“In a minute I’m going to ask you to get on the floor. When I do, you go down without asking questions.”
He turned his head, and his mouth tightened slightly. That was the closest he’d come to signaling fear in three days.
“Okay.”
“Keep your hands free and out of your pockets.”
“Okay.”
I tapped my comm.
“Dane. Possible follower. Delivery van, white, no markings. Three car-lengths back. Held position from Cambridge Street through the curve onto Storrow.”
“Plate?”
I read it off what I saw in the mirror.
“Copy. Stay on the line.”
Pereira eased our SUV one lane to the left. The van moved with us.
A beat later, she drifted back to the right. The van followed.
“Confirmed,” I said into the comm. “He’s tracking lane changes.”
“Copy. Tell Pereira to take the BU Bridge exit at speed. Don’t signal. Take the ramp on the inside line.”
I watched Pereira. She’d heard him through her own earpiece.
“Copy,” she said, eyes on the road. “Coming up.”
“Wiley. Down.”
He went down.
He didn’t fold gracefully, the way the principals fold in the training videos. He went down sideways and awkward, one shoulder catching the seatbelt before he twisted free of it. Wiley ended up on his side on the floor of the SUV with his face turned toward the door and one hand braced against the back of Pereira’s seat.
“Stay there. Don’t look up.”
“Okay.”
I drew my sidearm and tracked the mirror.
Three hundred feet to the exit. Then two hundred. The van was still three lengths behind.
Pereira didn’t signal. At one hundred feet, she committed, full pressure on the wheel and no brake. The SUV pulled hard right across the line and onto the exit ramp at fifty miles an hour.Wiley slid an inch on the floor mat and braced harder against Pereira’s seat.
Behind us, the van committed too. It cut across the same line a beat after we did. No hesitation. Whoever was driving had been waiting for the move and reacted within half a second. It was a professional maneuver.
Dane in my comm. “Boston PD has a cruiser on him.”
The car came out of the right lane on Storrow with its lights dark and dropped into the lane directly behind the van as it cleared the merge onto the bridge ramp. It didn’t use sirens or flashers, but it was a sudden official presence eighteen inches off the van’s rear bumper.
The van’s brake lights came on. Held. Then they cycled off and on. It was a driver dealing with the unexpected.
Pereira was already through the curve and onto the bridge deck. The Charles opened on both sides of us.
I kept watching in the mirror. The van took the bridge with us.