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  “You’ve pushed me for the last time,” Hadley warned, getting out and yanking his briefcase off the seat. “You need to learn a few lessons when we get back.” Reining in his temper, Hadley glanced at Sandini, who was staring off into space, trying to look docile and deaf. “You have your list of errands, Sandini. Get them done and get back here. You,” he ordered Zack, “get your ass over to that grocery store across the street and find me some nice imported cheese and some fresh fruit, then stay in the car. I’ll be finished in an hour and a half. Have the car warm and running!”

  Without waiting for a reply, Hadley started up the sidewalk. Behind him, the two men stood watching his back, waiting for him to enter the building. “What a prick,” Sandini said under his breath, then he turned to Zack. “This is it. Good luck.” He glanced up at the dark, snow-filled clouds. “This has all the makings of a real blizzard.”

  Ignoring the weather problem, Zack said quickly, “You know what to do. Don’t deviate from the plan and don’t, for God’s sake, change your story. If you play it exactly the way I told you, you’ll come off like a hero instead of an accomplice.”

  Something about Sandini’s lazy grin and preoccupied, restless stance alarmed the hell out of Zack. Clearly and succinctly he repeated the plan that they’d only been able to whisper about before now. “Dom, just do it the way we decided. Leave Hadley’s shopping list on the floor of the car. Do your errands for an hour, then tell the clerk in the store that you left your list in the car and can’t be sure you got everything. Tell her you have to get it, and come back here. The car will be locked.” As he spoke, Zack took the list from Sandini’s hand, tossed it on the floor on the passenger side, then he locked and closed the door. With an inner calm he didn’t feel, he took Sandini’s arm and propelled him firmly toward the corner.

  Pickup trucks sped by as they waited for the light to turn green, then they crossed the street unhurriedly—two men who looked like ordinary Texans casually discussing the state of the economy or the next pro football game—except that they wore white pants and white jackets with the initials TDC stenciled in black across the backs. As they neared the curb, Zack continued under his breath, “When you get to the car and discover the door is locked, go across the street to the grocery store, look around a minute, then ask the clerks if they’ve seen anyone who looks like me. When they tell you they haven’t, go to the drugstore and the bookstore and ask if they’ve seen me. When they tell you no, head straight into that building and start opening doors, asking where the warden’s meeting is. Tell everyone you need to report a possible escape. The clerks in all the stores you went to earlier will verify your whole story, and since you’re going to alert the warden that I’m missing a half hour before he’d have come out here and discovered it himself, he’ll be convinced you’re as innocent as a baby. He’ll probably let you out early to attend Gina’s wedding.”

  Sandini grinned and gave Zack a jaunty thumbs up instead of a more conspicuous solemn handshake. “Stop worrying about me and get going.” Zack nodded, turned, then turned back. “Sandini?” he said solemnly.

  “Yeah, Zack?”

  “I’m going to miss you.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Give Mama my love. Tell your sisters they’ll always be my favorite leading ladies,” Zack added, then he turned and walked quickly away.

  The grocery store was on the corner with a recessed entrance on the street facing the building Hadley was in and another one facing a side street. Forcing himself not to deviate from the plan, Zack walked into the main entrance. In case Hadley should be watching from the building, which he occasionally did, he lingered just inside the doors, unnoticed, and counted slowly to thirty.

  Five minutes later, he was several blocks away, his prison jacket tucked under his arm, walking swiftly toward his first destination—the men’s room in the Phillips 66 Station on Court Street. His heart beating with suspense and dread, he crossed Court Street on a red light, dashing between a taxi and tow truck that had slowed to make a right turn, then he saw what he was looking for—a nondescript black coupe parked halfway down the block, with Illinois license plates. The car was still there, even though he was two days late getting to it.

  With his head bent and his hands in his pockets, he slowed his pace to normal. The snow was beginning to fall in earnest as he strode past the red Corvette pulled up at the gas pumps, heading directly for the men’s room at the side of the station. He grasped the door knob and twisted it. It was locked! Resisting the urge to ram his shoulder into the door and try to break it down, he grabbed the knob and rattled it hard. An angry male voice shouted from inside, “Keep your pants on, buster. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  The occupant of the men’s room finally emerged several minutes later, yanked open the door, looked around at the empty area outside the building, and then headed for the red Corvette at the pumps. Behind him, Zack moved out from the cover of the dumpster, went into the men’s room, and carefully locked the door behind him, all his attention fastened on the overflowing trash can inside it. If anyone had emptied it in the last two days, his luck had just run out.

  Grabbing it he turned it over. A few paper towels and beer cans came loose. He shook it again and loosened a deluge of refuse, and then—from the very bottom—two nylon duffel bags tumbled out onto the grimy linoleum floor with a satisfying thud. He yanked open the first bag with one hand and started unbuttoning his prison shirt with his other. That bag yielded up a pair of jeans in his size, a nondescript black sweater, an ordinary denim jacket, boots in his size, and a pair of aviator sunglasses. The other bag contained a map of Colorado with his route highlighted in red, a typewritten list of directions to his ultimate destination—a secluded house deep in the Colorado mountains—two thick, brown envelopes, a .45-calibre automatic pistol, a box of shells, a switchblade, and a set of car keys that he knew would fit into the ignition of the black coupe across the street. The switchblade surprised him. Evidently, Sandini didn’t think the well-dressed, escaped convict should be without one.

  Mentally ticking off the precious seconds, Zack stripped off his clothes, pulled on the new ones, then he stuffed the old ones into one of the duffel bags and refilled the trash can with the debris from the floor. Vanishing, without leaving a trace or clue about how he’d done it, was vital to his future safety. He opened the thick envelopes and checked the contents: The first contained $25,000 in unmarked twenty-dollar bills and a passport in the name of Alan Aldrich; the second contained an assortment of prepaid airline tickets to various cities, some of them in the name of Alan Aldrich, others in different names that he could use when and if the authorities discovered the alias he was using. Showing his face at an airport was a risk Zack had to avoid taking until things cooled down. Right now, he was pinning most of his hopes on a plan that he had conceived and directed as best he could from a prison cell, using the expensive expertise of some of Sandini’s contacts who’d supposedly hired someone who could be mistaken for Zack—a man who was waiting in a Detroit hotel for Zack’s phone call. Once he got it, he would rent a car in the name of Benedict Jones and cross the border into Canada at Windsor later tonight.

  If the police fell for the scam, then the massive manhunt they were bound to unleash would be centered in Canada, not here, leaving Zack able to head for Mexico and then South America when the search for him lost some of its momentum.

  Privately, Zack had grave doubts the diversion would work for long or that he’d ever reach his first destination before he was killed. But none of that mattered right now. At the moment, all that mattered was that he was temporarily free and that he was practically on his way to the Texas-Oklahoma border, ninety miles to the north. If he made it that far without being apprehended, he might be able to make it across the narrow Oklahoma Panhandle, a distance of only thirty-five miles, to the Colorado border. In Colorado, somewhere high in the mountains, was his first destination—a secluded house deep in the woods that, he had long ago been assur