The guy was suspicious of everything. “Isn’t there a bigger road up ahead?”
“Out of our way, too far east,” Parker told him. “We crossed the river, remember? Now we gotta go south, and then back west to the river. This is the turn.”
The guy frowned, but took it, and they drove southward through low hills covered with trees wearing their bright green new spring leaves, and here and there a little town with one intersection and a traffic light. And a gas station, usually, but not the kind Parker wanted.
Time to get off this road. “You’ll take the next right,” he said. “There’s a dark brown church at the corner, little graveyard.”
But there wasn’t; a different intersection appeared, with a farm stand on the corner, all its display shelves empty, not yet open for the season, nothing yet grown ripe enough to sell.
The guy pulled to a stop in front of the empty stand and said, “All right, what’s the story?” He was driving with the .38 tucked into his belt, just behind the buckle, and now his right hand rested on the butt.
“It must be the next one,” Parker said.
“Where we headed? Just tell me where we’re going, and I’ll go there.”
“I can’t tell you that,” Parker said. “This isn’t my neighborhood, I just came here a few weeks ago to do the ship. I don’t know the names of things and route numbers and all that, I just know how to get from one place to another. I forgot about this intersection, that’s all, it’ll be the next one.”
“If it isn’t,” the guy said, “we’ll try a different idea.”
“Fine. It’s the next one.”
The guy started the Lexus forward, and three miles farther on they came to the intersection with the old brown church. “See?” Parker said. “I’m not an old-time native here, that’s all. But I know where I’m going. You take this right, and it comes to a T, and then you take the right off that.”
“The right? That sends me north again.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Parker said. “These roads twist all over the place, because of the hills, and because they laid out the farms before they laid out the roads. We won’t go north any more, don’t worry about it.”
But they would. The second right would send them north, to a different road that would send them west again, if they went that far. Parker was grateful for the cloud cover; if the sun was out, it would be a lot harder to move this guy around into the right position.
Before they reached the T, Parker glanced over at the dashboard to see the fuel-low warning light gleaming red. “How long’s that been on?”
The guy didn’t look down from the twisty road. “What?”
“Low on gas, the light’s on.”
The guy gave it a quick look. “We’re all right,” he said. “It isn’t far now, is it?”
“In and back out? I don’t know. How long’s the light been on?”
“Not long,” the guy said, but out of irritation, not conviction.
“You’re in charge,” Parker said, “but if I was driving, and I come across a gas station, I’d put in a few bucks.”
“We’re fine,” the guy said.
As they’d been driving, to ease the tendency to cramp in his shoulders and upper arms, Parker had been rolling his shoulders, exercising them from time to time, keeping them limber. The guy hadn’t liked it the first time he’d done it, but then he’d realized the reason, and hadn’t minded after that. Now, as they approached that T, Parker rolled his shoulders, and this time he hunched his butt forward just a little on the seat, which increased the pain and pressure on his arms at the same time that it gave his hands some room between his body and the seatback. The fingers of his left hand plucked the paperclip out of his right palm. Both hands worked at straightening one end of the clip. Then the fingers of his left hand found the lock in the middle of the cuffs and bent it up so that it gouged into his flesh, but the fingers of his right hand could insert the end of the clip, holding fast to the part that was still bent.
He’d done this before; it would be painful for a while now, but not impossible. He probed with the end of the clip, feeling the resistance, feeling where it gave. There.
“The T will be coming up in a couple minutes,” he said, the words covering the faint click, already muffled by the seat and his body, as the lock released on the right cuff.
That was enough. He could undo the left cuff later, and in the meantime it could be useful.
They reached the T, and turned right. Parker rolled his shoulders, clenched and released his hands. His arms stung as the blood moved sluggishly through them.
“We turn left up ahead,” he said. “There’s an intersection with a Getty station and a convenience store.”
“If it’s there,” the guy said.
“No, it’s there. I got the church off by one, but this is right. You see the sign? There it is.”
The red and white Getty gas station sign was the only thing out ahead of them that wasn’t green. It was a small place, two pumps, a small modular plastic shop behind it that had been built in an afternoon. There were fishermen’s landings nearby, and a few small manufacturing businesses tucked away discreetly in the hills, not to offend the weekenders with the sight of commerce, so there was enough business to keep this gas station open, but rarely was it busy.
It was empty now. The guy slowed for the intersection, and Parker kept quiet. Push him, and he’d push the other way. And if this place didn’t work, there was one cabin that had been shown to them by one of the real estate agents that they hadn’t liked because there was no easy way to get down to the river you were supposed to admire the view, not enter it but that would do very well now, if necessary. Be better if it hadn’t been rented to
