Izzy went from the Goodwill thrift shop to the Grocery Outlet supermarket next door. She needed a plan and she needed some time to herself to make one, some thinking time and she wasn’t going to get it on the run. She needed to hunker down. More than that, she needed to wind down and the best way to do that would be with a bottle of Cabernet.
It had been years since she’d sworn off drinking. The affair with the slimy surgeon had driven her to a couple bottles of expensive wine a night, sometimes more. She’d been afraid of becoming an alcoholic, afraid of ruining her career, so she’d quit, hadn’t touched a drop in more years than she cared to remember.
Tomorrow she’d deal with her problems, but tonight she was going to relax with a couple glasses of Cab, get a good night’s sleep and in the morning, she’d deal.
At the wine section, she picked up a bottle that looked promising, then she wandered the isles, picked up several cans of corned beef hash, got a can opener and started for the checkout. Cab for her, hash for Hunter.
Back in the car, she started for the Springfield Suites she’d seen as she’d gotten off the freeway. She pulled into the covered area for new guests, opened the door, started to get out when Hunter woofed.
“ Sorry, you gotta stay till I work this out.” Initially she’d planned on staying in one of the sleazy motels on Riverside, but she didn’t have it in her. She wanted a roachless room, clean sheets and a warm bath, which was just what the doctor ordered and she should know, she was the doctor.
“ Can I help you?” The girl at the front desk was maybe old enough to drink, had a fresh scrubbed look, a genuine smile and a nametag that said, “Emily”.
“ I need a room for the night for me and my dog.”
“ I’m sorry, no pets.”
“ I can’t use my credit card either.”
“ That’s another problem.”
“ I can pay cash.”
“ We need a card and we still don’t take pets.” The smile faded.
“ If I use my card my husband will find me. If he does that, he’ll kill me. I can’t leave the dog in the car and I’ve been on the road for twenty-four straight. I can pay cash, the dog’s well trained, quiet and doesn’t have fleas. Nobody will even know he’s here.”
“ I could lose my job.” The smile was a frown now.
“ I’ll give you five hundred dollars.” She sighed and paused for effect. “I’ll sneak the dog in, he won’t leave the room and we’ll be gone before sunup.”
“ I can’t take your money.” She opened a drawer, took out a key card. “The last room down the hall, 113, on the left. It’s been booked for two weeks, starting this morning, but the woman called and said she can’t make it till tomorrow. She comes up from Sacramento a couple times a year to visit her granddaughter, who stays with her. They stay here for the indoor pool; the kid’s a swimmer.” Her smile was back. “If you park by the back, wait till no one’s looking, you know, be sneaky about it, you can get the dog in without anybody seeing.”
“ I can pay you.” Relief flooded over Izzy.
“ No, it’s on me. Well, on the hotel actually. But since we have to hold the room anyway, they won’t be out any money. But you gotta be out before sunup, because it’ll be my ass if anyone sees the dog. Also, Mrs. Leahy will get here around 7:30 or 8:00 and I won’t be here and since the room’s clean, there won’t be any maid service. So if you need a shower, you’ll have to use the green towels from the pool and you’ll have to wipe down the bathroom and can you sleep on top of the covers-”
“ Whoa, Emily, you’re going a mile a minute. I get it, I’ll leave the room the way I find it. Mrs. Leahy will never know I was there. Neither will anybody else. Thanks a bunch, you’re a lifesaver.”
“ It’s because I know what you’re going through. I was in an abusive relationship, too. I was lucky to get out.”
“ But you’re so young.”
“ Not any older than you.”
Izzy started to disagree, then it struck her that she wasn’t seventy-seven anymore, so she said, “Yeah, I guess I just feel old. It’s been hard.”
“ I hear that.” She handed over the key card. “Good luck and keep Bowser out of sight.” Then, “You can drive round to the side. The key will unlock the door. It’ll be the first room on your left.”
“ Got it, thanks.” Izzy went to the car, drove around to the side, parked, waited till the coast was clear. Then, with Hunter at her heels, she made for her room and once safely inside, she found some paper plates inside the microwave. She opened a couple cans of hash and fed Hunter. While the dog was eating, she pulled the forty-five from her purse, set it on the nightstand, just in case, then she dropped on the mattress and was quickly asleep.
Stunned, Lila stared at the girl, who should’ve been screaming, but wasn’t. She got out of the bed, covering herself with a pillow, but never taking her eyes off the gun in Lila’s left hand.
