She shook her head. “You’re the one who jumps across the chasm and then turns to the rest of us and calls, ‘Come on. You can do it!’ Only we can’t. Or most of us can’t.”
The light changed and only one taxicab was caught in the intersection to block the traffic. Jack Till accelerated and then swerved into the left lane to avoid it at the last moment. He kept going on Pine Street and turned south onto Van Ness to head for the 101.
“Are we going to the airport?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t seen anyone following us. If nobody is, then what they’re probably doing is betting that we’ll try to fly out.”
“And?”
“And then they’ll be waiting for us at the airport, so we don’t want to go there.”
“But you once told me airports are the safest place. How could they hurt us with all that security?”
“The system is designed to detect objects that blow up or people who might shoot into a crowd. There are a lot of other ways to kill a hundred-and-ten-pound woman and walk away.”
“Jesus!” she said. “I can’t believe that after six years I’m back to this again—running, just like the first day.”
“If you’ve got anything new to tell me, I’d love to hear it.”
“I had six years to think about this, but you know what? I didn’t. I mean, not in any useful way. I went about my life, and I thought about what I had to do each day. I met Louanda after a few weeks, and—”
“Louanda? Is that Ann Delatorre?”
“Yes. Her name was Louanda Rowan. Without her, I don’t think I would have made it this far.”
“I’m sorry about her. If only I had been able to convince her to let me help, she would be alive. Somebody found her after I did.”
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know she existed. If I had been there to open the door as you expected, it never would have happened.
“I can tell you that kicking your own ass doesn’t leave much time for anything else.”
“Have you done a lot of that?”
“Enough for the moment.” Till drove aggressively like a cop on duty, moving along in a lane for a time, gaining steadily on the cars ahead and then switching lanes. He kept staring into the mirrors, trying to catch another car changing lanes to keep him in sight. After a few minutes, he said, “How are you doing?”
“Not so great. I’m so terrified, I can hardly breathe.”
“We’ve got to be scared, but only enough to stay alert and do the little things we can do.
“I suppose I have figured out some of it in the last six years. Not the important parts—about the man who is killing people or anything. Only the personal parts, the things about me, me, me. So it’s not worth saying aloud.”
“Yes it is. I’d like to hear it.”
“Why?”
“Because your life—and mine—might depend on it. We can drive fast and try to be inconspicuous, but that won’t stop the people who killed Louanda from trying to kill you.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
He said nothing. After a few seconds, she said, “Why aren’t you answering me?”
“Does that SUV back there look familiar? The dark one. It kept coming up a while ago, then kind of fell back, and now here it is again.”
She stared at it through the back window. “I don’t know. They all look alike.”
“I’m trying not to be an alarmist, but I’ve got a feeling about it. Have you ever fired a gun?”
Her eyes widened. “Not really. Not the way you mean. When I was at camp, they taught us riflery. And I fired a friend’s pistol once.”
“Here’s the problem. If the people in that SUV are the killers, they’ll pull up on your side of the car and slightly behind us. The first few shots will get you. Then they’ll pull forward to try for me.”
“What can we do?”
He reached to his belt and took out his gun. “Here is the safety. If I tell you to, flip it off with your thumb, keeping your finger outside the trigger guard. You hold the grips tight, aim out the window with both hands. You fire four shots into their windshield—two rounds at the shooter, then two rounds at the driver.”
“What?” She was shocked. “Shoot them?”
“If you hit anybody, it’s over. If you just scare them, I can probably build up some distance and lose them.”
He allowed the dark vehicle to gain on them, glanced at the freeway signs and took the next exit. He coasted to the end of the exit ramp, turned right, and pulled into the first parking lot he saw on the new street. It was the big lot for a Home Depot store, and the aisles were full. He pulled to the end of the first aisle, stopped, and looked back to watch the street in the direction of the exit ramp. He waited for a few minutes, but he saw no sign that the SUV had come down the ramp.
“What now?” she asked.
“You can give my gun back, I guess.” He accepted it, put it back in the holster and covered it with his jacket again. He looked out at the street. “This is the way to the airport, isn’t it?”
“It’s one of the ways. The airport is just a few miles down the road that way. You stay parallel with the 101.”
“Then it might be another opportunity to throw some more confusion in our trail. I rented this car at the airport. I’d like to turn it in and get a different one.”
“Are you still against flying?”
“When you get on an airplane, people know exactly where you’re going and exactly what time you’ll arrive. If we go by car, we make them work to stay with us, and we get a chance to see who they are.”
22
PAUL GOT OUT of the black SUV and opened Sylvie’s door so she could climb out. As he watched her long legs swing out and straighten, and then saw her slide lightly off the seat and hop to the ground, he realized that the sight made him like her better. He had been seething, his jaw clenched much of the time since Sylvie had shot Ann Delatorre, and the nasty irrational remarks Sylvie had made in the parking lot at the pier had made things much worse. She was stupid and childish and completely unable to keep her mind focused on anything except herself. But the sight of those long legs and the graceful hop to the pavement dissipated his anger.
Paul was an aesthete. Other people could have said his response was not aesthetic but sexual, but that kind of statement would have shown that these people knew nothing. They didn’t understand that the two were the same: the response of the human mind to beauty.
He glanced toward the car rental building and took Sylvie’s arm, confident that he was pursuing the right strategy. Jack Till had left the freeway several miles before the airport. Till was fond of pulling tricks around airports, sometimes turning in his car and flying out, and sometimes turning in one car and renting another. Either way, the airport car rental was the place where Jack Till would be this afternoon.
“Why are we stopping here?” Sylvie asked.
“We’ve got to trade this SUV for a different vehicle.” He removed the two small suitcases from the SUV and shut the back door.
“Why?”
“It’s a tactic. Just like chess. I think he may have spotted us behind him. If he didn’t pick this out as the
