Chasing Rain Read online

  A minivan and shrubbery concealed them. Nash found the keys hidden on the van while she replaced the cover and watched the street for their pursuers.

  “You drive, I’ll navigate,” he said, passing her the keys. In between telling her where to turn, he continued to explain the Antimatter Machine. “You shouldn’t have any trouble. Bottom line, it’s just a fancy laptop computer.”

  She kept checking the rearview mirror.

  “Don’t worry, they haven’t even gone into the garage yet,” he said, checking on the Antimatter Machine. “I’ve got cameras and sensors everywhere.”

  “But they will soon, and then they can track us with the satellites,” she said, stopping at a red light she wanted to run.

  “It may be a problem for you because although they are after you, you don’t have an escape plan,” the Astronaut said, sounding like a parent gently scolding a child. “Turn in there.” He pointed to the entrance of the West Edmonton Mall.

  Wen immediately understood his tactic. During her preparations to come to the city and locate a suitable meeting place for her and Chase, she’d discovered that this mall was the largest in North America, covering more than five million square feet, consisting of nearly one thousand stores and restaurants. With more than twenty-four thousand employees and as many as two hundred thousand shoppers on any given day, it was an ideal place to “get lost.”

  “Any entrance will do,” he said.

  She pulled up to the curb. “I can take the van?”

  “Do anything you want with it, but, as you know, you’ve probably only got twenty more minutes before they know you’re in it.”

  “I’ll lose it before then.”

  “Good,” he said, smiling warmly as he got out. “Good luck, my little China doll. Remember everything I told you.” Nash pointed to the Antimatter Machine he’d left on the passenger seat.

  She nodded. “You’ll be okay?”

  “Oh they won’t catch me,” he said, as if doubt was a punchline. “And I suspect you’ll find a way to escape, or I wouldn’t let you take the machine.” With that, he turned and walked calmly into the mammoth mall and disappeared.

  Forty-Seven

  Chase tried to concentrate on driving while resisting the urge to call Boone, Dez, Adya—everyone.

  “Boone is getting word to Mars,” Flint said after hearing the update about Chase’s missing parents. He’ll get people moving on this. He’s got good contacts in Mexico.”

  Chase knew Flint was right. Mars had no family of his own. He’d worked for the service station owned by Chase’s parents for almost twenty years and considered them family. Chase and Boone were like his brothers. Mars would kill to protect them all, and, more than that, he would mobilize his considerable network to find them.

  As Chase drove toward the rendezvous point with Wen, he told Flint about Lori and the need to protect the other two Garbos.

  “My best team is on the way here,” Flint reminded him. “But I’ll make some calls and see if I can get some pros to back up your security.” By “pros” he meant former CIA or military, to supplement what Flint considered to be an inferior force on the level of mall security.

  GlobeTec agent 0630 had thus far anticipated every turn and still “followed” four cars ahead. Franco and 0830, in the blue SUV, were well back and occasionally even lost sight of Chase and Flint in the Challenger. Franco watched Chase’s progress on his tablet, as the drones were locked in. He’d been confused when 0830 had reported that Chase bought a Leatherman Wave-plus Multi-tool. It seemed a frivolous act, although it confirmed that Chase had no idea he was being followed.

  That will cost the brilliant billionaire, Franco thought. He’s making my job easy. He went back to reading his book.

  Chase turned north onto 109th Street, figuring Wen was less than ten minutes away. Flint, on the phone trying to line up bodyguards for the two remaining Garbo-threes, suddenly dropped it and reached for his short barreled shotgun. “Damn it!”

  “What?” Chase asked, instinctively checking his rearview mirror.

  “That white Honda up ahead is following us.”

  “Ahead?”

  “I spotted it not long after we left the airport, again leaving the Canadian Tire, but it’s such a common car, I figured it was a coincidence. I finally checked the plate—it’s the same damn one. They know where we’re going.”

  “Impossible,” Chase said. He’d told no one. Then the sickening realization hit him. RAIN. “Oh, no . . . They’ve got CHIPs after me.”

