Jane saw it and laughed. “I’ll probably get demoted for this if we don’t find anything, you know that, right? If I’m lucky. Worst-case scenario, I’ll end up back in uniform, fetching coffee and checking for hookers at truck stops.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with working for a living, kid.”
“Yeah, but I really, really like coming to work in a suit.”
“Thank you,” Hank said, putting as much meaning as he could muster into those two very simple words.
“When this is over, let’s get together for some drinks again, huh? Maybe dinner too, this time. Your liver could use a break. Plus, Andy misses you.”
“That sounds good, kid. That sounds really good.”
“I’ll call you back when I get the chance, or if I have anything. Can I call you on this number?”
He checked with Lucy, and the girl nodded.
“Apparently, yes,” he said.
“Who is that with you?” Jane asked. “Does he have a name?”
“Later,” Hank said. “Go get ’em, kid. You can do this. I have faith in you.”
Jane sighed. “I hope you’re right, for all our sakes. I’ll see you around, old timer.”
The screen flicked to black, and it was just his big, old face staring back at him, except this time on the entire screen.
Hank handed the tablet back to Lucy. “She’ll do what she can, and if anyone can get it done, it’s Jane.”
“Do you trust her?” Lucy asked.
“With my life.”
Lucy nodded. “Who’s Andy?”
“Her daughter. Ten years old. You two could be friends.”
The girl made a face. “I’m sixteen. Do you really see me hanging out with a ten-year-old?”
“You could do worse.” He picked up the now-warm can of Coke from the nightstand and took a sip. “What now?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “I guess we wait for Allie to contact us.”
“Can you get in touch with her?”
Lucy shook her head. “We decided it would be too dangerous to keep an open channel between us. Allie’s trained me a lot over the last year, but I’ll never be as ready for any of this the way she was her first time.”
“Can you at least tell me what kind of training Allie had?”
“Let’s just say she can take care of herself.”
“You do realize that I know more people at the state police than just Jane? That I could ask any one of them to look into you and your friend?”
Lucy grinned at him.
“What?” Hank said, slightly annoyed.
“Nothing,” Lucy said. The girl stood up from the bed, said, “Come on, boy,” and walked to the door, with Apollo trotting anxiously alongside her.
“Where are you guys going?” Hank asked after them.
“Outside. Apollo’s been cooped up in here all day. I need to get him some exercise.”
“It’s dark out there, kid.”
“I’m not afraid of the dark, lieutenant.”
“Maybe you should be.”
The girl opened the door, then looked back and gave him another one of those grins that told him she knew something he didn’t before she turned around and slipped outside, the dog already a rocket of white fur under the parking lot lights.
“Weird kid,” Hank said to the empty room.
Nine
“Babysitting never used to be this hard,” Dwight said. “You know how many hiccups we’ve had since we started this gig?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” Allie asked.
“One. A big ol’ once-o. You wanna guess when that was?”
She didn’t bother replying this time and instead unzipped her jacket halfway down to let the cool air in. It felt good to be outside again, maybe because she had spent too much of the day locked inside a car with two men she wanted to kill so badly.
“Tonight,” Dwight said, and smiled at her, though there was little charm in it. “I told him we should have gone with someone else — maybe even skip the mother hen this time — but he insisted Juliet’s recommendation could be trusted. It’s a weakness of his; Reese can sometimes be too loyal for his own good.”
“And here I thought loyalty was a good thing.”
“Not in this business, Alice in Wonderland. In this business, loyalty gets you screwed in the front and back.”
“Sounds painful.”
“It is, believe me.”
“Are we talking from personal experience here?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“What exactly have I done that makes you think I shouldn’t be trusted, Dwight?”
“Besides the fact I’ve never seen or heard of you until you slipped into our car?”
“Besides that.”
He shrugged. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
“Are you worried I’m going to try to take Reese from you?”
“I don’t fuck the guy, I just work with him.”
“Hey, what the two of you do between the sheets is your business.”
He grunted but otherwise didn’t take her bait.
She kept her eyes fixed forward, even though it was difficult to ignore his presence leaning against the side of the car next to her. There were just the two of them at the moment, and she ran the odds through her head for the fifth time in as many minutes: If she went for the holstered gun behind her back right now, could he react in time? At this range, it would take a miracle to miss Dwight’s big head.
Bright headlights washed over her as another semitrailer pulled into the truck stop and went in search of an empty spot among the well-lit gas pumps. They were far enough from the bright lights at the center of the wide-open parking lot that they could have passed for Peeping Toms watching the rest of the world go about their business.
It wasn’t hard to pick out Reese as he emerged from the main store next to the pumps. He was the only tall man in a black suit and black tie, and he stood out among the truckers in jeans and weary travelers stopping for some gas and food. He dodged the fleet of parked vehicles and jogged his way back to them, slipping in and out of the bright pools of light. New cars were entering the lot, while others left, every other minute.
The black and red semi, with Sara and the others inside, was parked thirty yards to her right, nestled among truckers who had decided to shut down for the night. The vehicle and its contents were so close and yet so far away.
You should have saved them back at the drive-in movie. You blew your best chance.
Maybe she had, and maybe she didn’t. She was only sure of one thing at the moment: She was still alive, and so were Sara and the other girls, and her chances of locating Faith remained in play. It was still a long shot — when had it been anything but? — but a long shot was better than no shot at all.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
Reese finally reached them, swinging a plastic bag in one hand. He was breathing noticeably hard from the long jog across the parking lot.
“Listen to you, all out of breath,” Dwight said.
“We should have parked closer,” Reese said.
“No, you just need to work out more.”
“That too.”
Reese dug out a wrapped sandwich and bottle of water and handed them to Allie. He took out another sandwich and bottle for himself before surrendering the rest of the bag to Dwight, who put it on the hood and fished out a large can of Red Bull.
She took one bite from her sandwich, decided she liked the chicken salad, and took another one. She was swallowing when a station wagon entered the lot, and as it drove past her, Allie saw a bored teenage girl in the back staring out at her, and suddenly the sandwich didn’t taste nearly as good anymore. She forced the piece she’d already bitten off down anyway, but she might as well be swallowing rocks.