'The piece I called up for you to read on the laptop, the one I condensed for you instead… it was a transcript of an hour-long interview that Proctor did on your favorite radio program.'
'Parish Lantern?'
'Proctor's been on the show three times in five years, the third time for two hours. It figures you might've heard him once, anyway.'
Jilly brooded about this development for a moment and clearly didn't like the implications. 'Maybe I'd better start worrying more about Earth's magnetic pole shifting, and about brain leeches from an alternate reality, for that matter.'
Outside, a vehicle pulled off the street, into the parking lot, and raced past the restaurant at such imprudent speed that Dylan's attention was drawn by the roar of its engine and by the flash of its passage. A black Suburban. The rack of four spotlights fixed to the roof above the windshield didn't come as a standard accessory with every Suburban sold.
Jilly saw it, too. 'No. How could they find us?'
'Maybe we should've changed plates again after what happened at the restaurant in Safford.'
The SUV braked to a stop in front of the motel office, next door to the coffee shop.
'Maybe that little weasel, Skipper, at the service station suspected something.'
'Maybe a hundred things.'
Dylan faced the motel, but Jilly was sitting with her back to the action. Or to some of it. She pointed, tapping one index finger against the window. 'Dylan. Across the street.'
Through the tinted window, through the heat snakes writhing up from the sun-baked pavement, he saw another black Suburban in front of the motel that stood on the far side of the street.
Finishing the last bite of his lunch, Shep said, 'Shep wants cake.'
From his angle of view, even with his face close to the window, Dylan wasn't able to see the entire Suburban now that it had parked in front of the registration office. Half the vehicle remained in his line of sight, however, and he watched two men get out of the driver's side. Dressed in lightweight, light-colored clothes suitable for a desert resort, they looked like golfers headed for an afternoon on the links: unusually big golfers; unusually big, tough-looking golfers.
'Please,' Shep remembered to say. 'Cake please.'
30
Dylan was accustomed to being one of the biggest guys in just about any room, but the two hulks who got out of the driver's side of the Suburban looked as if they had spent the morning in a rodeo ring, tossing cowboys in the air and goring them. They disappeared around the car, heading toward the motel office.
'Let's go,' he said, sliding out of the booth, rising to his feet.
Jilly got up at once, but Shep didn't move. Head bowed, staring at his clean plate, he said, 'Cake please.'
Even if served in a wedge instead of a square, the single curved end of a piece of cake could be flattened easily. Otherwise, a wedge was satisfyingly angular, not curvy, not shapey. Shep loved cake.
'We'll get cake,' Dylan lied. 'But first we're going to the men's room, buddy.'
'Pee?' Shep asked.
'Pee,' Dylan confirmed quietly, determined to avoid making a scene.
'Shep doesn't need to pee.'
Fire laws and a need to receive deliveries guaranteed the existence of a back door; but no doubt they would have to go through the kitchen to reach it, a route that would assure too much commotion even if they were permitted to take it. They dared not leave by the front door, for fear of being spotted by the faux golfers. Only one exit remained.
'You may not get another chance for a while, buddy. Better go now,' Dylan explained.
'No pee.'
Their waitress arrived. 'Will that be everything?'
'Cake,' said Shep.
'Could we have menus to look at the desserts?' Dylan asked.
'Cake.'
'I thought you were leaving,' the waitress said.
'Just going to the men's room,' Jilly assured her. When the waitress frowned, Jilly added, 'The men's and the ladies'.'
'Cake.'
Withdrawing their lunch ticket from a pocket of her apron, the waitress said, 'We have some wonderful cakes.' She extracted a pencil from her elaborately piled and pinned red hair. 'Toasted-coconut, Black Forest, lemon, and lemon-walnut.'
'We don't all want cake,' Dylan said. 'We'll need menus.'
'Cake,' said Shepherd.
As the waitress went to get menus, Dylan said, 'Come on, Shep.'
'Cake. Toasted-coconut-'
'Pee first, Shep.'
'-Black Forest-'
By now the men in the Suburban would be at the registration desk in the motel office.
'-lemon-'
If they were carrying law-enforcement credentials, they would be presenting them to the desk clerk.
'-and lemon-walnut.'
If they had no credentials, they would be using intimidation to get the information they wanted.
'No pee,' Dylan quietly informed Shep, 'no cake.'
Licking his lips in anticipation of the cake, Shep considered this ultimatum.
'Dylan,' Jilly said softly but urgently. 'The window.'
The second black Suburban had crossed the street from the other motel. It parked behind the SUV that already stood in front of the registration office next door to the coffee shop.
Unless given absolutely no other option, Dylan didn't want to seize his brother by the arm and haul him out of the booth. In that event, the kid would probably come, although his cooperation was not a certainty. He wouldn't resist violently, but if he set his mind to it, he could become as immovable as a stubborn octopus.
Carrying menus, the waitress began the return trip from the hostess station.
'No pee, no cake?' Shepherd asked.
'No pee, no cake.'
'Pee, then cake?' Shep asked.
'Pee, then cake,' Dylan agreed.
Shepherd slid out of the booth.
Arriving with the menus just as Shepherd stood up, dropping them on the table, the waitress asked, 'Can I get you coffee?'
Dylan saw the front door open. Sun glared on that moving glass panel, and from this oblique angle, he couldn't see who might be entering until they stepped inside.
'Two coffees,' Jilly said.
An elderly couple crossed the threshold. They were probably in their eighties. Not stooped, spry enough, but surely not assassins.
'Milk,' Shep mumbled.
'Two coffees and one milk,' Dylan told the waitress.
The glass that the milk came in would have a round mouth; but the milk itself wasn't round. It wasn't shapey, but shapeless, and Shepherd never harbored a prejudice against any food solely because of the design of the container in which it might be served.