“ You don’t have to kill me,” the girl soothed. “I’m a professional. I know how to keep my mouth shut. You can put the gun away. I won’t say a thing. I didn’t see anything.”
“ I’m not a child,” Lila said, “and I’m not crazy. So change your tone of voice. I’m a professional, too.”
“ So, you’re not going to shoot me?”
“ Of course not, though I should.” She shook her head. Of course, she should shoot the little vixen, but she couldn’t. What was happening to her? First she lets the Eisenhower woman skate, then she warms up to old Harvey and now this.
“ Is it okay if I get dressed?”
“ Yeah.”
Lila watched as the girl shimmied into her panties, pulled on a tee shirt, stepped into a pair of faded jeans.
“ Shoes are in the living room.”
“ Okay.” Lila backed out of the bedroom, smelled sex on the girl as she passed, smelled fear, too. “I said I wasn’t going to shoot you. I meant it.”
“ Good.” The girl went for the sofa, sat, picked up and put on a pair of tennis shoes. “So now what?”
“ I’m going to get on down the road, before the neighbors call the police.”
“ I got no way outta here. He picked me up. Can you drop me?”
“ No.”
“ It’d be cool if you could.”
“ Fuck. Get your shit and let’s go.”
“ Got no shit. I’m ready.”
“ After you.” Lila held the door.
“ Cool car,” the girl said.
“ Yeah.”
“ Surprised nobody’s out. You’d think with the noise your gun made, someone woulda noticed.”
“ Nothing surprises me anymore.” Lila started the car. “Maybe they’re all at work. Maybe they thought it was a car backfiring or maybe they knew it was gunshots and they just don’t give a shit.” Lila gave a quick look to the neighbors, both sides and across the street and saw no curtains pulled aside. If somebody was looking, they were being careful. Still, it was time to change the plates on the Jag, maybe even get rid of the car.
“ I vote for they don’t give a shit,” the girl said.
Five minutes later Lila dropped her at the McDonald’s at the east end of town. Then she was off again, heading west to Medford, Oregon and Izzy Eisenhower, but only a couple miles outside of town, right after she made the right turn onto Highway 49, she knew she wasn’t going to make it. She would need all of her wits when she met up with Eisenhower. Right now she was afraid of falling asleep at the wheel. She saw a sign for a rest stop twenty-two miles up the road.
She could go that far, but not much further. At the rest area, she parked in the farthest spot from the restrooms, put up the top, closed her eyes and went straight to sleep.
The sun was straight up when she woke. The clock said 12:30. She started the car, put the top down. It was a gorgeous day. The sky was cloudless. It was unseasonably warm for November. The road had just been repaved. There was no traffic. It was as if she were alone in the world. The snow on the side of the road, combined with the tall pines and the sun filtering through them, made her feel like she was in a magical place.
She pushed the Jag up to sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five, decided to hold it at eighty. She’d be in Medford in time for dinner, then she’d find Eisenhower.
She turned on the radio, wondered if she’d find a rock station. She found the news instead, learned about a lot of dead people back in Reno.
Mansfield had called on his government friends, the black ops kind. There was no other explanation. He was pulling out all the stops. If Lila didn’t find Eisenhower before the end of the day, they would and she’d be out her five million. That bastard.
A shadow moved over her. She looked up, saw a helicopter flying low. It was only a momentary distraction, but it was enough, eyes back on the road she saw the deer, saw it an instant too late. She clutched, slammed the stick into second, popped her foot off the clutch, hit the brakes as she turned radically to the left, hoping to spin the car around and maybe hit the animal a glancing blow in the process or maybe not hit it at all.
Had she started a fraction of a second sooner, she might have been able to keep control of the car.
“ Oh fuck,” she muttered, car going sideways heading for the deer, which seemed too stunned to move. Then, just before impact, the animal leapt out of the way. Still spinning the wheel, she heard the horns. A semi was bearing down on her, coming from the west.
The roaring truck beast filled her sight. She saw the driver, black as night, a determined look in his dark eyes. He was fighting the behemoth he was driving, but the metal monster’s wheels screeched in protest against the man trying to tame it.
Still spinning the wheel, she hit the accelerator, hearing her own wheels screech, smelling the burning rubber, the truck’s and her own, as she spun through her one eighty, with the truck so close the sound of it’s engine drowning out the world. Foot still on the accelerator, the wheels found purchase and the car shot away from the braking semi like a scalded race horse, flying back the way she’d come.
