Mrs. Torelli gives another twitch of her head, and Grace creaks open the door.
The man keeps his face turned, his eyes on Mrs. Torelli. His hair is light, and Grace can tell by the lines around his neck that he is not young. She would guess middle aged. Which is good. It means he is not a rookie and has been around long enough to know what’s what.
Her heart beats out of her chest as she crawls inside. He tenses, and she freezes, willing him not to be stupid and get himself shot, and he must draw the same conclusion, because a second later he relaxes. She reaches across the seat and pulls the gun from the holster clipped to his belt, then pulls the keys from the ignition and backs out slowly.
After checking the safety on the gun, she clicks it off, then moves to the rear of the car and opens the trunk.
A door behind her opens, and she whirls to see Mattie standing in the frame. “Mom?” she says, her eyes surveying the scene and growing wide.
Grace looks back as Mrs. Torelli looks up, and everything else happens in a microsecond: The car door slams open, knocking Mrs. Torelli to the ground. The man is out of the car and lunging for the gun. Grace fires. The bullet strikes a foot in front of the man’s hand, and he freezes.
Time stops, and the world closes in on Grace as she stares at the patch of asphalt that’s exploded and realizes what she’s done. She’s just fired a gun at a federal officer, and her life as she knows it is over. Her heart clatters so hard she feels like it’s going to shoot from her chest.
The agent straightens slowly, his hands raised.
Mrs. Torelli scrambles to her feet and points the gun at him, her body quaking violently, the gun waving with it.
“It’s okay, Hadley,” Grace says, working hard to keep the tremor from her voice and using Mrs. Torelli’s first name in hopes of calming her. “He’s getting in the trunk now. He’s not going to hurt you. He’s walking toward me.”
The agent backs up cautiously, his movements slow and his eyes on Mrs. Torelli, who continues to spasm and shake.
“In,” Grace says when he reaches her.
He looks down at her, sizing her up. “In,” she says again, sharper this time, amazed how in control she sounds despite her brain being on fire.
With a sigh more of mortification than fear, he climbs into the small car’s trunk and folds his thick limbs into a fetal position so he’ll fit.
Grace slams the hood shut and nearly crumbles to the ground, her knees buckling beneath her.
Mattie runs toward them. “Mom, are you okay?”
Grace straightens and steps in front of her. “Mattie, get your brother and your things from the room and from the van,” Grace says.
Mattie hesitates, her attention still on her mom, who is convulsing with sobs, the gun still held out in front of her, pointing at the spot where the agent was.
“Now,” Grace orders.
Mattie runs off, her face white with fear.
“Mrs. Torelli—”
“Hadley,” Mrs. Torelli mumbles, her voice huffing through her panic. “My name is Hadley.”
“Okay. Hadley,” Grace says, stepping toward her carefully and taking the gun from her trembling hand.
She secures the safety and slides it into the waistband of her sweats; then she does the same with the agent’s gun, cinching the drawstring tight around them.
“I need you to sit tight. Do you think you can do that?”
Mrs. Torelli’s pupils are small as pinpricks, and tears still stream down her face.
“Hadley,” Grace says, taking hold of Mrs. Torelli’s shoulders and forcing her to look at her. “I need you to stay here and wait for me. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
A small nod.
“I’m going to grab Miles, and I’ll be right back.”
Her head reverses direction.
“Mrs. Tor . . . I mean, Hadley, I promise, it will only be a minute.”
Her head shakes harder. “No,” she says, her bottom lip trembling. “You need to go. You and Miles. It’s not fair. You shouldn’t be here.”
And as Grace walks toward her room, she thinks Mrs. Torelli is right. She needs to take Miles and go.
29
MARK
Mark is in the trunk of his own damn rental car, bumping around like a sack of potatoes, his body crashing into the hood, then slamming down again each time the car hits a bump. He wraps his hands around his head to protect his skull, swearing and cussing at the pain and his stupidity.
