Danny presses stop on the tape player and hangs up the phone. His whole body feels tense. He turns back to the Buick, and just as he does, he sees a black sedan driving down the road. It has a large antenna sticking up from the trunk, and it looks a lot like an unmarked police car. Danny should know—he spent some time in them when he was working with the Kankakee drug-enforcement agents last winter.
“Goddammit,” Danny mutters, and hurries to Nancy’s car.
“Let’s go,” he says, practically shouting. “Come on. Come on!”
“Jeez,” she says. “What’s wrong with you?”
Danny doesn’t answer.
The sedan slowly passes the bait shop. Once the car has passed, Danny watches as it attempts a three-point turn in the middle of the road.
“Was Jerry home?” Nancy asks.
“He can’t do it,” Danny snaps. “Go this way. Hurry up.”
Nancy drives the Buick onto the road. Danny watches in the rearview mirror as the car begins to follow them. He checks and rechecks the mirror, squirming in his seat as if it’s a bed of nails.
The car is behind them, its headlights far away but clearly visible. But then the car turns off the road, and the lights disappear.
Danny collapses into his seat.
“Sorry,” he says. “It just seemed like that car was following us.”
“You’re being paranoid,” Nancy says. “Why would anyone be following us?”
Danny has an idea. He sits up and rolls down his window and zips open the duffel bag.
“Keep your eyes on the road,” he says to Nancy.
“What are you talking about?” she says, but she keeps her eyes forward, fixed on the yellow lines in the center of the road.
Danny pulls out the tape recorder and launches it out the window into the weeds. Then he rolls up the window and sinks back into his seat, exhaling loudly.
“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?” Nancy says.
“I’m telling you for the last time, Nancy. For your own good, stop asking so many goddamn questions.”
Nancy says nothing more, just keeps driving. She doesn’t know what Danny has gotten himself into—and doesn’t want to know.
When she passes another gas station up on her left, there is a car sitting in the lot, waiting to pull out. When she passes the car, she looks out her window and, under a parking lot lamp, makes eye contact with a woman behind the wheel.
The car pulls onto the road behind Nancy’s Buick and begins following them at a distance.