Her serious tone of voice brought his head around. “Very.”

The two men went into neighboring rooms. Butch kept the duffel bag with him. “He must be the senior partner,” Raley said. “Or maybe just the best shot.”

Britt asked, “Now what?”

After taking a glance around, he said, “Keep an eye on their rooms. Signal me if they come out.” He pushed open the car door.

“Where are you going?”

“To call Candy before it gets any later.” He pointed toward a telephone booth at the far end of the shopping center. “Since the booth is still there, I’m thinking the phone will be working.”

“Let’s drive over.”

He shook his head. “We couldn’t see their rooms as well. Stay put. Watch those rooms.”

“You’ll be exposed. They could see you.”

“They’re not looking. But just in case…” Holding the pistol by the barrel, he extended it to her. “You keep this.”

She recoiled. “Leave it on the seat.”

He got out and carefully set the pistol on the driver’s seat, then set off across the parking lot at a jog. Despite what he’d told Britt, he didn’t like being so exposed. He stepped into the phone booth but didn’t close the door, so the light wouldn’t come on. Fortunately the telephone was still there. Even more of a break, it was in working order. He’d come up with a pocketful of change.

Candy answered his call on the first ring. “Where have you been? I was beginning to think that you’d come to your senses and weren’t going to call back.”

He plugged his ear with his index finger to help filter out the swishing noise of traffic. “I got tied up. Sorry I kept you up late. What have you got for me?”

“An appointment with Fordyce.”

He was stunned. He hadn’t admitted, even to himself, that she might manage to pull it off. “No shit?”

“Oh he shit, all right. At least I’m fairly sure he did. He was having no part of it at first, but I eventually wore him down. I told him he was lucky you hadn’t accosted him at Jay’s funeral like you did George. I advised him as a former colleague that he should talk to you in private before you did something very public and probably crazy. He’s expecting you to be just shy of a complete mental case, so hopefully your reasonable state of mind will come as a pleasant surprise.” She hesitated, then said, “You aren’t a mental case, are you?”

“No. Just a man with a mission.”

“Same as,” she muttered.

“What time?”

“Eleven o’clock. His office. Check in with the guard. A page will escort you.”

“Candy, I don’t know what to say.”

“Say good night,” she said querulously. “I’ve got back-to-back interviews all day tomorrow and need to go to bed. I’m retaining fluid because I never have time to pee, so my eyes are already puffy. Don’t even get me started on my ankles.”

He smiled at the picture she painted. “I owe you. Huge.”

“Red and white.”

“What?”

“When you come to dinner next week, you have to bring both colors of wine. And no cheap stuff.”

“You’ve got it.”

“And, Raley.”

“Yeah?”

“Hold his feet to the fire. Pun intended.”

“What time?” Britt asked when Raley returned to the car with the good news.

“Eleven o’clock. His office.”

“I’m surprised. I hoped he would agree to see you, but I doubted he would.”

“Frankly, so did I. Maybe he’s got bigger cojones than I give him credit for.”

“It’s easy to be brave when you’re inside a guarded government office.” She gazed thoughtfully at the maroon sedan parked outside the rooms at the Holiday Inn. “Or when you have someone fighting your battles for you.”

She repeated the statement to herself and realized how accurately it applied to her. Acting on impulse and before she could change her mind, she opened her car door and stepped out.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll be right back.”

“Britt?”

Ignoring him, she ran toward the busy boulevard, calling to him over her shoulder. “If something happens, drive away and call Detective Clark.”

“Britt!”

“Drive away.”

Her timing couldn’t have been better. Just as she reached the curb, there was a break in the traffic. She sprinted across two lanes, the dividing median, and then the other two lanes, and came out on the sidewalk bordering the parking lot of the Holiday Inn.

She didn’t dare look back at Raley, fearing that he would be in hot pursuit. Instead she continued moving purposefully across the parking lot toward the two rooms with the familiar car parked in front of them.

She couldn’t positively identify it as the car that had forced hers off the road and into the river. But she couldn’t eliminate it, either. She also knew that at least one of these men had been at The Wheelhouse, where she had been drugged. All circumstantial, but awfully suspicious.

What she knew with certainty was that they had searched Raley’s cabin and truck yesterday, and that they had doggedly followed him from Jay’s funeral, indicating that they were men whose purpose was shady, and possibly deadly. Nor did she believe for a moment that their being at the notable gay bar tonight was happenstance. Whether they were allies or enemies of Pat Wickham’s, their intentions were contradictory to hers and Raley’s.

The bastards had this coming.

Keeping her eyes trained on the windows and doors of the two rooms, she cautiously approached the car. She glanced around to make certain that no other guests or hotel employees were in sight or looking out the windows.

Seeing no one, she crouched down behind the sedan. The lights were still on inside both rooms. She didn’t dare take her eyes off the windows. At any second the door of either room could have burst open. The occupants might even have been able to hear her heart pounding.

She crept to the left rear tire and ran her fingers along the rim until she located the air valve stem and hastily twisted off the cap. Clutching it in her hand, she duckwalked to the front tire.

She could hear the sound track of a TV sitcom coming from one of the rooms. Had the curtain moved, or was that her imagination? Was the air-conditioning unit beneath the window causing the curtain to flutter?

Her nervous fingers found the valve of the front tire and removed the cap. Her thighs were burning by the time she duckwalked the length of the car and around the back of it, then up to the right front tire. She twisted off that cap. The fourth and last one was more stubborn than the others. She was sweating and the pads of her fingers were rubbed raw from the effort by the time she got it off.

Then, holding all four in a tight fist, she stood up.

In the same instant, the door of one of the rooms was pulled open.

Instinctually she whipped her head around.

Sundance was framed in the open doorway. He was barefoot, still wearing his trousers, but he had replaced the dress shirt he’d worn into the nightclub with a white T-shirt. The tail of it was neatly tucked into his waistband. It was a ridiculous thing to note at a time like this, but irrationally it flashed through her mind how silly and uncomfortable that looked.

He was holding a plastic ice bucket, which he dropped the instant he spotted her, and reached for a shoulder holster that wasn’t there, shouting, “Hold it!”

She did the opposite. She turned and ran for her life. She expected to see Raley waiting anxiously inside the gray sedan across the boulevard. But neither he nor the car was where she’d left them.

Behind her, she heard pounding, and figured Sundance was beating on his partner’s door. He yelled, “Get out here!”

She didn’t stop to look back but ran headlong toward the street, not even knowing in which direction to go. Where was Raley? She had told him to drive away if anything happened, but she really hadn’t expected him to desert her.

She thought she heard one of the men call her name, but she didn’t need to look back to know that they were hotfooting it and closing in fast. She could hear the slaps of bare feet on pavement, their huffing breaths, cursing.