The old truck clattered across the Nevada desert. US 50 took them through the little towns, and at last, they hit Interstate 80 at Fernley and took it through Reno and across the state line into California.
The sun went down, but neither of them suggested making camp. The honeymoon was over. They felt a pressing need to get on with it now. Mostly it was Emma, but Francis could feel the urgency radiating off her, and it infected him. Stops were infrequent and quick, a gas fill-up, an unappetizing service-station egg salad sandwich, in and out of the restroom.
They passed through Sacramento, and when they made their final stop just outside of Vallejo, Emma took over driving.
“Easier than your having to follow my directions,” she said.
Fine with Francis.
They hit Berkeley just after 11:00 P.M., and Emma exited the interstate. She drove past the campus, looking at it with nostalgia.
“Man, it seems like a long time ago.” She leaned over the wheel, looking up at the buildings through the windshield. “I can’t even tell you what it was like to come here, a girl like me from Podunk, USA. It was crazy and wonderful, like the world was showing me what it could be for the first time.”
“Do you miss it?”
“I miss things about it,” she said. “I miss feeling like everything was new.”
She turned down the main drag, passing coffee shops and bookstores and the occasional pub. She almost missed the turn down the side street she was looking for.
“Been a while,” she said.
A block later, she parked on the street in front of a place called Atomic Doughnuts. The entire interior of the place was visible through huge glass windows. It was brightly lit. Booths and a counter and all the décor meant to look retro like from the 1950s.
“Come on,” she said. “This place will change your life.”
They got out of the truck, and Francis glanced into the bed. “What about that?”
Emma followed his gaze to the footlocker full of guns. “Yeah. Probably should lock that up.”
They put the footlocker into the front seat and locked the doors. Emma stuffed the keys into the front pocket of her jeans.
They walked into the doughnut shop. College kids sat at various tables, hunched over textbooks, nursing cups of coffee.
“I like sitting at the counter,” Emma said. “I always did when I used to come in here.”
“Fine with me.”
They took two stools, and a guy came to take their order. He had a full, perfectly trimmed beard, gold hoops in each ear, curly brown hair under a watch cap. He looked directly at Francis.
“I don’t know what to get,” Francis said.
The bearded guy didn’t look like he had a lot of patience with this.
Emma leaned in, took over. “He’ll have coffee and a raspberry filled.” She looked at Francis. “Trust me.”
“And you?” Beardo asked her.
“I’ll have a raspberry too,” she said. “But also a cream filled.”
“Right.”
“And a chocolate with sprinkles and a blueberry.”
“Will that do it?”
“And a double fudge.”
Beardo hesitated. “We good?”
“And coffee.”
Beardo nodded and left to fetch the order.
Francis looked at her, raised an eyebrow. “Hungry?”
“I’m making up for a lot of lost time.”
Beardo brought the doughnuts and set them on the counter. He returned a second later with two cups of coffee.
Emma took half the raspberry in one bite. She moaned, eyes rolling back in her head. “Oh my God, I’ve been waiting for that for so long.” She finished the doughnut in two more bites, then went after the blueberry.
Francis looked down at the doughnut and coffee on the counter in front of him.
Emma noticed he wasn’t eating. “Problem?”
“Egg salad.”
“I told you not to eat a gas station sandwich.”
Francis rubbed his stomach, stifled an acrid burp. “I feel gross.”
Emma twisted on her stool, looked back through the big glass window. “Try Jerry’s across the street. Get some antacid or something.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Francis slipped off the stool and left the doughnut shop.
Jerry’s was a narrow storefront wedged between a florist and an aromatherapy salon. Magazines, soft drinks, snacks, cigarettes, batteries, aspirin, all the world’s bright and varied sundries. The bored oldster behind the counter looked up from his copy of Road & Track long enough to sell Francis a bottle of water and a single pack of Alka-Seltzer. He took his purchases outside, stood in the doorway of the store, and crumbled the tablets into the bottle.
He watched them fizz, then guzzled the water until the bottle was empty. A long, searing belch pushed up and out of him. He felt better.
He watched Emma through the doughnut shop’s big window. She chomped into the last of her doughnuts. Even from across the street, the raw glee on her face was clear. He hated to ruin her moment, but time was up. They needed to talk about what she intended to do and why. Emma had a score to settle with her husband. Depending on what she told him, Francis would try to help, or he’d try to talk her out of it.
But no matter what, he wasn’t walking away.
Two men in dark suits entered the doughnut shop.
Francis thought nothing of it until they approached Emma. One of them gestured toward the door. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the gesture looked like Come with us, please. It all unfolded in the big window like a show on a huge TV screen with the sound on Mute.
Emma started to stand, face open and cooperative, like she was more than willing to go along with them. Her little fist suddenly came up hard into one of their guts. He doubled over, and she shoved the other one aside, dodged away as he grabbed for her. She leaped up on a stool, jumped to the counter. Everyone in the place was watching now as she ran along the counter, knocking off cups and plates, the guys in the suits following and still trying to grab her.
Francis’s hand went to his front pocket. Emma had the truck keys.
Shit.
He had to go to her. Francis took two steps into the street and was brought up short by the sound of slamming car doors. His head snapped around to look.
A black sedan parked on his side of the street four car lengths down. Two men in similar dark suits came toward Francis.
