“And then she just walked away from it, didn’t she?”
“You think she wouldn’t do that?”
“I know she would. She did it once before.”
“I think she just got anxious, worried that she hadn’t run hard enough, or far enough. She gave me everything: the birth certificate, her credit cards, the deed to this house, the incorporation papers for the business. She withdrew the money from the business account at the bank and helped me start a new account at another bank that would know me as Ann Delatorre. She went with me to New Mexico so I could apply for a driver’s license in the new name. Then she left.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“She gave you her name. You know that somebody is after her, too, don’t you?”
“Of course. We told each other everything.”
“But you kept the name, anyway—Ann Delatorre. That was part of the deal, wasn’t it? You could have the house and the mail-order business, but it had to stay in the name Ann Delatorre. You’re her early-warning system. If somebody came for her, the mostly likely way they would do it was the way I did—by tracing the name change and then finding this address. If anyone came here, you would warn her.”
“It’s not like that. Neither of us believed anyone would ever come.”
“I mean nobody any harm. I’m only trying to save her best friend from going to trial for her murder.”
Ann Delatorre looked defiant. “He’s not her best friend anymore. I am.”
“Then you’ll let me talk to her. Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know, or you could never warn her. You’re here for that. You have something. Is it just a phone number?”
Ann Delatorre looked at him, puzzled. “You’re so smart, but you’re not so smart.”
“No?”
“If somebody comes for her here, either they’ll kill me, or I’ll kill them. Either way, it will be in the newspapers, won’t it? All she needs to do is type the name Ann Delatorre on the Internet once a day, to see if it’s been in the news.”
He stared at her. She was still holding the gun on the arm of the chair. It was not aimed nearer to his heart, but no farther away, either. “You aren’t going to trust me.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m going to stand up now.” He leaned forward slowly and raised himself from the couch without making any rapid or abrupt movements. Ann Delatorre rose, too, and retreated around her chair to keep it between them. As he walked toward the door, he said, “You’re a good friend. I can see that. But somebody else is searching for her now. The man who’s after her hires people to do his killing. They’re pros, so as long as he can pay them, they won’t stop looking. Sooner or later, they’ll trace her this far. Expect them.”
As he opened the door, he turned to look at her. She still held the gun on him. “I do.”
15
IT WAS NEARLY ten o’clock in the evening when Paul Turner drove the rental car to the corner of the street where Ann Delatorre lived. “He’s gone. He’s been to that house twice today,” said Paul. “I’ll bet he set this up six years ago: If he ever needed to get in touch with Wendy Harper, he would come here, and Ann Delatorre would know where she was.”
“Till’s amazing,” Sylvie said. “He never let anybody know that he had even met Wendy Harper, let alone taken her away. But he still bothered to set up a woman nobody ever heard of to act as a go-between.”
“You know, this could easily be the meeting place. But we can’t assume that.”
“What do we do?”
“It’s like watching a magic trick. You keep your eye on the hand that holds the ball, and ignore everything else.” He looked at the notebook computer on Sylvie’s lap, and watched the blue dots appearing on the map. “We follow Till’s car.”
He pulled out from the curb and drove out to the Boulder Highway toward Las Vegas. When he reached the city and turned left toward the Strip, he saw bright spotlights and construction machinery ahead. He took three quick lane changes, moving in and out of traffic. Then he made a wide turn. There were pockets of road construction everywhere in Las Vegas, constant revision and replacement. This road was being widened to accommodate the expansion of a hotel, but tonight all but one of the lanes were blocked by big yellow machines hauling asphalt or stirring up clouds of dust. Paul’s hand was always sure and steady as he swerved to achieve position.
Sylvie wasn’t worried about catching up with Till’s car. She watched Paul’s dark eyes shine as he looked ahead, and she knew he was looking ahead in time, too. He was working out details.
“We’re going to need the two .38s, and also the rifle. Make sure they’re loaded and lying where you can reach them, so we can pick one up and fire.”
“Okay.” Sylvie released her seat belt, knelt on her seat, and reached between the bucket seats to the floor behind her. She carefully pulled the SKS rifle between the seats to the front. She had to keep it low and covered with her jacket because the drivers of trucks and bulldozers they passed could see down into the car.
Sylvie was comfortable with the .38 revolvers they had picked up from Paul’s gun dealer. Revolvers were simple, and the differences between them were mostly cosmetic. But the SKS rifle had a nasty profile like a black wasp, with a folding metal stock and a pistol grip that made it short enough to swing around inside a car. The SKS was Russian, so the markings that hadn’t been drilled off meant nothing to her, and the action felt stiff and unpredictable. The spring-operated moving parts seemed likely to pinch her fingers. She held it carefully under her coat and reached behind her to the floor for the ammunition clip. “Do you want me to crank a round into the chamber of this thing?”
“Go ahead.”
“Okay. Just so you know it’s there.” She clicked the magazine into the underside of the receiver, then held the rifle by its pistol grip and pulled back the charging lever. She checked the safety catch and then carefully placed the rifle between her seat and the door with the barrel upward so any accidental discharge would only blow a hole in the rented car’s roof. Then she reached into the glove compartment and took out the two .38 pistols, careful not to bump the threading on the ends of the barrels against anything. She checked the cylinder of each, put them both on her lap under the coat and waited for Paul.
The SKS would punch through the sheet metal of a car without slowing down very much. The .38 pistols didn’t have the same piercing power, but they would be lethal fired through glass at short range. Paul must be planning to take Jack Till and Wendy Harper in Till’s car and kill them both at once, without any preliminaries. He always seemed to know what he wanted and how to get it. That was one of the things that she had always loved about him.
When they had met, she had still been married to Darren McKee. After all this time, it was hard to remember what it had felt like being married to Darren. He had been short, and had come up to a spot about even with the middle of her ear. She could remember embracing him and feeling his hair tickling her earlobe. She could still recall how bristly his mustache had felt on her skin, but that wasn’t a feeling anymore, it was just information. She couldn’t bring back his smell or hear his voice or feel his shape on her hands or her body. He had no weight or volume in her mind anymore.
Darren pampered and controlled her. He allowed her to buy all the clothes she wanted, but he would look at them when she brought them home, and if he disapproved of them he made her take them back to the store. He scheduled her days, so there was a two-hour period for exercise, then an hour for hair and makeup. Darren believed it was beneficial for her to leave the house every afternoon, so from one to five she was free to shop, see friends, or go to matinees. She had a cell phone, but she almost never made a call. Darren would call her several times a day to see if she was on schedule. If she wasn’t, he would adjust the schedule to give her more time.