The TV screen switched to a male reporter at the scene of the crime. Jake immediately recognized Caitlin’s house behind him. Seeing his own face and name appear on TV felt like a body blow that took the breath right out of him. He looked over at his friend. Drew was also staring at the TV. Then his buddy looked back to Jake with his mouth dropped open.
“Jake, what the hell?”
“It’s not true,” Jake insisted. “You have to believe me.”
“Uh, OK. But what . . . ?”
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Wait, Jake. What the hell am I supposed to do about this?”
Jake reached down to the floor, grabbed his backpack. “Nothing.”
“Nothing? If it’s not true, then let me help you.”
“All right. If you want to help, I need cash. Whatever you have on you.”
Drew reached into his blue jeans pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “Take it. Probably two hundred bucks or so. It’s yours.”
“Thanks.” Jake grabbed it, shoved it into his pocket. “I’ll be in touch.”
Spinning around, Jake began to make his way back to the front of the bar near the sidewalk. Then he froze in his tracks. He spotted two men up ahead of him standing in the entrance of BBG’s, both wearing similar dark-blue windbreakers. The men were clearly not barhopping. Both were shoving their phones in front of people. Squinting, Jake thought they were sharing the same photo of him the news had just flashed up on the TV screen. FBI? But how would they know he was inside this bar? How the hell had they found him so fast?
Then one of the men turned and put his eyes directly on Jake.
ELEVEN
Jake spun around, hoping the guy in the dark windbreaker hadn’t recognized him because of his ski cap and glasses, and began to quickly move toward the back of the bar again. His heart was hammering in his chest. If the guy still had eyes on him, where would Jake go? He peered up ahead. It looked like his only option was to hit the kitchen and try to find a back door into the alley behind the strip of buildings. He slipped through a big group of people standing around a table. As he did, Jake cast a quick look over his shoulder and cursed again. Both of the men in windbreakers were fully locked in on him and now making their way through the crowd in his direction. They knew it was him. It was no longer time for Jake to be casual about this—it was time to run like hell.
Jake bolted for the kitchen. Pushing through a swivel door, he nearly collided with a waitress coming from the other direction with a tray full of food. Jake swerved, ducked under the tray, lost his footing, and then slid on the slick kitchen floor into a wall with a crash. Everyone in the hot and loud kitchen turned to stare at the unexpected interruption. Jake pushed himself up, his eyes searching in all directions, looking for the exit. He spotted a hallway over to his right and scrambled for it. Inside the hallway, Jake reached up and pulled down a large row of metal shelves behind him. Various dishes and boxes crashed down everywhere. He hoped it would buy him precious extra seconds. He could now hear shouting going on back in the kitchen. A man clearly yelled out, “FBI!”
Pushing through the back door, Jake stumbled out into a dark alley. There were several dirty metal dumpsters directly in front of him, pressed up against an adjacent brick building that was connected to a multilevel parking garage. Jake wondered if there was some way to block the back door to the bar but couldn’t find anything to do the trick. Because BBG’s was in the middle of the strip of buildings, Jake had about the same distance to make it to either side street. He chose left and took off running again. But he got only a few feet in that direction before a man in a similar windbreaker appeared in the alley up ahead of him. Jake skidded to a sudden stop when he saw the man reach down to his side and pull something out. Was it a gun? He wasn’t going to get close enough to find that out. Pivoting, Jake took off in the opposite direction.
As he passed by the back door of BBG’s again, he heard it swing open behind him. The other two guys were going to be close on his heels now. Jake was about fifty feet from the next side street when yet another person appeared. Same dark windbreaker. But this was a woman. And not just any woman. Jake stopped, stared, completely stunned. Dani?
He knew her face so well, even if it had aged slightly. He would still dream about her sometimes and had often wondered how life might have turned out if he’d chosen differently. But seeing Dani standing there in front of him in this moment with a gun held at her side was surreal. Jake felt trapped. But he noticed she never raised her gun. He looked over to his left, where the parking garage butted up against the adjacent building. Entry into the parking garage from the alley was completely blocked by chain-link fencing. Jake spotted one corner of the fence that had been peeled back.