window, not bothering to ask why Blues was ignoring all the highway signs pointing to Kansas City.
Looking back, he realized his doubts began when she told him about her medical background. She knew enough to poison Sullivan. At the warehouse, Camaya threatened him, not her. Tying her up could have been for show, her escape planned rather than fortuitous. And Camaya couldn’t have found them without somebody telling him where to look. He wondered if paranoia made him a clear thinker or just paranoid.
They chased the afternoon sun through the rolling, wooded Ozark hills, across the state line, and into the grassy knolls of eastern Kansas. Highway 54 beckoned westward to the broad, endless plains.
Mason had once driven that road all the way to Liberal, Kansas. Eight hours of seamless prairie, thinking about the pioneers who had dared to cross that land 150 years ago. There must have been moments when they looked in every direction, finding nothing to reveal where they were, where they’d been, or where they were going. Swallowed by their surroundings, they had to press on or go mad where they were.
He was beginning to understand what that felt like. He couldn’t go back, and it was impossible to know whether he was headed the right way. By the time he found out, it could be too late.
An hour and a half later, Blues pulled into the parking lot of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Rogersville, Kansas. After his diet the last few days, those red and white stripes and tantalizing choices of original or extra crispy beckoned Mason.
A weather-beaten phone book dangled on a steel cable from beneath a pay phone planted in a corner of the asphalt parking lot. While Blues and Sandra went inside, Mason lingered at the phone, checking the local listings. There was no listing for Dr. Kenton Newberry. Meredith wasn’t listed either. She may have married, died, or moved away. There were ten different listings under Phillips. He tore out the page, hoping that one of them might be her family.
Blues and Sandra sat opposite each other in a booth. He was eating and she was watching. Mason slid in next to Blues and reached for a chicken thigh. That was as close to dinner as he got.
“Okay, Boy Scouts. I’ve been good and kept my mouth shut. But I’ve had enough. Either I get some answers, or I’m out of here.”
She didn’t have to raise her voice. Sandra had one of those tones that sliced right through you.
“We just thought it would be a good idea to take a different route home in case anybody was watching for us,” Mason said, hoping it was the question she wanted answered. Wrong again.
“I’m not stupid, Louis, so don’t patronize me. We’re having this wonderful bonding-in-the-midst-of-danger experience and you all but accuse me of tipping Camaya off about the cabin. Now, what is that bullshit all about?”
Blues was making quick work of the mound of chicken, gravy, and mashed potatoes on his plate and was not going to bail Mason out. The teenager wiping the counter overheard Sandra and dropped his dish towel, the snap of boiling oil and sizzling chicken fat the only sounds in the Colonel’s house. He thought of every witness who’d blown his credibility by stalling an answer to the tough question and knew his was draining away.
“I don’t know,” he said without looking at her, his bad start getting worse. “Somebody had to have tipped him off and you weren’t at the cabin when they came for us. I didn’t mean to imply anything. It just came out that way. I was out of line. I’m sorry.”
She chewed her lip for a moment, eyeing him, then took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, since we’re all friends again, tell me what was so interesting in that phone book you vandalized.”
Blues moved on to the biscuits, the cashier wasn’t moving, and Mason wasn’t fast enough with a response because he didn’t have one that wasn’t a lie she wouldn’t see through.
“Listen, Sandra …,” he stalled.
“No, you listen, Louis! I saved your ass at the warehouse! Or did you forget how we got untied? Blues, Kelly, and me-we’re the ones saving you-not the other way around. And now you treat me like a suspect! You don’t even have the nerve to accuse me to my face.”
She shoved the bucket of chicken in his lap and stormed out. Mason knocked it onto the floor as he followed her outside.
“Wait a minute! Where are you going? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do what I should have done in the first place, Louis. Handle this on my own.”
She walked across the street to a truck stop, waving at a trucker about to pull out. He stopped long enough for her to climb into the passenger seat of his eighteen-wheeler. Blues joined Mason as the rig headed north.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
On the way to Kansas City, Mason scanned every tractor-trailer rig they passed, looking for Sandra, alternating between feeling guilty for goading her into leaving and relieved that she was gone. When he felt guilty, he kept his eyes open for rape victims lying abandoned on the shoulder of the highway. When he felt relieved, he concentrated on what he would do next.
Blues left him to his thoughts until they reached the southern edge of Overland Park, the biggest of Kansas City’s suburban bedrooms.
“You make up your mind yet?” Blues asked.
“About what?”
“Whether you want to let trouble keep finding you or whether you want to start running the show.”
“I’m tired of running-that’s why we came back. I’ve got a short list-Pamela Sullivan, Scott Daniels, and Angela Molina. You got any preferences?”
“You’ve been set up. Scott picked you to investigate the firm because he figured he could control you. When you picked Sandra to help you, he knew that he was screwed.”
“There’s a big difference between trying to control the investigation and committing a murder.”
“One’s the beginning and the other’s the end. When Scott found out you had the disks, he told the wrong people. Maybe he knew what he was doing and maybe he didn’t. Either way, you’d have been just as dead.”
Mason didn’t want to confront the possibility that Scott would let him be killed. He could live with the O’Malleys being crooks. He could handle some unknown bad guy sending a slimeball like Camaya to punch his clock. These were people he didn’t know or care about. They presented problems that he would find a way to solve. But betrayal by a friend was another story. He was loyal to his friends and expected no less of a commitment in return. It seemed a modest standard in a world too often covered with shifting sands.
They stopped at a sporting goods store, where Blues bought two boxes of.45-caliber ammunition.
“Scott has a lot of questions to answer,” Mason said when they got back in the car. “He was in on the fixtures deals from the beginning. But he wouldn’t know what rock to turn over to find Camaya, so he’s got to be reporting to someone higher up.”
“If he’s scared enough, he might talk to us,” Blues said.
“Then we’ll give him a chance.”
Mason dialed Scott’s home number. His wife answered.
“Gloria, it’s Lou Mason. Is Scott around?”
She didn’t answer at first. When she did, she struggled to keep her composure. “No-Lou. He’s been working late-every night.”
“Friday nights too? You think he’s still downtown?”
“He called a little while ago-and said he was going for a swim and before he came home.”
“I’ll try him there. If I miss him, tell him I called, okay?”
“Lou-what’s happening? Will we be all right?”
She started to cry. He remembered the dead, flat look in Scott’s eyes the last time he saw him and thought again about what Scott had done to him. Mason owed Scott nothing, and he wouldn’t lie to her.
“I don’t know, Gloria,” he said and hung up.
“Any luck?”
“Not home. His wife is on the edge.”
“They have any kids?”
“Yeah. Three.” Then Mason felt sick as he remembered one of those loose threads, the elusive piece of the