Carjacked by a woman on crutches. It might have been better had she shot him. If he survives this, it’s going to follow him to his grave.
She sneaked up on him like a burglar from somewhere off to the side and popped up beside him waving a gun in his face before he could even react. She stood on one foot, no crutches, and he realized she must have crawled there.
From where? He has no idea. Not from the motel rooms. They must have been standing watch, taking shifts. These women are a hell of a lot more savvy than he’s given them credit for.
“Hands where I can see them,” she said, sounding like a bad actress in a poorly scripted movie.
And what choice did he have? She was waving that gun at him, and his gun was in his holster, clipped in tight, safety on.
Get shot? Thinking back on it, it might have been the better option.
Uuuuugh! he screams in his head; then he yelps out loud when his knees slam hard against the front wall of the trunk.
The backup agents were minutes away. They’d called half an hour earlier to confirm their ETA. The agent in charge had sent two cars, each with two agents. Double backup. No one wanted a repeat of what had happened at the hospital or in Barstow. Five agents to pick up two women in a motel in the desert was overkill, or so they thought.
The hotel was dark except for the light on in the office. He was foolishly relaxed, not a care in the world as he watched the rooms.
He keeps his arms clasped tight around his head and tries not to think how mortifying this is, focusing instead on the fact that at least it will be over quickly. The backup agents will arrive, figure out what happened, and set up roadblocks on the 15, the only artery into Las Vegas. A few more minutes of bouncing around and a lifetime of humiliation, and the women will be in custody and it will be over.
They go around a bend, and he’s thrown sideways, his damaged shoulder hitting hard against the wheel well. He grunts with the impact as pain radiates to his spine. He curls tighter, bracing for the next blow; then suddenly the car slows, bumps from the asphalt onto dirt or gravel, then drives a few more feet before stopping.
Through the barrier of the seats, he hears the women arguing, a baby crying, and a boy hollering something about not having his uniform.
“He’s getting knocked around back there like a set of bowling pins.” The voice sounds like Torelli’s, husky and deep. “You’re going to kill him.”
“Yeah, well, what do you suggest?”
“I suggest not killing him.”
“Yeah? Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to pull a gun on an FBI agent.”
“What was I supposed to do, let him arrest us?”
A door opens, then slams. The baby still cries. The boy still hollers.
“Champ, we’ll get you a new uniform. I promise,” Torelli says.
“I left it at the pool. We need to go back.”
“No, buddy. I’m sorry, but we can’t go back.”
The baby screams.
“I need my uniform,” the boy sobs.
“Mattie, hand me the baby. Champ, we’ll get you a new uniform. Mattie, also a bottle and a can of formula.”
“I want to go back.” A thumping starts, the whole car bucking with the pounding, and Mark imagines the boy kicking the seat.
“Hey, Champ,” the girl says. “What do you think about getting a Rockies uniform instead? I think we’re driving through Denver.”
“No. No. No.”
The pounding continues, and the baby cries
louder, and Mark grits his teeth against it.
“I need to go back. I left it by the pool—”
“What if we also go to a game?” Torelli says. “Mattie, check if the Rockies are playing at home this week.”
A pause. The kicking suspended. The baby no longer wailing.
“Are they?” the boy says, his voice quaking.
“They are,” the girl says brightly, making Mark wonder how she’s looked it up. Fitz traced all their phones, along with Torelli’s iPad and laptop, and they’d all been abandoned when they’d fled the hospital.
“Number forty-four?” the boy asks.
Forty-four, the great Hank Aaron, one of Mark’s favorite players of all time.
“We’ll try,” Torelli says. “Mattie, hand me a burp rag.”
Another door opens and closes, this one on the right.
“Should we check out the roster?” the girl says.
“Wolters. I like Wolters,” the boy mutters, still sounding distressed.
“That’s the catcher?” the girl says, and Mark is impressed she knows this.
“Yeah. He’s really good.”
Arguing outside the trunk distracts him from the kids’ conversation. Muffled voices that sound like Torelli and Herrick bickering, the words too garbled for him to make out.
