Last to Die

“Maybe we should call nine one one.”

“By the time they respond, he’ll be long gone.”

They slipped out the exit into the night and darted behind a parked car. Peering around the rear bumper, she stared down the row, toward the stall where their rental vehicle was parked. The dome light was no longer shining.

“You sure about what you saw?” he whispered.

She didn’t like the doubt she heard in his voice. At this hour of night, with the gritty pavement biting into her bare feet, the last thing she needed was to have her eyesight questioned by Mr. Neon PJs.

She crept toward their rental car, not knowing or caring if Frost was behind her, because now she was starting to doubt herself. Starting to wonder if the light she’d seen was just a remnant from her nightmare. Aliens in her dreams, and now aliens in the parking lot.

The car was one stall away.

She paused, her sweating palm pressed against the rear bumper of a pickup truck. All she had to do was take another two steps and she’d be touching their own bumper. Crouching in the darkness, she listened for movement, for any sound at all, but she heard only the hiss of distant traffic.

She rocked forward and stared between the two vehicles. Saw empty space. That doubtful note she’d heard in Frost’s voice echoed in her head, even louder now. It sent her scrambling around the rear of their rental car, to peer down the passenger side.

No one there, either.

She rose to her feet and felt the night breeze against her face as she scanned the parking lot. If anyone was watching them, he would see her now, fully exposed. And now here came Frost, an even more blatant target in his red-and-white pajamas.

“No one,” he said. Not a question, just stating the obvious.

Too irritated to respond, she turned on her penlight and circled the car. Saw no scratches in the finish, nothing on the pavement around it except a trampled cigarette butt that looked like it had been lying there for weeks. “My room is right there,” she said, pointing to her window. “I saw a light through the curtains. A flashlight. While I was watching, the dome light went on. Someone got into our car.”

“Did you actually see anyone?”

“No. He must’ve been crouching too low.”

“Well, if he got into our car, then it should be …” Frost paused. “Unlocked.”

“What?”

“It’s not locked.” He gave the driver’s handle a tug and the dome light came on inside. They both stared into the lit car, neither one of them moving.

“I locked it tonight,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Why do you keep questioning me? I know I locked the frigging door. You ever seen me not lock my car?”

“No,” he admitted. “You always do.” He looked down at the handle he’d just touched. “Shit. Fingerprints.”

“I’m more concerned about why someone was in our car. And what they were looking for.”

“What if they weren’t looking for anything?” he said.

She stared through the window into the front seat and thought about Neil and Olivia Yablonski climbing aboard their Cessna Skyhawk. She thought about RDX and Semtex and a New Hampshire farmhouse that exploded into flames.

“Let’s take a look under the car,” she said quietly.

She didn’t have to explain a thing; he had already backed away from the driver’s door and was following her to the rear bumper. She got down on her knees and felt grit biting into her palms as she leaned in to study the undercarriage. Her flashlight beam skimmed across the muffler and tailpipe and floor pans. Nothing caught her eye or looked out of place.

She stood, her neck sore from the awkward position. Massaging her sore muscles, she circled to the front of the vehicle and once again dropped to her hands and knees to search the undercarriage.

No bomb.

“Shall I pop the trunk?” said Frost.

“Yeah.” And hope that doesn’t blow us sky-high.

He hesitated, clearly sharing her anxiety, then reached under the dashboard and pulled the release lever.

Jane lifted the trunk and shone her flashlight into the empty space. No bomb. She peeled back the floor carpet and peered into the well with the spare tire. No bomb.

Maybe I did dream it all, she thought. Maybe I forgot to lock the car. And we’re standing out here at three A.M., with Frost in those god-awful PJs, losing half a night’s sleep for nothing.

She closed the trunk and gave a huff of frustration. “We need to look inside the car.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it,” muttered Frost. “Might as well make a whole night of it.” He crawled onto the front seat, his pajama-clad rear end poking out the open door. Who would have guessed he’d go for the candy-cane convict look? As he rifled through the glove compartment, she knelt down and shone her flashlight up into the left rear wheel well. Of course, she saw nothing. She moved to the front of the car, repeated her examination of the left and right wheels, and circled back to the right rear wheel. Dropping to her knees, she aimed the flashlight into the space above the tire.

What she saw instantly made her freeze.

Frost called out: “I found something!”

“So did I.” She crouched staring into the wheel well as a chill clawed its way up her back. “You’d better come look at this,” she said quietly.

He climbed out of the car and dropped down beside her. The device was no larger than a cell phone, and affixed to the underside of the wheel well.

“What the hell is it?” she said.

“It looks like a GPS tracker.”

“What did you find inside?”

He took her by the arm and pulled her a few feet away. Whispered: “It’s under the passenger seat. They didn’t even bother to tape it in place. I’m guessing whoever put it there had to take off in a hurry.” He paused. “That’s why he left the car door unlocked.”

“It can’t be because he spotted us. He was gone before we even got out here.”

“You called me on your cell phone,” said Frost. “That had to be the tip-off.”

She stared at him. “You think our phones are being monitored?”

“Think about it. There’s a bug under the seat and a GPS tracker in our wheel well. Why wouldn’t they tap our phones?”

They heard the sound of an engine and turned just in time to see a car suddenly swerve out of the parking lot. They stood barefoot beside their bugged and tracked rental car, wide awake now, and too shaken to return to bed.

“Parris wasn’t paranoid,” said Frost.

She thought about burned farmhouses. About massacred families. “They know who we are,” she said. And where we live.

TWENTY-FIVE

 

THE EVENSONG DINING HALL WAS STRANGELY HUSHED THIS MORNING, students and teachers talking in murmurs over the muted clink of chinaware. Dr. Welliver’s now vacant seat was flanked by Dr. Pasquantonio and Ms. Duplessis, who both scrupulously avoided glancing at the empty chair that their late colleague had occupied