“ Two tours in Vietnam when I was a kid. Some things you don’t forget.”
“ Okay, so you’re hearing okay. I just got mine back. For a while there I thought I might be permanently deaf. Ears are still ringing, though.”
“ That’ll stop.”
“ So, how are you?”
“ Beaten up, back hurts.” He shifted in his seat. “But I’ll be okay.”
“ Awful bloody.”
“ Something hit me just before I hit the ground, metal, glass, I don’t know. Punched me like there was no tomorrow.” He reached a hand behind his back, under his field jacket, pulled it back out. “Nothing there. Cut me though. Bleeding has stopped, so it’s not bad. I’m guessing it was a metal fragment, big enough to knock me down and out and bounced off. That’s good, though. If it would’ve been smaller or if it would’ve been glass, it would’ve penetrated and that would’ve been bad.”
“ Sorry about your rig.” She moved into the fast lane, passed a couple trucks.
“ Yeah, that’s a bummer.” He winced. It hurt more than he was letting on. “Lucky I was traveling empty. No paperwork about destroyed cargo.”
“ But you lost your truck.”
“ That’s gonna be hard to explain, but I’ll figure something out. Maybe I stopped because the engine sounded funny. Helicopter hits my truck. Good Samaritan picks me up, takes me to a hospital.”
“ How come you didn’t call 911.”
“ No phone.”
“ How come we didn’t stop in Yreka?”
“ We didn’t?”
“ Behind us, we’re in Oregon now.”
“ Really? You didn’t head straight to the nearest hospital?” He winced again. “You are in trouble.” He looked out the window. “Yeah, we’re in Oregon, sure enough.”
“ You shot that helicopter out of the sky. That was pretty cool. You were pretty cool.” She was at the top of the pass now, passing several trucks which had pulled off in the brake test area. “But what I don’t understand is why?”
“ Actually, I shot the pilot. His passenger had a Mac 10. In my experience guys with Mac 10s in low flying helicopters don’t take prisoners.”
“ But is wasn’t your fight.”
“ Anytime there’s a damsel in distress, it’s my fight.”
She glanced over at him and he hit her with a smile so real it was as if she’d been smacked by a ray of sunshine.
“ I’m Black,” he said.
“ No shit,” she said.
“ It’s my name.” He laughed. It came from his belly. “Last time I introduced myself that way to a young lady, who said what you just did, ‘No shit,’ it changed my life. She was a gunslinging girl in trouble, too.”
“ Katie?”
“ Yeah, Katie. She was fast on the draw, hit what she shot at and when she killed a man, she didn’t look back, didn’t cry over it. Course, those she killed had it coming.”
Lila gave the man a glance, put her eyes back on the road, shifted into the fast lane and passed a truck on the winding road down into Ashland.
“ Don’t believe me?” His voice was low now, conspiratorial, almost a whisper. “No reason you should. Most folks who carry concealed never use their weapon. Most are braggarts or cowards, trying to impress with their gun or trying not to be afraid. Of course, most are men. Most women I’ve met are against guns.”
She gave him a scowl, then put her eyes back on the road as she slid back into the slow lane, in front of the truck.
“ Don’t look at me like that, just stating facts.”
“ Whose facts?”
“ Mine. My opinion, based on my experience.” He laughed again, a chuckle this time. “Women who carry are either in trouble or deal in trouble. Either way, someone crosses them better look out, because unlike a lotta men with a gun hidden in their clothes, a woman with a gun is a mighty dangerous animal.”
“ I think I resent that statement, Mr. Black.”
“ It’s just Black.”
“ First or last name?”
“ Both, I only got the one name.”
“ Like Cher?”
“ No, she’s got two names, Cher Bono, everybody knows that. I only got the one.”
“ On your birth certificate, you only have one name?”
“ Yep, just the one.”
“ Cool.” She swung back into the fast lane, passed another truck. Moved back to the right as the road turned straight, Ashland ahead, then Medford. She’d be there in fifteen or twenty minutes. Then she’d have to figure out how to lose Black and deal with Izzy Eisenhower. “So, tell me about Katie.”
“ Ah, Katie. She was, is, one for the record books. But I don’t think I want to talk about her. She’s been out of the limelight for a long time.” He sighed. “I’ve said too much.” Again a sigh, heavier this time. “You can drop me in Medford. I got a friend owns a little music store by Harry and David’s.”
“ Out of the limelight?” She turned to look at him, met his eyes for longer than it was safe, considering she was driving. “You can’t be talking about Katie Sullivan.”
The look in his eyes and his silence confirmed it for her.
“ You are, aren’t you?” She put her eyes back on the road, slowed some as she was closing on a black SUV with government plates. “Tell me about her.”
“ I can’t.”
“ You don’t have to tell me where she is or even if she’s still alive. I just wanna know about her, what kind of person she was. How she survived what she did.” She took the first Ashland offramp.
“ This ain’t Medford?”
“ I’m starved.” She pulled into a McDonalds parking lot. “Fancy a Big Mac?”
For the last quarter hour Izzy had been sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes glued to the flat screen TV. Other than the photo of her, the police didn’t seem to know any more than they did when she saw the story back in McCloud.
She had to do something.
But what? And what about Amy? Whoever was after her would eventually get Amy. That wouldn’t be good.
One thing for sure, she couldn’t go flying off the handle. Just getting in the car and driving wouldn’t be smart. She needed a plan. She needed help, too. Maybe it hadn’t been such a bright idea, dropping the girls off in Susanville. Amy couldn’t be much help, because now they shared the same face, but her friend Alicia would’ve been.
She thought about going back, recruiting the girls, but she’d dropped them there for a reason, because she’d wanted Amy safe. But now, with the stories on the news, she wouldn’t be. What if her daughter-in-law saw the news and called the police? She probably wouldn’t. She’d be afraid she’d lose the money. But it was possible.
Izzy had to go back. But first she had to eat. She called reception. Asked for the number of the quickest pizza place in town and ordered a large Hawaiian, extra ham and no pineapples on one side. She’d split it with Hunter, then get on the road.
Lila pulled into the drive thru behind a police car. Cops gotta eat, too, she thought. At the window, she ordered a Big Mac meal. Black did the same, but added an extra burger. Lila paid, then pulled into the parking lot. She thought about lowering the top, it was a gorgeous day, but seeing that cop made her decide against it.
“ So, Black, you knew Katie Sullivan. I find that hard to believe, but a few hours ago I’d’ve never believed a trucker I met by chance would shoot down a helicopter and save my life. The odds of us sitting here together are a bazillion to one, because I have worshipped Katie Sullivan ever since she killed those cops and disappeared. I know in my heart they were after her somehow. That they were somehow connected with that serial killer Ronny Stark. And since it’s come out that the cop she killed in El Paso was about to rape his stepdaughter, that makes Katie a hero in my book, not a cop killer.”
“ Mine too,” Black said.
“ But they never caught her. And Ronny Stark, who’d raped her and left her for dead, stopped killing and they never caught him either.”
“ What’s your point in all this.” Black bit into his burger, took almost half of it in one bite.
“ I don’t want to know where she is or anything like that, but I’d like to know if she’s doing okay, if she ever got her revenge, if she got the bastard.”