  “Who is Chips?” Flint asked as he scooped up extra shells.

  “Cranial Hybrid Implanted Person.”

  “Is that as freaky-Terminator-sci-fi as it sounds?”

  “Worse,” Chase said, trying to decide if he should still head toward the rendezvous point or not, his next turn only a few blocks ahead. “I invented a Rapid form of Artificial Intelligence—RAI—it uses something called deep learning, which normally take massive amounts of data to train, mine works differently—”

  “And faster?”

  “Much faster. Anyway, the company Franco Madden works for found a way to link RAI to a bioNode to insert it into the brain. RAI combined with the Node makes RAIN.”

  “And they’ve got these hybrid freaks running around?”

  “Apparently.” Chase, hands now wet on the steering wheel, tried to drive as if everything was normal.

  “How smart are they?” Flint asked, alternating between watching the white Honda and looking for more behind them.

  “They essentially have all of the combined knowledge of humanity as their starting point, but they think and compute faster than the best supercomputer . . . They’re God-like.”

  “And they’re after us.” Flint looked ahead. “Wonderful. My daily rate just tripled.”

  “Done. Only hope I get to pay you for more than just today.”

  “You built this thing,” Flint said, a gun now in each hand. “Any weaknesses?”

  “One big one,” Chase said. “Creativity . . . Machines haven’t learned it yet.”

  “I can be crazy-creative,” Flint said. “Hang your next right on 82nd, no blinker.”

  Chase took the turn, fearing he was driving straight into another Vancouver massacre.

  Back in the blue SUV, 0830 spoke on an open phone line to 0630 in the leading Honda and Franco at the same time. “Ninety-one percent chance Chase Malone has discovered our presence.”

  Franco scoffed, unconvinced, putting down his reader again. “Just because that was the first turn that 0630 hadn’t anticipated? You guys are too smart for your own good.”

  “We should take him,” 0830 said.

  “No. Keep your distance,” Franco replied. “And 0630, find another route and get back in front of him. The Drones are still locked.”

  “If Malone turns off 82nd Avenue before he gets to 83rd Street,” 0630 began, “there will be less than one-tenth of one percent chance that he doesn’t know we are tracking.”

  “Fine,” Franco said, watching the aerial view of the Challenger on his tablet.

  Less than two minutes later, Chase took a right on Gateway Boulevard, and then another onto 81st Street, essentially backtracking.

  Franco took a deep breath. It’s about to get ugly, he thought. “All right. Close on him.”

  Forty-Eight

  The blue SUV roared up 81st Avenue, no longer pretending not to be there. Traffic on the street was light.

  “Punch it!” Flint barked, turning around in the seat, ready to fire.

  Chase’s foot stomped on the pedal, feeling immediate response, thankful to be in the Challenger as the 3.6-liter Pentastar V-6 engine sent 305 horsepower and 268 pounds of torque to the rear wheels, throwing him back in the seat.

  81st Avenue turned tree-lined and more residential, so he blared the horn in an effort to warn kids and pedestrians. Swerving past a faded red Volkswagen Beetle from another era and nearly missing a shiny green pickup truck full of lawnmowers, Chase pu
t distance between him and the pursuers. Crossing 110th street, he saw the road teed to an end ahead in a couple of blocks.

  “Right or left?” he called out.

  Flint, busy trying to get a shot at the SUV, called out, “Pick it.”

  Right seems right, Chase thought.

  The white Honda suddenly rocketed out from 111th Street, sliding to a stop, partially blocking the road. The Honda’s driver fired an automatic rifle. A burst of bullets ripped through the front left quarter panel, holes tracing up the hood. Chase, running on pure adrenaline and reflexes, cut the wheel seconds before impact and rounded the corner like a maniac, bouncing over the curb, taking out a small fence and postal boxes as oncoming traffic screeched to a halt.

