Philippe Romero steered the sleek Mercedes sedan onto the I-5 southbound ramp and located the abandoned truck stop along a dark, winding road that aimed west toward a seaside town that had once been a lumber port. The truck stop’s back lot consisted of a pale, claylike mud and deep potholes that looked to him like open wounds in the moonlit surface. Derelict gas pumps, now nothing but sawed-off pipes protruding from the ground into hulks of rusting sheet metal, rose like headstones from the ooze.
Philippe pulled around back of the boarded-up restaurant and mini-mart, per instructions, facing a rusted-out Dodge pickup truck and an eighteen-wheeler with Iowa plates. He carried a Beretta semiauto in the door’s leather pouch, a round chambered and ready to fire. He had another weapon, a.22 meant for target practice, tucked into the small of his back inside the black leather jacket. A hunting knife warmed in his right sock.
He pulled alongside the tractor-trailer and a moment later a male figure stepped out of the broken-down Dodge. Paolo came toward him in the headlights. He opened the door and climbed inside. His face glowed blue in the light of the dashboard. He smelled foul. His face looked like he’d bobbed for apples in a deep fat fryer.
“You were smart to call,” Philippe said. “We don’t need a stolen eighteen-wheeler on the property.”
“You want her in the trunk?”
“No. Put her in the backseat with the kiddy lock on. We’re decent people.”
Paolo didn’t move.
“She’s okay, right?”
“Yeah, she’s fine.”
“You haven’t done anything to her, right?”
Paolo leveled his blister-encrusted eye at the driver. “I’m not going to hurt this kid. You understand me? You want that done, you’re going to have to ask someone else.”
“Okay, okay. You can relax now. We’ll get you fed and cleaned up, all right? You smell like low tide and your face looks like you’re still doing Halloween.”
“I stay with the girl.”
“You do what I tell you to do.” Philippe felt his hand slip toward the leather pouch. It brushed the stock of the gun. “We’ve got a hell of a night ahead of us. Don’t make trouble for me, Paolo. You’ve done good. Keep it that way. We’ll get that face looked at. That’s got to hurt.”
“I’ve got pills.”
“Get the girl.” Philippe reached down to the dash and switched off the car’s interior light so it would not come on when a door was opened. “And no names when she’s in the car. You got that?”
Paolo didn’t answer. He climbed out of the car, shutting his door, but then opening the back door a moment later.
Philippe leaned over. He felt the.22 at his back. “Put her behind me, so you can keep an eye on her.”
Paolo shut that door and came around and opened the opposite door. He moved heavily, under the weight of great fatigue.
Philippe put all the windows down to air it out.
It stank in there.