I moved awkwardly to the shoulder as the ambulance driver knelt over General Bo Farquhar. I didn’t even see how Bo managed to grasp the man’s shirt and pull the Glock from the holster inside his jacket. But I did limp in front of them toward the ambulance so that the guard, still in the ambulance, wouldn’t see them, either. When I came up to the driver-side window, I did what Bo had told me and got out of the way. Above us on the road, Arch and Jake climbed into the Jeep.
Wielding the Glock, Bo barked commands into the ambulance. I stationed myself behind the rear doors as the driver and the attendant police officer lined up by the emergency vehicle. The police officer was a woman I knew, but her name eluded me. She unlocked the ambulance doors. Marla, clad in an orange prisoner suit, emerged slowly. She hopped clumsily down onto the graveled shoulder. Her face was swollen with hives and she was gasping. Seeing me, her rasping breath turned instantly into wrenching sobs.
Bo demanded the guard’s gun and got it. He threw it off the cliff that abutted the road. Down, down into the ravine the gun fell.
Holding the Glock high, Bo yanked something that I guessed to be the radio wire out of the ambulance. He ordered. the ambulance driver back into the disabled vehicle. Then he ordered the female guard to do something to the driver. She leaned into the cab to follow Bo’s orders.
“Marla! How sick are you?” I demanded anxiously. “Are you breathing okay?”
She wheezed, then said, “Well, I look a lot better than you, I can tell you that!”
“Blood’s fake. Your epinephrine is on the passenger-side front seat of that Jeep up there. Go, take care of yourself.”
“Is that you, Goldy? Goldy Schulz?” the female guard called from the ambulance. “Are you nuts? Don’t do this!”
I stared down at the policewoman. I still could not for the life of me, recall her name. To my horror, General Bo raised his gun and brought it down on her skull. Her body crumpled to the pavement.
“Come on!” Bo yelled at me. The fake blood streaked on his face made him look ghoulish. “Bring that car down!”
My muscles felt as if they’d turned to sponge. ?I don’t believe he did that,” I muttered as I jogged to the Jeep. I threw the car into gear and checked the rear-view mirror for traffic. Beside me, Marla rasped a request to Arch that he avert his eyes so she could have privacy. Then she rolled down the waistband of the orange prisoner pants, took a shuddery breath, and stabbed herself in the hip with the Epipen. She rolled the pants back up and whispered an all-clear to Arch. My son stared, openmouthed, at General Bo and the unconscious policewoman. He looked confused and scared, as if what we had just done had finally penetrated his consciousness.
I veered onto the road and brought the Jeep to where Bo stood. He holstered his gun and assumed a paternal tone. “Please get into the back, Goldy.”
As I hopped out of the car, a blue van traveling eastward slowly passed us and stopped on the shoulder twenty feet below the ambulance. The Front Range ambulance lights flashed inexorably: red and white, red and white. The guard’s body did not move. I couldn’t see or hear the ambulance driver.
I opened the door to the back seat. Jake began to howl. On the shoulder twenty feet from the ambulance, two women emerged from the van. They were calling to us: Need help? Everything all right? Need… call on … cell phone? Suddenly I felt Bo’s hand grip my shoulder.
“Get back in the goddam car, Goldy. Climb back there with your son, now!”
Arch was crying. His body was stiff with fear. I lost my balance trying to sit and ended up both beside and partly on top of Jake. The dog snuffled and whined. I was sorry to have scared Arch. But seeing Marla so weak and frightened strengthened my resolve.
Bo checked the mirror, then zoomed the Jeep across three lanes and careened up onto the bumpy median. The Jeep rocked from side to side as it bounced, too fast, over the rocky, unlandscaped strip dividing the interstate. Finally the car shot up on the westbound side of the highway. Bo snapped the steering wheel to straighten the shuddering car. The Jeep’s engine ground ominously as we sped back toward Aspen Meadow.
Marla struggled to breathe. The rash on her chubby bruised face made her look monstrous. Jake snuffled and licked my hand. General Bo was staring straight ahead, pushing the Jeep to high speed.