The trunk opens, and he blinks his eyes to see Herrick standing over him, his Glock in her right hand. “Get out.”
He unfurls himself, his muscles creaking and his shoulder pulsing.
“What are you doing?” Torelli says from beside her, the baby slumped over her shoulder, her injured leg held up behind her.
“I said get out,” Herrick says. “Unless you’d rather continue riding in the trunk?”
Mark watches a thin smile break on Torelli’s face, and he knows that’s what they were arguing about: Torelli’s worries about him banging around in the trunk.
He climbs out, and wisely Herrick steps back, keeping herself out of range.
He is impressed by her. She doesn’t rattle easily, and she knows her way around a gun. That was no lucky shot she took in the parking lot. Her husband is Army Special Forces, sniper division, and it’s obvious he’s taught her a thing or two about shooting a gun.
She’s different from her photos. Though in her pictures she’s pretty, she’s fairly unremarkable. While in person, Herrick is anything but ordinary. Her hair is a fiery mane of wild rust curls that swirl around hypnotic hazel eyes, her brain ticking rapidly behind them as she figures out her next move.
Meanwhile, Torelli is exactly like her photos—glamorous, like she belongs on a runway in Paris or on a yacht in Greece. Ink-black hair, catlike eyes, and curves designed to make men go to confession.
“Mattie,” Herrick says, “I need your help.”
The girl steps from the car. She is a strange combination of her mom and dad. Her hair is bleached white blonde but has a wave to it like her father’s, and her eyes are the same chocolate brown as his. But her other features are like her mom’s, with the same wide lips and slightly upturned nose. Winding up her left ear is some sort of silver piercing.
“Take off your tie,” Herrick says to Mark.
He does as she says, his humiliation mounting as he realizes what she intends to do with it.
“Get down on your knees and put your hands behind you.”
He frowns, and Torelli frowns with him.
“Do it,” Herrick says, lowering the gun to aim at his knee, letting him know exactly where she intends to shoot him if he doesn’t comply.
“Grace,” Torelli says, “is this really necessary?”
Herrick glares at her. “No, Hadley, this isn’t necessary. I’m just doing it because this is how I get my kicks.”
Torelli turns away and continues to coddle the baby, swaying back and forth and nuzzling her nose into his neck. Unlike Herrick, who seems to know exactly what she’s doing, Torelli is as unlike a criminal as Winnie the Pooh is a grizzly.
His tie in his left hand, he lowers himself to the ground, and it is only then that he notices the direction they’re traveling, the car parked behind an abandoned jerky stand with the sun rising behind them. And his stomach sinks, his hopes for a quick ending to all this obliterated. Baker is on the way to Las Vegas and the women’s final destination of Omaha, but Herrick has driven the opposite direction, back the way they came.
Goddamn brilliant.
She must have realized east is a bottleneck, while driving west has too many options to set up roadblocks along each one.
“Mattie,” Herrick says, “make sure you stay behind him and out of reach. Do you know how to tie a strong knot?”
“I took a sailing class last summer,” the girl says.
“Good. Make sure the bind is at the smallest part of his wrists and that there’s no space.”
The girl steps in a wide circle around him and pulls the tie from his grip.
He considers whirling around to take her hostage, but Herrick has the gun trained on his chest, and while she doesn’t strike him as violent, she does strike him as protective, and he feels her worry for the girl, making him unwilling to risk it.
The girl is surprisingly strong, and Mark feels the circulation being cut off as she cinches the tie around his wrists. When she’s done, she tugs on it to be sure it’s secure.
“Up,” Herrick orders.
He struggles but manages to get to his feet.
Herrick looks him up and down, her brain ticking.
“Take off his shoes,” she says to the girl.
“Really?” Torelli protests. “Grace, have some decency.”
“Mattie, take them off,” Herrick orders.
“Why?” Torelli says.
