Nick of Time by John Gilstrap Read Free Book Online

want—”
    â€œWhat I want is to catch my flight. In eight hours, I intend to be sitting in Paris, meeting with clients, and enjoying the sights. There’s plenty of time for me to expense the cash I lost. Now, if you could just tell me where to go to get my property back . . .”
    * * *
    It felt great to be free again. For Brad Ward, it was the greatest feeling in the world. The fact that it was over a hundred degrees there in the long-term parking lot didn’t bother him a bit, any more than it would have bothered him if it were thirty below zero or blowing like a hurricane. He didn’t think it was possible for people who’d never been in prison to understand just how precious—how priceless—fresh air could be. Even if it was only as fresh as an airport on the outskirts of Washington, DC.
    Simply seeing the sun without craning your neck was life-affirming—or inhaling the aroma of freshly cut grass. Hell, even the smell of dog shit beat the stink of inmate shit.
    He walked calmly down the wide aisles between cars, the slap of his flip-flops keeping time with a song that only he could hear. At the little bus stop where the shuttles took you to and from the terminal building, he stooped and reached under the trash can to recover the Leatherman tool he’d stashed there. Security in the airport might not be all that the government wanted you to believe, but there wasn’t a chance in hell that he could have gotten the Leatherman through the checkpoint. Think Swiss Army knife on steroids. While he walked on, he slid the tool’s leather pouch onto his belt.
    In a perfect world, he’d have been in shorts instead of chinos, but he feared that the glaring whiteness of his flesh might cause people to ask questions. Institutional pallor was the tattoo of everyone who’d lived as Brad had lived these past two and a half years.
    Soon, though, he’d be in Florida, and from there, if he could talk her into it, he and Nicki would be in the Caymans, out of the country and out of reach. Then, the entire world would belong to them. Three thousand miles would yield light-years of separation from everything that was ugly.
    This was a big step, though, fraught with big risk. For the past six months, he’d lived by the baby step, moving no more than fifty or sixty miles in a day, laying low in campgrounds and flophouses and keeping in touch with the world via the Internet.
    But now, the only part of the world he really cared about was coming to join him. Who would have believed the luck in that? Maybe the time really had come for life to settle out for him. It wouldn’t be easy, of course—for him, nothing was ever easy—but if things could settle down just a little, he’d be better than fine with that.
    So far, it was going even better than he’d hoped. The big guy in the airport was totally clueless about what happened, and Brad was particularly proud of the last-minute gambit to buy the second cup of coffee. It was the only way he could think of to keep the guy from reaching for his wallet.
    What Vincent Anthony Campanella didn’t realize was that he’d been Brad’s sole target from the moment he’d driven into the parking lot. He met all of Brad’s criteria: First of all, the car had to be a Ford, because that was the only key that Brad had with him. The model didn’t matter all that much because all the Ford keys looked alike, and Fatso wasn’t ever going to be driving his vehicle again. All that mattered was for the keys on the ring to look right if and when airport security returned them to him.
    The second criterion Campanella met was his arrival in the long-term parking lot. That, combined with criterion number three—lots of luggage—made it a done deal. From there, it was just a matter of timing. Brad had followed him all the way to Concourse C, getting past the security station merely by showing the security guy a