Free Unidentified Woman #15 by David Housewright Page B

other day, about the soul? I think you’re on to something.”
    *   *   *
    Thirty minutes later, Smith ran into the gymnasium. He was woefully out of shape for a security guard and spoke between labored breaths.
    “The girl,” he said. “She left the building. Went out the door. Carrying a backpack. We tried to call. You didn’t have a phone. Saw you on camera…”
    My first thought was to chase after Fifteen, but in shorts and a T-shirt, I wouldn’t last ten minutes on the streets of Minneapolis in March.
    “Where did she go?” I asked.
    Smith shook his head.
    “Jones is following her,” he said.
    “Good man.”
    I had just gotten the words out when Jones spoke to Smith over the radio that was attached to the lapel of his jacket.
    “I lost her,” Jones said.
    “What do you mean you lost her?” I said.
    Smith repeated my question into his mic.
    “Target was headed to the train station. I thought she was going to get on the Green Line to St. Paul. She didn’t. She—she disappeared. Just now. I looked. She’s gone.”
    “Dammit,” I said.
    I guess she didn’t believe you after all, my inner voice said.
    Smith asked a question then that impressed me for the simple reason that I hadn’t thought of it myself.
    “The man in the white Toyota—Howard. Did he see her leave?”
    “I don’t know,” Jones said. “The car is gone.”
    “Is that a good sign or bad?” Smith asked me.
    “Hell if I know.”
    *   *   *
    I searched the condo when I returned to determine what Fifteen might have taken with her in the backpack. Afterward, I made three phone calls. The Minneapolis Police Department was the first to respond.
    I was filling out a theft report with an officer when Nina burst into the room, leaving our door open behind her.
    “What did you do?” she wanted to know.
    “Sit. I’ll explain in a minute.”
    Only Nina didn’t sit. She stood there glowering while I finished with the officer. The officer told me where and when I could get a copy of the report online and left the condo. He had to step around Bobby Dunston to get out.
    “What did you do?” Bobby wanted to know.
    “I screwed up. Twice. The first time was when Fifteen arrived. I let her see me going into the man cave.”
    The bookcase door was still open, and I led Bobby and Nina inside.
    “What good is a secret room if you don’t keep it secret?” Bobby asked.
    “None at all.”
    “What did she take?”
    “Four guns—a .25 Colt semiautomatic, .38 Smith & Wesson wheel gun, nine-millimeter Beretta, and my Walther PPK. They’re all registered. I gave the numbers to the Minneapolis cops.”
    “Why did you do that?” Nina wanted to know. “They’ll arrest her. Is that what you want?”
    “It’s the only excuse we have to search for her,” Bobby said. “Except for the guns, Fifteen has committed no crimes that we’re aware of.”
    “I don’t want her arrested.”
    “I’ll withdraw the complaint after we find her,” I said. “If that doesn’t work, I’ll hire my own lawyer to defend her; G. K. can discredit me on the witness stand.”
    Nina’s expression suggested that she’d pay real money to see that. Yet having an excuse to search for Fifteen was only part of the reason I called the police, and Bobby knew it. The other part—I needed to protect myself in case the guns started showing up at crime scenes.
    “Why did she leave?” Nina asked. “McKenzie? She was safe with us. I told her that. Didn’t you tell her that?”
    “She didn’t believe us. When she heard me use Doug Howard’s name, she didn’t believe us at all.”
    “Who’s Doug Howard?”
    “Is that what made her run?” Bobby asked.
    I told them about my morning.
    “Ahh, McKenzie,” Bobby said.
    “You thought she was lying about having amnesia. Now we know for sure.”
    “How did Howard know Fifteen was here?” Nina asked.
    “Probably followed her when she left the hospital.”
    “What are we going to do?”
    Bobby ignored the