He got up to the parkway and started jogging back down the northbound lane. He would have plenty of time to duck down behind the stone walls if he saw approaching headlights. He would try to get a call through to Carter again from his van. Right now, everything would depend on how long it took for the Park Police to find the wreck. He watched for signs of a fire as he jogged back down the empty roadway, but the woods behind him remained dark.
Janet Carter came out of the tiny bedroom where Lynn lay, relieved that the bleeding had stopped. An elderly woman who smelled of lilacs had cleaned the wound with soap and water, then applied some yellow powder and a clean bandage. There was a large bruise around the wound, but the bullet had apparently hit a rib and stopped. Lynn had remained awake and had gasped when the soap and water hit, but the old woman had given her some hot herbal tea, and now she was asleep.
To Janet’s surprise, the interior of the log house was spotlessly clean, in sharp contrast to all the junk piled around the front entrance and out behind the cabin. She couldn’t tell how many people actually lived in the cabin, which appeared to be a central log house with a conglomeration of additions and extensions. It was much bigger
than it had appeared from the road. The woman, who had not spoken since Janet had followed the men carrying Lynn into the house, led her back to a kitchen and family room area. The kitchen smelled of coffee and baking bread, and Janet saw three more loaves of bread rising in an oven next to the stove. There was another small bedroom and bath behind the kitchen, and the woman indicated Janet could go in there and clean up. She closed the wooden door behind her and went into the bathroom to wash her hands and face. She had some bloodstains on her hands and her face was sooty. She cleaned up as best she could and then went back into the kitchen. Micah Wall was there, taking off his jacket. A semiautomatic shotgun was parked on the wall next to an ancient-looking refrigerator.
“What happened?” Janet asked.
“Took the pickup down the road, and they was a bunch of meanlookin’ boys and some cars pulled up where the other one went into the woods. One of ‘em told me to turn around, take my boys, and git outta there. He had him a Steyr machine pistol, so we done like he said.
They friends of your’s?”
“Nope,” Janet said, surprised to hear this old mountain man talking about Steyr machine pistols.
“How many of them were there and how were they dressed?”
“Couldn’t rightly tell. They was lotsa of headlights, so most of ‘em was in shadow. The one doin’ the talkin’ was wearin’ sunglasses. Big fella.”
“But not uniforms? Not deputies?”
“No, hell no. We know all the deputies in these parts. No, these boys wasn’t from round here. Now your car’s got five bullet holes in it. Here’s a coupla the rounds we dug out. How’s about you tell me what’s goin’ on here with that girl yonder.”
Janet explained who she was, and how she came to be flying through the night with federal agents in hot pursuit. The old woman brought them both a cup of coffee and then sliced some fresh bread, which she put on the table with a crock of butter and another one with preserves. Micah indicated Janet should eat something, and she ate three slices of the fresh bread before stopping short of eating all of it. Micah took it all in, nodding his head a couple of times when Janet described Ransom and his partner and told about the incident with the Bronco. When she was finished, he just sat there, staring down at the table, as if lost in thought.
Then the phone rang. He looked at Janet with raised eyebrows, but Janet just shook her head. He went over to the wall-mounted phone,
answered, and listened for a moment. Then he handed the phone to Janet with an amused expression in his eyes.
“Yes?” she said.
The woman’s voice was as cold as she remembered it.
“Not bad for an amateur,” she said.
“But you can’t shoot for shit.”
“I was aiming low, between the headlights,” Janet said.
“Otherwise, you’d be dead.”
“You put them all through my windshield. Like I said, you can’t shoot for shit. I have some news for you.”
“You shot Kreiss’s daughter,” Janet interrupted. There was a second of silence on the line.
“No, I didn’t,” the woman said.
“I’m not carrying,” Janet didn’t know what to say.
“Then who—” “Did you recover a bullet?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Keep it. It might give you some leverage later. But in the meantime, I thought you’d want to know. We have Kreiss. The Bureau picked him up in Washington and is delivering him to Langley. So I don’t need the daughter anymore. You can relax.”
“Relax. Right,” Janet said.
“Suit yourself, Carter, I no longer care. But the aTF people whose roadblock you ran might.”
“The ones who shot at my car and hit a kid?”
“That’s why I told you to keep the bullet. If you get your tail feathers in a crack over it, find a reporter, tell your tale. The aTF hates that. And don’t let your famous Bureau lab get the bullet; their ballistics work goes to the highest bidder these days. But you probably knew that.”
The dial tone came on and the woman was gone. Janet, her face a bit red, slowly hung up the phone.
“Friend of yourn?” Micah asked.
“No,” Janet said.
“She was the one who set the hospital on fire and then chased us up here. But she says she didn’t do any shooting. That it was a bunch of aTF guys who did that.”
“Now, that’ll please brother Edwin no end,” Micah said.
“Revenuers shootin’ at his little girl.” He shook his head slowly.
“Mama says the girl’s goin’ to be all right; we don’t have to get a doctor into it, less’n we see proud flesh.”
“Shouldn’t we do that anyway?”
“Doc sees a bullet wound, he’s obliged to call local law,” Micah said.
“Might want to wait on that.”
Janet sat back down at the table. She was aware that there were other men in the cabin, out in the front rooms. She was suddenly very tired.
“They, the feds, already know it was me in that car. They may or may not know who Lynn was.” She stopped, and then it penetrated—what the woman had said about Kreiss.
“Oh, hell” she said.
“She said they had Kreiss. Up in Washington. She said the FBI had him and was taking him to Langley. Where she’s from.”
Micah obviously didn’t know what she meant by Langley, but then the phone rang again.
“Grand Central Station,” Micah muttered, reaching for it. He said his name, then smiled.
“She’s right here.” He handed her the phone. This time, it was Kreiss.
“Where are you?” she said in a rush.
“I’m in a pay phone. I don’t have much time. Where’s Lynn?”
“She’s here and we’re safe, for the moment anyway.” She saw Micah shaking his head slowly. He was warning her not to tell him his daughter had been shot. She nodded.
“A lot’s happened, but we’re safe. But that woman just called, said the Bureau had you.”
“They had me, and then I had them. Look, I’ve got to get back to my vehicle, and then I’m coming down there. I don’t know where McGarand is. He and his truck have disappeared.”
“That woman said she was no longer interested in Lynn because the FBI was bringing you in—to Langley. When she finds out—” “Yeah, that’s why I’m leaving here. Soon.”
“And there’s no sign that McGarand is going to bomb something up there? Like Bureau headquarters?”
“I looked. I looked for his truck at all the Washington truck terminals.
Then I went over into town and looked around the Hoover Building, and then I went up to the aTF headquarters building. There was no sign of the propane truck.”