There was one way to find out.
“He’s just sittin’ there, Red.”
“I can see that, doofus. What do you want me to do? Get out and knock on his window? Ask him where the body is?”
“Hell, I was just sayin’….”
A car pulled up behind Red’s truck. “Shit, we got company,” Red yelped.
Billy Don craned his head around. “It’s that sedan from outside the Mamelis’.”
Red peered into his mirrors and saw nothing but headlights. “Can you see who’s in it? Is it Mameli?”
Billy Don twisted around in his seat. “Naw, it’s just some fat guy in a suitcoat. He’s-”
The Camaro gunned it and laid rubber out onto the highway, fishtailing left, then gaining traction and zooming off into the darkness.
Well, shit. Red’s well-planned surveillance operation had obviously come to an end. Time to get serious. He popped the clutch, the truck’s big engine gulping gasoline, and took off after the Camaro.
Smedley watched the two vehicles scream away and tried to steady himself. Who were those men in the truck? They might be Vinnie’s friends, and they were all just heading out for a little late-night carousing. Could be as simple as that. But something nagged at him. The kind of friends Vinnie had wouldn’t be driving a truck like that. He had another idea that spooked him, something almost unthinkable.
It was a long shot, but could those two guys be button men for the mob, trying to pass as locals? After all, a couple of hitters would stand out-well, as much as Sal did-if they arrived driving a Lincoln, wearing double-breasted suits.
They might have come to whack Sal, saw Smedley’s car on the road, and decided to follow Vinnie instead. If they could manage to abduct Vinnie, Sal would do anything they asked, including having a sudden memory loss at the next trial.
Smedley gulped. It could all be happening right under his nose. Todd the Asshole would never let him live it down. Smedley could almost see his supervisor’s report now: “The suspects initiated their operation while Agent Poindexter was having intercourse with the Mamelis’ Guatemalan housekeeper.”
Smedley stomped the accelerator-and the sedan lurched to a stall.
Creeping up to 110 miles per hour now, Highway 281 as straight as a ribbon in front of him, Vinnie was leaving the truck in his dust. And he couldn’t even see Smedley’s headlights behind the truck. Yeah, like either of those assholes ever had a chance against his Camaro. Another mile or two and he’d be long gone. The rednecks had surprised Vinnie by chasing after him, but the teenagers living out in the boondocks liked to get out on the roads and raise hell on weekends. Nothing else to do around this fucking county.
Two minutes later, Vinnie smiled as the truck’s headlights faded from his mirror. A couple miles farther ahead he’d take a right on Miller Creek Loop, a narrow, curvy blacktop that wound north, back to Johnson City.
Red was pretty sure if he pushed his old truck any harder it might just come apart around him. It had been years since he had taken it up to a hundred miles per hour, and the thirty-year old vehicle groaned in disapproval. Up ahead, the taillights of the Camaro were becoming two faint specks on the horizon. Red slapped the steering wheel in frustration, then eased up on the gas, dropping his speed to ninety.
He was feeling miserable. His first full day as a vice president, and already he was a failure. God, what a screwup.
Then it struck him. At first, it was merely a germ of a thought. Then, unlike many of his other thoughts, it sprouted into a full-blown idea. Hot damn, he had it all figured out!
A bodyguard! The guy in the sedan was Sal Mameli’s bodyguard!
And when you’re a thug like Mameli, who would be more likely to take care of simple tasks for you-things like disposing of a corpse-than your hired muscle?
“We got the wrong guy,” Red muttered.
“We what?” Billy Don wailed, his arms still braced on the dashboard.
“We got the wrong guy!”
Smedley figured it was a lost cause. He had the gas pedal floored, but the sedan barely reached eighty-five. He crested a small rise and could now see a mile of highway before him. Nothing. Not another vehicle in sight.
But he pushed on anyway. The men in the truck-if they were wiseguys-might have Vinnie pulled over a few miles up the road. There might still be time for Smedley to catch them before they abducted Vinnie and took off again.
He covered the mile ahead and came to another small crest. He topped it-and what he saw next sent a thunderbolt of fear through his colon.
There, maybe forty yards ahead of him, was the red truck. It was parked broadside in the middle of the highway, a huge, steel, Detroit-made roadblock. It all happened so quickly, Smedley barely had time to react. He slammed on the brakes with both feet. From the corner of his eye he saw two shadowy figures standing on the median, waiting.
The men from the truck. They had outsmarted him.
Maybe that’s why they called them wiseguys.
Smedley closed his eyes and waited for the impact.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Inga lay in bed and watched the digital clock on the nightstand. She was certain more than sixty seconds had passed, yet the clock still read 2:59. It was kind of stuffy in her hotel room. She considered turning on the air conditioner to help her sleep. Finally, anticlimactically, the clock flipped to 3:00.
She was worried about Tommy. Somewhere out in the darkness, he was roaming the Texas Hill Country in handcuffs. Poor little guy probably hadn’t had a meal since before the town assembly on Thursday evening. Now it was almost dawn on Saturday.
And there were coyotes in this part of the country, right? She was pretty sure there were, because-my god-they even had them in New York City now. She could almost picture Tommy unconscious at the bottom of a ravine, curious coyotes nearby sniffing the air, drawing closer and closer.
She had a thought that made her smile: If one of the coyotes bit Tommy, he’d probably bite it right back. Send it yelping into the night with its tail between its legs.
Tommy, for all his faults, had a fierce determination about him. He was unwaveringly committed to what he thought was right. Yes, part of his motivation was his love for Inga, she knew that much. Inga felt certain, though, that he’d still be pursuing the same causes even if she weren’t by his side.
The truth was, he was a good man.
That’s why she felt guilty that her mind kept wandering away from Tommy and his predicament. For a few moments, she would lie in the dark, trying to focus on Tommy-and whether or not he might fit into her long-term plans for life. But then her mind would slip off in another direction and she would find herself thinking about the game warden, John Marlin.
She found herself wanting to be in his company, to have deep meaningful conversations well into the night. And yes, she found herself wanting him on the most basic level. It wasn’t because of his looks: Sure, he was handsome, but not in a leading-man kind of way. It was something beyond that. Maybe it was his sense of confidence, or the honest, straightforward way he dealt with the world around him.
Really, who knew what caused one person to be attracted to another? If someone had said, Inga, you’re going to meet a game warden in Texas and want to rip his clothes off, then make him dinner afterwards, she would have laughed. Inga Mueller dating a law enforcement officer from Texas? Wanting to feel his big, strong arms around her, making her feel safe and loved and adored? Sounded like some corny movie. The kind that sets the women’s movement back with every showing. Gag.
She decided to take her mind off things by watching TV. As she reached for the remote control, she heard a noise outside her room. Kind of a scratching, like tree limbs across a window. Not the window by the front door, but from the window in the adjacent wall.