LOVE ON THE RUN - Sample Chapters

Chapter 15 - Part 1

SEVENTY-TWO HOURS EARLIER

Sam nudged Kerry awake. He had been surprised to find her at the NYPD FBI bureau office at five in the morning. And she didn't look like she'd arrived early. In fact, she looked like she'd been there all night, as he remembered leaving her in the same clothes earlier. The day shift people had yet to arrive. This was the overnight crew, no smaller in numbers, from what he could see. 

Kerry stirred to consciousness at Sam's continued finger prodding. "Hey, young lady. What are you doing here at this hour?" 

She smiled meekly at him. "I work twenty-four/seven, Sam. A little trick I picked up from Jack La Lane. He never slept more than fifteen minutes every four hours either." She ran her hand through her hair to make it a little less unkempt. Then she scavenged through her handbag, fetching out her toiletries, and freshening up with some deodorant under her arms, makeup to cover the dark spots under her eyes, and jewelry to switch out with what she had around her neck to make it look like perhaps she had several suits of the same type and hadn't actually slept in hers. She passed a small plastic steam iron from inside her desk drawer over her dress. "Better get out of my way, Sam, unless you want to start taking orders from now." 

"This is me getting out of your way," he said, getting off her desktop. "One question first, though. What allows you to keep this many people on just these two, twenty-four/seven? I can't imagine the bureau would sanction that. Not with government budget cutbacks across the board." 

"Oh this," she said, eying the office full of agents, almost embarrassed. "All of this is paid for three times over by the bank president who the couple managed to piss off. And the president's insistence, of course, that we cooperate. Seems the current FBI director owes him one big time for the appointment. And the extra money, as you say, will help keep the agents in the field chasing after more of America's Most Wanted when this case is through." 

"Don't tell me you're doing yourself any good running yourself into the ground like this. You're already half way to looking like a bag lady. Hell, you even have the bag," he said, pointing to the large brown paper grocery bag in which she kept her crocheting yarn.  

"Just how I work, Sam. Always been this way. Nothing new. If you want to get ahead today, you have to be willing to throw more of yourself into what you do than the other guys." 

They looked over together at Milos's and Dead Man Walking's empty chairs, and he caught the drift well enough. "I'm guessing they're part of the 'work smart, not hard' school of thought," Sam said. 

"Work conniving, anyway." 

"I'm still not walking away until you convince me that you really do operate better this way." 

She threw down a satellite picture of the couple in their latest getaway car, a champagne colored Porsche Boxster, heading across some barren desert in Utah to points west. "DMW left that on your desk yesterday," Sam said, as if she was just making his point for him. 

"Yes, but while I was sleeping I realized why they're headed for points west. They're going to hit up a casino, not a bank this time. That road heads straight to Las Vegas." 

"It leads to a lot of things," he said incredulously. "Including bigger banks than they have in New York." 

"I guess from an altered state of consciousness, fueled by exhaustion, I'm a little more responsive to my intuitive side. That should be proof enough my method works." 

"Little too early to tell that. But I'll wager the other half of that paycheck I owe you, because I'm a man of my convictions, and I'm convinced you need to treat yourself better."