To the left, the drive-through lane of the restaurant was staggeringly illuminated. Behind us, the light increased until reaching the shelter of the building itself, where it diminished in its awning. From the rooftop of the hotel, I hadn't been able to see if the restaurant was still actually open, or if the lights it had on were a security precaution. Whichever way we went from here, though, we risked greater exposure.
And there was still the problem of getting across the street and past whoever was almost certainly posted there to contend with.
I checked my watch. According to its luminous hands, it was twenty-three minutes past seven. We'd been outside for all of six minutes.
"We use the drive-through lane," Alena said in my ear.
I needed a second to follow her logic, but then I saw it. The drive-through lane was well lit, true, but it was also blocked from view on each side. On the left was the restaurant itself; to the right was a cinder-block wall bordering that side of the property. If we hurried through it, staying to the restaurant side, we'd have cover at least until we reached the edge of the building.
"You go first," she said.
I shook my head. She was slower, and I wasn't about to risk leaving her behind.
Her eyes narrowed, and she was going to argue with me, but then decided that would be an even greater waste of our time. She showed me the three fingers again, counted them down to one, then went into motion. I followed after her, as close as I dared.
It was very bright in the drive-through lane. Glancing past the giant-sized decals of burgers and two-for-one deals in the windows, I could see the restaurant was empty inside.
The building ended at a children's play structure, encrusted in snow and ice, and looking very much the worse for it as a result. It threw shadows down for our benefit, and we took to them eagerly, hunkering down, now with a view of the street ahead of us. Just as I dropped onto my haunches behind Alena the sound of engine noise reached us, a car approaching, and each of us dropped flat.
A patrol car rolled slowly into view, the driver's floodlight on, splashing light towards the building. I wrapped my arms around Alena's middle, pinning her against the duffel still on my chest, then rolled onto my back, wedging us beneath the last few feet of a slide. She didn't move, and together we watched as the light from the flood flowed in our direction, daylight bright.
Then the light hit the slide, and the shadows concealing us bloomed deeper. I rolled us back the way we'd come as the car continued past.
We waited until the silence returned, the red glow of its taillights marking its passage, and then we sprinted for the street, the edge of the perimeter, and yet another extension to our diminishing freedom.
CHAPTER
The lipstick was hot pink and called "cotton candy" and Alena applied it quickly, checking herself in the sun visor's mirror. Then she drew herself up in the seat beside me, unfastened the top two buttons of the black-and-red flannel she was wearing, and pulled the shirt taut down her front, tucking it hard into her pants. She settled the cowboy hat atop her head, then gave her reflection a final appraisal before turning to me, still sitting behind the wheel of the Ford pickup truck we'd stolen from the parking lot of a bar some five blocks away from the Outlaw Inn.
When in Rome and all that.
We'd found the lipstick in the glove box, the flannel on the floor, and the hat behind the seat. We'd also found a box of triple-ought shotgun shells and the shotgun it went with, two empty cans of Rock Star energy drink, and a silver hip flask engraved with a picture of a bucking bronco and the words "Ride 'em, Cowgirl!" The flask had been empty.
"Well?" Alena asked.
"You're going to think less of me for saying this," I said. "But I'd definitely do you."
It didn't earn a smile, just a curt nod, and then she looked out the front window, to the warm lights of the Sweetspring County Airport's flight school. From where we sat in the truck, I could make out a handful of people inside, bathing in the glow of a television screen somewhere out of sight. I knew what they were watching, the same as Alena did. They were watching the same thing the people at the bar where we'd stolen the truck were watching.
Alena and I had to split up. I knew that, and I knew the reason for it, the logic behind it, and I knew both were solid and good. It had been forty-two minutes since we'd managed to sneak out of the hotel and the siege we'd been put under. As far as the world was concerned, we were still trapped in our room, not out and running free. At least, if everything was going according to plan.
But that wouldn't last for long. Maybe another four or five or six hours, if we were exceptionally lucky. Then time would run out, and Bobby Galloway would give way to HRT or a squad of Deltas, and the door would come down, and the people with guns would find our room empty and a hole in the ceiling. The APBs would issue forth like threats of damnation from a Southern Baptist pulpit.
Those APBs would be for a man and a woman, traveling together.
We had to split up.
But I didn't want to. This wasn't going to be like Whitefish, where the cold and the pain had brought me to doubt, because then, doubt had been all it was. This was different. This was each of us traveling alone.
For the first time in over three years, we wouldn't be able to protect each other.
That scared me. Looking at Alena, still staring out the windshield at the flight school, I knew it scared her, too.
"We can find another way," I said.
She shook her head, then shook it again, more vehemently, resolving herself. "We're wasting time. I'll see you in Wilmington tomorrow."
She slipped out of the truck cab, letting a gust of cold in to take her place.
"Be smart," I told her.
"Be smart," she agreed.
Then she slammed the door shut and started for the terminal, and I turned the truck towards the Interstate, and tried not to believe that I would never see her again. Here's what she did:
There were five people in the flight school office, all of them gathered around the television, still watching the live play-by-play of the siege, and all of them past the point of boredom with it. One was a woman, working behind the counter, but the other four were men, the youngest in his early twenties, the oldest perhaps in his mid-fifties. Two were wearing coveralls, clearly maintenance, and so it was the remaining two that Alena focused on even as every eye turned to mark her entrance, and it was the younger of those that she directed her words to, because he would be the most likely to need the opportunity she was about to provide.
"Please," Alena said, and she said it like a local, and not like a woman who was born six thousand miles away. She said it earnestly, and she said it with just enough emotion that everyone could hear it, with the thinness that comes from speaking out of the throat rather than the chest, and that says tears are only a heartbeat away. "Please-are you a pilot?"
"Yes, ma'am," the man said. "Well, almost. Not certified yet. Can I help you?"
"I need to get to Omaha," Alena said, and the tremor in her voice increased, and the tears began to well in her eyes so much that the man looked away, embarrassed for her obvious distress. "I have to get to Omaha tonight, my mamma got hit by a car, I have to get to the hospital to see her. There aren't no flights out of Lynch, I can't get a flight. I asked Sarah, my friend, Sarah, she said I should go to the flight school, she said that if I offered to pay for fuel and the rental and all of that, someone might be able to fly me, someone might need hours and be able to fly me. She says there are always people who need hours and that someone could fly me. Can you fly me?"