HENDRICKS WATCHED FROM his perch across the street as the big rig shuddered to life. Its runner lights flickered on. Its air brakes emitted a hydraulic hiss. Then its headlights were engaged, pushing back the dark of night, and it pulled out of the parking lot, kicking up dirt as it rumbled past. Hendricks averted his eyes and blinked away the grit.
The Roadhouse Truck Stop was situated just off the Pennsylvania Turnpike between Harrisburg and Morgantown. It was no doubt a gorgeous stretch of countryside by day, Hendricks thought, but at night it was just a desolate pool of black bisected by a thin ribbon of rarely traveled highway.
The Roadhouse was a mom-and-pop place, not part of a national chain, and it looked like a remnant of an America long forgotten. A midcentury sign topped a metal pole tall enough to be seen from the toll road. The sign’s colors were faded, and the incandescent bulbs that framed it were long dead. The main building was cinder block, off white and grungy at the edges from exhaust. Fluorescent light spilled from its storefront, bathing the men out front smoking in its sickly glow. Two banks of gas pumps extended out from it, one on either side. Behind the main building was a second one, small and windowless, containing showers, and behind that was an overnight lot, a dozen eighteen-wheelers side by side. The smaller lot out front had, until now, been blocked from view by the truck that just drove off.
The Roadhouse sat at the intersection of two rural routes, a stoplight blinking yellow where they met. Across the street in one direction was a low-slung motel, its neon sign declaring VACANCY. In the other direction was a road-salt storage dome, dun brown, beside which sat a pair of idle snowplows, weeds sprouting around their tires.
It was nearly three a.m., and business was slow. The lunch counter was a quarter occupied. The booths were out of sight around a corner.
Hendricks had been watching the place for an hour. He had another hour before he was expected. Though the drive from Long Island took less than four hours, he’d told whoever had summoned him it would take six-in part because he figured he’d need some time to steal a new set of wheels, and in part because he wanted the chance to case the place before he went in.
He was wrong about the wheels. It turned out Cameron had a car stashed around the corner, a four-year-old Volvo wagon. It was clean-a hand-me-down still registered to her mom-and it had room enough for him to lie in the back and rest while Cameron drove. Hendricks was grateful she was the type to bike to work, otherwise the car would have been sitting in the Salty Dog’s lot, inaccessible and useless. Now it was parked across the street from the Roadhouse in the motel’s lot, Cameron hunched behind the wheel so she could case the truck stop from the other side. She’d been thrilled at the prospect of joining him. He’d told her not to get used to it, that she was to do nothing but observe, and even that was a onetime deal.
“Sure thing, boss,” she’d replied.
The wind gusted, cold and clammy. The lone streetlight swayed. The sky was clear and full of stars. The heat of the day had long since bled off into space. Hendricks zipped up his new sweatshirt and crossed his arms for warmth. The stitches in his side protested. He wondered how long it had been since he’d washed down those four Advil with Gatorade in the Walmart parking lot in Hempstead, New York, trying simultaneously to dull the pain and replace the fluids he’d lost.
He watched trucks come and go from his perch atop one of the snowplows. The dirt lot in which it sat was dark. The salt dome behind him prevented anyone from seeing him in silhouette.
Walmart was where he’d gotten his new clothes: a pair of olive-drab cargo pants, a navy blue henley, a gray zip-up hooded sweatshirt. The fits were close, but not quite; since his old clothes were covered in blood, he’d made Cameron go in to get them. She’d also picked up a few other supplies: gauze pads and medical tape; a pack of disinfecting hand wipes; two pairs of pocket binoculars; ammunition for Pappas’s.45; several cheap, prepaid cells (Android smartphones, to Hendricks’s surprise-burners had come a long way since he’d started using them four years ago); two Bluetooth earpieces; a backpack; some snacks for the road. All told, it wasn’t cheap, but the cash Pappas had slipped her at the Salty Dog more than covered the bill.
When they’d arrived at the Roadhouse, Hendricks had Cameron drive by slow a couple times, but there’d been no sign that he was walking into an ambush. There’d been no sign of Evie either, so Hendricks decided they’d set up at two vantage points, a phone line open between them, and watch the place awhile.
“Hey,” she said in his ear, “can you read the license plate on that pickup now that the tractor-trailer moved?”
He raised his binoculars. Eyed the boxy old Chevy-mid-1980s, he figured, in two-tone red and white. “Yeah, I can read it.”
“Pennsylvania tags?”
“Yup.”
“Cool. I’m ready when you are, then.”
Hendricks read the number to her. Heard her tap at her keyboard. Aimed his binoculars at her while she worked, her face lit ghostly white by the laptop screen, barely visible from this distance. He reluctantly admitted to himself that it was nice to have some backup for a change. And the kid was good. She didn’t fill the line with idle chatter or complain that she was bored. She was alert and attentive, her focus unwavering. And she’d infiltrated the PennDOT database without breaking a sweat.
“Says here it’s registered to a Stan Walters,” she said.
Hendricks’s adrenaline spiked. His palms grew sweaty. His chest felt as though someone had filled it with helium.
Stan Walters sounded awfully close to Stuart Walker. Stuart Walker was Evie’s husband’s name-and WITSEC liked crafting aliases their charges would answer to.
“Huh,” Cameron said.
“What?”
“Well, as a matter of course, I’ve been cross-referencing every address we pull up running tags with local tax records.”
“And?”
“And the address on Walters’s registration doesn’t seem to exist.”
That clinches it, Hendricks thought-Evie really is inside. He hoped she was all right. He wondered how long she’d been waiting. He wondered if she was alone or if Stuart had come with her. He wondered-guilt and hope battling-if Stuart even knew she was here.
“That’s the one we’ve been looking for,” he said. “I’m going in.”
“I thought you said I’d go in first to scope the place out before you risked it,” she said, disappointment evident in her tone.
It’s true; he had said that. Cameron made the perfect scout. No one was looking for her. No one would suspect her of working with Hendricks, because there was no obvious connection between them. But he couldn’t stomach the notion of making Evie wait any longer than she already had-or of Cameron somehow spooking her.
“Yeah, well, the plan’s changed.”
He climbed down from the plow gingerly, stitches pulling, and flipped up the hood on his sweatshirt. Then he trudged across the road, hands thrust deep into his sweatshirt pockets, one of which contained Pappas’s.45. The truckers smoking out front eyed him suspiciously when he materialized from the darkness. Hendricks nodded at them as he walked by.
Inside, the restaurant smelled of grease. The floor was institutional tile, scuffed and dulled by wear. The booths and bar stools were emerald-green vinyl. The bar and tables were a matching green veneer that was meant to look like marble but mostly looked dirty. Fox News played on the television in the corner-muted, mercifully. A live shot of the Golden Gate was green-screened in behind the talking heads. It was nearing midnight on the West Coast, but crews still struggled to quell the fires and evacuate the bridge. Plumes of smoke and steam were lit from within by fire and emergency lights.
A cook at the griddle. Neck beard, T-shirt, apron, ponytail. Two men at the bar. One fat and sagging in his stool, ass crack visible between his untucked work shirt and filthy jeans. The other all hard angles-knees, elbows, nose, and Adam’s apple-a skinny leg bouncing as he hunched over his coffee. A married couple who looked as if they hauled freight together made quiet conversation over two plates of chicken-fried steak. Every one of them tense, jumpy, worry-lined.