The Night Falconer Read Online Free PDF Page A

the outside wall. Footsteps pounding down metal stairs, flash of green, a dark shape moving below. Nicole behind me yelling.
    I leapt down the first short flight of steps and landed with a hollow crash against a metal screen wall. Kept going.
    Vapor rose from somewhere. Gargantuan air conditioning units pounding. The stairs terminated in the middle of a dim tunnel. Had the runner gone left or right? I waited, listening. Nothing—impossible to tell.
    Behind me, Nicole and Darla thumped down the steps, Nicole hauling both our bags, Darla with her gun drawn again.
    “You see anybody?” Darla asked.
    “Not really. Just a glimpse,” I said.
    “Is this the kind of creepy stuff you were talking about?” Nicole asked.
    Darla nodded, looking at me. “Welcome to the big apple again, Franco,” she said.
    Back beside the van, I moved carefully around the side to have a better look at the damage with Nicole looking over my shoulder. Darla positioned herself in front of the vehicle, her phone welded to her ear and cursing under her breath, talking to someone from the airport police.
    The entire glass panel from the Dodge’s rear sliding door had been shattered. This was no routine smash and grab, where thieves went after the stereo or anything else of value. Even though there was no security on the private lot, someone had gone to great lengths to pull this off in broad daylight, not to mention the strength required to drive the blade so deeply into the seat.
    Darla finished talking on the phone and stepped around to join us. I stared with her into the back seat at the image of the blade buried in the Graco Turbobooster.
    “Looks like you’ve got yourself some nasty new friends, Darla.”
    “Shoot. More like the Terminator on speed, you ask me. Cops’ll be down here in a minute.”
    “They catch anything on their surveillance system?”
    “There’s no camera on these parking spaces.”
    “Figures. Our Terminator must have known that too.”
    “Yup. My guess is, it was someone posing as a baggage handler or a maintenance worker.”
    “Remind me not to hang with you next time I fly.”
    “I guess I should’ve said something to you folks earlier about the threat.” Darla shielded her eyes and looked past me into the glare of the early morning sun as a LaGuardia patrol car, its beacons spinning, whipped into the lot.
    “Threat?” I said. “What threat?”

4
    Half an hour later, after working through the intricacies of dealing with the airport cops and Darla’s insurance company, Nicole and I were standing by a rental car counter with Darla, waiting for the agent to process the paperwork on the new van Darla had rented.
    The knife was being checked for prints and any other trace evidence, and so was the Dodge, before they towed it to a body shop. The cops were treating the incident as a routine B&E, figuring we’d been lucky to scare away the person responsible. The knife was simply the idiot’s twisted calling card, left when he realized he’d have to bolt empty handed. If Darla weren’t ex NYPD and who she was, they would simply have written up their report and wouldn’t even have messed with the van any further.
    “I’m sorry you two had to walk right into this mess,” Darla said.
    “No apology needed,” I said.
    “Mmmmm.”
    I was beginning to wonder what else she might not be telling us as she took the keys and the paperwork from the agent. I knew I could trust her with my back, but not if we were only dealing in partial truths. There was a bench outside on the curb where the three of us sat down to wait for the rental car shuttle.
    “You said something earlier about a threat,” I said.
    “Yeah,” she said. “It’s like this. Yesterday, I got a message on my service. A voice says to stay away from the cat thing with Dr. Lonigan or there might be consequences. That was the word they used—consequences.”
    “All right. So?”
    She reached inside her jacket pocket and pulled out a folded slip of