“Nick’s been taken. That all?”
“The less you know, the safer you’ll be.”
Nick set Reese’s business card on the truck’s dash.
“We got a minute and a half,” the man said. “I ain’t got no wife anymore. Died some years back. Nowadays, I live for fixing up old trucks, driving new ones, and watching NASCAR with the boys. But I sure wish I could help you out more.”
“That makes two of us,” Nick said.
“Almost thirty seconds to spare.”
“Nice going. I really appreciate it.”
The man pulled the truck off the highway just past the exit thirteen cutoff. They peered out through the rain- dotted windows for another vehicle, but saw none that were parked.
“Doesn’t seem to be anybody here,” the old man said.
Suddenly, the driver’s side door flew open as if blown by the wind. Koller leaped inside, shoving the driver over as if he were a doll, sandwiching him between himself and Nick. Then, without uttering a word, Koller grabbed the man’s head between his hands, and in a single, powerful twist, snapped his neck with a sickening crack of bone. The cab instantly filled with a foul stench as his bowels and bladder let go.
“You fucking bastard!” Nick screamed.
Koller leveled his gun on him.
“Nothing you can do will save him now. But a deal’s a deal, Doc. And you just cut one with me you don’t want to go back on. That’s a promise.”
With the dead man riding between them, Koller eased the truck into the flow of traffic. The rain was falling harder now.
CHAPTER 48
“If you light up in here, young man,” Junie said, “I promise you I’m going to throw up.”
“Even with the door and windows open?”
“You could cut the roof off this bus with a giant can opener and I’d still vomit. It’s like an allergy. A person smokes around me indoors, I throw up. Just go outside. You’ll be looking right at us through the windows while you give yourself cancer and emphysema and heart disease. But what you won’t be looking at, darlin’, is this old lady getting violently ill.”
The guard, a handsome, well-built African-American man in his thirties, glanced about the RV, clearly pondering what problems could possibly arise from leaving the two women handcuff ed to the supports of the dining table while he smoked outside. Finally, he unfolded his six-foot frame from the passenger chair and stepped easily down to the dirt-covered floor of the barn.
“I’ve seen you smoke, Junie,” Jillian whispered.
“Only one a day. It’s a deal I made with Sam when we got married. I’ve never broken the deal, not once, but God, does that one Marlboro taste fine.”
“Junie, we can’t just sit here waiting for them to kill us. We’ve got to do something.”
“We’re not going to be as easy as I was when they hijacked the RV. The guy was already behind the curtain in the exam room, waiting for me when I left to go pick up Nick’s replacement for the night. Let’s vow right now we won’t go down without a fight.”
“Any sense of where Nick might be?”
“I’m worried, that’s for sure. But I’m also worried they might be using us to get at him.”
“All the more reason to fight. The question is, how do we deal with an armed guard while we’re handcuff ed?”
“You may not be able to tell yet, but I’m softening him up. I remind him of his mother.”
“How do you know that?”
“I remind every man of his mother.”
“What do we do after you’ve got him softened?”
“I’m counting on you for that one, sweetie. You’re the psych nurse.” It had been five uncomfortable hours since Paul Regis, or whatever his name was, had led Jillian to his car on the pretext of getting some papers for her to sign. Over coffee, he had been charming, worldly, funny, and complimentary, even after she had told him she had met someone, and so she was totally unprepared when he grabbed her wrist and viciously twisted her arm behind her back. In almost the same movement, he shoved her facedown onto the passenger side floor, hoisted her into the car by her belt, and demanded she hold her hands together behind her back. By the time they arrived at the farm-somewhere north and west of D.C., she guessed-her forehead and one cheek were rubbed raw by the carpet.
It was late afternoon when the car finally stopped and Regis opened the passenger’s side door. They were parked in a broad field, flat and verdant. Facing them, in parallel, were four large, weatherworn barns, the sort used for storing and curing tobacco. Some distance behind the barns was a small whitewashed house, but there was no farming equipment anywhere, and no corrals or other signs that livestock was about.
Parked in front of the second barn from the right was a black pickup truck, and beside it was a man in dark slacks, sunglasses, and a white shirt, wearing a shoulder holster. It bothered Jillian greatly that Regis had made no attempt to keep her from viewing the setup or from gazing around. Apparently it didn’t matter to him what she saw because she wasn’t ever going to leave the place alive.
At the second barn, Regis spoke briefly with the man on duty, turned her over to him, and left in something of a hurry. She was handcuffed and led through the side door into a surprisingly vast raftered space, two stories high, poorly lit by three widely spaced naked bulbs. There were dozens of boxes and crates of all sizes stacked along the walls, and a small Jeep parked at the rear. In the center of the barn, beneath one of the three hanging lights, was the Helping Hands Medical RV. She was devastated but not completely surprised to see Junie through the windows, sitting calmly at the table. A minute later, Jillian was sitting across from her, also handcuffed to the table leg.
“Looks like he’s almost done with his smoke,” Jillian said. “Any ideas?”
“I feel certain I can get out of these handcuffs, at least temporarily.”
“How?”
“No man wants to sit around and watch while an old lady wets herself. In fact, I’m not going to have to act very hard to convince him of that threat.”
“What comes after that?”
“Coffee,” Junie whispered urgently, as the guard stubbed out his butt and turned to mount the stairs.
“I gotcha,” Jillian replied as the man settled back wearily into his seat.
“Hey, thanks for doing your smoking out there,” Junie said.
“No big deal.”
“You really shouldn’t be doing that at all, you know.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
“My name’s June-Junie, everyone calls me. This here’s Jillian. We’re both nurses. We know about smoking.”
“That’s nice.”
“You got a name?”
“Call me Butch.”
“This can’t be much fun for you, Butch, holding two ladies prisoner like this.”
“I do what I’m told.”
“I have a son your age. He never did what he was told.”
“That’s nice.”
Jillian sensed that she was watching a master at work-a queen of swaying people to her point of view.
“He’s a lawyer now-a public defender. You some kind of cop?”
