Jess took the highway back to the motel. The drive took about thirty seconds, and it was long enough for Jess to catch sight of Kirby Harwood’s big red truck again and squeeze her foot down a little harder on the gas pedal.
Harwood’s truck was parked outside the next motel down the road, the Harbormaster’s, about a two-minute walk from the Land’s End. Jess pulled the Blazer into the lot and up to the door to their room. Climbed out, left the engine running, circled around, and rapped on the door a couple of times.
“Pineapple,” she said. “You in there, Burke?”
The lock unlatched and the door swung open. Burke was dressed, and he’d piled his overnight bag and the blanket and his junk food provisions by the door with the shotgun. Had Lucy sitting there too; she wagged her tail and stood and came over for a butt scratch, but now wasn’t the time.
“Kirby’s just up the road,” Jess told Burke. “Throw the stuff in the truck and come on if you’re coming.”
Burke was already slipping past her with the bags. He opened the passenger door and tipped the seat forward, chucked his stuff back there and laid the shotgun down, gentle.
“Come on, girl,” he told Lucy.
Lucy gave Jess a look, gave the Blazer a cursory sniff. Then she leapt into the back and settled on the seat.
“Get in the back,” Burke said, closing the door to the room. “I’ll drive.”
She looked at him. “Excuse me?”
“Better if I drive this stretch,” he said. “You—”
“I’m not going to have another episode, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she told him, her face flushing. “That doesn’t just happen whenever. I can drive.”
He met her eyes. “Those deputies know your face too well,” he said. “And they’re looking for two. I’m not suggesting you can’t drive, just that maybe I should. You stay back there and keep Lucy out of sight until we get out of here a ways. They aren’t going to recognize me at speed.”
He had a point, as much as it pissed her off to admit it. So she climbed into the back seat after Lucy, shoved the dog’s big butt to the side to clear a space to sit, and pulled the front seat back into position again. Waited as Burke circled around to the driver’s side, adjusted his seat, and put the Blazer in gear.
“Nice ride,” he told her, pulling out of the lot. “Heck, you did better than I would have done.”
“That’s for sure.” She pulled out the money he’d given her, reached in between the front seats, and laid it on the center console.
Burke glanced down at it, and she watched his eyes go wide in the rearview mirror. “Now, how did you—”
“I told you,” she said, sitting back in her seat. “It’s better if I do the talking.”
* * *
Jess gave Mason directions, and pretty soon they were on the highway again, headed back east toward Deception Cove.
The rain had let up, and there were patches of blue sky; Mason figured it was as close as the region got to a beautiful day. The highway wound along the shoreline, and Mason could see the views he’d missed last night: a long, rocky coast, whitecaps on the water, the trees growing almost to the water’s edge in many places. There wasn’t a soul for miles, and apart from the highway and the ships out in the channel, Mason imagined this was probably exactly how this land had looked for centuries.
He studied the ships as he navigated the Blazer along the highway’s sinuous curves. There were three headed inbound toward Seattle, another two pointed west to the open ocean. He wondered what it would be like on those ships, the solitude, hard work, nobody giving a damn about your history. See the world, get a tan, make an honest living. It didn’t sound so bad.
In the back seat, Lucy whined a little, and Jess leaned forward between the two seats. “You take her out this morning?”
“No, ma’am,” Mason said.
“You have to take her out. Unless you want her to pee in this truck.”
“I expected they’d be looking for a dog matching her description in town.” He glanced past her in the rearview, saw nobody behind. No one ahead, either; they were alone on this road. “Next pullout, we’ll let her go.”
“So what are we going to do?”
He’d pulled them off the highway at a picnic spot overlooking the water. Got out, stretched his legs, enjoyed the cool breeze off the ocean and the fresh air. Lucy peed near the picnic table and disappeared into the brush. Mason went to follow, but Jess stopped him with her question.
He turned back, and she was leaned against the hood of the Blazer, looking out at the beach and the channel beyond. Somewhere in the distance was Canada, but the Great White North wasn’t showing itself today, and those ships he’d seen earlier had disappeared too.
“The dog will be fine,” Jess told him, catching the way his eyes wandered after Lucy. “She’ll come back when she’s done. But what about us, Burke? You have any kind of plan whatsoever?”
He’d been thinking about this. As far as he could tell, there was really only one loose thread to start pulling.
He leaned on the Blazer beside her. “Your husband cooked meth,” he said, and glanced over to see how she took it. She didn’t react one way or the other, just looked out over the water with her mouth set in a hard line.
“I did some poking around yesterday, in between getting my ass kicked,” he continued. “Met the lawless contingent of that town, of which your husband was apparently a member.”
“You going to get to it or what, Burke? I asked you what are we going to do.” Jess’s voice was soft, and she still wasn’t looking at him, and the way she said it made him feel like a shit-heel.
“Yeah, all right.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, studied the ground. “A guy named Yancy said Ty had a spot where he used to do his cooking, up the forestry main line a ways. We go on up there and see if we can’t find what those deputies are after. Assuming they haven’t been up there already.”
Jess didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. He wondered if she’d even heard him, was about to ask when she straightened and pushed herself off the hood of the Blazer. Wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt and gave a low whistle for Lucy.
“Well, come on, then,” she said, circling around to the passenger door of the truck. “Are we going to do this, or what?”