Safely away, she pulled over to the side of the road to let the truck pass, but instead the driver pulled in behind her. She got out of her car as he climbed out of his cab.
“ Holy shit, that was close!” He was basketball tall, with the darkest skin she’d ever seen on an American black man. He was wearing a military green field jacket and faded Levi’s. He looked tough. He looked old.
“ Yeah, sorry.”
“ Saw the deer. You did real good.”
“ Thanks.”
“ You’re shaking,” he said.
“ No, I’m not.” She didn’t shake. She was as cool as they came. God didn’t make anybody cooler than her.
“ Yes, you are.”
She held her hand up in front of her face, expected it to be rock steady, but it wasn’t.
“ You’re right. That’s not like me.”
A shadow passed over her. She looked up, that chopper was still up there. Hovering. The black man was looking skyward as well. He pulled a set of miniature binoculars from one of his large jacket pockets.
“ Birdwatching’s a hobby.” He put the binoculars to his eyes, said, “Not good.”
“ You think?” she said.
“ Man up there’s got a gun and they ain’t police.”
“ You’re right, not good.”
Lila could tell the helicopter wasn’t military, more like the kind the TV traffic reporters used. It was high enough that under ordinary circumstances, she wouldn’t have given it much thought. She could hear it, but she lived close to the airport and was used to planes and helicopters. Anybody who lived near RNO automatically blocked out those kinds of sounds, but now those whirling blades were beating a thundering tattoo through her brain.
The helicopter did a three sixty, banking, like the passenger was watching them.
“ What kind of gun?”
“ Say again,” the black man said.
“ You know, what kind of gun did you see up there?”
“ Mac 10.”
“ Shit.”
“ You piss anybody off lately?” he said.
“ Maybe, you?”
“ Once upon a time there were some bad people might’ve wanted me dead. Not anymore.”
“ They’re here for me.” Lila sighed. “I think they’ll wait till you leave. You should go.” She reached into her coat, pulled the Glock from the shoulder holster, but kept it concealed from the men in the chopper, however the man next to her saw it. She figured he’d hightail it on out of there pretty quick.
“ You really think they’ll let me go?”
“ Don’t know, maybe.”
“ They know you got the piece?”
“ Maybe.”
“ So maybe it ain’t gonna be a surprise. Maybe they’re expecting you to pop a few caps at ’em.”
“ Maybe.”
“ Okay, Katie, shake my hand, like you’re telling me goodbye. Then I’m gonna walk on over to my rig, climb in my cab and while they’re focused on you, I’m gonna blow the motherfuckers outta the sky.”
“ My name’s Lila.”
“ Sorry, you reminded me of someone.” He smiled down at her, held his hand out. “Shake my hand, now.”
She grabbed his big hand, squeezed tight.
“ It’ll be okay, Lila.” He released her hand.
“ Sure.” She watched him sort of shuffle back to his truck, get in and as if on cue the helicopter dropped from the sky. Apparently she’d been wrong about them letting him go. Mansfield probably had told them not to leave any witnesses.
She dove behind her car, expecting automatic fire from the helicopter, but instead she heard one gunshot, she turned toward the sound of it, saw the old black man standing next to his truck, with a rifle pointing skyward.
Lila looked up. The chopper was stationary, but it wasn’t. It seemed locked in place, but the body was whirling around, like the blade was still, driving the body below it. Did he get the pilot? Was he dead? Wounded? Could the gunman control the plane?
And as if in answer to her unspoken questions, the chopper stopped it’s ring around the rosy craziness and started climbing, backwards. After only a few seconds that felt like an eon, the flying machine stopped its climb, was stationary and hovering, like a praying mantis about to strike. Then, like a dive bombing mosquito, it started downward, hungry for blood. It seemed to be heading straight for her.
Lila brought the gun up, was about to pull the trigger when the chopper banked into a clockwise circle, still coming down, but just above the treetops it leveled of, continuing to circle, but unlike the last time it circled above her, this time she had the sense that the machine was out of control. It rose up about a hundred feet, started spinning around again, then headed down. It looked like it was going to crash into the trees, but at the last second up again it went, back into a clockwise circle. Then it banked left, flying sideways. Buzzing like a wounded dragonfly.
Again Lila thought it was going into the trees, but again the pilot managed to pull it up before impact. For a fraction of an instant it looked like he was going to save the chopper. It stopped in place, looking like those countless traffic helicopters she’d seen on television. She could almost imagine the passenger holding a camera instead of a Mac 10, reporting that the highway was free and clear, save for a semi and a sports car parked on the side of the road.
