, torn with the knowledge that it would be much easier with a weapon. Terri and Cutler pounded ahead, impressively fit, strong and oddly alone. Alicia couldn’t imagine where the hell they might be going.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Terri Lee was a nobody. Born to an ordinary family that lived in an ordinary street in the heart of chaotic Tokyo, she never excelled at anything, and she never failed at anything. Her father worked in a low-key position for a video games company; her mother painted nails and sold jewelry. In the big scheme of things, she lived off the radar, quietly, unnoticed behind the surging tide of those that sought meaning, adventure, wealth and experience.

  Not surprisingly, she was happy. Family life was mundane, but comforting; structured and strict, but loving. Security and peace came with the knowledge that her parents were always going to be there.

  The meeting with Paul Cutler was entirely unexpected.

  He was a young, brash American. Confidence radiated from him like heatwaves from a fire, and he presented the kind of figure that both men and women admired. He could be a friend, a confidant, always there in times of trouble. He was also reliable, humorous, resourceful. Cutler started working at the new coffee shop down the road, which was far from local, but Terri’s feet often found their way past that fresh, pristine threshold.

  Eventually, he took his short breaks with her; the two of them seated across a small round table, sipping chai-tea lattes. Terri wondered if she might be able to apply for a job to work alongside him, but guessed her parents would never allow it.

  When he asked her to the cinema, Terri had never imagined a date so grand. Truth be told, she’d never really imagined a proper date.

  At seventeen, she had left school with adequate results. Her future was guaranteed within the parameters she’d been set by her parents and her grandparents. It was safe, secure, born of love. It was everything they’d ever had themselves and everything they’d ever wanted for her.

  Terri faced the crossroads of her life with an aching heart.

  Paul Cutler had already shown her that things could be different. Not with actions, but with words. She’d always loved reading — at age thirteen she’d managed to sneak the entire five book series of The Belgariad into her bedroom and fallen in love with the romance, the imagination and the camaraderie. It had been a glimpse into another world; not just fantasy but the world of possibility.

  Cutler offered no pressure, and that made it all harder. The man was so easy-going and yet so attentive. He owned her heart… but she knew leaving Japan would destroy her parents. Their lives had been built around providing for her. This would end them.

  So, she let Cutler go; broke all contact with the American, broke his heart in the process. Terri settled into a normal, uneventful life and tried to push all other concerns aside.

  But once in your life, you find someone.

  Her emotions, her heart, was irrelevant. As time passed, her own parents were aging and needed more care. Terri would be the one to provide that extra care. It was the tradition, the discipline of life.

  But life throws events at you. It hurls adversity in the way of choices, or choices in the way of adversity. It tests you, but it also gives you options.

  Hard options.

  Terri’s father suffered a stroke when she was twenty five. She stayed and she helped and loved it when he came home from hospital, a healed but slightly different man to the one she’d always known now. For so long, children saw their parents as invulnerable, eternal, a safe, immovable wall that would always be there to break their fall and tend their wounds. When those parents started to suffer, to look vulnerable, it marked the end of whatever childhood a person may have been holding on to. Bluntly, it killed the dreams of youth, and proved mortality.

  Terri saw her father’s stroke not as a warning to him, she saw it as a warning to her. Life is fragile, life is short; get out there while you can.

  After two months of softening the blow she took whatever savings she had and left home, determined to search out her long-lost friend — Paul Cutler — wherever he may be in the world.

  It was a noble quest — akin to those she’d embarked on in her early teens through the powe
r of imagination. The difference being that this world could hurt her. Terri started in Tokyo, quizzing the coffee shop owners — whom she knew — for information on Cutler’s whereabouts. She came away with meagre fare — a family address in the States and a dubious new employer in Thailand. The one thing that urged her on was the date he’d quit — just two weeks after they’d broken up.

