CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Laura set off immediately without waiting, not needing either permission or guidance as to whether giving chase was the right thing to do. To her left she was aware of Nate also giving chase, his larger frame almost knocking over one of the mannequins as they both entered the thin rows, one line apart.
She raced with her elbows tucked into her sides, trying to pump her arms without knocking into any of the silent guards that seemed bent on slowing down her progress. The employee slipped out of her line of sight but it didn’t matter – he was wearing basketball shoes with rubber soles that slapped loudly against the hard floor of the warehouse, echoing off the walls but not enough to conceal the direction the sound came from. Laura carried on straight, sensing from his progress that he was going for an exit somewhere towards the back of the room.
Somewhere to her left, there was a loud clatter as a mannequin fell, and she heard Nate swear just before several other clatters sounded one after another. A domino effect. She didn’t let it distract her, but it did send her heartbeat racing up another notch: make one mistake here, and you could get yourself stuck, hemmed in by an avalanche of plastic.
Somewhere up ahead, she heard another clatter, and it was her time to swear – because it sounded as though their suspect had just figured out the same thing.
If he brought down enough of them, they might never catch up to him.
Laura put on another burst of speed, seeing the back of the warehouse in her view at last. If she got out of this tangle of mannequins and props and staging, she could at least get a chance of catching up with him –
An oversized plastic arm caught on her sleeve as her increased pace reduced her control, and she found herself having to dive to the side, only to almost fall onto a crate stacked with unattached legs. She caught herself and kicked off the ground to almost dive out of the last row of mannequins, glancing over her shoulder just once to see that Nate was still fighting his way through, several rows back, then focusing in front again. There was no one in her immediate view, but she could still hear his shoes – off to the right somewhere – she burst around the corner of the last column of the display, and there he was, fighting his own way out of a tangle of what looked like dog-shaped mannequins – some of them small, some of them larger.
He saw her and turned to back away, only to trip over one of the smaller dogs, sending himself flying. Plastic models scattered before him like bowling pins, each knocking over another and another, the sound of it multiplying into a cacophony that echoed back from the walls of the warehouse, drowning out everything else.
Laura didn’t let it stop her. Didn’t pause or hesitate. He was down, and she had her chance.
She leapt over what looked, in her heightened state of awareness, like a model dalmatian, putting her hands down on its back and vaulting forwards until she was right on top of him. He was scrambling on his stomach, trying to get to his feet, models shifting under him like marbles. Laura reached –
And clamped her hands down on top of his, pushing him back to the ground in a vice grip, determined not to let him go.
“Dan -” she said, panting for breath and stopping for a moment. “Wait, what’s your name?”
“Dan Molloy,” he said, in strained groan.
“Dan Molloy,” she repeated with satisfaction. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder.” She caught her breath as Nate came over, tripping over another two fake hands and almost bringing down what looked like a plastic tree before he made it over to them.
Somewhere at the other end of the warehouse, she imagined the manager looking over his ruined storage with utter dismay, and the adrenaline made her hysterical enough that she actually laughed.
***
“Alright,” Laura said, throwing a closed file down on the interview room’s table and sitting opposite their warehouse employee. “Dan Molloy.”
The suspect in question sneered at her from across the other side of the table, his cuffed hands clinking slightly as he tried to move and found himself unable to. “What do you want, pig?”
Laura glanced at Nate, who rolled his eyes as he took the chair next to her. “How original,” she commented drily. “I’ve never heard that one before.”
“It’s inaccurate, you know,” Nate pointed out. “We’re FBI, not police.”
“What do I care?” Molloy spat, looking both of them over with a derisive snarl on his face. “Doesn’t make any difference what you are.”
“Oh, it makes a difference, buddy,” Nate said. Just the size of his muscular arms made them vaguely threatening as he leaned on the table and pitched forward slightly. “Because it means we can put you in a whole new world of hurt compared to what the police can. You don’t want to provoke us into increasing your charges. Judges listen to us.”
Molloy actually scoffed, turning his head towards the ceiling as if he had no need to listen to them.
Laura knew why, and she was almost beside herself with anticipation on how his face was going to look when he found out he was wrong in his assumption.
“You don’t think we can do anything to you, do you?” she asked. “You think you’re going to get away with this. As soon as you’re let out on bail or allowed access to the outside world, you’ll be gone into the wind and we’ll never find you again. Is that it?”
Molloy turned to stare at her with a hard expression on his face. He said nothing. He was clearly waiting to see where she was going with this before commenting.
“That’s not going to happen,” Laura said. “Firstly, because multiple murderers like you don’t usually get bail – and with a history like yours, I can guarantee you’re not going to get it. And second, because you’re not going to be charged as Dan Molloy. You’re going to be charged as Dan Martin.”
His eyes widened in the way she had known they would, panic taking over his formerly cool outlook. He stared at her for a long moment and swallowed hard, then tried to recover. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter what you charge me as. I’m not a murderer.”
“Hmm.” Nate grabbed Laura’s file and started flicking through it, as if finding it extremely interesting. “That’s odd. Because when we ran checks on every single employee at the warehouse, none of them have criminal records. The company doesn’t hire people who have records. But as it turns out, even though Dan Molloy’s record is clear, Dan Martin’s isn’t. Is it?”