“So he can’t run off if he gets the stupid idea in his head.” She holds Mark’s eyes as she says it, letting him know she knows he’s considering it and that it would be, in fact, stupid.
Mark sighs and then, to spare himself further humiliation, slips the shoes off himself.
“Mattie, put them in the trunk, then take his socks off as well.”
“His socks?” Torelli says.
“Would you want to walk across hundred-degree desert in your bare feet?”
Mark’s insides go cold, wondering if that’s what Herrick intends to do—drive him into the middle of the desert and leave him there.
30
HADLEY
Mattie and Skipper share the front seat, and the agent sits in the middle of the back seat between Hadley and the baby. His bare feet are on the hump between the seats, and his hands are tied behind his back, forcing him to bend forward, his chest practically on his knees. It looks very uncomfortable, and Hadley feels bad for him.
Because of his folded position, there was no way to get the seat belt around him, so Hadley left it off. Hadley has always been a stickler about seat belts, and she really hopes they don’t get in an accident.
He doesn’t look like a bad fellow. He’s somewhere in the midst of middle age, perhaps a few years older than she is, and has a wide, open face; sandy, almost cinnamon-colored hair; and light-blue eyes that remind her of Skipper’s.
He keeps glancing over, like there’s something he wants to say, but then he reconsiders and looks away.
She wants to reassure him it’s going to be okay, but since she has no idea whether it’s going to be okay or not, she says nothing. All of this is so crazy; she can’t get her head around it. Everything’s happened so quickly. One minute she was smoking a cigarette; the next she was crawling across the parking lot with a gun in her hand.
Until yesterday, she had never even touched a gun. Now, in a matter of days, she has pointed one at two separate people on two separate occasions.
She considers apologizing, explaining to him why she did what she did, but each time, she glances at Grace and knows it would piss her off, so instead she says nothing, feeling awful for how uncomfortable he must be.
The agent glances over again, concern on his face, and Hadley
realizes she is crying, tears streaming down her face. Embarrassed, she wipes them away, then turns so he can’t see her.
He scoots forward on the seat so he’s leaning over the center console and closer to Grace.
“Grace?” he says.
Grace ignores him.
He scoots forward another inch and tries again. “Grace?”
The car stops so abruptly all of them fly forward. Seat belts hold those who are tethered in, while the agent slams into the console with an oof.
“Grace!” Hadley snaps as she helps him back to his seat.
Grace glares at her in the mirror, then returns her foot to the gas.
The agent doesn’t talk again. He sits with his head down and his shoulders hunched, his left folded more than his right.
When they’ve been driving for almost an hour, Hadley says, “Grace, do you have a plan?”
The sun is up now, and the kids will need to eat soon, and all of them need a restroom.
“I’m looking for a sign,” Grace answers absently.
Hadley swallows, not sure what that means: A sign from God? A sign from the great beyond? Hadley wonders if maybe Grace has lost it, if stress has pushed her over the edge, so she is now putting their fate in the hands of the Almighty.
“There,” Grace says a few minutes later; then she turns sharply from the highway onto a narrow dirt road that shoots straight into the desert.
The sign they pass reads:
CALICO EARLY MAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE:
OPEN TUES.–SAT.
9:00 AM–4:30 PM
PUBLIC WELCOME
←2 MILES
Today is Sunday. The site is closed and won’t open again for two days. Hadley looks at the agent, whose face has turned pale.
“Grace, this isn’t a good idea,” Hadley says.
“You have a better one?”
“Yeah,” the agent says. “Turn yourselves in.” He turns his shoulder as he says it, in case Grace slams the brakes again, his arm positioned to take the brunt of the impact instead of his chest and face.
Grace doesn’t slam on the brakes; instead she says, “Yeah, that’s a swell idea. I’ve been thinking how I could use a vacation. Three squares a day for the next ten to twenty years. Free room and board. Only two small problems with that plan. First, I’m particular about the thread count of my sheets. And second, the itsy-bitsy issue I have with not seeing my kid grow up.”
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