“ If I use my card my husband will find me. If he does that, he’ll kill me. I can’t leave the dog in the car and I’ve been on the road for twenty-four straight. I can pay cash, the dog’s well trained, quiet and doesn’t have fleas. Nobody will even know he’s here.”
“ I could lose my job.” The smile was a frown now.
“ I’ll give you five hundred dollars.” She sighed and paused for effect. “I’ll sneak the dog in, he won’t leave the room and we’ll be gone before sunup.”
“ I can’t take your money.” She opened a drawer, took out a key card. “The last room down the hall, 113, on the left. It’s been booked for two weeks, starting this morning, but the woman called and said she can’t make it till tomorrow. She comes up from Sacramento a couple times a year to visit her granddaughter, who stays with her. They stay here for the indoor pool; the kid’s a swimmer.” Her smile was back. “If you park by the back, wait till no one’s looking, you know, be sneaky about it, you can get the dog in without anybody seeing.”
“ I can pay you.” Relief flooded over Izzy.
“ No, it’s on me. Well, on the hotel actually. But since we have to hold the room anyway, they won’t be out any money. But you gotta be out before sunup, because it’ll be my ass if anyone sees the dog. Also, Mrs. Leahy will get here around 7:30 or 8:00 and I won’t be here and since the room’s clean, there won’t be any maid service. So if you need a shower, you’ll have to use the green towels from the pool and you’ll have to wipe down the bathroom and can you sleep on top of the covers-”
“ Whoa, Emily, you’re going a mile a minute. I get it, I’ll leave the room the way I find it. Mrs. Leahy will never know I was there. Neither will anybody else. Thanks a bunch, you’re a lifesaver.”
“ It’s because I know what you’re going through. I was in an abusive relationship, too. I was lucky to get out.”
“ But you’re so young.”
“ Not any older than you.”
Izzy started to disagree, then it struck her that she wasn’t seventy-seven anymore, so she said, “Yeah, I guess I just feel old. It’s been hard.”
“ I hear that.” She handed over the key card. “Good luck and keep Bowser out of sight.” Then, “You can drive round to the side. The key will unlock the door. It’ll be the first room on your left.”
“ Got it, thanks.” Izzy went to the car, drove around to the side, parked, waited till the coast was clear. Then, with Hunter at her heels, she made for her room and once safely inside, she found some paper plates inside the microwave. She opened a couple cans of hash and fed Hunter. While the dog was eating, she pulled the forty-five from her purse, set it on the nightstand, just in case, then she dropped on the mattress and was quickly asleep.
Stunned, Lila stared at the girl, who should’ve been screaming, but wasn’t. She got out of the bed, covering herself with a pillow, but never taking her eyes off the gun in Lila’s left hand.
“ You don’t have to kill me,” the girl soothed. “I’m a professional. I know how to keep my mouth shut. You can put the gun away. I won’t say a thing. I didn’t see anything.”
“ I’m not a child,” Lila said, “and I’m not crazy. So change your tone of voice. I’m a professional, too.”
“ So, you’re not going to shoot me?”
“ Of course not, though I should.” She shook her head. Of course, she should shoot the little vixen, but she couldn’t. What was happening to her? First she lets the Eisenhower woman skate, then she warms up to old Harvey and now this.
“ Is it okay if I get dressed?”
“ Yeah.”
Lila watched as the girl shimmied into her panties, pulled on a tee shirt, stepped into a pair of faded jeans.
“ Shoes are in the living room.”
“ Okay.” Lila backed out of the bedroom, smelled sex on the girl as she passed, smelled fear, too. “I said I wasn’t going to shoot you. I meant it.”
“ Good.” The girl went for the sofa, sat, picked up and put on a pair of tennis shoes. “So now what?”
“ I’m going to get on down the road, before the neighbors call the police.”
“ I got no way outta here. He picked me up. Can you drop me?”
“ No.”
“ It’d be cool if you could.”
“ Fuck. Get your shit and let’s go.”
“ Got no shit. I’m ready.”
“ After you.” Lila held the door.
“ Cool car,” the girl said.
“ Yeah.”
“ Surprised nobody’s out. You’d think with the noise your gun made, someone woulda noticed.”
“ Nothing surprises me anymore.” Lila started the car. “Maybe they’re all at work. Maybe they thought it was a car backfiring or maybe they knew it was gunshots and they just don’t give a shit.” Lila gave a quick look to the neighbors, both sides and across the street and saw no curtains pulled aside. If somebody was looking, they were being careful. Still, it was time to change the plates on the Jag, maybe even get rid of the car.
“ I vote for they don’t give a shit,” the girl said.
Five minutes later Lila dropped her at the McDonald’s at the east end of town. Then she was off again, heading west to Medford, Oregon and Izzy Eisenhower, but only a couple miles outside of town, right after she made the right turn onto Highway 49, she knew she wasn’t going to make it. She would need all of her wits when she met up with Eisenhower. Right now she was afraid of falling asleep at the wheel. She saw a sign for a rest stop twenty-two miles up the road.
She could go that far, but not much further. At the rest area, she parked in the farthest spot from the restrooms, put up the top, closed her eyes and went straight to sleep.
The sun was straight up when she woke. The clock said 12:30. She started the car, put the top down. It was a gorgeous day. The sky was cloudless. It was unseasonably warm for November. The road had just been repaved. There was no traffic. It was as if she were alone in the world. The snow on the side of the road, combined with the tall pines and the sun filtering through them, made her feel like she was in a magical place.
She pushed the Jag up to sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five, decided to hold it at eighty. She’d be in Medford in time for dinner, then she’d find Eisenhower.
She turned on the radio, wondered if she’d find a rock station. She found the news instead, learned about a lot of dead people back in Reno.
Mansfield had called on his government friends, the black ops kind. There was no other explanation. He was pulling out all the stops. If Lila didn’t find Eisenhower before the end of the day, they would and she’d be out her five million. That bastard.
A shadow moved over her. She looked up, saw a helicopter flying low. It was only a momentary distraction, but it was enough, eyes back on the road she saw the deer, saw it an instant too late. She clutched, slammed the stick into second, popped her foot off the clutch, hit the brakes as she turned radically to the left, hoping to spin the car around and maybe hit the animal a glancing blow in the process or maybe not hit it at all.
Had she started a fraction of a second sooner, she might have been able to keep control of the car.
“ Oh fuck,” she muttered, car going sideways heading for the deer, which seemed too stunned to move. Then, just before impact, the animal leapt out of the way. Still spinning the wheel, she heard the horns. A semi was bearing down on her, coming from the west.
The roaring truck beast filled her sight. She saw the driver, black as night, a determined look in his dark eyes. He was fighting the behemoth he was driving, but the metal monster’s wheels screeched in protest against the man trying to tame it.
Still spinning the wheel, she hit the accelerator, hearing her own wheels screech, smelling the burning rubber, the truck’s and her own, as she spun through her one eighty, with the truck so close the sound of it’s engine drowning out the world. Foot still on the accelerator, the wheels found purchase and the car shot away from the braking semi like a scalded race horse, flying back the way she’d come.