“If that was him,” Ashley said. “We never got a good look at the guy. Or his car. It doesn’t make sense. Why would he try to kill us one minute, then stand in the hallway and shout out he loves me?”
Scott shook his head. It didn’t make sense to him, either. “Anyway, we shall give him something to think about, if he is watching.”
He collected the bags and arranged them all by the front door. Behind him, Catherine was turning off every light in the house. Leaving the two women in the hallway, he walked out into the nighttime. He scanned the night shapes, flashing back to when he was Ashley’s age, in Vietnam, staring out through spyglasses into the jungle, the battery of howitzers behind him, silent for once, the damp, stale smell of closely packed sandbags close to his chest, wondering if they were being observed from the vines and tangled, thick undergrowth.
Scott slid behind the wheel of the Porsche, fired up the engine, and backed into a space next to Catherine’s small four-wheel-drive station wagon. He left his car running, stepping out after popping the hood. He reached in and started Catherine’s car. He went to the right-hand side of each vehicle, opened the door, and adjusted the passenger seat, so that they were lowered as far as they could go.
Scott went back inside, seized all the bags, and went out again into the night.
He placed Catherine’s bag in his car, and Ashley’s in Catherine’s, closing the trunks, but leaving all four car doors open.
He walked back swiftly to the front door. “Ready?”
Both women nodded.
“Then let’s go. Fast, now.”
All three of them moved together, in a single dark lump. Ashley slipped into the passenger seat in the Porsche, and Catherine behind the wheel of her own car. As she took her place, Ashley immediately dove down, so that she could not be seen. She had tucked her hair up under a dark navy watch cap.
Scott ran around, slamming all the car doors, before jumping into his own seat. He gave Catherine a thumbs-up signal, and she accelerated hard, her wheels spitting gravel. Scott pulled in, barely inches away. Fast now, he thought. But Catherine was already jamming her foot down on the gas, and the two of them headed quickly for the highway, in tandem.
Scott scanned the road behind him, on the lookout for headlights. But the twists in the highway made it difficult. He thought, There’s a full moon tonight. If I were chasing someone, I’d be driving without lights.
Beside him, Ashley remained scrunched down. He accelerated, keeping up with Catherine.
She was heading to a spot she knew, right before the entrance to the interstate highway. It was a drive-in bank that had a small parking lot in the rear. When she spotted the entrance, she waited until the last second to flick on her blinker and tugged the wheel sharply. She could hear the tires squeal briefly as she zipped between the dual drive-in windows, pulling into the rear, where there were no lights. She could hear the roar of the Porsche’s engine directly behind her. She stopped and breathed in.
Scott pulled in beside her, then leapt from his car and ran to the edge of the building.
A single car went past on the main road, then a second. He couldn’t make out the driver of either car.
But neither car slowed; instead they disappeared down the road, neither one turning for the interstate. Nor did they seem hesitant and suspicious. He waited for another car to go past, which took nearly a minute. Then he returned to where the two women were waiting.
“All right, switch time,” he said. “No sign of him.”
Wordlessly, Ashley slid from her seat in the Porsche and jammed herself into the passenger seat of the wagon, tucking an old plaid fleece blanket around herself. Catherine nodded, then put the car in gear and headed out toward the entrance ramp of the interstate heading south.
Scott pulled behind her, but instead of taking the ramp south, toward their destination, he stopped by the side of the road. He watched the small car’s taillights disappear. He waited, determined to get a look at any car that might be heading south behind Catherine, but none came along. There was no one else around that he could see. He paused again and, after counting to thirty, suddenly floored the Porsche and, with tires screeching, ducked the nose of the sports car onto the northbound ramp. By the time he was at the bottom of the ramp, he was already doing close to ninety. He saw a tractor-trailer in the right-hand lane, blocking his access, but instead of braking, he punched the gas and flew past the trucker in the breakdown lane. The truck’s air horn blasted the night behind him, and the driver flashed all his lights in irritation. Scott ignored him, looking hard for the illegal U-turn coming up on his left. He just hoped no trooper was hanging out in it. His high beams caught a FOR AUTHORIZED USE ONLY sign, and he slammed on the brakes. In the same motion, he cut all his lights.
The Porsche bumped on the dirt and bottomed out once as he went from the northbound side to the south. A quick glance told him the road was empty, and accelerating hard, he flung the Porsche back onto the highway, flicking on his headlights once again. He saw a pair of deer’s eyes lighting up red in the median.
He took a deep breath. Try following that, he said to himself.
Scott figured it would take less than ten minutes for him to come up behind Catherine and Ashley, checking every car before he reached their tail. Then he would escort them the rest of the way home.
He pursed his lips together tightly.
I’ve got a few tricks left, he thought. He could feel the car engine throbbing with speed and, for the first time that night, felt some control over the situation.
He was smart enough, however, to remind himself that this sensation was not likely to last long.
The need for sleep, after so much tension, prevented them all from gathering together until much later that day. Ashley, in particular, had dissolved into sobs upon hearing all the details of Nameless’s death and had cried bitterly in bed, before finally tumbling into a deep but dire sleep, her dreams marred by black images of death. On more than one occasion, she cried out, bringing either Sally or Hope to her door to check on her as if she were still a little girl.
Scott had gone back to the college. He had stolen some ninety minutes of sleep in his chair in his office before waking, feeling that the entire day was somehow misshapen. In the men’s room, washing up, he spent a few seconds staring at himself in the mirror. History, he thought, is the study of men and women who rise to extraordinary events. It is, over and over, an examination of one person’s bravery, another’s cowardice, a third’s prescience, and a fourth’s failures. It is emotion and psychology, played out on a field of action. He felt a kind of cold sickness inside, wondering whether he had spent all his adult life studying what others did without learning how to do something himself.
Michael O’Connell, he believed, was simply a moment in his own history. And how he acted in the next few days, Scott thought to himself, would define him forever.
Sally struggled with anger.
It seemed to her that everything they had tried had failed. They had tried to be reasonable, polite. They had tried to be forceful. They had tried to bribe their way out. They had tried intimidation. They had tried deception. They had tried flight. And for all the various schemes they had come up with, they had gained nothing but failure. Their own lives had been roiled and thrust into turmoil, their own careers threatened, their privacy invaded, their lives upset and truly pushed into some other realm.
A world of fear, she thought. That was what awaited them.
She was seated in the living room, alone. She found herself grimacing, shaking her head, waving her hands in the air, pointing angrily, gesticulating, frowning, as if she were in the midst of some furious conversation, but no one else was in the room to hear the words that she was forming in her head. Upstairs, Ashley was still asleep, but Sally intended to awaken her soon. Hope and Catherine had gone outside for a walk to pick up some sort of takeout for dinner. In all likelihood they were discussing what had descended upon them. She had been left behind, on guard.