  Three cars piled into each other as he swerved up across the opposite sidewalk, zooming over a flowering sapling, and knocking out an electric utility box. The Challenger fishtailed onto a side street running parallel to 82nd and zoomed toward the cross street at 112th. Traffic veered off as he hit the next turn without slowing. Chase caught a glimpse in his rearview mirror of the blue SUV.

  “Nice driving!” Flint shouted. “You really are a race car driver.”

  “Hope you can shoot as well!”

  As they sailed through an underpass, the congestion of cars thickened considerably. Chase wove in and out of the vehicles, trying to use them to fortify his lead. Progress was good until 87th, when somehow the white Honda crashed out of a parking lot and sideswiped the Challenger. Incredibly, the CHIP driving had one hand on the wheel and the other pointing an automatic rifle at them. Flint ducked, opened his door, slipped the shotgun out, and fired. He didn’t know what he’d hit, but it was effective enough to send the Honda into a parked sedan.

  Chase rammed through traffic amidst horns and screams. The road ended near the University of Alberta and the Rutherford library, so he hung a hard right and headed for the North Saskatchewan River. As Chase raced through a treed area he assumed was some kind of a park, he had a fleeting thought of pulling off and hiding in the trees, but the blue SUV ramming into the rear of the Challenger quelled that idea. Their back window shattered.

  “Obviously they don’t care about attracting attention,” Flint said. “We don’t either!” He fired another shot, blowing a hole in the front grill of the SUV, but it kept coming as they roared across the bridge until the Challenger got pinned behind a dump truck.

  The men in the SUV took advantage by ramming into the side of them. “He’s trying to push us off the bridge!” Chase yelled.

  Flint got off another shot, shattering the SUV’s back window.

  “Franco Madden’s the passenger!” Chase yelled. “Shoot him!”

  “I’m trying,” Flint said. “Would you mind keeping the car still? Then I might have a chance.”

  If it hadn’t been for the presence of the CHIPS, Chase might’ve been relieved it wasn’t Rong Lo after him.

  Just before the end of the bridge, the SUV came in to attempt another side-hit. This time Chase slammed on the brakes and, instead of smashing the Challenger, the SUV careened into the guard rail. Chase stepped hard on the accelerator and pulled around the dump truck, into oncoming traffic. A Toyota Camry steered out of their way, clipped the dump truck, spun 180 degrees, and took a full side impact from a minivan coming from the opposite direction. Somehow the SUV funneled through as a full pileup effectively blocked all lanes of the bridge behind them.

  Chase had no idea where they were going, but took a wide, sliding turn onto 95th Avenue, heading east as the signs showed it turned into Rossdale Road. He could tell they were in a nicer section of town—landscaped, manicured, orderly. More high-rises, wider streets, maybe a better chance at escape. More importantly, he was getting farther away from the rendezvous point. He had no intention of taking those monsters to Wen. The speedometer topped 150 kph as Chase veered sharply onto Bellamy Hill Road, flying past two round apartment buildings. He’d widened his lead over Franco and blew onto Jasper Avenue, side-swiping a Cadillac and nearly mowing down a dozen pedestrians on the crosswalk. Panicked and screaming, they all dove out of the way. So far, Chase had out-maneuvered Franco and the CHIPs, but now there was another problem.

  Police sirens wailed, and flashing lights appeared in his rearview.

  Forty-Nine

  Rong Lo and two of his top operatives landed in Edmonton, sure that Chase was already somewhere in the city. Finding the Astronaut would not be easy, but the AT system, utilizing satellites and secure data, had already focused the search to four areas.

  “It won’t be long,” Rong said as they left the airport.

  A separate query in AT had been reverse tracking Wen. They might even locate her before getting the Astronaut. Additional resources were scouring both San Francisco and Edmonton for Chase, but Rong believed finding Wen was the same as finding Chase. Either way, he didn’t plan on leaving Edmonton without all his problems wrapped up in body bags.

  Two members of the Chinese Mafia, fresh off a private plane from Vancouver, met Rong’s unit with weapons. The five of them headed to the first quadrant, confident the AT system would narrow their efforts further by the time they reached city center.

