They shot up on the Mercedes before he let off on the gas, and he saw the back of the thief's head quite clearly, an average head, oblivious beneath its Mr. Hipster haircut, and the thief's shoulders and the long swaying fringe of the thief's wife's hair as she leaned forward to adjust the radio, and he had to make a snatch for Dana's arm because she wasn't hearing him. “The phone! Quick, the phone!” He was one lane out, falling back now, drifting, allowing a silver Toyota to interpose itself between him and the Mercedes, the warning light on the fuel gauge burning a hole in the dash. Then the phone was in his hand and he punched in 911.
It picked up on the first ring and a woman's voice said, “Nine-one-one, can you hold, please?”
“No!” he shouted, but the connection gave back static and the needle held fast and the thief cruised along in the inside lane as if it had been funded, surveyed, poured and striped for his exclusive use. There was an exit coming up fast on the right, gas, food and lodging, a Chevron station showing its badge, and he didn't know what to do. Dana was watching him, her eyes wide with excitement, a thin red furrow of blood leaching out of the black slit at her hairline. “What do they say?”
“Hold,” he shouted. “I'm on hold. And we need gas. Didn't you-?”
“Nine-one-one,” the voice came back at him. “What is your emergency?”
“A thief,” he said, and he was shouting still, he couldn't help himself. “A theft. Identity theft. He's-he stole my girlfriend's, my fiancée's, identity, and he's here, we have him in sight, we-”
Dana's voice, fluting in its highest register, clambered atop his: “A red Mercedes. Tell them a red Mercedes!”
“What is your location?”
At first the question didn't register. Location? “We're in a car,” he said. “On the freeway, the I-80, and he's-we're running out of gas…”
“You're running out of gas?”
“Yes, and he's-”
“Sir, this is an emergency line only. I'm sorry. You're going to have to hang up immediately.”
The connection went dead, the exit blew past. A crazy thought of battering the Mercedes off the road flew in and out of his head, something he'd seen in a movie, a dozen movies, but there was no one to paint out the wires here, and the blood on Dana's forehead was real. “How accurate is this gauge?” he demanded, flinging the phone back at her. “How many miles do we have? Does it go right out or is it just a warning and you get twenty miles or something? Do you know?”
She said, “What?”
He repeated himself slowly, and she said, “You mean the gas gauge?”
He nodded.
She was leaning over him to check the gauge for herself, to get the angle on it, when the Mercedes suddenly swung out into their lane and he was so startled he nearly let go of the wheel. Had he seen them? Was that it? Bridger tapped the brake, drew back until the car behind him sped up to pass. But no, the guy wasn't looking in his mirrors, wasn't doing anything but staring straight ahead except to dip his head toward his wife's, as if they were conversing. He didn't have a clue. They were okay. Everything was okay. Until they ran out of gas.
When it happened, he was almost surprised, expecting miracles, the loaves and fishes, the Hanukkah oil, good triumphing over evil despite the odds. The car suddenly seemed to waver, as if a gale had swept up off the roadway to fling it back, then the engine choked and died and he was coasting to a stop on the shoulder, as powerless as one of the lizard lords of Drex III.
For a moment he just sat there, his hands trembling on the wheel. Beside him, her knees drawn up to her chin as if she were bracing herself against some unseen force, Dana gave him a long slow look that cut right into him. Disbelief was there-that was part of it; he felt it himself. Disappointment. Sorrow. And something else too: disgust. She looked disgusted. With him. He couldn't suppress a quick flare of anger. “What? What is it? You want me to get out and run him down on foot?”
The gash on her forehead had begun to crust over, a yellowish contusion swelling beneath a ragged badge of dried blood. Her hands snapped at him: “No, I want you to get out and get gas.” And then she was pointing to a building in the near distance, on a side street that ran parallel to the freeway, a gas station, Shell, and how far was it? A quarter mile?
He'd already cracked the door-he was already on his way-but he couldn't resist coming back at her because he was as wrought up and furious as she was and how dare she blame him, as if this whole mess was his idea, as if he were the one who should have seen to the maintenance of the car when it wasn't even his in the first place. “What's the point?” he said aloud. “You think he pulled off to wait for us? You think we'll ever see him again? Huh? Do you?”
A truck blasted by, sucking all the air with it, and the car shook on its springs. Her face twisted. Her hands flew at him and she was signing angrily and forcing out the words at the same time: “Shit,” she said, “shit, shit, shit! Just go, you idiot, you jerk, you-” But he was already gone, the door slamming behind him, and he hadn't walked ten feet before he broke into a sprint, as angry as he'd ever been-murderous, crazed-but for all that glad to be out of the car and away from her.
The whole thing-the whole fiasco-cost them maybe twenty minutes, half an hour, he couldn't say. He jogged back to the car with a gallon can that was as heavy and awkward as a cannonball, and then he left a strip of rubber burning on up the freeway to the next exit so he could double back and fill up the car, and he had to ask her for cash because they wouldn't take his credit card and he was in no mood for an argument. And then, without discussion, without debating whether they should call the cops with a description of the car, fill out a police report, drive to the hospital to see if she needed stitches or sit down to some breakfast, some nourishment, bacon, eggs, Tabasco, coffee for Christ's sake, they were hurtling up the freeway, uselessly, hopelessly, and the Jetta hardly rattled at all when he hit a hundred and left it there.
Neither of them spoke. He felt strangely calm, beyond the law, beyond the grasp of the pedestrian drivers in the slow boats of their sedans and convertibles and pickups as he blew by them, shedding their quick startled looks of bewilderment and outrage, hammering the car from one lane to another, using one pedal only. The day was clear now, sun glancing off the hoods of the line of cars and trucks stretching off into infinity, the roadside a blur of golden-brown vegetation and the searing intermittent flashes of aluminum cans hidden in the weeds. He was sweating. His fingers ran loosely over the wheel, attuned to the slightest variation, manipulating it with all the finesse and superior hand-eye coordination he brought to his PlayStation, and what game was he playing now?
Twenty minutes into it, twenty minutes after he'd pinned the accelerator to the floor, she spoke for the first time since they'd left the gas station. And what she said was, “Take this exit-U.S. 50, to Lake Tahoe. He's going to Lake Tahoe, I know it. I feel it. Pull off, pull off!”
Why would he go to Tahoe? He was running, and he was on I-80, heading east-he was going back to New York, obviously. To hide out. To get away from them. They'd been to his house, they'd knocked on his door, and now he was running. “That's crazy,” he said.
Her face floated there, inches from his, and it was clear that she wasn't concerned about reason or logic or even likelihood. “Just do it.”
“Shit, why not just use a Ouija board?”
“Do it.”
He took his foot off the accelerator and it was as if they'd been flying ten feet above the roadway and come crashing to the ground. Everything was moving in slow motion. Cars began to overtake them. Signal lights flashed. People's faces cohered behind planes of glass. He was on a highway, he could see that now, the sun in his eyes, tires rippling beneath him, the air conditioner wheezing in his face. An SUV slid by on the left and two kids, brother and sister, waved to him from the rear window as their dog-some sort of terrier that looked as if it were wearing a false mustache-popped up between them. And then, and he didn't know why, he merged with the traffic heading for Tahoe.