“To where?”
“Anywhere but here.” She placed the empty Glock back into its holster and covered it with her shirt. “This vehicle is a magnet for cops. We need to buy some time.”
Graham pushed his door open as well and stood. “Time to do what?”
“To live a little longer,” she said.
“What about the rifle?”
“Leave it. We can’t go walking around town with a rifle.”
“But your pistol is out of bullets.”
Jolaine made a circulating motion with her arm, encouraging Graham to move faster. “Maybe we can find some more. Meanwhile, we’ve got to get away from here.”
He joined her, looking over this shoulder, back at the car. In the distance, the sirens continued. “Shouldn’t we wipe it down for fingerprints?”
“It won’t matter,” Jolaine said. “Our fingerprints are all over everything — the car, the rifle, the motel room. When they find it, they’ll know that the car belonged to the people who rented the room. What we hope they won’t know is who we really are.”
They walked behind a long line of industrial low-rises. The only business that seemed busy was an auto mechanic shop whose employees seemed to avoid eye contact. Jolaine wondered how many of them would scatter if the police came by. The whir of impact wrenches and the pounding of hammers on metal drowned out the sound of sirens. Jolaine considered that a good thing.
“Where are we going?” Graham asked. He kept throwing nervous looks over his shoulder, and in general acting jumpy as hell.
“I need you to walk as if nothing is wrong. The more nervous you look, the more attention you’ll draw to yourself. To us.”
“That’s kind of hard when you know people are trying to kill you.”
“Graham, everything is going to be kind of hard until this is settled. You need to trust me.”
“I do trust you,” he said. Then, with a wry chuckle: “Not that I have a whole lot of choice.”
The alley behind the low rises dead-ended at a street without a sign. Jolaine estimated that it ran roughly north-south. She turned right to head north, away from the main drag. Ahead, there was a patch of woods that would provide additional cover. She headed that way.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Graham asked.
“Toward the woods. We’ll be less readily seen there.”
“Is that really a good idea? I mean, I’m not saying I won’t go, but aren’t they going to dispatch dogs or something pretty soon? If we’re just hanging in the woods we’ll get caught right away.”
He had a very good point, Jolaine thought. She stopped and turned, colliding with Graham.
“Whoa,” he said. “What are you doing now?”
“You’re right,” she said. “We need a car. Come this way.” She started back toward the main drag.
Graham trotted to catch up. “And where are we going to get a car?”
She led the way to her answer. The easiest cars to steal — to hotwire and drive away — were of an older vintage, the older the better. It was damn near impossible to hotwire anything made in the past ten years or so — certainly that was beyond Jolaine’s limited ability. As luck would have it (it was about time for some good luck for a change), the ideal candidate sat parked along the curb outside a low-rent apartment building. It was an old Honda Civic that appeared to have the original paint job, which was to say very little paint at all. Call it red. Maybe brown.
As she approached, Jolaine drew her Leatherman tool from its pouch on her belt and opened it up. In a second stroke of good luck, the driver’s door opened when she lifted the handle. That was often the case, she’d been told, when people parked their cars in poorer, crime-ridden areas. It was better to leave the car unlocked and let thieves find out for themselves that there was nothing worth stealing, than to make them break a window to discover the same result.
Once inside, she wondered if the owner actually hoped that someone would steal these wheels. The gray cloth seats were worn nearly transparent in the spots where they weren’t torn, and the headliner drooped like old cobwebs from the ceiling.
Graham climbed in the opposite door. “Do we really have to be in this much of a hurry?”
She ignored him. She folded out the flat-head screwdriver, jammed it into the keyway, and twisted. The engine jumped to life. That done, she stuck the blade into the gap between the steering wheel and the steering column to find the tab that would release the steering wheel lock. That was always the toughest part of this operation. It took a good twenty seconds, but when she found it, she pressed down and the wheel was free.
“There,” she said, more to herself than to Graham.
He gaped. “How do you know this shit?”
“I used to hang around with tough people,” she said. In reality, she used to hang around with a former SEAL named Darrell, whose youth had introduced him to all levels of thievery. She’d held him in her arms until he bled out and died in some rocky village near J-Bad in Afghanistan whose name she’d forgotten.
She pulled the transmission into drive, and they were on their way. She still didn’t know where they were heading, but north seemed right, so she swung a U-turn and headed wherever the road would take them. Canada, maybe, if she could figure out a way to get them some passports.
“Who were those people?” Graham asked. “And why were they shooting at us?”
“You tell me,” Jolaine said. She made sure her tone was leaden, devoid of humor.
In her peripheral vision, she saw Graham’s head whip around. “What?”
“You heard me,” she said. “You tell me why people are trying to kill us.”
“How am I supposed to know?”
She cast him a glance, then returned her eyes to the road as she navigated out into the country. Buildings were already becoming sparser. “How do you think?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “What the hell is wrong with you? How did you become my enemy all of a sudden?”
“The last thing I am is your enemy,” Jolaine said. “Tell me about the phone call you made this morning.”
“I already told you about that.”
“I have it on good authority that you left out some good parts,” Jolaine countered. “What did you say?”
“I talked to a creepy guy and I hung up on him.”
“But why?”
“I talked to him because my mom asked me to. I hung up on him because he was creepy. What aren’t you understanding?”
Jolaine settled herself. Getting frustrated or getting angry would only be counterproductive. “Please try not to be obtuse,” she said. “You talked with the creepy guy, you said something, and then all of a sudden the world is trying to shoot us. Last night, they were shooting at your parents. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that your mother filled your head with some secret thing and a phone number, and now our lives are in jeopardy.” She paused and glared through his head. “What do you have, Graham? What justifies all of this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. You know I’m risking my life for you, right? I could drop you off on the side of the road and let you fend for yourself. No one wants to hurt me because of what I know. They only want to hurt me because of my association with you.” It felt good to utter the truth, even though she took no pleasure in hurting him.
“Let me off, then,” he said. She’d triggered his defiant streak, always a mistake.
“That’s not the point, Graham, and it’s not going to happen. You know that. My job is to protect you. And yes, it’s to protect me, too. But you owe me what you know.”
“I promised my mom not to tell anybody but the guy on the phone.”
“And how’s that working for you?”