“If that guy I shot wakes up, she may find out soon enough that I’m on the way to Stowe,” I said. “If she pressures you, tell her I’m still in the Beetle. At least then they won’t be looking for this car.”

Susanne nodded. She said, “I can’t let you go alone.”

“Suze, you can’t come.”

“Then you have to take Bob.”

Bob had just shown up with the two guns. He was holding them like they were made of plutonium. “What?” he said.

“You’re going with Tim.”

“Oh no, no, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Just this once, I gotta agree with Bob,” I said.

“If you don’t go,” she told him, balancing on her cane, “I will.”

He stood there a moment saying nothing. Then, guns still in hand, he gave Susanne an awkward hug and walked around to the passenger door of the Mustang, opened it, and got in.

“Let’s go,” he said, gently putting the guns on the floor mat in front of him.

FORTY-TWO

BY THE TIME WE’D GASSED UP and got onto I-95, it was around 10:30 p.m. Once I’d merged the Mustang onto the highway, I put my foot down. The needle on the speedometer climbed until I had the Ford up to ninety. I could feel the car floating a bit, but I was confident it was a speed I could maintain, and decided to hold it there for the time being.

“We don’t even know where we’re going,” Bob said. “I mean, once we actually get to Stowe. I was there once, years ago, with my first wife, Evan’s mother, and the place is lousy with resorts and all these places tucked up into the mountains.”

“I doubt Sydney’s staying at a resort,” I said.

“Maybe she got a job at one,” Bob said. “A lot of those places, they’d pay a kid like Sydney cash under the table. She wouldn’t have to give her real name or anything, which, considering she’s a kid on the run, would kind of be appealing to her.”

What he said made some sense.

He continued, “I think one of Evan’s friends had a summer job up there once. Stowe does a pretty big winter business, the skiing and all, but it’s pretty nice in the summer, too.”

While I was thinking about what Bob had to say, I was also trying to concentrate on the road. When you’re doing ninety-and nudging up above that-you need to pay attention to what you’re doing. Especially at night.

As if reading my mind, Bob said, “You know, if a deer or something runs out in front of us at this speed, we’re fucked.”

“I’d rather take my chances in this than that Beetle,” I said.

“Still, we hit a deer, the goddamn thing’ll come right through the windshield.”

I glanced over. “If you want, Bob, I can drop you off at the next service center.”

“I’m just saying, you’re not going to be much help to Sydney if you’ve got an antler through your brain.”

He leaned forward in the dark and picked up one of the two guns I’d brought along for the ride.

“Be careful with those, Bob,” I cautioned.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not an idiot.” He was peering closely at the gun in the darkness. What light there was came from the glow of the instrumentation. “Can I turn on the light for a second?” he asked.

“No,” I said. I didn’t want an interior light interfering with my night vision, such as it was.

“You know what I think this is? This and the other one? I think these are Rugers.”

“I don’t know anything about guns,” I said.

“Well, I know a little. These are impressive pistols. I think they hold a ten-round magazine.”

“Huh?” I said.

“Ten bullets,” he said. “The clip holds ten bullets. The gun can hold eleven if there’s already one in the pipe. Semi-automatic,.22-caliber. These guys who were gunning for you had nice taste in weapons.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You know whether these are fully loaded?”

“Considering that they were shooting at me with them, I’d have to say no,” I said. “The one guy, Gary, I think he fired the most shots, so the gun that he was using, there might not be any rounds left in it at all. The other one, that was the one Carter was using. He got off a couple of shots into the ceiling of the van, but I think that was about it. Then I fired…” I had to think back. “I think I fired three shots with it.”

“So these guns might be empty,” Bob said.

“Yes, Bob, those guns might be empty.”

He powered down his window, suddenly putting us in the eye of a mini-hurricane. Gripping one of the guns, he rested his arm on the door and fired off into the night.

“What the fuck!” I shouted. “Don’t do that!”

He brought his arm in and powered the window back up. “That one still has some ammo in it,” he said.

“It did!” I shouted. “What if that was the last bullet?”

“Well, if it was,” he said, “you really couldn’t have hoped to accomplish much anyway with just one bullet.”

I was ready to get out my phone and tell Susanne to come pick up her boyfriend along the side of I-91 about twenty miles north of New Haven, but restrained myself.

“I think I can figure out how to remove the magazine to check,” Bob said.

“Jesus Christ, Bob,” I said. “Please don’t end up killing us here in the car.”

I had my eyes on the road but was pretty sure he gave me a look. “I know what I’m doing,” he said. “You just press this little button here and the clip falls out. There, see?”

He displayed the candy bar-shaped magazine for me. “It’s got like a little slit in the side here so you can see how many bullets you have left. You gotta turn on the light for just a second, okay?”

Reluctantly, I reached up and flicked on the interior light. If Bob was going to inspect the guns, I supposed it made sense that he be able to see what he was doing, for both our sakes.

“Okay, hang on,” he said, pulling the magazine out of one gun and examining it. “There’s one bullet left in this one. And let’s have a look at this other one here. Hang on, okay, there’s three in this one. So we’ve got four bullets between us.”

“Great,” I said.

“How many bad guys you figure we’re going to be running into?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, if there’s more than four, we’ll ask them to stand in front of each other.”

That nearly made me smile. “How come you’re so laid back about this?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Come on,” he said. “What are the odds that we’re really going to run into a bunch of badass gunslingers?”

Maybe, if Bob had had the kind of evening I’d had, he wouldn’t have asked a question like that.

MY CELL RANG.

I held on to the wheel with one hand, fumbled the phone to my ear with the other.

“It’s me,” Susanne said. “Thought I’d check in.”

“Bob’s shooting at trees, but other than that, we’re fine.”

“I went online. Getting to Stowe’s pretty simple. You just stay on 91 for a dog’s age. Then, when you’re well into Vermont, when you get to 89, you take that northwest, follow signs to Montpelier. You go past Montpelier a few miles, look for the Waterbury exit, go north, Stowe’s just up there. Do you need me to go over that again?”

“No,” I said. “Thanks.”

“The computer says it’s more than four hours to drive there.”

“I think we can cut an hour off that,” I said. “So long as we don’t get stopped by the cops.”

“Speaking of which,” Susanne said, “Detective Jennings called again.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“She sounds pissed.”

“There’s a shocker.”

“She’s tearing apart Milford trying to find you. I think she’ll be calling your cell next.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her what went down at the dealership. But not where you’re going.”

“She didn’t like that.”

“No. Like Bob predicted, she accused me of aiding a fugitive.”

“Did she say whether the guy I shot was dead?”

“She didn’t get into it with me,” Susanne said. “But she did say someone was taken to Milford Hospital.”