She wondered what was going on up there. If there really was a gunman, as the black man had said. She had only his word on it, but she believed him. From her position behind the Jag, she looked over at him as he fired another round and the chopper immediately started downward, heading straight for the man with the rifle and this time she knew there would be no pulling up, it was going crash.
And it did, slamming into the black man’s semi, disintegrating into an exploding ball of heat, fire, flying metal and glass. It was as if a volcano had erupted next to her. The heat of the blast was scorching, the sound deafening, like she was in the middle of sonic boom caught on fire and the fire was sucking the oxygen right out of the air.
Had she not instinctively dropped behind her Jag, she’d’ve been killed, of that she had no doubt. She got up, ears ringing, fighting to get a breath. She was about to move away from the burning mess, when she thought of the man. Surely he was as dead as the men in that chopper, but she had to know for sure. He’d saved her life, she couldn’t walk away from that.
Staying low, because the air seemed better closer to the ground, with an arm wrapped in front of her face, she moved from behind the passenger side of the car, surprised to see the big man face down on the ground in front of the driver’s side door, his back covered in blood. He must have run and taken a flying leap as she was ducking behind the car, which would be going up in flames any second if she didn’t move it.
She dropped to the ground next her savior and he was her savior, she knew that to be true. The men in the chopper had come for her. Old Mansfield Wayne had sold her out. It was the only thing that made sense. She hadn’t seen the gun, but anybody who could shoot the way the bleeding man on the ground could, who acted so fast, so calmly in a crisis, was a truth teller when it came to men in helicopters wielding Mac 10s.
She reached for his neck, put a couple fingers on a carotid, felt a pulse.
He groaned.
“ Hey, can you hear me?” She couldn’t hear the sound of her voice. His ears had to be ringing, too. If she couldn’t hear herself, he couldn’t hear her either. She knew moving him was dangerous, but if she didn’t get him out of here pronto, he’d die.
She didn’t know if she could lift him into the car without his help. She lowered her mouth to his ear, shouted, hoping he could hear her through the deafening ringing.
“ I need you to stand up, only for a second. I’m going to use a fireman’s carry to try and get you into my car. Do you understand me?”
He moved his hand. Good enough, she’d take that for a yes.
“ I’m going to roll you onto your back.” She grimaced, because she knew it was going to hurt him, but she had no choice. She grabbed him by a shoulder, flipped him over. With him on his back, she fisted his field jacket by his upper chest and pulled him up into a sitting position, then with a strength she didn’t know she possessed-and she worked out, was in shape-she got up and pulled him to his feet. He put an arm on her shoulder, struggled to hold on as she wrapped an arm around his waist.
With her free hand, she grasped his wrist and raised his right hand above his head as she knelt in front of him and pulled him onto her shoulders, by bringing his arm around her neck and over her shoulder. Now the big man’s legs were dangling over one of her shoulders, his head over the other. She moved her arm from around his waist, bringing it to the back of his knees as she stood up.
He was heavy, but she was strong.
She moved around to the passenger side of the Jag, thankful the top was down and she dumped him like a sack of potatoes into the passenger seat. She hoped there were no broken bones, hoped she hadn’t hurt him too badly, as she hurried around to the driver’s side of the car.
Once in, she started the car and pulled away from the burning semi. About a quarter mile away, she did a Y turn, pointed the Jag west, hit the accelerator, shifted into second at thirty, clutched and slammed the stick into third at sixty as she flew by the ball of flame that was the helicopter and the big man’s truck.
She hoped this guy could hold on till she got to Medford, because they were in the middle of nowhere now, no hospital to be found and she wouldn’t be looking for one in Yreka. He was going to have to make it till they got to Medford, lots of hospitals there. Izzy Eisenhower was there, too. And there was no doubt in Lila’s mind that Mansfield Wayne had betrayed her and that pissed her off.
He must have decided if he turned to his behind the scenes, black ops contacts that he could get his hands on Eisenhower for a whole lot less than the five million he was offering her.
The man had a chance to be young again and he was looking to do it on the cheap and apparently that meant getting rid of her. Fifteen minutes ago she was willingly doing his bidding, but he’d double-crossed her. Now she had a new mission in life. Save Izzy Eisenhower and send Mansfield Wayne straight to Hell.