Morgan took the opportunity to riffle through her coat pockets and lift her wallet with the fake ID. The one thing that could get her arrested. The cops would be searching the house, looking for evidence against Gibson. She eyed the younger kids’ winter coats and hats. No, it was supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow; they’d find it too soon.
“Can I get you a glass of water, Mrs. Radcliffe?” she called down the stairs, even as she was dashing for the kitchen. With the water running, she turned the disposal on and slid the fake driver’s license down it. A few seconds later, bye-bye Devon Wilson, age twenty-two, address in Shadyside.
As she ran back down to the basement with a glass of water, she glanced out the front window. Andre was talking to one man, the other was on his cell. Calling for backup, no doubt. Maybe it was better this way. It meant Andre would be safe, working with the cops. The cops would be busy ransacking Gibson’s life. And she’d get a look at the manhunt’s operation firsthand, maybe get an idea where to look for Clint. Or where not to.
She sat next to Diane and placed the water on the table. The mother was too shaky to trust with anything she could break or spill. Diane turned to her, her face splotchy with tears. “I don’t understand any of this. What was Gibson thinking?”
Morgan didn’t really care too much about Gibson’s plans. She was more concerned about how those plans intersected with Clint’s. No way in hell would Clint partner with an amateur like Gibson without having an ulterior motive. Whatever target Gibson was planning to bomb would almost certainly be some kind of smokescreen for Clint.
Clint had already escaped custody, why would he risk being caught during some mass killing spectacle? What game was he playing?
Chapter 11
AFTER SHOWING THE two federal agents how to access the messages on the gaming console, Morgan left Andre behind with the still weeping Diane and climbed into the back seat of a patrol car that the agents had summoned to escort her to the command post coordinating the local search for Clint and his fellow escapees.
The two police officers looked at her with curiosity but said nothing—obviously they’d been instructed not to ask questions and simply to deliver her into the hands of the fugitive task force. They didn’t have far to go. The task force had taken over the offices of a defunct travel agency in a small strip mall on Route 22.
Morgan knew from the news that the State Troopers were running the show, with assistance from the FBI, US Marshals, and a variety of local law enforcement agencies. Made sense, Clint and the other escapees were in state custody at the time they’d escaped.
The cops had established several command posts extending in a radius from the State Police barracks in Ebensburg, near where the fugitives had last been sighted, expanding outward to areas of interest. In Clint’s case, that meant following his old trucking routes extending from Huntington past Pittsburgh, giving the task force a wide area—wilderness, farmland, suburbs, small towns, and the city—to cover.
The travel agency was on the first floor of a two-story whitewashed concrete building. Part of the top floor was being renovated—a bright yellow construction debris chute caught Morgan’s eye as it led down from a second floor window into a dumpster parked in the alley between the building and its Chinese take-out restaurant neighbor. The other part of the top floor was occupied by a lawyer specializing in accident claims, an 800 number emblazoned across his windows.
There was no special security as the officers walked Morgan through the front door of the former travel agency. No lobby, no metal detectors, no one manning the reception desk—just a cubicle farm filled with weary law enforcement professionals, most with phones to their ears while also working at computers.
Several large maps littered with notations were duct-taped to a wall—they appeared wrinkled and worn, as if they’d been taken down from other temporary locations before finding their way here. Which was probably the truth since, as the search area expanded, the command posts would have moved as well. There was none of the Hollywood glamor that the public at large associated with a manhunt.
Some of the task force members looked up from their work to stare at Morgan with disdain and contempt, others with a hint of fear, many with frank curiosity as if she were a freak in a circus sideshow. Whatever stories Jenna had told them, they appeared to be having difficulty reconciling them with the polite, pretty young woman in the pink coat.