“ Her story is pretty unbelievable and better left untold,” Black said. “Safer for her.”
“ I’m not the kind of girl who tells.” She took a bite of her burger, small compared to his, but big for her. She was hungry. After a few seconds of silence, she said, “I’ve got a pretty unbelievable story of my own to tell.” She smiled. “How about if I tell you mine, you at least tell me if Katie Sullivan is doing alright, if she killed Ronny Stark.”
“ Your story have anything to do with a helicopter that recently crashed into my truck?”
“ Yes it does.”
“ Then you tell me your story and I’ll see after if I can trust you with Katie’s secret.”
“ Fair enough.” And she told him everything. She told him about her rotten childhood, about her stepfather and how she’d just killed her mother and her latest husband. She told him about the Waynes, Tucker and Mansfield. She told him how Mansfield had rescued her, then turned her into his private killer. She told him about Izzy Eisenhower and how she was all of a sudden young again. She told him about the dead back in Reno. She told him how she was supposed to get five million dollars for delivering Izzy alive to Mansfield Wayne. She told him how she thought Wayne had double crossed her. How she thought he’d called in his government pals, that that’s who she thought was up in that helicopter, government spy types who were off the books, or on them, she didn’t know for sure. She told him too much, more than she’d ever told anybody about herself. Something was happening to her and she wasn’t exactly sure what it was.
“ Real Coast to Coast AM kind of stuff,” Black said.
“ Yeah, weirdness to the extreme.”
“ Any of it true?”
“ Every last word.”
“ You want to know something funny?”
“ Yeah?”
“ I believe you.”
“ Really? Why?”
“ I had a radio in that truck. I know the official version about what’s going on in Reno. You story kinda jibs with that.”
“ But that’s not why you believe me, is it?”
“ No, it’s not. I believe you because I do. You don’t look like a liar to me. Besides, only an idiot would sit here and spin a yarn like that if it weren’t true and you don’t seem like an idiot. Then there’s that helicopter.”
“ So are you going to tell me about Katie?”
“ Do you know where Dr. Eisenhower is now?”
“ She’s in Medford.”
“ You know where?”
“ I got a GPS on my car, which was, the last time I checked, parked at the Marriott Suites.”
“ You remember the black SUV that was in front of us when you turned off the freeway.”
“ Shit, it had government plates.”
“ There were a couple more just like it in front of it. Three of ’em.”
“ Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She tossed the rest of her burger, her coke and fries out the window, fired up the car as Black tossed his food away, too.
Chapter Fourteen
Izzy figured she had fifteen or twenty minutes before the pizza arrived. Time enough for a quick shower. She raised an arm, sniffed under it. “Holy crap!” She picked up the green pool towels, started for the bathroom, but stopped before entering.
“ What the-” the words caught in her throat when she saw her reflection in the mirror above the washbasin. Her hair, the lovely, long trestles she’d cut off, it was back in all his auburn glory. “How?” It made no sense. She’d hacked it off, made herself look like a meth queen and now, as if by magic, she looked like a prom queen. What was up with that? Was she going crazy? It wasn’t possible.
But then again, a lot of not possible stuff had been happening to her.
“ Shake it off, Izzy,” she told herself.
In the bathroom, she pulled off her clothes, turned on the water, set it for as hot as she could stand it and stepped under the spray. She pulled the shower curtain and sighed, thinking of the line Mary Magdalene sings to Jesus in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar:
Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to
Problems that upset you oh don’t you know
Everything’s alright yes everythin’s fine
And we want you to sleep well tonight
Let the world turn without you tonight
If we try we’ll get by so forget all about us tonight
She so wanted to forget about everything that had happened to her. Earlier she’d hoped she could drink a bottle of wine, rest for the evening, really forget about everything. But now she knew she wouldn’t be getting her peaceful night. However, she wanted a few minutes at least. She wasn’t Christ, but she thought even he would be struggling under the weight of her problems.
She felt the hot water needles against her back. She closed her eyes, hummed the lyrics to Mary’s song. How she’d loved that record when it came out, oh so long ago. She’d been in med school, with her whole life ahead of her.
And it looked as if she had her whole life ahead of her all over again. How crazy was that?
“ Stop it!” she told herself, but she couldn’t help it, her mind wasn’t going to let her have even a few minutes of peace. Something crazy was going on and she was at the very heart of it.
She leaned back into the spray, let the hot water cascade over her hair. She ran her fingers through it. Having hair again was wonderful. Being better was wonderful. Being young again was wonderful. But having her hair back, Lord that was great.
“ Oh, my God!” She gasped. No wonder Emily had that look on her face. It had been meth queen Izzy who’d checked into the Marriott, but it had been the prom queen version of herself Emily had seen just now. She’d been transformed during her nap, back into the lady killer on all the news channels.
Had Emily recognized her as the woman wanted for murder? And if she had, did she know that the meth and prom queen were the same person? Maybe not, but maybe so.
She shut off the water, grabbed a towel, dried off as she left the bathroom.
“ We gotta go, Hunter. We gotta go now!”
Lila took the first Medford off-ramp, followed it around toward the City Center, but made a right into the Marriott Suites parking lot.
“ There’s my car.” She pointed to her Crown Vic, was about to park next to it, when she saw three black Suburbans. Government SUVs. One man was standing guard by the government cars, but her Crown Vic, parked four spaces away from the Suburbans, was unguarded.
“ Doesn’t look like they know about the car,” Black said.
“ Yeah.” Lila wondered what she was still doing with this Black character. She should’ve dumped him the second she found out he was okay, but she didn’t. He’d proven his worth with that helicopter, maybe he would again. She hoped so, because it looked like she was going to need all the help she could get.
“ You wanna save the woman or you wanna walk away?” Black said.
“ What do you think?”
“ Then get out of the car and start running.”
“ What?”
“ Head for the roller rink on the other side of that field there.” He pointed. “Once you pass the rink, cut right to the Fred Meyer store on the far side of the parking lot. In the store, lose the coat, then go to the deli and order something to eat. Don’t be in a hurry. Act like you don’t have a care in the world.”
“ You’re going to set them after me, aren’t you?”
“ Don’t get caught.”
“ Shit.” She got of the car, took off at a dead run.
“ It’s her!” Black shouted. “The killer woman. The Eisenhower woman!”
“ What?” the man watching the black SUVs said as Lila streaked past. She looked over her shoulder. Black had his arm outstretched, his finger pointed at her as she ran. The government man was shouting into a radio no bigger than a cell phone. She had to give it to Black, that old man thought fast on his feet.
She turned away from the scene behind, faced forward, pumped her arms locomotive quick, using them to force her legs to move faster, because any second there was going to be a passel of FBI agents in her wake. Fortunately, she was a runner. And double fortunately, they wanted Izzy Eisenhower alive, so they wouldn’t be shooting at her. At least she hoped not.