“Sir,” one of them said. “Can we have a word, please?”
Francis turned slowly as if he hadn’t heard them and went back into the sundries store.
“Is there a back door?” he asked the oldster.
“It’s just for deliveries.”
Francis headed down the back hallway past a restroom and a bunch of storage boxes.
“Hey, idiot,” the old guy called after him. “Didn’t you hear me?”
Francis walked faster.
He emerged from the back door into a dark, narrow alley. Trash cans and locked back doors on the wall across the way. A ten-foot-high chain-link fence blocked one way, so Francis turned the other way and jogged.
The two suits exploded out the back door right behind him.
Francis broke into a run.
His head spun. What was happening to Emma? He needed to help her, but he needed to escape first.
He erupted from the alley, not breaking stride as he sprinted across the street. The blare of a horn, and a little compact slammed on its brakes, tires squealing, the front bumper missing Francis’s leg by three inches. He paused in the wash of headlights to look back. The two guys were still coming fast.
The driver stuck his head out the window, screaming insults, but Francis was already running again. There was some kind of club ahead of him, and Francis entered.
It was crowded, college-age people. The interior was dark, and it took a second for Francis’s eyes to adjust. Everyone wore black, hair falling down in front of people’s eyes, black lipstick, piercings, and tattoos. A goth club. If Francis had been hoping to blend in, he could forget it.
He hunched down, trying to make himself small, and waded into the crowd. When he glanced back, he saw the two suits standing in the doorway, scanning the crowd. One of them brought his wrist up to his mouth and muttered something. Francis noticed the wires hanging from their ears.
Francis kept low and found the hallway back to the restrooms. There were no other doors or exits. He entered the men’s room and shut the door behind him, slapping the cheap bolt lock into place. It wasn’t much of a restroom. A single toilet and a sink. It didn’t matter. His eyes went to the little window.
The very little window.
He was relieved when it opened easily. He had to stand on the toilet to look out. The space between the building he was in and the next wasn’t wide enough to legitimately call it an alley. He leaned out and looked both ways, saw the blur of headlights at the far end of the narrow space. Good. He could get back to the street. Or at least some street. Once he’d ditched these guys, he’d bend his mind toward how he could possibly help Emma.
A banging on the restroom door sent his heart into his throat. He ignored it and braced his hands on the windowsill, making ready to hoist himself up. The banging on the door became more insistent.
Francis failed the first attempt to hoist himself, foot almost slipping on the toilet seat. He caught himself.
The banging on the door was so loud now it rattled the hinges. He thought maybe they were kicking it. They were definitely coming through at any moment.
He hoisted himself again, made it, and wriggled through the small space. It wasn’t easy. He had to put one arm through at a time. He wasn’t huge by any means, but his shoulders were just too wide to fit.
This time the banging was accompanied by a sharp crack. The door wouldn’t last much longer.
When Francis wriggled down to his hips, he got stuck, the top of his jeans catching. Francis heard the door smashed inward, hinges clanging on the cement floor. Men shouting.
He panicked, tried to push himself through with a big heave, his belly and lower back scraping. Hands grabbed his ankles. He twisted and kicked, his heel connecting with something solid. A grunt and the hands let go.
It was enough to dislodge him and knock him through, and for a long second, he floated in the air, facing upward at the dark, narrow space between buildings. Falling backward was a strange sensation. An endless plummet that felt like it would go on for—
He hit hard, the air slammed out of him. His legs pointed straight up the side of the wall. There wasn’t enough room in the cramped space for him to spread out. His mouth worked for air.
A head poked out of the window, one of the slick-haircut suits who’d been chasing him.
“Stay right there, sir.”
Fuck you. Francis wished he’d had the breath to say it out loud.
He righted himself, gulped oxygen, and hobbled away.
“Sir!” The voice behind him. “Sir!”
Francis was almost breathing normally again by the time he came out on the street. He didn’t recognize where he was. A glance back showed the guy trying to come out the window after him, but he was a lot bigger than Francis and couldn’t fit. Francis picked a direction to run when a black sedan came around the corner and screeched to a halt, blocking his way.
He turned to run the other way.
A black SUV roared into view, blocking him that way.
Francis froze, eyes flicking right to left, seeking an escape route.
Shit shit shit shit.
Suits and haircuts spilled out of the two vehicles, forming a quick semicircle.
“Come with us, sir,” said one of them. “There’s no point making this more difficult.”
Francis could have sworn the man speaking to him was the same guy who’d told him to stay put through the window. All these guys looked like they were made in the same factory.
Francis spotted a slight gap between two of the guys and ran for it.
The two guys slammed into him from either side, and all three of them went down. More came to pile on top. Francis thrashed, tried to twist loose. A forearm against his neck. One of his arms twisted behind his back.
“Don’t struggle, sir.”
“Go to hell!” Francis had hoped to sound tough, but it came out desperate and afraid.
He heard a crackling sound and in the farthest periphery of his vision saw the flash of a familiar blue light. Francis remembered zapping the one with the mustache in the bathroom, the expression on his face.
Oh, hell no. No no no no—
The guy stuck the stun gun into Francis’s ribs, and Francis contorted with what felt like a million volts running through him. Darkness closed in from every side.
So that’s what that feels like.