“Don’t try and change the subject!”

Then a crash next to Serge as a stool went over. Coleman pulled himself up from the floor. “Yo, Serge. Sorry I’m late…”

“Who’s that boob?” asked the blonde.

Serge put an arm around his buddy’s shoulders. “Coleman, this is a special day! I’d like you to meet a couple of dear old friends, City and Country.”

“What happened to Lenny?” asked Country.

“Still living with his mother. Probably grounded again… Coleman’s the original: Lenny, beta version, initial glitches intact.”

“We’re still going to kill you,” said City, glancing at her boss. “Just not in the bar.”

Tommy saw this could go one of two ways, and he couldn’t afford to lose his best meal tickets. Plus he’d grown fond of Serge. “Let’s make peace.”

He gave them the afternoon off, placed a few calls and tended bar himself until reinforcements arrived.

The foursome grabbed a corner booth, and Tommy set them up with sweating metal ice buckets of Rolling Rock.

Electric tension around the table. The women steamed with crossed arms, cats ready to claw eyes out. Then alcohol began oiling conversation. Two hours in, empty green bottles scattered everywhere. The women switched to Jack Daniel’s.

Coleman awoke and lifted his face off the table. Serge brought him up to speed, making an extremely long story USA Today-short.

City and Country. From the blue-collar side of the usual town-gown friction at any university. Both ingenues back then, which was a decade, sweet as pie before the highway life as fugitives. Bogus murder case. Never should have gone into that student bar. Trash talk about them being trash. The ringleader was a sorority president from a prominent donor family. Then, in the restroom, the coked-out sister fell on the knife she’d been using to cut rails in one of the stalls. Country tried first aid but lost the patient and her future. Only one thing to do when you’re outside the local power structure, uneducated and panicking with blood on your hands and fingerprints on the knife:

Florida road trip!

Before entering that fateful saloon, they barely drank, didn’t smoke, definitely didn’t do drugs and had no legal scrapes of any sort. Since then, shit. Anything went. Anything. A ten-year mountain of petty and not-so-petty crimes. Never caught. Whatever it took to get by. Prison didn’t turn them out any tougher.

With almost anyone else, the lifestyle ushered a downward spiral. In rare cases like City and Country, it sharpened survival skills to a fine, glinting edge and, all things considered, allowed them a half-decent existence in the gray margin of society.

“Some story,” said Coleman.

“Sucks,” said Country, expertly rolling a joint on the table. “Jesus!” Serge glanced around. “Trying to get us pinched?”

“Fuck it.”

“Cool,” said Coleman.

Country lit the number and passed it under the table to City.

She passed it back. “On three…”

They did shots.

The Hawkeyes were turned around on their stools with backs against the bar.

In love.

So was Country; her altered blood chemistry drooped eyelids and formed a coy smile at memories of old times with Serge. She got up, whiskey hips swaying, and, without intention, couldn’t have caused more drooling on her way to the jukebox.

Her right hand braced against the domed glass; her left pressed buttons, mechanically flipping miniature album covers. Flipping stopped.

B-19.

The bar echoed with the slow, immediately recognizable forty-year-old cadence of a cowbell. Charlie Watts joined on drums. A single guitar chord.

Country sauntered to the middle of the floor, giving Serge a bedroom smile and making a naughty “come hither” motion with an index finger.

Serge could dance, but it wasn’t a smooth prospect. He had only one speed: open throttle. Duck-walking, backflips, jumping jacks, sliding across the floor for imaginary home plates. Country told him to just stand still.

“… I met a gin-soaked barroom queen…”

She did all the work. Her back to him, slithering up and down against his chest, running hands through her wild, curling hair.

Over in the corner booth, Coleman raised his eyebrows toward City and nodded toward the dance floor.

“Are you retarded?”

Coleman strained to think.

She hit her joint.

He reached for it.

“No.”

Back on the dance floor, Country continued grinding into Serge, shifting tempo perfectly with the music. The chorus came around again and she flung her head side to side, that blond mane whipping back and forth in front of her face.

“Honnnnnnnnky-tonk women…”

At the bar, six Hawkeyes with outstretched arms pointed cell phone cameras.

Chapter Fifteen

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Snow fluttered.

Big, thick flakes clumped before they hit ground. Accumulation reached three inches on the steps of the Dimond Library. Inside, toasty and empty.

Only four students. Three on the main floor and another in archives.

Andy McKenna sat at a microfilm machine, researching an article for the student paper on plans to attach a full-scale plastic replica of the Old Man of the Mountain at the top of Franconia Notch.

His iPod earphones: “More than a feeling…”

He didn’t hear the door open behind him.

Several pairs of feet moved quietly across the carpet. Andy’s eyes stayed on the screen as he advanced the reel.

Feet moved closer. Fifteen yards, ten, five… the back of Andy’s head growing larger… four, three…

At the last second, Andy caught a reflection in the microfilm’s screen, but it was too late.

A thick forearm wrapped around his neck. Andy grabbed it with his hands, thrashing left and right, earbuds flying, feet kicking the ground.

No use.

A voice from over his shoulder: “Just accept it and this will go a lot easier.”

“Let go of me!”

The arm released.

Laughter. The three amigos: Joey, Doogie and Spooge.

Andy jumped up and grabbed his chest. “That wasn’t funny. You nearly scared me to death!”

More laughing.

“What’s this about?” asked Andy.

“A kidnapping. It’s futile to resist.”

“Leave me alone.” He sat again. “Got work to do.”

A hand reached down to the wall and unplugged the microfilm viewer. Andy’s head fell back with a deep sigh.

“Come on,” said Joey. “We have to get going before the snow’s too deep.”

“Going? I’m not going anywhere.”

Joey was the one with big forearms, thanks to the rowing team. “Guys?”

They snatched Andy under his arms.

“Okay, okay!” He jerked free. “Where are we going? If, that is, I agree.”

“Agreeing’s not part of it,” said Spooge. “Florida,” said Doogie. “Florida? I can’t go to Florida!”

“You don’t have a choice…”

“… Andy, it’s spring break!”

“… It’ll be wicked excellent!”

“Send me a postcard.” Andy reached for the electrical plug. He was blocked. Another sigh. “Besides, you have to go.”

“Why?”

“We used your credit card to reserve the room. You have to show picture ID at check-in.”

“Dang it!”

“Relax, we’ll pay it all back. You were the only one with a card, at least not over the limit.”

“This already sounds like a disaster.”

“We’re looking out for you. All this work isn’t healthy.”

“I can’t just leave. I’ve got too much to do.”

“That’s why this is a kidnapping. We knew you’d never come on your own.”

“But I’ll have to pack. It’ll make you late.”

A smiling face. Joey raised a gym bag and backpack. “All taken care of.”

“You broke into my room?”

“You’ll thank us someday.”

“But I don’t have my cell phone.”

“It’s spring break.”