The Pursuit Read Online Free PDF

was ripped out on her jeans.
    The door to the building was wedged open. Kate ran inside to the lobby, went straight for the stairs, and took them down to the bottom floor. The vault door was open, with some kind of suction tool stuck to the front and wires dangling from the wall. She ducked under the wires and into the vault. Nick was on the floor sprawled motionless among hundreds of mangled safe-deposit boxes, loose cash and papers, assorted jewelry, gold bars, silver coins, and scattered diamonds.
    Kate dropped to her knees beside him and quickly scanned his body for injuries. Blood matted the side of his head, but he was breathing, and his eyes were fluttering open.
    “Nick? It’s Kate. Can you hear me? Nick!”
    He winced as he regained consciousness. “Crashing headache,” he said. “Blurred vision. Think I see an angel.” He managed a small smile. “You found me.”
    “I swore to you a long time ago that I’d never let you get away.”
    “I didn’t think I’d ever be thankful for that,” he said.
    Kate helped Nick up, sitting him against the wall for support. “You have a concussion. We should take this slowly. I don’t think the police know about what just went down yet.”
    She surveyed the pile in the center of the vault. “There’s got to be millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry, diamonds, and cash that they left behind.”
    “It was an embarrassment of riches. They only took the very best and left when they had as much as they could carry. Not that I saw what happened. They took me out before the action started.”
    “You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”
    Nick blinked hard, trying to focus his vision. “I’m no good to them dead. They wanted me to get caught to distract the police and buy them time to get away.”
    “They weren’t afraid you’d talk?”
    “What could I possibly tell the police that they don’t already know?”
    Kate gestured to the bank of safe-deposit boxes. Most of the slots had been forced open, but there were still at least a third of them that hadn’t been touched. “How did they decide which boxes to break open?”
    Nick’s head was starting to clear a bit. “No idea. I wasn’t involved in that part of the planning stage.”
    Kate’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She retrieved her phone and answered it. “Where are you, Dad?”
    “Still parked on the street.”
    Nick squinted at her. “You brought your dad?”
    “I told you to follow the thieves!” Kate said to Jake.
    “I don’t care about them or the diamonds,” Jake said. “I care about you. You have two minutes, maybe less. The police are swarming the place. I bet now you wish I’d gotten that rocket launcher.”
    “Get out of here and burn your phone.”
    She split open her own phone, removed the micro SIM card, and swallowed it.
    Nick stared at her in disbelief. “Did you just eat your SIM card?”
    “I don’t want anyone finding it. The phone is a disposable, and to my knowledge I didn’t make any traceable calls, but better safe than sorry.” She dropped the phone onto the floor, smashed it under her foot, and kicked the debris away. “The police are coming. Something must have triggered the alarm.”
    Nick had a sinking realization. He moved aside and glanced with dread behind him. He’d been leaning against the heat and motion sensor and had wiped the hairspray off it with his back.
    “You have to arrest me,” he said to Kate.
    “Think again. Get up, we’ll find a way out.” She reached for him but he resisted, grabbing her wrists to get her attention.
    “There’s only one way out of this vault,” Nick said.
    “You’ll find another,” she said. “You’re Nick Fox. That’s what you do.”
    “Not this time. You have to arrest me. If you don’t, we’ll both go to prison. You need to get in touch with Jessup. Find out what was in this vault. I’m thinking it might have contained more than diamonds.”
    They could hear a rumbling upstairs, like a herd of cattle