And there it was.
Peering through the glass to be sure the backseat was empty, she got behind the wheel and tried the ignition. A sluggish sound rose up from under the hood. And again. And again. Just as she was beginning to panic, the engine turned over with a roar. Relieved, she pulled out into the street, heading for Rock Creek Parkway.
She was creeping past the Kennedy Center—Yo-Yo Ma was opening that night—when she noticed a shiny black car in her rearview mirror. She didn’t know what kind of car it was, but it was low-slung and predatory looking. It seemed to her she’d seen it on the street outside her office, when she’d been looking for her own car—but maybe not. Then the traffic opened up and, suddenly, she was past the Ken-Cen, gathering speed on her way to the bridge. With a glance at her rearview mirror, she saw that the car behind her was now a van.
And so she relaxed, her mind turning to Duran as she crossed the Potomac, heading toward Springfield.
She couldn’t believe that she was going to spend another night in a motel with this guy—or what was worse, that he was now her only confidant. That, more than anything else, really got to her. It boggled the mind. Her eyes rose to the rearview mirror, and stayed there for several seconds before they returned to the road. Still no shiny black car, but in all this traffic, who could tell?
At the brightly lighted Sultan Kebab in Springfield, she ordered takeout for herself and Duran, then sat down to wait with the magazine section of the Post. There was a terrific recipe for preserved lemons and, reading it, she wished with all her heart that she might someday have time to do things like that—instead of spending her Sundays immersed in asphalt. Finally, the proprietor emerged from the kitchen with a pair of self-enclosed, Styrofoam trays containing rice, kebabs, and salad.
The motel was only a couple of minutes away, which was good—because, as she emerged from the Sultan Kebab, she saw the shiny black car, or thought she did. It was parked about a hundred feet away in a rank of other cars, facing in the opposite direction. What caught her attention was not so much the car itself, as the fact that its brake lights were on. Noticing that, she then saw a thin column of vapor rising from the car’s exhaust, even as a hand reached out from the front seat to adjust the mirror on the passenger’s side.
She saw this as she walked, and in her peripheral vision, she noticed that there were two men in the car. She could feel their eyes upon her in the side view mirrors. Or so she imagined.
Then she was at her own car, the rented Dodge. Fumbling for the key, she unlocked the door, got in and tried the engine. For the second time that night, it was slow to start. But start it did and, when it did, she took off like a teenaged psycho, accelerating through the parking lot, eyes on the mirror. For a second, she thought she saw the headlights flash on the shiny black car, but then she turned, and there was no one behind her.
At least, she didn’t think there was anyone behind her.
The Springfield mixing bowl was a tangle of converging highways, half of which were under construction, and it would have been death to take her eyes off the road.
Then, again…
If she was being followed, Adrienne thought, they must have had a change of mind. About Duran, that is. Because the only reason they would follow her—when they could have grabbed her outside work—would be to find him. Which was strange, because Duran wasn’t their target. At least, he hadn’t been their target the day before. Then, the big man—the Bear—had gone out of his way not to kill him, turning the gun on Adrienne. So something had changed… but why? Was it the break-in? The 911 call? Maybe. Or maybe she wasn’t being followed at all.
Soon, she pulled into the parking lot of the Comfort Inn, a vast expanse of concrete that glowed pinkly from the mercury street lamps overhead. Hurrying into the motel, she went straight to the elevator and up to the room, where Duran greeted her from his chair behind the desk.
“You’re right on time,” he told her, looking up from the Post. “I’m starving.” Brushing by him without a word, she put the boxes of kebabs on the desk, flicked off the lights, and crossed to the windows—where she pulled the curtains shut, and peeped outside.
“I think I was followed,” she told him.
“What!?”
She nodded. “I wasn’t sure, but… yeah.”
He went to her side, and peered out through the parted curtain. “What am I looking for?”
“The car behind mine. Next to the jeep. Shiny black car.”
He looked, and saw a Mercury Cougar parked in a space about fifteen feet behind the Dodge. The car was empty, or seemed to be, until he saw the lighted end of a cigarette flare in the darkness of the front seat. Duran took a deep breath.
“Now what?” Adrienne asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He paused. “How many people were in the car?”
She thought about it. “Two… I think.”
He sighed. “Give me the keys.”
She handed them over with a frown. “They don’t know which room we’re in—or even that we’re together.”
He stood beside the curtain, looking out. Finally, he told her, “Here’s what I think: that guy’s friend is at the front desk, right now, asking about us. And if it’s the same guy we met yesterday—the big guy?—I think the clerk will tell him what he wants to know.”
“So what do we do?”
“That’s the really hard part,” he replied. “I have no fucking idea.”
Adrienne groaned.
“Get your things together,” he suggested. “If we get outta here, you’ll need something to wear.”
“‘If’!?”
His look was incredulous, but what he actually said was: “Yeah—‘if.’”
She pulled the shopping bag out of the wastepaper basket, and went into the bathroom, where she cleared the counter of everything it held. Then she tossed her clothes on top of that, and stood beside the door, waiting for Duran to give the word. Or have an idea. Or whatever it was he was waiting for.
Finally, Duran said, “There he is.”
“Who?”
“The big guy,” he replied, eyes on the parking lot. “He just came out the door.”
“What’s he doing?” she asked.
“He’s getting the other guy.” Suddenly, he turned to her. “We have to go.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re on the way up.”
Lunging from the room, Adrienne turned instinctively toward the elevator, but Duran caught her by the sleeve and pulled her toward the emergency exit at the end of the corridor. Yanking open the door to the stairs, they heard the elevator ping and dove into the stairwell, taking the concrete steps two at a time.
Until Adrienne crashed with a yelp into someone a lot bigger, someone who was coming up the stairs as fast as they were going down.
“Bitch!” The Big Guy grabbed her by the collar with both hands, brought her close, then made a sort of no look pass, tossing her into the wall. She hit the cinderblock flat and square, the back of her head smacking against the rock. A gasp fell from her mouth as she sank to the floor—even as Duran came down the stairs, throwing a roundhouse that caught the Big Guy behind the ear. No ooof this time, but a bellow of pain and rage as the Big Man bounced off the wall and, with a feral growl, plowed into the therapist as if he were a tackling dummy, slamming him into the iron balustrade. The impact sent a shock wave up and down his spine, but the real agony was in his mouth, where Duran’s teeth slammed shut on his tongue. He could taste the blood—but only for a moment, as the Big Guy hit him flush in the forehead, setting off a series of clicks and pops inside his head.