  Wen knew that Graham was right—he would not be caught. He’d blend in with the zillions of shoppers and stroll out another entrance into one of a zillion vehicles and drive away. It helped that the van, a target, would still be driving around Edmonton. Wen understood that she, too, owed him any help she could. She’d no doubt led them to him. Her situation was even more complicated since she was due to meet Chase, but there was still time to kill. She also had to time abandoning the minivan—getting it far enough from the mall to cover the Astronaut, but not drive it long enough for them to find her.

  Twelve minutes was all that she could risk, Wen decided. It took her almost fourteen to find the perfect drop point, a fast-food joint next to a public transit hub. Leaving the van, hoping they’d think she’d taken a bus or subway, which would keep them busy for hours, she crisscrossed seven blocks to a park.

  Her pack, which contained the ten hard drives in the cigarette carton, her guns, ammo, SIM cards, phones, cash, passports, assorted other necessities, and now the Antimatter Machine, also held one of her most useful items—a special fabric with a camouflage of gray and brown that made it appear like tree bark. Wen loved trees. She found a suitable one, checked to make sure no one could see her, and climbed. The fabric was strong and light. When she reached a spot where the leaves provided enough cover, she tied it off hammock-style, crawled inside, and pulled it around her like a cocoon, leaving only her nose and mouth exposed up to the sky. Virtually impossible to see from the ground or the air, Wen, completely exhausted, closed her eyes and fell asleep in seconds with a hand on her Glock.

  Tess and Travis watched the status and updates from the nine IT-Squads. The units in New York, Seattle, and San Francisco had comprehensive surveillance in place for both GlobeTec, TruNeural, and BE headquarters. In Las Vegas they had officially lost their Astronaut. The Astronaut they’d been watching in Amsterdam had also somehow slipped away. Tess was furious.

  Things in Dubai had not gone any better. Adya’s father had made more than a billion dollars of Chase’s personal fortune vanish, and although the financial crimes team was telling Tess that the funds would still be found, she had serious doubts.

  Finally, the squad leader from Edmonton checked in.

  “We found the Astronaut, Graham Nash,” he began, but Tess could tell by his tone and word choice what was coming next. The squad leader hadn’t said, ‘We have Nash in custody.’ This already long day grew grindingly longer. “However,” the squad leader continued, “he managed to escape. We are still attempting to ascertain how.”

  Tess began hitting keys on a touch pad, simultaneously calling out voice commands. Two screens as big as ping-pong tables extended down from concealed openings in the ceiling. They filled with different windows containing live images from Edmonton. The squad leader gave her th
e GPS coordinates of where the Astronaut had been, and instantly satellite footage of the prior three hours up to the present moment displayed.

  “Wen Sung, a Chinese national, was also present,” he added. Facial recognition algorithms of nearby cameras had identified her. Tess already possessed a large file on Wen, and her involvement in the ever-widening case made her head throb. She ran through the time-stamped images, searching for someone other than Wen and Nash, and although she didn’t see him, she knew he wasn’t far.

  “If she’s there, then he is, too,” she said, barely audible.

  “Who?” Travis asked, already guessing the answer.

  “Chase is in Edmonton,” she said firmly.

  “I’m on my way,” Travis said, standing.

  “We’re too late for Edmonton,” Tess said. “The question is should you go to Seattle or San Francisco.”

  “You really think Chase will live that long?”

  She nodded slowly. “I think he might. And then he’ll want to finish it.”

  “We can’t let that happen.”

  “I know.” She reached for her phone and gave a voice command. “Call Flint Jones.”

  Fifty

  Franco had no doubt that 0830 would catch Chase, as the CHIP seemed to anticipate every obstacle and they were steadily gaining on the Challenger. Chase is a mere mortal. He keeps making mistakes, and any minute he’ll make his last, Franco thought, before muttering to himself, “‘Quietly, like a shadow, I watch this drama unfold scene by scene. I am the lucid one here, the dangerous one, and nobody suspects.’”