“Okay, good one.” She leaned back, arms folded across her chest. “My daughter seems to know when you’re making fun of me faster than I do. How sad is that? Now, where the hell are we going, and do you think I’ll ever get the job at your friend’s cafe in Pacific Grove?”
“That’s our goal.” Nick steered the Cadillac out onto the road. “We’re heading for Sarasota. I’m hoping to be in Missouri before we call it quits today. We’ll take Danger to the best hotel we can find. You and Deke should be entertained enough with the portable Playstation and DVD player, right Danger?”
“Sure Nick, but we are going to stop to eat, aren’t we?”
“Yep. But I’d like to be out of Colorado when we do. We’ll stop the moment we get into Kansas. As for my old buddy, Frank, we’re going to play a little game with him and buy some time. I’m going to wait for his call and -”
“Pretend you’re coming after him,” Rachel interrupted, grabbing Nick’s arm. “You are such a monster. He’ll be going nuts wondering when and where.”
“Is this my plan or yours, Miss I’m Going To D.C.?” Nick glanced at her with an award winning look of annoyance.
“Leaving us to deal only with the thugs we expected before.”
“That’s the plan. I figure we can take our time once we split off for the South.”
“You’ll have to be subtle and not openly threaten him. If…what?” Rachel laughed, seeing the quick glances she was getting from Nick as she lectured him on the obvious. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to insinuate you don’t already have every detail of your conversation with Frank planned out, Master.”
“Very well, you’re forgiven, young Jedi.” Nick glanced back at Jean, who had her Playstation already out and headphones on. “I figure the room-temperature Senator will be discovered very soon. It’ll be interesting to hear how the cops play it out with what I left them. Frank will know instantly, which will lead him to try and make immediate contact with 'Beavis and Butthead,' who are also at room-temperature. I’ll bet he doesn’t have any assets in the area to clean up the mess either. Although I took all their personal stuff, you can bet their DNA and fingerprints are on file somewhere. They’ll be looking into that scene very closely. I believe he’ll be calling right around the time we stop to eat.”
“Those guys… the sniper team…do -”
“Don’t go there, Rachel,” Nick cautioned. “They were paid to take us out. We’re driving toward Kansas because we were better.”
“You were better.”
“When you told me to hold up at the door, I was going in. Chances are, without my spotter, I’d be dead. You can bet ‘Beavis and Butthead’ had skills. Don’t short change yourself. If all goes as planned, you and I may develop into one of the best teams around.”
“As long as we don’t raise Jean up in the family business, I’ll go where you go.”
“Hey, don’t limit your daughter’s potential, Mom.”
“Not funny!”
“Calm down.” Nick laughed. “Hell, you figured to be dead by now.”
“We’ll never really be safe after this, will we, Nick?” Rachel reached over to put a hand on his thigh.
“No one is really safe. Many times, having value means greater safety. If we make it through this, we’ll be quite valuable. Unfortunately, it may mean I won’t be able to put a bullet in that prick Frank’s head for a while.”
Later, Nick exited for gas and a pit stop off Route 70, in a town called Brewster, past the Colorado/Kansas border. As he drove toward the indicated gas station and restaurant his satellite phone vibrated next to him. He grinned over at Rachel, who was shaking her head.
“Now that’s timing.” Nick saw Frank’s ID on the digital readout as he picked up the phone. “Assassins R Us, Nick speaking, how may I direct your call?”
“I know what you’re thinking, Nick,” Frank said.
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re wasting your time. You’ll never get to me.”
“Why…whatever do you mean, Frank?” Nick asked in a lilting voice. “Has something happened to make you think you’re in danger?”
“I…I have to hand it to you. They think Ambrose had some kind of attack. They’re hushing it up because of the mistress waking next to him with no idea what happened.”
“Gee, that works out really well for you, Frank. Maybe you were a little shortsighted in your cleanup idea.”
“Small damn doubt about that. Jesus! You can’t really be coming to D.C., Nick. You’re not that stupid.”
“Now see, I don’t really think of a nice trip to the nation’s capital as stupid. I consider it kind of a vacation-or even an adventure.” He pulled off the road for a moment to finish the call, with Rachel watching him closely.
Frank's voice came across as slightly panicked. “What can I do to make this right, Nick? I’m really in a position to help you.”
“How sweet, you’re going to help me now.”
“Don’t be an ass. We can work this out.”
“Let me think about it for a couple weeks, Frank. Maybe you’ll be around when I make the decision-or maybe not.”
Nick ended the call and steered onto the roadway again.
“How we doing?”she asked.
“Five by five, Rach, five by five.”
Rachel checked the speedometer once more, glad for the cruise control. It had taken them over ten hours, with stops for gas and food, to get across Kansas. Every time she had taken the Escalade off cruise control and operated the gas pedal manually, Nick had been forced to nudge her back down to seventy miles per hour. He kept reminding her that the last thing in the world they needed was to be stopped for speeding. After an hour of driving, seventy seemed like twenty on the highway.
“Did you say something?”
“I’m sorry.” She met Nick’s gaze. “Did I curse Kansas out loud?”
“It feels like you age a couple years driving through here, doesn’t it?”
“I kept glancing back at Jean the last half hour expecting her to be a teenager.”
He laughed. “She and Deke are good travelers.” Rachel saw him glance back at Jean, who was again dozing off. “They sleep when they can and play when they can. I’m glad Jean thought to get a Frisbee when we stopped. Did you know Deke was a champion Frisbee player?”
“It was a surprise to me. I guess we should have tried him out with balls and Frisbees before this. Work, eat, sleep, and life slips by without a stir. I noticed the goofy dog sleeps with his head on the damned thing now.”
“Deke’s grown quite attached to it.”
Hearing his name, Deke looked up with the black Frisbee in his mouth, gave it a few chomps and put his head down again.
“The border’s only five minutes away…thank God! Where do you want to stop?”
“I’ve been to Concordia before when Kansas has worn me out. It’s not far from the border. We should be there by seven. We’ll stay at the Day’s Inn, off of Route 70. They allow pets and Danger will like the indoor pool and hot tub. I know I will.”
“Sounds wonderful. I’ve noticed it doesn’t take much to make you happy.”
“These days, we have to take the good times where we can get them. Didn’t you like our stay in Denver?”
“Too much tension,” Rachel admitted. “All I could think of was what you were going to do and whether we’d ever make it out of there alive.”
“Okay, then this drive through Kansas was pretty nice, right, relatively speaking?”
