Maybe it wasn’t luck, after all, now that he thought about it. Maybe it was the only way she could have stopped him without killing him. He remembered the argument she’d had with the other two, including the Brit, the one Hank was sure was the leader of the pack.
“What does that mean?” the girl asked. “You didn’t give her any choice?”
“I had a gun, and there were two of them.”
“Are you saying she saved your life?”
“I guess that’s one way to put it. Though I can’t figure out why she would put your phone number in my pocket.”
Apparently he wasn’t the only person trying to figure that one out. The girl cocked her head slightly to the side, her eyes glued on him.
“What are you, some kind of cop?” she asked. Then, before he could answer, “Or ex-cop?”
“How’d you know?”
“Well, you’re old.”
Hank grunted. He was liking this kid more and more. If nothing else, he’d never have to tread lightly around her or worry she was bullshitting him. His Diane was like that; it was one of the (Many, so many) reasons why he missed her so damn much.
“Yeah, I was a statey for a while,” he said.
“Statey?”
“State police, kid.”
“Oh.” She walked back to the nightstand and opened the drawer and pulled out some kind of tablet, using her thumb to turn it on. “What’s your full name?”
“Hank Pritchard.”
“Hank, like Hank Hill?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“He’s a famous dad. Sold propane for a living.”
“Yeah, I guess. Like Hank Hill.”
She sat down on the side of the bed, put the tablet in her lap, and typed on it with one hand, using all five fingers. Hank didn’t know how the hell she did that while keeping the gun in her right hand, but then he’d always been a two-fingered typist. It was one of the curses of not owning a computer, a tablet, or a cell phone, though back when he was in the department he did have a ten-year-old desktop—
“You were a lieutenant,” the girl said, looking back up at him. Hank glimpsed his picture (or, at least, an old version of him) in uniform on her tablet’s screen. “Retired six years ago. Why?”
“I got old,” he said. “Is that my state police file?”
“Yes,” she said, and put the tablet down, slipping the Glock into her jacket pocket.
She had put the gun away so quickly, without any preamble whatsoever, that it actually took him a few seconds to realize he was no longer in danger of being shot, accidentally or otherwise. Of course, there was still the dog behind him…
“I’m sorry about the gun and everything,” the girl said, “but I had to be careful.”
“What’s going on here, kid? You wanna tell me who you are, what you’re doing here, and more importantly, why some woman I’ve never met slipped your number into my pocket while she was holding up a diner?”
“My guess is Allie recognized your face,” Lucy said. She looked down at his picture again. “You still look like your file. Well, mostly. Allie’s really good at collating information. It’s like some kind of superpower that she has. Before we came here, she did extensive research on everything, including local and state law enforcement in the area. I bet she recognized you right away.”
“So my next question is, who is Allie?”
“I guess you could say she’s my unofficial guardian.” She nodded at the dog behind Hank. “Apollo belongs to her. He’s been in a real funk since she left.”
Hank glanced back at the dog a second time and was surprised to see that it was almost right behind him. Jesus, damn! How’d the beast get so close to him without him even noticing?
He shook his head (Damn dog’s going to give me a heart attack) and looked back at Lucy. “So you wanna fill me in? What are you and your, uh, unofficial guardian doing out here? And why are you in this motel room while she’s running around in my state, robbing diners?”
Lucy didn’t answer right away but continued to stare at him, as if she could figure him out if she looked long and hard enough. Hank wanted to tell her he wasn’t that complicated, but he gave the kid her time.
Or ten seconds, anyway.
Finally, he said, “Kid, you gotta give me some answers. I took a big chance coming here and not handing that phone number over to the stateys. What the hell is going on?”
“She’s looking for a girl name Faith,” Lucy said. “Everything she’s doing out there right now is to find her.”
Five
Do it. Take them both out now, then rescue the girls. Faith might not even be there, but these girls are here, now. Sara, the others, they need your help. They need your help now. You know this is the right thing to do. So do it already.
But she didn’t do it.
She couldn’t, no matter how much she wanted to. Besides the fact that she had promised a mother she would do everything in her power to find her daughter, dead or alive, the logistics were all wrong.
At the moment she had the advantage, sitting in the backseat of the Ford with Dwight and Reese vulnerable in front of her. It wouldn’t have taken very much to draw the Sig Sauer and shoot Reese in the back of the head, then force Dwight at gunpoint off the road before finishing him off. But then what about the semitrailer?
The big rig was trailing about a hundred yards behind them at the moment. There was another vehicle, a van, farther back down the road, keeping an eye on the semi’s rear. It too was leaving a generous space to give the impression they weren’t together, with two-way radios used to keep in touch from time to time.
That was three vehicles to deal with, not to mention the difficulty of getting a semitrailer to stop. She couldn’t think of any ways to do that from the backseat of the Ford. There was the radio, which she could take after disposing of Reese, but the other drivers had been taking orders from Reese — and only Reese — all this time, so would they really obey Dwight’s or her instructions? Maybe, maybe not.
Reese. He was a problem. The biggest obstacle for her by far. He was the brains of the operation. That much was obvious. Which meant Reese had to go first.
So what was stopping her from acting?
Everything. Even if she could successfully kill Reese and Dwight agreed to force the semi off the road, there was still the matter of the two bodyguards in the back and the submachine guns underneath their jackets. She had dealt with multiple opponents before — some just as, if not more so, heavily armed — but never with more than twenty terrified girls stuck in the middle. As far as she knew, the trailer wasn’t bulletproof, and all it would take was one stray bullet…
“Someone’s got a lot on her mind,” Dwight was saying. She looked over and saw him staring at her in the rearview mirror. “What’s got you all Jack Handey back there?”
“Jack what?” she said.
“Jack Handey. That voiceover guy from Saturday Night Live.”
She shook her head.
“No one watches the classics anymore,” Dwight said.
“I’m just trying to figure out how you two hooked up,” Allie lied.
“Why, you don’t think we look like twins? We look more like twins than Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.”
“He watches way too much TV,” Reese said, turning around in his seat to glance back at her. “Keeps trying to get me to watch with him.”
“This guy reads,” Dwight snorted. “I’ve never met anyone who actually reads as an adult.”
Reese grinned at her, as if to say, “Can you believe this guy?” and Allie forced a mercy smile back his way.
“So how did you two meet?” she asked.