  In Thailand, she encountered an entirely new world: part intoxicating, part terrifying. Initially, and then again the second night, she made her mind up to go home — but both nights something happened. She saw a kind of wonder — a happiness in the majority of people that crossed her path, and realized that all they were doing… was living.

  Cutler had worked for a small establishment in Phuket for about six months. The knowledge, when it came, electrified her, for somehow she enjoyed the idea of following his footsteps around the world, of zeroing in on his new life.

  Maybe it was her earnest and honest attitude, or her enthusiastic outlook, but Cutler’s employers readily passed along what details they had. The American had given the same US address, but also a new one — this time he’d moved to Europe.

  Terri followed him to Warsaw in Poland where he worked for a woman named Joanna. Terri met her personally and very quickly came out with the whole story — life so far having taught her to be open, trusting and giving. Joanna had been about the world herself, and imparted several nuggets of bad experience before sending Terri on her way.

  To Paris.

  It was a slightly different Terri that trod the Champs Elysees and wandered the Louvre; that watched a football match in a pub whilst drinking beer. It was a harder Terri that realized she would have to take on some part-time work to supplement her savings. Of course, she gravitated to the address Joanna had given her and worked hard for six weeks in the pub where, two years ago, Paul Cutler had spent eight months.

  Touching the same surfaces that he had touched; seeing the same furnishings. Even talking to the same people. It comforted her until she found his leaving information and realized that he’d moved on to another bar, here in Paris.

  By now, she’d developed a few skills. She’d learned to read people, to watch their movements and look for patterns. But it never once felt deceitful to her — she was merely chasing a dream.

  The new bar took some cracking. The place had changed hands more times than she could fathom and was currently being run by an unsavory family from Russia. Terri didn’t want to work there. In the end she took a risk — one of the first true risks of her life. She paid a bartender for the information, then skipped town immediately, never knowing or wanting to know what happened next. Was she burying her head in the sand or growing wiser? It didn’t matter, because now she was a mere four months behind Paul Cutler and close to finding him.

  London was her next stop. A little pub called the Wilton Arms in Knightsbridge. Terri entered the UK visa-free with her Japanese passport and spent a little time pretending to be a local worker that popped in after work for a quick drink.

  Head down for most of the time, trembling even, she had carefully watched the staff. Paul Cutler was nowhere to be seen. A week passed, and then on a quiet Sunday afternoon she plucked up the courage to ask a female member of staff who’d just started smiling at the new regular.

  “Hello, how long have you worked here please?”

  The short, blond-haired bartender rose from the table she’d been wiping and looked surprised. “Oh, I guess, six months. Why?”

  Perfect. Terri’s heart had never raced so much.

  “I’m searching for a friend of mine and was told he worked here about four months ago. His name is Paul Cutler. He’s American and… you’d remember him, I’m sure.”

  “Ah, Paul,” the blond lady nodded. “He was… a lovely lad.”

  Something about the way she spoke, about the way her features fell, sent a wall of ice crashing down Terri’s spine.

  “He’s… not here?” It was a forlorn whisper.

  “Paul… fell in with the wrong crew. Small gang from the west end. Robbers, I think. They promised him a bit of adventure and a lot of money, so he joined their crew. Then, one night, he told me that he wanted out, and that he was going to tell them.” The woman sat down heavily across from Terri.

  “And then?”

  “Nothing. Paul never returned to his job. I checked the Internet…” She whispered the last. “But… well, his name never came up.”

  It took Terri a minute to understand the blond woman was referring to obituaries — deaths. The cold water flooding down her spine quickly washed through her entire body. It was one thing to be tracking the love of your life, imagining him to be just two or three steps ahead of you, but it was quite another to be told that everything she’d imagined could be very, very wrong.

  Paul might even have died whilst she’d been searching. How close had she come?

  The blond woman clearly saw the pain in Terri’s eyes, for she reached out a comforting hand. “I can ask around, love. Come back in a few days.”

