mountain watching with binoculars, the silhouette of the weapon would be clearly visible through the windshield. Meanwhile, Rhonda had the presence of mind to put together a packet that contained a blanket, thermos, and enough food to make us look like a pair of legitimate picnickers.
Rhonda took my. 38, checked it in a very businesslike manner, and put it inside her jacket pocket. I took possession of the 9-mm. Owens disappeared into his bedroom and returned carrying his military dress-uniform side arm, a formidable Colt. 45 that looked more like a cannon than a handgun.
Years before, Rhonda told us, she had been to Montezuma Pass on a weekend camp-out with a Girl Scout troop that had hiked the Huachuca Mountains' Crest Trail. Since she knew the way, Rhonda drove. Like a bat out of hell.
The Beretta had shown a mere twelve hundred miles on its odometer when we had picked it up at Sky Harbor International earlier that morning. None of those miles could have been nearly as tough as the ones Rhonda put on it that afternoon. By comparison, our jaunt up Yarnell Hill in her Spider several days earlier could have been a tame carousel ride.
Once we were off Highway 92, the road was paved for only a mile or two. As soon as it changed to chuck- holed gravel, we started climbing. The road was steep and full of switchbacks and one-lane turns, but Rhonda drove with fierce concentration, heeling the Beretta around corners and gunning the engine on the straightaways.
'How'd you know it was JoJo's briefcase?' I asked. Making asinine conversation helped take my mind off her driving.
'I told you. I recognized it, initials and all. He hasn't used it in years, I'm sure, but he's physically incapable of letting loose of old briefcases. He must have a dozen or so lined up out in his garage. He had half that many when I move out, and obviously, if he still has this one, he hasn't thrown away any of them.'
'And the combination? How did you know that after all these years?'
'His birthday. Not very original, is it?'
The car sawed dangerously as she wheeled it around a washboarded curve faster than she should have. I swallowed the lump in my throat as she fought the bucking Beretta back under control.
'What are we going to do when we get there?' she asked.
'Find a place discreetly close to the blue Blazer, throw down our blanket, and neck up a storm.'
'Are you kidding?' she demanded.
'No. I'm not kidding. There's nothing so boring as watching somebody else neck. If we make it embarrassing enough, maybe Monty will forget about us entirely.'
'It'll be dangerous, won't it?'
'No more dangerous than being shoved around by that creep in the 4-X-4 last night. Besides, if Guy's got his information straight, there'll be three of us and only one of him. But we'll have to move fast, before he figures out how come his friends aren't getting out of the Trooper.'
She nodded her understanding, and I reached over to pat her leg. 'Are you scared?'
'Not yet. Later, I guess, right?'
'Right,' I answered. 'Later.'
By then we were nearing the top of the pass, but the idiot light in the dashboard was beginning to glow dully. The engine was overheating. The Beretta was built for sedate freeway driving. Rhonda Attwood was treating it like a damn mountain goat.
With the temperature light glowing bright red and a cloud of steam rolling out from under the hood, we pulled into the rest area parking lot near the top of the mountain. There were only three other cars parked in the lot, two of them sedans side by side near the restroom building. One was a robin's-egg-blue Dodge Dart with South Dakota plates, while the other, a four-door Dodge Aries from Arizona, wore a bumper sticker that said, 'We're spending our children's inheritance.'
The blue Chevy Blazer occupied the parking spot nearest the road and as far away from both the restroom and the other vehicles as possible. Like the 4-X-4 that had pursued us in Phoenix the night before, the Blazer was another window-blackened behemoth.
I attempted to glance inside the Blazer as we pulled into the lot. No one was visible, but I didn't want to attract attention by appearing too interested.
Rhonda parked three spaces away, halfway between the other vehicles and the Blazer. As soon as she stopped the car, Rhonda got out and stretched, looking as though she'd been driving for hours. When I got out of the car and came around to stand beside her, she flung her arms around my neck and kissed me passionately on the lips.
'You want necking, fella?' she whispered in me ear. 'I'll show you necking.'
I pushed her away. 'Let's go use the restroom,' I said. 'We'll try to get the lay of the land.'
We stopped long enough to open the hood of the car and let billows of steam roll skyward.
'Should we add water?' Rhonda asked.
'No,' I said. 'Don't worry about it. It'll cool off of its own accord.'
Guy Owens had told us that he'd give us a ten-minute head start, so there wasn't much time for reconnoitering. The restroom, built from roughhewn stones, would have made every environmentalist's conservationist heart go pitter-pat. A brass plaque affixed to an inside wall announced that the chemically treated composting toilets were a totally nonpolluting system and had been manufactured by some little one-horse company in Newport, Washington-wherever that is.
Unfortunately, I was far more concerned with finding adequate cover than I was with nonpolluting toilets. I tried looking out the eye-level window in the men's room, but that was no good. It faced in the wrong direction.
Back outside, I mingled with the occupants of the other two cars, touring retirees holding an informal coffee klatsch, as they drank coffee and munched sweet rolls. They were all totally oblivious to the drama unfolding around them.
One of them, a white-haired little woman leaning on a four-pronged cane, looked up at me and smiled. 'Nice weather after all that rain, isn't it?'
I nodded and said nothing. What I wanted to do was tell them to get the hell out of there. To run for cover while spending their kids' inheritance was still an option, but I couldn't. Any sudden change in behavior would have alerted our quarry that we were onto him.
Rhonda still hadn't emerged from the ladies' room when off to the left, just above the parking lot, I spied a slightly raised ledge with a small bench on it. When she finally did appear, I seized her by the hand and dragged her in that direction.
'Let's go sit up there,' I urged.
She nodded happily and trotted along, looking for all the world as though she was having the time of her life. People seeing her from a distance would have thought she didn't have a care in the world. They couldn't see the troubled look in her vivid blue eyes.
'What's going to happen?' she whispered anxiously, leaning close to my shoulder.
As if I knew, but I took a stab at it anyway. 'We'll sit up there to begin with. Then, when we see Guy pulling into the lot, we can split up and go in opposite directions. At least that way he won't be able to get all of us at once. If it looks like he's getting away, shoot for the tires or the radiator, not the interior. We might hit Michelle.'
She nodded. 'Okay,' she said, but she punctuated the word with a quick hoot of laughter that made it sound as though I had just cracked some incredibly funny joke.
Still laughing, she scampered over to the Beretta to fetch the thermos and bag of food. She came back toward me, smiling and swaying her hips-showing off. It made me wish we were all wearing flak jackets. Whatever was about to go down, I didn't want any harm to come to Rhonda Attwood's sleek little frame. Or my much larger one either, for that matter.
According to Ralph Ames, Rhonda was a talented artist. Now I learned firsthand that she was also a consummate actress. She was vibrant. She was happy. She was brimming over with infectious laughter. She was on. We made our way up to the bench, but she set the thermos down without pouring coffee. Instead, she wrapped her arms around my neck, ran her fingers through my hair, and pulled my face close to hers. The ardor in her probing kisses set fires in my system that almost made me forget why we were there.
Eventually, laughing again, she drew away. 'Can you see anything?' she whispered.
