The rain was falling harder as Bonnie retrieved her Jeep, and the wind was picking up, clutching with invisible fingers at the canvas roof. It looked like they were in for a genuine drenching.
Settled behind the wheel with her beret back on her head, she steered down the gravel track of the driveway and pulled around to idle alongside the back door. She was pretty sure she’d squashed some of Cynthia’s flowers, but the main thing was to keep the family out of sight of the road in case Pascal came back.
It took the Kirby clan six minutes, not five, to appear at the door toting two small suitcases and a sleepy towheaded boy in a rain slicker and pj’s. The kid was plugged into a pair of earbuds and gazed mesmerized at a smartphone’s screen.
Bonnie leaned out the window and whistled. “Let’s get a move on. Everybody into the car, chop-chop.”
Alan slid into the front passenger seat while Cynthia and A.J. took up the rear, sharing the space with the suitcases. Bonnie pulled off before her passengers had finished fastening their seat belts.
She reversed onto Old Road and turned east. Wet asphalt blurred beneath her hood. Trees framed the road on both sides. In time with the beat of the wiper blades, her gaze kept flicking from the windshield to the rearview mirror and back. Pascal had left the farmhouse, but he might not have gone far.
“How much can Junior hear?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Cynthia said from the backseat. “He’s in his own world.”
“Okay, here’s the thing.” She lit a cigarette. “Time for us to have a powwow. I need the truth, folks. And I need it now.”
Cynthia coughed. “Must you smoke?”
“Just doing my part to keep Phillip Morris profitable. I’m a shareholder.”
“Secondhand smoke isn’t good for children.”
“Neither are bullets. That oughtta be your priority right now.”
“I don’t think I like your attitude.”
“Yeah, I need to work on that.” She expelled a stream of smoke, hoping the bitch choked on it. “So before you two were Alan and Cynthia, you were Jeffrey and Caroline. I’m guessing there’s a story that goes with that.”
Alan looked at his hands. “It’s complicated.”
“Let’s stop the dance. Was there anything you told me on the boardwalk that was actually, you know, true?”
“Parts of it.”
“Which parts?”
“I did work for a nonprofit organization in New York—”
“Yeah, but it was a human rights deal, not a feed-the-hungry deal.”
“Um ... yes.”
“You’d been involved with that stuff for years, right? Going back to Chicago?”
“There I was mostly handling immigration and refugee cases.”
“And then you moved to New York and joined, uh, what was it called? Bleeding Heart?”
“Conscience Watch,” Alan said peevishly.
“Potato, potahto.”
“The abuse of political dissidents is no laughing matter,” Cynthia said.
Bonnie glanced in the rearview mirror. “Who are you, Sally Struthers? Jeez.” Then she caught sight of a distant flash of headlights behind Cynthia’s head. “Uh-oh.”
“What’s the matter?” Alan asked.
“Someone’s behind us.”
“You mean ...?”
“Let’s find out.” She floored the gas pedal and watched the speedometer bend to sixty, sixty-five, seventy. The headlights shrank momentarily, then expanded as the vehicle accelerated to match her speed. “Aw, shit.”
Cynthia was staring out the back window. “That’s him? That’s really him?”
“Sure looks that way. Hang on.”
His strategy was bound to be pretty basic: pull alongside the Jeep and take out the driver—namely, her. She didn’t intend to cooperate.
She watched the sides of the road. Trees, trees, more trees, a blurred wall of trees hemming her in. No good. She needed open space.
And the headlights behind her continued to brighten as the SUV closed the distance with the Jeep.
Still more trees, too goddamn many trees. Hadn’t they ever heard of development around here?
The son of a bitch was close now. She couldn’t outrun the Lexus on a straight stretch of road. In another few seconds Pascal would be right on her ass, and then he would swerve into the other lane and overtake her.
She reached for the fanny pack, preparing to pull out her Glock, and then the right side of the road opened up, the trees disappearing to reveal a flat stretch of open field.
Finally.
She flung the wheel hard to the right and swerved off the road, bumping up onto the grass. For a bad second her tires were caught in a drift of mud—she felt them spin helplessly—and then they tore loose and she barreled forward, cutting a path at a ninety-degree angle to the road. The Jeep rocked on the rutted ground, throwing up pinwheels of mud. On her left, rows of crops flickered past—corn stalks or some goddamn thing.
“Did we lose him?” Alan asked.
“Of course not.” Even without looking, she knew the headlights were still dogging them. Cynthia’s low moan confirmed it.
She ground the gas pedal into the floor. The Jeep pulled away from the Lexus, maybe because it had better traction off-road, or maybe because Pascal wasn’t accustomed to blowing through muddy meadows at night.
A lone oak tree came up fast out of nowhere. She skirted it, but just barely. One of the low branches whickered against the Jeep’s side panel.
That’ll leave a mark, she thought ruefully.
She kept going. A bevy of nesting birds exploded out of the grass directly in front of her, launched like buckshot into the night sky.
She had crossed at least a hundred yards of open field, and she was just about to run out of room. Dead ahead lay another street, one that ran parallel to Old Road.
“Hold on tight,” she said, as much to herself as to her passengers.
She touched the brakes to prevent the Jeep from tipping over. She took a hard left, and took it fast.
Too fast. The muddy tires slipped on the rainswept pavement, and for a moment she was sure the Jeep would skid across the road into the utility poles along the far shoulder.
She spun the wheel, the Jeep straightened out, and she gunned the engine.
For the next few seconds they would be screened from their pursuer by the farmhouse and a high wall of crops. She raced east for half a block, then veered into a narrow clearing on the right-hand side of the road, nestling the Jeep amid a stand of tall evergreens. She killed the motor and lights.
“No one move or make a sound,” she said quietly. She took a look in the backseat and observed that A.J. was asleep. Amazing. Little bastard could doze through anything.
Cynthia hunched low in her seat. “It won’t work. He’ll see us. He’ll see us.” The words repeated like a mantra.
“Shut up.”
She did. Which was good, because otherwise Bonnie might have had to shoot her.
Alan whispered, “What if he does see us?”
“Then we’re fucked, Chuck.”
She eased the Glock out of her fanny pack. The carbine was stowed in the back of the vehicle, difficult to access. She hoped she wouldn’t need it.
There were a lot of ways for this to go south. If she’d left tire tracks on the asphalt, they would point directly to her hiding place. If Pascal had glimpsed her maneuver from a distance ... or if he spotted the concealed Jeep as he was driving by ...
He was always one step ahead. Always outthinking her. Why would it be any different this time?
She waited. Pascal hadn’t been that far behind. He had to be close, very close. He might have pulled to a stop already, headlights dark. He might be training his gun on her right now.
With a whoosh the SUV careened past, not even slowing. It hurtled around a blind curve, disappearing into the dark.
Gone.
“Score one for our side,” Bonnie said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as shaky as she felt.