  Terri thanked the woman, though her voice was husky and her eyes were blurred. She spent the next few hours wandering blindly, finally finding herself lost in Harrods and unable to find the way out.

  She saw nothing, heard nothing, but ended up perched on the edge of her bed in a small, lonely hotel room with nobody she knew and now, no golden dream to chase. She broke down, crying, hugging the only thing she knew, everything in the world that she could now rely on.

  A tattered hotel pillow.

  She felt far from home, another lonely stray lost on an indifferent highway. She fell to sleep in her clothes and barely moved the next day. When the time came to return to the pub she could barely walk; but somehow found the inner strength to move forward.

  The blond woman saw her after ten minutes.

  “Hey.” She brought a pint of lager over without being asked. “I asked about your friend. Turns out he’s working for the Ws. The same gang I mentioned; seems he’s making good money too. Now don’t you go looking all bright eyed, girl. They’re criminals. Robbers. He’s fallen hard, that lad, and he’ll end up in prison.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed, her face hardening. “Didn’t you hear me? He’s no good for you now.”

  “I can save him.”

  For a moment the eyes softened. “I’ve been there myself, love,” she said. “And more than once. If it wasn’t criminals, I’d help, but I’m not sending you into that den. I won’t be responsible.”

  Terri found them anyway, two days later. It was the hardest, scariest and most imaginative thing she’d ever done. Knowing they were thieves, she posed as a client.

  Standing and waiting for them to turn up was nerve-wracking; standing facing them was indescribable. She’d never known this kind of terror existed. More than once, she found herself questioning every motive, every decision that had brought her to this point. If she lived past today she would re-evaluate everything.

  But then she saw him.

  And he saw her. The electric that passed between them was surely visible, a thread shimmering through the air. But the other two members of the gang never noticed — they were too busy staring at her.

  “You for real?” one asked.

  “I’m just a small town girl,” she said.

  Paul Cutler stepped up. “I’m just a city boy,” he said.

  It was their mantra.

  Learned in the coffee shop, it was close enough to describe their first meeting and the opening to a rock song they loved. It told her that everything was okay. It told her that they could still sail away.

  They organized the job as cover, then met again. Cutler worked out a way to meet her alone and they flew like birds with the wings of eagles, never intending to return to London again. It was some time before they could properly talk; it was longer before they could relax, but it was the start of something extremely special.

  Something they would ne
ver walk away from.

  Terri looked back on all this sometimes, how she found Cutler and the intensity of their first proper reunion; the time she had spent scouring the world; everything she’d learned along the way.

  Was this new life better than the one her parents wished for her?

  She didn’t know, but one thing was for sure — it was better with Paul Cutler in it.

  Even now.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Terri had been uncomfortable for two days. The act of getting in to the Smithsonian was easy. The exploit of sneaking behind private doors was well planned and well executed, though not exactly stress-free. It had taken the acquisition of more than just a security guard’s key fob; it had taken fingerprints too. Luckily, Terri and Cutler were as experienced as anyone in their field could be, and had acquired the set without incident in just one night.

  Then, it was a matter of squeezing into the museum’s air vents for two full days.

  Waiting, listening. They had done it before. They would probably do it again. Nobody expected the thieves to be inside the building, breaking out. When word reached their employers that there was a leak, and the banner would have to be retrieved quickly or not at all, it was Cutler that had come up with the plan. They moved speedily, instantly.

  And then lay in discomfort for two days.

  Perhaps they should have waited longer, but there was a strange pressure coming from their employers. Something the duo had never encountered before. They were utterly professional, and worked only for professionals, so always merited and expected specialist contacts with which to work.

  “This new bunch are a little off,” Cutler whispered during the first long night as they lay prone in the dark high above the floor inside the large, eerie museum.

  “You vetted them?”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course. But these ain’t the guys I vetted. I don’t like it.”

  Terri stared at the rigid metal three feet in front of her eyes. “It’s kind of late to mention that now.”