sprang up on its roof, he would not have felt more exposed. Another car pulled out from a liquor store, filling the gap between the truck and a knot of cars racing forward from the intersection a block away.
'Come on, come on,' he said under his breath.
'Just go!' From his position on the floor, Allen was blind to the traffic.
Stephen hunkered low in the seat and looked over. The Warrior
had come out of the office. He was standing in the sunlight, squinting at the cars in the parking lot.
The car behind him honked again. Stephen jumped. The Warrior turned to look. He put his hand against his brow to block the sun. The horn blared again, longer. Now the Warrior was striding forward, across the motel parking lot, directly toward Stephen.
He realized the rear of the long van was blocking the lane that went straight through the intersection. Deciding to turn had been a mistake.
He calculated he could cut through the traffic behind a car and pray the oncoming drivers were attentive enough to slam on their brakes hard enough and fast enough to avoid colliding with him. He saw an opening and knew there wasn't room. He was going for it anyway.
He moved his foot off the brake and glanced quickly at the Warrior, thinking he may have to duck away from a gunshot. He was gone. Stephen jammed the brake pedal. Then he spotted him: staring into a parked Toyota. The Warrior moved around it to examine the interior of the next parked car. He seemed to have discounted the commotion in the street as being none of his concern.
Stephen closed his eyes, let out a long breath.
'What? What's happening?'
'Nothing. We're outta here.' The light had turned yellow, stopping the surge of oncoming cars. Stephen roared across and into a residential neighborhood.
Allen grunted as he began pulling himself up.
'Stay down, Allen!' Stephen said, urgent, wide-eyed. There was something about his brother sprawled on the floor of the van that lifted his spirits. He turned his head to hide his smile.
The roar of a big engine and the squeal of tires beckoned
her to the window. Pistol in hand, she pressed against the wall, flicked her head around the sill, and pulled it back again. A dark blue conversion van, idling directly in front of the room, not parked. Had to be the guys. But why the Jeff Gordon theatrics? A car door slammed. Allen ran around the front of the van. She holstered her weapon and swung the door open.
'Let's go!' he said, still outside. 'The Warrior! He's at the Motel 6.'
'That was fast. He'll know we didn't check in.'
'Then he'll start checking around.' He was grabbing the few items he and Stephen owned, tossing them into the drugstore bag.
'He may not be alone,' she said, disconnecting computer cables with one hand, pushing components into the gym bag with the other. Allen stepped into the bathroom, used his forearm to sweep whatever was on the counter into the bag, and followed Julia out of the room.
Stephen pulled away before she had the side door shut, and that was fine by her. He bounded over a curb onto Broadway, jostling her headfirst into one of the plush rear seats. For a while she watched out the tinted rear windows for a vehicle pulling up fast or following at a consistent distance. Nothing.
'You saw only the Warrior?' she asked.
'Isn't he enough?' Allen had a smudge on his cheek, but his hair was perfect. It came to her that she'd never seen it any other way, even after crawling out from under the car.
'I need some navigation,' Stephen said.
'Knoxville.'
'You gotta be kidding. The airport?'
'Hungry Farmer Restaurant. I've arranged to pick up some new phones, ones that can't be traced back to us.'
'And then?'
'And then we find out who wants us dead so badly.'
Neither man had seen her withdraw her pistol, and both jumped when she jerked the slide back and let it return with a resounding
fifty-two
The van was perfect. Besides tinting its windows, someone had put curtains over the side and back windows. Curtains also separated the front seats from the rear of the van, but were now pushed to the sides. A foot-wide board could be placed on supports so that it spanned the width of the van directly in front of the rear captain's chairs, or stowed under the seats. A mattress on a plywood board took up the last four feet of the interior. Julia could have done without the stench of cigar smoke, but by the time they reached the parking lot of the Hungry Farmer, she had the table cluttered with computer gear and had forgotten all about the repugnant odor.
'Drop me off and park across the street,' she told Stephen. She took a table by a window looking out on the parking lot and ordered coffee.
Halfway through her second cup, a red Camaro pulled in, its beige canvas top up. She was out of the restaurant before the car came to a complete stop. An obese man behind the wheel eyed her suspiciously. She squatted by the window and tossed a wad of cash onto his bulbous stomach. He counted it and handed her a plastic grocery bag. She looked inside and nodded, and the car pulled out faster than it had pulled in. Thirty seconds later, Stephen picked her up in the van.
'I wish everything went that smoothly,' she said, slamming the van's sliding door. She moved into the captain's chair behind the driver's seat and laid a phone down on the table beside the computer. She dumped the rest of the bag's contents into the chair next to her: three more cell phones and another bag of items from Radio Shack.
'Where to?' Stephen asked.
'Take us to an east-west interstate.'
'Which direction?'
'Doesn't matter. Find a rest area or truck stop.'
He thought about it. 'We're not too far from I-40.'
'What's east?'
'Next big city, Charlotte.'
'What's west?'
'Nashville.'
'I-40, James.'
Stephen got the van moving.
Allen turned around in his seat. 'What's with the phones?'
'Each one has been reprogrammed with a cell phone number that someone retrieved by monitoring the calls in a congested area, like rush-hour traffic.'
Allen nodded. 'The people looking for us don't know to monitor the airwaves for these particular numbers. We can use them without the bad guys tracing the signals back to us.'
'Except that I want them to find these two.' She held up a phone in each hand.
'I don't get it.'
'You will. But first, here . . .' She handed him a minicassette recorder still in a Radio Shack box, two AA batteries, and a cassette tape. She began pulling a second recorder out of its box. When both recorders were ready, she said, 'Pretend it's a phone. Hit the record button when I hit mine and chat with me.'
'What do I say?'
'Follow my lead.'
