Chapel managed to get the judge into his limo and moving out without incident. If Quinn was nearby, he didn’t show himself. Chapel supposed that was the best he could hope for, at the moment. The sedans, several troopers on motorcycles, and a highway patrol vehicle formed up in a loose convoy, headed north.
Hollingshead had said it wouldn’t be enough. Hollingshead had been certain of that.
Chapel rode with one of the troopers, in the patrol cruiser, at the back of the convoy. Out on the road, under the big western sky, an attack could come from any direction. He strained his neck trying to look every way at once.
The mountains off to the west were wrapped in the green majesty of heavy pine growth, dappled here and there by the shadows of clouds that streamed across the big sky as fast as trailing smoke. It was a spectacle that might have taken Chapel’s breath away any other time.
“Are we likely to hit much traffic?” Chapel asked his driver, a grizzled old state trooper named Young.
She shrugged. “Could be. The road to Boulder is pretty heavily traveled all times of day. I’ve had no reports of congestion so far, but if there’s an accident… well, these roads really weren’t meant for all the people on ’em. There’s four million people in the entire state of Colorado, and two million of ’em live in this corridor, between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs.”
“Great,” Chapel said. He watched civilian vehicles go whizzing by on his left. They were moving fast enough he couldn’t get a good look inside any of them. Quinn wouldn’t know how to drive, himself, but the chimera in New York had proven how easy it was for one of them to commandeer a vehicle.
If Quinn was coming from the north, headed toward them, it would be easy enough to veer into oncoming traffic and ram the limo. Even a chimera would know the long car was where the judge would be. At highway speeds, that kind of collision might kill the judge outright.
Chapel touched the hands-free unit in his ear. “Is the judge wearing a seat belt?” he asked.
“No, he is not,” Reinhard called back. “Keep this channel clear, Captain. My men might need it in an emergency.”
Chapel shook his head. There was something wrong here. Reinhard was acting like this was just a Sunday drive and Chapel’s paranoia was irritating him, rather than reassuring him like it should.
“Get the judge belted in. If someone rams the limo, he’ll go bouncing around in there like a pebble in a tin can, otherwise. And keep that screen of motorcycles tight in his front left quadrant.”
“We’re doing good, Captain. I want this channel clear. If you have any more suggestions, keep them to yourself.”
Chapel watched a civilian car try to overtake them. A motorcycle drifted out to their right to block its advance. The civilian honked his horn but eventually got the point.
“If it’s any consolation, I think you were right,” Young said.
Chapel glanced across at the driver. “About what?”
“About the seat belt. You know how many people we have to scoop out of wrecks every year? That’s half our job in the summer,” Young said. “If people would actually wear those belts, a lot of them would survive.”
“Colorado doesn’t have a mandatory seat belt law?” Chapel asked.
“Well now, we do, but we can’t pull you over unless there’s some other reason,” Young told him. “Unless you’re under seventeen, we don’t even make you wear a helmet when you’re riding a motorcycle.”
“I guess things are a little different out west,” Chapel said.
“Sure are. We all think of ourselves as having a little cowboy in our souls, still. So we don’t much like the government treating us like children who have to be told what to do.” Young clucked her tongue. “Does make you think twice, though, when you get a report of some family of vacationers in a crashed car, and all you find is raspberry jelly all over the dashboard.”
Chapel laughed, despite himself. “That’s gruesome, Young. Truly gruesome.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess that’s what we call dark humor. Helps us get through our job. You know. You ever want to see gruesome for real, you come out for a ride along with me up in the mountains.”
“If I ever decide that yes, I want to see gruesome for real, I’ll do just that,” Chapel told her. He turned his head and saw one of the sedans full of Reinhard’s goons just ahead of him and to one side. “What about those?” he asked. “Tinted windshields. I thought those were illegal, too.”
“It’s a kind of iffy thing. You’re allowed to tint them down to twenty-seven percent, which means twenty-seven percent of available light gets through. I’d say those sedans are pushing the limit.”
“Only twenty-seven percent of available light? That’s ridiculous,” Chapel said. “How can they expect to see anything? They’re missing three-quarters of their visual perimeter like that.”
“I have a feeling, now, that Mister Reinhard figures, if you can’t see in, you can’t tell who’s in the car. So you can’t tell which car the judge is in.”
“Unless you notice that one of the cars is a limo, and the rest are sedans,” Chapel pointed out.
“That is what we might call, in my line of work, a clue,” Young agreed.
Chapel touched his hands-free unit. “Reinhard, your people can’t see anything through those tinted windows.”
“Captain Chapel? I told you to keep your thoughts to yourself,” Reinhard replied.
“Have them roll down their windows. It’ll be windy but they’ll survive,” Chapel ordered.
“Those windows are bulletproof, Captain. They’re up for a reason.”
Chapel grimaced. “Our guy isn’t a shooter. That’s not his style. Roll down the damned windows.”
“Chapel, I swear, if you don’t clear this—”
Reinhard’s transmission cut off in midsentence. At first Chapel thought something had gone wrong, that Quinn had somehow disrupted their communications, but then he realized Reinhard had just muted his microphone, presumably so he could talk to the judge.
“All right, Chapel,” Reinhard said, after a while. “The judge says I have to play nice with you. I’ll make you a deal. If I have them roll down their windows, will you promise to stay off this channel?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Chapel said.
“I’ll hold you to that,” Reinhard replied.
Young laughed. “That boy does not like you, he surely does not,” she said. “You’d think the two of you might get along, being in the same line of work.”
“Oil and water are both liquids, but they won’t mix,” Chapel pointed out. He craned his head around, watching all the sedans. One by one they started lowering their windows and he could see the black-suited security guards inside. The guards blinked and squinted as the pure mountain sunlight hit their eyes.
“Tell the truth, now. Did you do that just to annoy ’em all?” Young asked.
“I think I’d like to have my lawyer present before I answer that—”
Chapel stopped talking, then.
“Something wrong?” Young asked.
“Yeah,” Chapel said.
One of the security guards, up in a sedan just ahead of Young’s car, didn’t squint or blink in the sun. No, he didn’t need to.
His third, black eyelid just slid down to protect his eyes.
Quinn had been with them the whole time.
IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+58:51
“Angel? Angel, can you hear me?” Chapel called. There was no response. “Angel, come in! I need you to patch me through to the walkie-talkie system Reinhard’s people are using. Angel!”
Trooper Young glanced over at him. “Maybe we’re just out of cell range. Reception is still kind of spotty out here,” she suggested.
“Maybe,” Chapel said. Though he’d assumed that Angel’s signal was carried by the satellite network, not by cell towers. She’d reached him in all kinds of strange places.