“Polly says you hate her and she wants to leave,” she said.
“I’ll drive her to the airport,” Neal offered.
“Someone tried to kill her, Neal!”
“And almost killed you instead,” Neal answered. “All because she had to get on the phone and blab to her buddy.”
“She trusted her friend,” Karen said. “Is that such a sin?”
“See?” Neal said. “Trust?”
“Neal…”
“As far as I’m concerned,” Neal said, “she can take a hike. She’s not worth it.”
“I dunno,” Karen said. “A deck and a hot tub?”
“We’re going to have to run, you know,” he said. He reached for her and pulled her close. “I almost lost you. I couldn’t take that.”
“I wouldn’t be so thrilled about it, either,” she answered, stroking the back of his head. “How long will we have to run?”
“I don’t know,” Neal answered. “But we need to get going.”
“I’m going with you,” Candy Landis said, stepping into the room.
“Doesn’t anybody in this house knock anymore?” Neal asked. “And no, you’re not coming with us.”
He was throwing things into a duffel bag when Chuck came back from Brogan’s.
“He has a hell of a bruise and a possible fracture of the cheekbone,” Chuck said. “That lady from the store is driving him to Fallon to check it out. They’re going to stop by for the dog.”
I owe Brogan, Neal thought-big-time. Not to mention the dog.
He could feel Chuck staring at him.
“Yeah?” Neal said. He didn’t exactly have warm and fuzzy feelings toward old Chuck.
“I should remove Mrs. Landis from the area,” Chuck said.
“Well, Chuckles, we’re about to remove ourselves from the area,” Neal said. “And Mrs. Landis is going with us.”
“That’s just not an option.”
Neal turned from his packing and stared up at Whiting, who did not seem particularly intimidated.
“You want options, buy a Buick,” Neal told him. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea, either, but the women insist, and I don’t have the time to argue.”
And between me and me, until I can figure out who is on whose side, I don’t mind having a little leverage in the person of Mrs. Jackson Landis.
“Can you protect her?” Chuck asked.
Neal saw the little bones protrude at the base of Chuck’s jaw and wondered if maybe this was a little more than business.
“I don’t know,” Neal answered. “Can you?”
“Of course.”
Neal zipped up the duffel bag and said, “Yeah, you’ve done a pretty good job so far. She was, what, six feet from a gun barrel, would you say?”
The little bones looked as if they were going to pop right through his skin.
“The danger came precisely from her proximity to that… tramp,” Chuck said.
“Agreed. You could have put that on the wreath,” Neal said. “Look, I don’t know what your feelings for Mrs. Landis are, but if you really want to help her, you’ll let her work this out.”
Chuck looked legitimately puzzled.
“Work what out?”
“See, that’s the thing,” Neal said. “You don’t know and I don’t know, so how can either of us help her? The best thing we can do is step away a little bit and let her do what she needs to do.”
And besides all that good stuff, she’s my trump card and I might need her handy.
“I don’t think this is the time for feminist rhetoric,” Chuck said.
“You’re right,” Neal said. “So try this: If Candice was a devious shit like me or you, she would have come here, found out what she needed to know, gone back to hubby, kept her mouth shut, and let him think everything was hunky-dory. And if you weren’t so much in love with her, you wouldn’t have made that call to Jack and blown what might have been a tremendous advantage. But she’s not cold-blooded enough to be a mole in her own bedroom, and you’re so jealous and so angry at Jack that you couldn’t resist showing him the ace in the hole.
“Now Jack gets to calculate his next moves with the knowledge that Candy is no longer an ally, but an adversary-information that I’d have preferred he didn’t have, but never mind-and we’re left groping around in the fog as to his thoughts and intentions.”
And I’m going to omit the happy news that Jack is apparently cheek-to-cheek with a known gangster who has caravans of empty trucks making deliveries to Candyland, because I don’t know if you and Mrs. Landis already know that, and I don’t want you to know that I know.
“I am not in love with Mrs. Landis,” Chuck said.
“Whatever.” Neal shrugged. “But I need your help and so does Mrs. Landis. Are you going to work with me on this, or what?”
Neal finished loading the jeep and walked back into the house. He’d hammered out a deal with Chuck, who left with the storekeeper-Evelyn, Brogan, and Brezhnev, so he was anxious to get moving.
He went back into the living room and said to Karen, “If the Sisterhood is ready to depart…”
“Funny,” she answered. “Funny boy.”
Polly asked, “Can’t I just take my-”
“No,” Neal answered for the fifteenth time. “There’s not a lot of room and we have to travel light.”
“Yeah, but I need-”
“We can buy things,” Neal said.
We have lots of cash, he thought.
Karen drove because she was the better driver and so Neal could concentrate on what was outside. The first few minutes would be the worst. If someone was going to make a try at Polly in the jeep, he’d have to do it before or near the first possible turn, so Neal held his breath until they were headed west on Route 50 and out of town.
Karen turned down the dirt road that led to the Milkovsky place. Jackrabbits and the occasional coyote scampered from the headlights. The moonlight turned the sagebrush silver. Neal usually loved to drive through this country at night, but now the effect was eerie and frightening.
“Where you taking us, the moon?” Polly cracked, then with genuine alarm asked, “Hey, we’re not going camping, are we?
“Keep your head down like I told you to and shut up,” Neal said. Polly seemed to have recovered her spirits, which was a mixed blessing.
Neal had Karen stop at the turnoff to the Milkovskys’. He felt a little edgy about making a stop there, since Withers knew about it and might figure they’d run there.
“How fast can you drive up to the house?” he asked Karen.
There was no point in sneaking in, and he wanted to give anyone inside as little time as possible to get ready.
“Please,” she said. She stood on the gas pedal and the little jeep hurtled, bounced, and leapt toward the house. She hit the brake and the jeep fishtailed to a stop in the gravel driveway.
“Are we there yet?” Polly asked.
“We’re just looking for a place to park,” Karen answered.
“Shut up!” Neal hissed.
“I’ve got to pee,” Polly whined. “Those bumps…”
Neal glared down at her and then listened.
He didn’t hear a sound, which didn’t mean much, but he got out of the jeep anyway and stepped up on the porch of the house. He walked around to the kitchen door and let himself in. The house was dark and quiet.
Neal felt the tingling sensation he always got in his arms when he was going into a dark and potentially hostile room. He wondered whether he was ever going to get over that. Joe Graham’s opinion was that if he ever got over it, he should get out of the business.
I should get out of the business, anyway, Neal thought. If something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen now.
He reached over and flipped the light switch.
Nothing.
Neal opened a drawer under the countertop and found two sets of keys. He used one to open Steve’s gun cabinet. Steve wasn’t big on pistols, but Neal found a. 44 revolver that was bigger than he wanted but would have to do. The pistol in his hand, he walked through the rest of the house and found it empty. He went back out on the porch and hollered, “If you want to use the bathroom, now’s the time to do it!”
While the women were thus engaged, Neal went back to the gun cabinet and selected a lever-action Winchester. 30-30, a twelve-gauge pump, and found the matching ammunition.