“He said this was a special case. There was no way to avoid it, and the client is somebody who would never be foolish enough to tell the police or anyone else about us.”
“That’s not the stick. What’s the stick?”
“The client has power. He’s had people looking all over the place for six years, nonstop. Now that we’ve used the bloody shirt and the bat to draw her out, he has no way of finding her again. We’ve used up his only chance. Densmore thinks that if we fail—let alone quit—the client will kill him and us, too.”
28
IT WAS ALREADY afternoon when Jack Till awoke. He kept his eyes closed and oriented himself. He knew he was in a hotel bed in Morro Bay. He had driven from King City into Morro Bay in the night and found a hotel on a low ridge above the harbor. The hotel was big enough to have a night clerk on duty who was capable of finding a vacancy for a pair of tired travelers, particularly a pair who were willing to pay summer rates for an expensive set of adjoining rooms for a minimum of three days. He had gone back outside to park their new rental car among the others in the back of the hotel where it would not be seen from the street. This time he had chosen a blue Buick Park Avenue that didn’t resemble the cars he had driven before. Moving the car gave him a chance to circle the lot and sweep the surrounding area with his headlights to search for parked vehicles that still had people in them.
When he had returned to his room, he had found Ann Donnelly placing a chair to hold the door between the two rooms open. She said, “Whatever else happens, I don’t want to die and have you not know about it.”
“We’ll be okay. We’re pretty far from where they lost us.” Till had locked and chained his door and hers, then moved a chair in front of each to give him an extra second or two if the door opened. She sat on her bed and watched his preparations without revealing anything, but she did not seem especially comforted. He put his pistol in its holster on the bedside table. Then he turned off the light in his room before he undressed and got under the covers. For a time, he could hear Ann Donnelly moving around and see the flickering bluish glow of her television set on the white cottage cheese ceiling of her room.
Till closed his eyes and let the events of the day repeat themselves in his mind, from the time when he had reached Ann Donnelly’s house in San Rafael before noon, through the sight of the car’s headlights growing steadily in his rearview mirror and then the shots. He saw again the car veering to the left to try to pull up beside him, and remembered trying to block its movement and stay ahead. His body relived the feeling of speed, the sensation of rising in his seat whenever the car went over the top of a hill and started down, and his ears felt the shock of the bullet pounding through the rear window and spraying broken glass everywhere.
He had moved the car from side to side each time the car behind him moved, trying to anticipate the other driver’s intentions and block them without losing control. Then the shots had come again, some of them making an amplified bang because what he was hearing was the bullet punching through the steel of his car’s trunk.
Everything had happened so quickly that he had acted without deciding, not even contemplating the events until now, hours later, as he lay in bed. He remembered looking ahead at the windshield and seeing the bullet hole in it, the aura of powdered glass around it just above eye level and to the left, and knowing that the bullet must have missed his head by two inches. That sight had goaded him to act, and he had let the car fly off into the empty field because the road wasn’t working and the shots were too close.
“I can’t sleep in there.”
He opened his eyes and dimly saw the shape of her standing beside his bed. She was wearing a pair of pajama pants and an oversized T-shirt. “Why not?”
“Because today I lost my best friend, abandoned my children, my husband, my home, my name, and then got shot at and driven into a ravine.”
Till slid to the far side of the king bed and pulled back the covers to admit her. “Reason enough.”
She climbed in beside him and rested her head on the pillow. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to sleeping alone anymore.”
“You were married for three years?”
“Almost four.” She was quiet for a few seconds, and Till thought she was falling asleep, but she said, “That’s not a long time. It’s just long enough so you get used to the illusion that things will always be the same.”
“Never sleeping alone?”
“You don’t think you’ll ever have to lie in bed in a dark room at night alone. You will, of course. People go on business trips and things. Then you find yourself—by accident or on purpose—with your face in the other person’s pillow, smelling his smell.”
“So you loved him. When you were talking before it sounded as though you didn’t.”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say what relationships are really about, other than not wanting to be alone. Mad, romantic love isn’t necessary. All you have to feel is that you’d rather be with that person and all his faults than be alone. And you don’t have to feel even that much all day, every day. You only have to feel it once each time you’re ready to file for divorce and put it off. If that’s what love is, then I loved Dennis.”
“That sounds pretty grim.”
“It’s not meant to be. I was in disguise, living as a person I wasn’t, remember? I knew the person I invented would be safer married than single. If your whole life is a lie, why draw the line at one more that will give you an extra layer of security? When a woman marries, not only does she get a bigger, stronger companion who will try to protect her, but she takes on his name, his whole history, whatever credit and credibility he’s built up, friends of his who will swear she’s legitimate. And I didn’t lie to Dennis. Everyone else in San Rafael, but not him.”
“Why did you think that he could protect you from the guys who were after you? Did you tell him what to look for, or describe them to him?”
“My disguise was being Mrs. Dennis Donnelly. It’s a lot easier to stay in character if you can find things to like. I knew Dennis loved me, and for a woman, that’s a bigger part of the equation than men know. I like him. I may regret that I married him, but I’m grateful to him. Now that’s over.”
Till had been asking for information about the killers, not her husband. Her answer surprised him. “You’re sure?”
“God, if I wasn’t before today, I would be now.”
“Because they found you?””
She turned toward him in bed. He could see her big eyes reflecting the faint light of the clock. “If I had been with Dennis when they found me, I would be dead tonight. I’m not, because I was with you. And he’s not dead, and the kids have their father.”
He glanced at the red numbers glowing on the nightstand. “It’s four-fifteen A.M. on your first night since you found out you were in trouble. For a while tonight, we were hanging by spit. Maybe you ought to put off thinking about the big things until you recover from that.”
“Maybe.”
“Good night.” He turned to face away from her, and closed his eyes. After a few seconds he felt her move closer to him, so she was touching his back.
“Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for letting me sleep with you.”
“You’re welcome.” He lay in the bed staring into the darkness. Her voice had come from very close, almost the back of his neck, and he could feel that she was curled against him. Her touch, which she probably didn’t think he could even feel, was the biggest phenomenon in the room. He squeezed his eyes closed, forcing out thoughts of her, and let his tired, overactive mind rest, as it often did at night, on the thought of Holly sleeping peacefully in her room at Garden House.