Finally the window slid down. “Can I help you?” The man inside sounded distinctly unhelpful. He was big and muscular, and his T-shirt didn’t hide the holster on his hip. Exley noticed a dog in the back seat, a big German shepherd that looked up eagerly at her, its red tongue lapping its teeth.
“I’m so lost. This guy I met, he told me about this party in Amagansett. This is Amagansett, right?”
“Lady. If you’re looking for Amagansett, go back to that road up there and make a right. Good luck. This is private property.”
Exley turned away. “Drunk skank,” one of the men in the Escalade said, deliberately loud enough for her to hear, and the other laughed. “Headed for the drunk tank.” The window slid up.
Exley got back in the Sienna, buckled her seat belt. Don’t think too much,she told herself. She put the van in gear, floored the gas, and—
The crash with the Escalade whipped her toward the steering wheel. Her belt tightened and the exploding air bag caught her, knocking her back. Even though she’d known the collision was coming, its force surprised her, and she heard herself scream.
She gathered herself. She’d wrenched her neck and had a cut on her arm, but she hadn’t broken any bones. The Sienna had taken the brunt of the impact, its hood crumpled, radiator leaking, windshield starred. The Escalade, taller and heavier, had little visible damage, though Exley saw its air bags had inflated. The bottle of wine cooler had broken and the minivan stank of peach. She reached into her bag and grabbed the syringe.
She unbuckled herself as the doors of the Escalade opened and the men inside stepped out. They didn’t look happy.
FROM HIS SPOT ON THE CORNER, Wells watched Exley park. When she stepped out of the van to talk to the men, he began to pedal the mountain bike beside the hedge on the east side of the road, the same side the Escalade was on. He stayed hidden in the shadow of the hedge. Unless the men looked directly his way, they wouldn’t see him.
Wells took his time, not wanting to get close too soon. The grass under his wheels was wet with dew, and this close to the ocean Wells could smell the clean salt air. Under other circumstances, Two Mile Hollow would make a perfect lovers’ lane.
Now Exley turned around, walked back to the Sienna, her shoulders slumped, her little ass wobbling slightly as she walked. She surely had the undivided attention of the men in the Escalade, Wells thought. Which was exactly what he needed. He was about fifty yards away, close enough that the men would see him if they looked his way.
They didn’t.
Bang! The Sienna smashed into the Escalade so hard that the bigger vehicle rocked back and its front end lifted before thunking back down. Wells took advantage of the distraction to throw himself and the bike onto the grass. He was less than twenty-five yards from the Escalade now, on its passenger side. Exley had rammed the Sienna into the left front of the SUV, the driver’s side.
The Escalade’s doors opened and the men stepped out. Inside the Cadillac, a dog barked madly, its rapid-fire woofing echoing through the night.
“My door won’t open,” Exley yelled through the night. “Help me.”
“Dumb cootch,” the Escalade’s driver said. “Fred, radio Hank, tell him what happened.” He yelled to the minivan. “You know whose car you just hit?”
Fred the guard turned back to the Escalade. Wells aimed the air pistol, bracing it in both hands. He squeezed the trigger. Propelled by compressed carbon dioxide, the inch-long dart took off with a soft hiss and hit the guard in the center of his back. He yelped, then sighed dully as the syringe pumped anesthetic into him. He raised a hand to the sill of the Escalade to steady himself and slumped into the front passenger seat.
“YOU ARE ONE DUMB DRUNK SLUT,” the driver of the Escalade said as he reached into it for Exley. She slumped across the passenger seat.
“I’m sorry, I’m so stupid, please help me,” she said. He grabbed her harshly and tugged her out, making sure to grope her breasts. As he pulled at her, she jabbed the syringe hidden in her hand through his khakis and into his thigh.
“Goddamn,” he said. “Wha—” But even as he cursed, Exley felt his grip loosen. He crumpled, the deadweight of his arms dragging her down. She freed herself and looked at him, fighting the urge to kick him in the balls. His breathing was slow, but he seemed fine otherwise.
“Sweet dreams,” she said.
“You all right?” Wells said from across the Escalade.
“Never better. Do what you have to do.”
22
IT WAS 3:05 A.M. WEDNESDAY. The radio’s bright green LCD lights told the mole what he already knew. He was awake.
For the last few weeks, he’d found sleep harder and harder to come by. He lay in bed, eyes blinking slowly as a toad‘s, twisting the thin cotton sheets Janice liked. Two bottles of wine at dinner and a hefty snort of whiskey afterward hadn’t been enough to knock him out. Worse, he didn’t seem to sleep even when he was asleep. He had the odd sensation of his mind nudging itself toward consciousness. Sometimes he couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep, if his eyes were open or closed, until he tapped on the radio and heard a late-night commerciaclass="underline" “We need truckers. Best rates per mile!”
So he made his way to the spare bedroom to watch reruns of Road Rules and Laguna Beachas Janice snored away obliviously in their bedroom. The mole had a weakness for the bikinied bodies that filled MTV’s version of reality, though he had to mute the sound to spare himself the nonsense that poured from the mouths of the kids on screen.
Something was wrong. They were after him. Not the indefinable impossible they who plagued the suckers who heard voices in their heads. Not aliens or Jesus. A very real they, probably in the form of a joint agency-FBI task force. He couldn’t say how he knew, but he did. He’d never been nervous like this before. And he was damn sure he wasn’t having an attack of conscience over what had happened to the Drafter. He’d traded in his conscience when his baby boy died. As far as the mole was concerned, God had no conscience, and if God didn’t need one, he didn’t either. No, this churning in his stomach wasn’t guilt. It was fear, fear that he might be caught.
Yet when the mole stopped to consider the facts, as he did a hundred times a day, he had no evidence to support his fears. Almost no evidence. Except for the polygraph. A couple weeks before the North Koreans blew up the Phantom, he’d failed a poly. Not even failed, really. He hadn’t muffed the big questions, the ones that he knew were coming. They were no secret, part of a routine as established as the Lord’s Prayer. Haveyou ever been approached,by a foreign intelligence service? Have you ever accepted money from a foreign intelligence service?And the granddaddy of ‘em all, the Rose Bowl of polygraph questions: Have you ever committed an act of espionage against the United States?
The mole’s exam had been scheduled months in advance, standard operating procedure. He’d hardly worried about it. In his basement lair, he practiced his answers until they bored him. When he walked into the musty offices in the basement of the Old Headquarters Building where the polygraph examiners worked their magic, he’d been relaxed and confident. In retrospect, maybe too confident.
The session was supposed to last an hour. For forty-five minutes, he breezed through. When the trouble hit, he was already looking forward to being done. Maybe he’d cut out of work early, head over to the Gold Club, celebrate getting this chore out of the way for the next five years. They had two-for-one drink specials before 7:00 P.M, and sometimes the girls went two-for-one on dances too, just to stay loose.