New Orleans: 4 June 8:35 P.M. Central time
“Hey, lady! This is a private bus.”
Her face hot and wet with mingling sweat and rain, Tobie turned toward the bus driver and found rows of exquisitely dressed wedding guests staring at her. “Sorry.” She flashed what she hoped was an apologetic grin. “Could you just let me out at the corner of Calhoun?”
“Some people,” muttered the driver, and swung onto Magazine.
The instant the bus swooped in close to the curb, Tobie leaped out. It was raining hard now, great, wind-gusted sheets of water that fell in waves from a lightning-torn sky. She hurried down Calhoun, her shoulders hunched and head bent against the downpour, her hair hanging in a wet curtain beside her face. A car splashed past and she spun around, heart pounding, adrenaline pumping, ready to run. The car disappeared around the corner.
By the time her Bug appeared as a yellow blur through the falling rain, she was drenched. Her skirt clung to her thighs, her cotton jacket hanging heavy and wet. Jerking open the door, she tossed her bag onto the far seat and slid in.
Rain drummed on the metal roof, cascaded in sheets down the windshield. She was shaking so badly she had a hard time fitting the key into the ignition. The engine sputtered to life and the voice of Lee Ann Womack blared out incongruously from the radio. Tobie punched the power button, turning it off. She wrapped her hands around the steering wheel, her breath soughing hot in her throat. Then she threw the car into first and hit the gas.
Turning onto Tchoupitoulas, she tore upriver toward Audubon Park. She had no thought in mind beyond putting as much distance as possible between herself and the men chasing her. But at the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Henry Clay, the light turned red and she had to stop. She watched the overhead traffic signal shudder in the wind, watched her windshield wiper blades beat back and forth, and tried to figure out what the hell she should do.
She didn’t dare go to the police, she realized; not when the men chasing her carried FBI badges. So where could she go? She tried to think of someone—anyone she could turn to. She’d made friends since moving here to New Orleans, good friends. But what would a couple of eccentric artists and a French Quarter musician know about dealing with the kind of men who flashed FBI badges and fired guns equipped with suppressors?
And then she thought about Colonel McClintock.
She’d never been clear on exactly what the Colonel had done during his many years in the Army. But she knew he’d spent two tours in Vietnam, and she’d seen pictures in his study, curious old photographs that hinted at colorful adventures involving far more than the kind of calm therapy sessions he’d had with her. Plus, he knew about Henry’s project. If anyone could help her make sense of what was going on, it was the Colonel.
Reaching over to the seat beside her, she fumbled around in her messenger bag for her cell phone. Her hand closed around it just as the traffic light changed, painting the rain-slicked black streets with a vivid wash of green.
The guy behind her in a white pickup decorated with two American flags leaned on his horn. Tobie dropped her phone on top of her bag and took off.
Lance Palmer closed his cell phone and held it in a tightened fist, his gaze fixed on the rain-flecked window and distant white lights that flickered past in the darkness. They were on the I-10 heading west out of the city toward the suburbs and Metairie Country Club, the destination of the wedding reception shuttle bus. He’d had a car with four men at the club waiting when the shuttle arrived. Except that according to the shuttle driver, October Guinness had hopped off the bus back on Magazine Street.
“Take the next exit and turn around,” said Lance.
Lopez glanced over at him. “We lost her?”
“We lost her.” Lance swiveled sideways in his seat and flipped the phone open again. “Let me see what else we’ve got on this girl,” he said to Hadley as he punched his own home number on the phone’s auto dial.
Hadley was a mess; his swollen left eye was turning blue and purple, and blood still oozed from a cut on the back of his head. There was obviously more to this girl than any of them had figured.
“Hey, Jess,” said Lance, his head tipped at an awkward angle to cradle the phone between his ear and shoulder as he reached to take the laptop from Hadley. “Looks like I’m not going to make it home tonight after all.”
Lance paused, his gaze scanning the directory of files while he listened to Jess’s soft expressions of disappointment. “What?” he said a minute later, his attention jerked back to the phone. “Sure I’ll tell them good-night. Put them on.”
His ten-year-old, Jason, was watching TV and could barely spare him a quick “’Night, Dad.” But the little one, six-year-old Missy, recited a long and tangled tale about her cat, Barney.
“That’s nice, honey,” he said finally. “I love you, too. Now let me talk to Mommy again for a minute, would you?”
“I should be home tomorrow morning,” he told Jessica when she came back on. “’Night, darling.”
He dropped the phone into his pocket and started flipping through the files on October Guinness. “Get onto headquarters,” he told Hadley. “Tell them I want to know everything there is to know about this woman. I want her license number and the kind of car she’s driving. I want to know who her friends are and where they live. I want the activity on her bank and credit cards monitored. And I want someone assigned to do absolutely nothing except wait for her to turn on her cell phone.”
Hadley shook his head. “She’s not going to be stupid enough to use it.”
“Are you kidding? So someone taught her how to kick. Big deal. She’s a lousy college dropout who couldn’t even make it in the Navy, for Christ’s sake. What does she know?” Lance glanced out the window again. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, more like a fine mist that swirled around the car. “She’ll use it.”