If I hadn’t met Cleo and Giles earlier in the day, I might have been more open-minded. Instead, I wondered if Graydon Fletcher’s family was helping Roy and Cleo flee the country while he distracted us. If they had escaped, they probably had two young boys and a girl with them. A girl who might be Caleb’s sister-living proof of Mason Fletcher’s innocence-with them.
CHAPTER 47
Tuesday, May 2
3:50 P.M.
HIGHWAY 138
CLEO had familiarized herself with the area she had chosen in the desert, so she knew which way she must travel to reach any sort of dwellings. She was in good physical condition, if a little scraped up, and the hike had not been difficult, even carrying her duffel bags. She had stolen a car, a small Honda, from the first home she found. The fuel gauge was nearly registering empty. She didn’t want to risk being videotaped by a gas station security camera, so she drove that to the edge of the nearest cluster of homes that passed for a neighborhood out here. She abandoned the vehicle after thoroughly wiping off anything she had touched-and she had been careful not to touch many surfaces. The Honda would keep police busy searching this area.
Stealing the motorcycle had been easy. She would have preferred to steal a car, but the owner of the motorcycle had been the most careless of his neighbors, and she didn’t have a lot of time to spare. The coveralls had helped her move from house to house without causing alarm-she moved in a determined way, a meter reader or other workman. Opportunity presented itself on her fifth try.
The motorcycle was kept in a garage, but the garage was unlocked. The bike’s key was in the ignition, and the helmet sitting right on it. She mentally called her unknown donor of transportation a fucking idiot.
Putting all her gear on the bike had been problematic, but the owner of the motorcycle had bungee cords on his workbench, and after she changed into her warmest clothes, the bags were less bulky.
The motorcycle owner’s head was a little bigger than hers, so she had to stuff one of her shirts into the helmet to serve as a liner. It looked weird, but no one would see it, because she would keep the face shield on.
She carefully closed the garage door and rode back toward the place where she had abandoned the Honda.
She was careful not to go too near it, but one advantage of wide-open spaces was that you could see a fuss being made from a distance, and clearly, law enforcement and media were already on the scene. She called Irene Kelly a fucking idiot, too.
She cut across an empty dirt road, then made her way to Big Pines Highway. The road twisted and climbed into the San Gabriel Mountains. Soon she was riding through Angeles National Forest. Earlier in the week, what had fallen as rain in Las Piernas arrived here as soft spring snow, although the low, plowed heaps along the roadside were already slushy. So far, the road remained clear, but wet with runoff. There was some traffic, but not enough to be irritating.
SHE kept herself going through the earliest part of the process of escaping the desert through sheer will. For a time, the mountain road required all her concentration. Eventually, though, her thoughts turned to that horrible set of moments in the desert, when she thought she might die.
Until today, she had been in control in every situation. Her careful planning, her preparations, her training were all aimed toward minimizing variables that could result in her death or arrest.
If today had gone as she had planned it, Roy would have made sure that Victoria’s drink was drugged, turned off the alarm, and taken all four children with him. How hard was it for him to count to four?
Even if Bonnie had refused the drink, Cleo could have taken her out. Having that stupid ass Giles along would have made it a little more difficult, but not impossible.
So what happens? Roy fucks up all but one of his assignments, and even so, things still might have been okay if Giles would have stayed calm and simply gone outside and met Carrie and told that reporter tough shit, he’s her uncle, no interviews, and good-bye. Instead, the dipshit packs a goddamned newspaper reporter into the van! Gives her directions to where Cleo is waiting with a dead body!
And worst of all, the idiot says her name in front of the reporter. Cleo had thought quickly then, realizing that he’d just freak out and tell the woman God knows what if Cleo didn’t calm him down as fast as possible. So she had lied and said he was great and did all the usual stroking of his ego that he required. And decided, as she hung up, that she’d had just about enough of Giles.
Her mistake had been in not shooting the reporter right off the bat. She saw that now. She had let her anger toward Giles get in the way of accomplishing her goals. At the very least, she should have taken the keys away from that bitch. Instead: amateur hour.
The killing of Giles had been nice and clean, and she had expected that the reporter and Carrie would be grateful for the rescue. Instead, the crazy bitch had driven off. And then, then-Cleo still couldn’t believe it-then the bitch had turned around and tried to kill her!
No one had ever tried to kill Cleo. It had made her go cold all the way through. It gave her a kind of sick and wobbly feeling that threw her aim off. The thought of someone else feeling that way was one thing, but she was not supposed to be in that situation herself.
And the look on that woman’s face! She had to stop thinking about it, she decided. It was too, too upsetting.
SHE didn’t dare stop to rest. She didn’t want any clerks or waitresses to have a reason to say where they had seen a woman matching her description.
THE sun was going down by the time she finished hiding the motorcycle. She hiked up the slope that led to her cabin, carrying her bags.
Roy was sitting at the kitchen table with the kids when she came in. There was a look of surprise on every face when she opened the door, then she saw Roy look anxiously beyond her.
“Carrie’s not with me,” she said. Then, seeing the look on the faces of the kids, she quickly added, “She decided to stay with Grandfather Fletcher.”
The kids were immediately relieved, but Roy still looked worried. One of the kids, the girl, said, “Can we all go to Grandfather Fletcher’s house?”
“No,” Roy said. “No, we’re going to stay here for a little while.”
They were all too well-disciplined to question his authority, but Cleo could see that this decision didn’t meet with their approval.
“Where’s Mommy?” the youngest boy asked.
“She decided to stay with your grandfather, too,” Cleo said, “so she asked me to come up here and take care of you and your dad.”
That resulted in puzzlement, but no rebellion.
“Who are you?” asked the older boy.
“She’s your cousin Cleo,” Roy said, before she could warn him not to give them her name. Well, what difference did it make, now that Giles had made a gift of it to that reporter? Now that a reporter could describe her to the police, to the world? It occurred to her that her whole life would have to change.
Fine, she thought, but she would make that reporter pay for all the inconvenience she was causing.
CHAPTER 48
