She parked in the small lot. There were only three other cars here, and it seemed to be the only parking area. She could see why he’d chosen this particular location. It wasn’t for her convenience, certainly, or for the garish ersatz Alpine decor, or, she guessed, for the food. It was instead the vantage point. From here you could see the countryside in all directions for miles.
Still sitting in the car, she checked the concealed Uher tape recorder Ray had taped to the small of her back. A wire came around to the front, taped to the side of her brassiere. With a quick motion she switched it on: the tiny on-off switch nestled beside her left breast. To anyone who might be watching, she’d simply appear to be scratching herself. She shuffled through the papers in her leather portfolio and, in another unseen gesture, switched on the miniature backup tape recorder concealed there, disguised as a pack of Marlboro cigarettes (not her brand, but she wasn’t going to quibble). There was, of course, the risk that he’d check to see whether she was wearing a wire, but she was willing to take that risk.
She did not expect Lentini to make himself available to testify in court.
She got out of the car, holding the portfolio, and made her way to the main entrance. The decor inside set her teeth on edge: cobblestone-paved floor, low wood-beamed ceiling (the beams looked fake even at a distance), artificially weathered wooden table, kitschy imitation stained-glass windows, a large artificial fireplace with roaring gas flames licking phony logs even in the summer heat. She found a table by a window overlooking a valley, and waited.
Nine o’clock came and went, and still she waited. She ordered a Coke.
At twenty past nine she wondered whether he would show up at all. She made a circuit of the almost empty restaurant and found only couples. No one who might possibly be Lentini. She asked the maître d’, who said that no one had mentioned meeting anybody. She called home; Jackie said no one had left a message for her.
At nine-forty-five she decided to leave. It was extremely unlikely she’d gotten the place wrong, unless there was more than one imitation-Swiss mountainside chalet in this remote Maryland town, which seemed improbable. More likely was that he had changed his mind, or for some reason had been scared off.
She left a few dollars for her Coke and went out to the parking lot. Two other cars there now. No sign of anyone who might remotely resemble Lentini.
Annoyed, she got in the car, started it up, and pulled out of the lot, half expecting him to arrive in his car as she was leaving. But no. She’d been stood up.
She maneuvered the car down the narrow mountain road. It was dark, and she was concerned that a car approaching from the opposite direction might whip around a bend and smash into her. So she flashed her brights as she approached the first hairpin turn, and braked to slow down as well.
And the brake pedal sank to the floor.
“Jesus,” she exclaimed, trying the brakes again and finding only a dead pedal. The bend in the road loomed closer. She turned the steering wheel abruptly to avoid going off the road and into the ravine.
The car accelerated from the natural gravitational pull, faster and faster, and she swung the wheel over to the left, then the right, as the road shimmied ahead of her and rushed toward her. She tried the brakes one last time, and nothing. Not working.
Spinning the wheel first to one side, then to another, the car speeding faster and faster down the incline, she yanked the emergency-brake lever upward. It pulled up easily, too easily, and the lever jiggled up and down uselessly.
“Oh, God,” she keened. Her eyes were frozen on the road ahead. The car careened, trees flying by in a blur, faster and faster and faster, and the thought suddenly leaped into her mind that any second another car might approach, and her stomach seized up.
“No!” she shouted. “No! God, no!”
Her eyes were blurry with tears, but they did not move from the headlong rush of the paved road ahead, her hands clenching the steering wheel with a death grip. The car hurtled forward wildly, now sixty, seventy miles an hour, accelerating madly. For a split second she felt herself at a remove, looking down calmly at this terrifying scene; then the next second she was screaming at the top of her lungs, petrified in her seat, immobilized while the car plummeted down the road. She shifted into neutral, but that made little difference.
Should I switch off the ignition? No, don’t dare, that would shut off the steering!
She spun the wheel left, then right, then left, then right, as the road whipped by and the trees and boulders on either side were dark blurs.
And then she saw, parked in the dead center of the road just ahead, a green military jeep, two large gas cans at its rear.
There was no way to avoid crashing into it!
She made an instant decision and spun the wheel to the left, steering the car sharply up the steep embankment overgrown with brush. As the car ran over the low bushes, rocks and branches crunching loudly, it slowed considerably, just what she’d hoped would happen, and she forced her left hand from the wheel, reached down for the car door, couldn’t find it, fumbled around, not daring to take her eyes off the road; then her hand touched steel, and she grabbed at the handle and pulled it, and the door flung open-
– and with a gasp of terror she leaned to her left, tucked her head in, and tumbled out onto the embankment, her head striking something hard among the brush, the taste of blood and fear metallic in her mouth, her eyes shut tight, a terrible crack of pain shooting up her neck, and then she heard the car lurch on forward, veering back onto the road, and strike something. There was a horrifying crunch of steel.
Crouched along the side of the road, half in the pine needle-covered soft earth, half on the asphalt, her head throbbing, she opened her eyes and stared ahead and saw that her car had crashed into the jeep, and then there was a cataclysmic, deafening explosion, and she shut her eyes, and even through her eyelids she saw the brilliant flash of light that was a gasoline fire, and she scrambled to her feet and turned and ran up the road, screaming.
A few minutes later, though it seemed hours, stumbling and weaving up the pitch-dark road, she remembered she was wearing her cell phone.
PART FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“I’m moving in,” Devereaux said. “You got more rooms in here than the goddamn Hilton, and the roach motel’s starting to wear on me. And you need protection.”
Claire lay on a couch in one of the sitting rooms, both Jackie and Grimes hovering nearby with grave concern. It was close to one in the morning. She was considerably banged up, particularly along her side and her left hip, where she had landed on several small rocks. There were quite a few scrapes as well, including a long, ugly one along her neck and left cheek, by the ear. She also had a ferocious, thudding headache. She’d spent over an hour being questioned by Maryland state police, from which nothing, she knew, would ever come.
“I don’t need protection, Ray,” she said weakly.
“Naw, you don’t need protection,” he said sardonically. “Not you. Someone disables your braking system, intending for you to wipe out on a jeep that’s conveniently left in your path, with two probably half-empty gas tanks on the back, and get blown up, but, naw, everything’s fine.”
“If you care about me-” Jackie said. “No, forget about me. If you care about Annie, you’ll take him up on his offer.”
Claire shrugged, unwilling to argue with such logic.
“So you never lost consciousness at all?” Devereaux asked.