Page 30 of The Mouse and the Maestro
“In case we get pulled over. The fines on no belt are huge,” she said.
Was she joking? She was driving a stolen car, one stolen by her, and she was worried about a ticket? “Prison is not going to go well for you,” he mumbled.
She snorted a laugh but otherwise ignored him.
They sped out of the city. Blue wasn’t a genius with directions, but he was certain they were going the wrong way.
“Where are you taking us?” he asked.
“To my criminal lair. We’ll see what the Kingpin wants to do with you,” she said, not bothering to look at him.
“Jane,” he pressed, but she said nothing else until eventually even he recognized where they were. “The airport? You can’t go to the airport.”
“Pretty sure I can,” Jane said.
“You have no ticket, no money, no ID, no shoes,no bra.”
“I’ll alert Anna Wintour atVogueI’m dressed all wrong for a heist and flight.”
“Okay, you’re mad, I get that, but you can’t stroll up to an airplane and say ‘fly me to DC’ without the things I mentioned.”
She skidded to a halt in front of the drop off gate, used a napkin from the floor to wipe down her half of the car and tossed it at him. “Watch me. Wipe down your side unless you want to go back to prison. Your prints are definitely on file.” Then she opened the door, got out, and disappeared.
Blue sat in the car for a solid two minutes, positive Jane would return, possibly in handcuffs. When she didn’t, he struggled out of the car, remembered he needed to wipe it down, and returned to the car. After wiping it clean of his prints, he sprinted inside, barefoot, his hands still tied in front of him.
Maybe they had detained Jane on entry. He imagined himself trying to explain to airport security.You see, officers, she’s apparently had some type of mental break that turned her from a mild-mannered anthropologist to one of the hookers fromGrand Theft Auto. But when he walked inside, she wasn’t detained by one of the guards. In fact, she was nowhere in sight. As usual, JFK teemed with masses of people, too many to find one tiny doctor, even if she was barefoot and wearing silky pajamas.
As before, Blue had no idea what to do. Should he try to hail a taxi—barefoot and bound—make it back to the hotel, and call Ridge? Or should he look for a phone here and call his boss? He imagined trying to find someone at JFK that would believe him. It would take forever. They would detain him and probably call Ridge for him. He would rather be the one to tell the story, knowing already it was going to be humiliating and might possibly get him in a heap of trouble. The one thing Ridge had asked him to do,the one thing,was to keep an eye on Jane, to keep her safe.
He walked back outside. Security was already surrounding the car he’d arrived in. As nonchalantly as possible, he bypassed them, walked up to a cab, opened the door, and slid inside. “Hotel Manafort in Manhattan,” he said.
The driver took off, and Blue breathed a sigh of relief. Now he only had to hope his ID and phone were still in his room back at the hotel. Had whoever nabbed him also taken his things? He’d know in an hour.
“Wait here, my wallet is inside,” Blue said when they finally arrived back at the hotel. The cabbie turned to scowl at him.
“No way, buddy, I’ve heard that one before.”
Blue showed him his rope-bound hands. “Do I look like I can make an easy escape? It’s been a rough night. Just give me a couple of minutes, and I’ll throw in an extra twenty.”
“You got five minutes,” the cab driver said.
Blue hopped out, sprinted to the elevator, ran to his room, worked the key out of his pocket, opened the door and, to his great relief, saw his wallet and phone sitting where he’d left them. Had it only been a few hours ago that he had set them on his nightstand to go see Jane, full of hope and promise and romance?
Not pursuing that line of thought further, he took his wallet back downstairs and paid the cabbie. “I don’t suppose you have a knife in there that could cut me loose,” Blue said.
The cabbie reached under the seat, pulled out an eight-inch blade, sliced through Blue’s ropes, and took off. He seemed so unfazed Blue wondered if it wasn’t the first night he’d had to cut a rider free.
Blue turned back toward the hotel, palming his phone. He was out of excuses and time; he’d have to call Ridge. He hit the button on his phone.
“What’s the bad news, Blue?” Ridge greeted him.
“How do you know it’s bad news?” Blue replied.
“I have a sense about these things,” Ridge said. “How’s Jane?”
“She was fine the last time I saw her.”
There was a pause. “The last time you saw her? Explain quickly before I reach through the phone and rip out your tonsils.”