I looked back. Below the median, I could just make out the two women approaching the ambulance. The guard’s body was still sprawled, limp, on the road.
We were fugitives.
16
“Goldy… I’m sorry you had to …” Marla rasped. “I can’t believe you and… Bo … what you did…”
“I need your wrist,” I said matter-of-factly. “I’ve got to monitor your pulse. That epinephrine could zap your heart right into overtime.”
“Great.” She struggled to catch her breath. “So then what? Call an ambulance?” Finding this amusing, she wheezed with laughter.
“Look,” I replied, “cool it. I can’t do blood pressure or EKG, but you need to let me check you for extra heartbeats. We may end up at the hospital yet.”
Marla cackled and gasped again. “Leave it to Goldy to break me out of jail using food. Marvelous ? “
“Try to calm down,” Bo ordered her gently. Instead, to my dismay, she gulped for breath and started to weep. She thrust her left hand in my direction. I clasped it, felt for a vein, and checked my watch. Normal. I knew enough about adrenal-type stimulation to expect bad side effects, if there were going to be any, within thirty minutes. On the other hand, the epinephrine should start alleviating her allergic reaction within a minute. Let us pray.
With her free hand, Marla opened the glove compartment. A cellular phone fell out. Sniffling, she slammed the compartment shut, groped in the storage compartment between the bucket seats, and pulled out a tissue. Awkwardly, she blew her nose. “Bo … I’m so … sorry I haven’t been nicer to you…” She laughed between sobs. “Great time for remorse, huh?”
“Would you please stop talking and hold still?” I demanded. Still, the wheeze appeared to be fading from her voice. I concentrated on the vein in her wrist.
But Marla would not be quiet. “When I heard Bo’s voice, saw the two of you, I … I didn’t know what to think. What… what have you done? What’s going to happen to us?”
Bo’s smile beneath the fake blood streaks was small and guarded. He took a clean tissue Marla offered and dabbed at his face. “Is that allergic-reaction medication working? Do you need some ointment for your hives?”
She ignored his questions. “Why, Bo?” she insisted. Her pulse remained normal. The scratchiness definitely had cleared from her throat. “Aren’t you violating your parole? Why are you here?”
He glanced over at her. “You’re beginning to sound better.” He frowned. “Why am I here? Because Goldy asked me to help. You know me, I’m a military-action kind of guy.”
“Cut the crap,” Marla snapped.
“All right, then,” he snapped right back, “I did it because whatever’s gone on between us, we’re family.”
“I don’t know, guys,” Arch interjected. His voice wavered. “This is all pretty… heavy.” With my free hand, I patted his shoulder. He shook me off with a muttered, “Quit it.”
Still clasping Marla’s wrist, I twisted in the leather seat to check whether anyone was coming for the guard and the ambulance driver. But the roadside scene had long ago been swallowed in fog. I tried not to imagine how much trouble Tom would get into when news got out that his wife had held up an ambulance. I turned back and focused on Marla’s pulse. Hunched over the wheel, General Bo sailed up the interstate. His prominent chin jutted out at a determined angle. The speedometer needle quivered just above seventy miles per hour.
“That guard’s going to be fine,” Bo reassured Arch. His grip tightened on the wheel. “She must have studied acting, that one. Or maybe she was truly passing out. When I want to kill or maim someone, I do it.”
“So…” Marla groaned. “Where are we going? How is all this… going to end up?”
No one answered her. Bo glanced into the side mirror and changed lanes. 1 checked my watch: Ten minutes had passed.
“Getting back to cutting the crap,” General Bo said mildly, “why don’t you, Marla, dear, tell us what’s going on. Goldy didn’t have a lot of time to fill me in. She said you’d been accused of killing your boyfriend. Did you?”
Marla bit her bottom lip and said nothing. “Self-defense?” Bo prompted. His eyes didn’t move from the road. “Maybe you were just pissed oft? God knows, I invested in that mine, too. I’m pissed off”
