Janeal moved through the next few hours without feeling anything but hatred toward Katie Morgon and a desire to confront this alter ego and be done with her forever. She bought a prepaid cell phone from Walgreens and a decent change of clothes from a small boutique before she checked into her hotel. She would stay only long enough to change and make a phone call. She hoped the detour wouldn’t cut into the time it would take for her to stay one step ahead of Salazar Sanso.
It was good he would not arrive before tomorrow. She dropped the clothes she’d been wearing into the trash can under the bathroom sink and changed into fresh clothes.
The hotel had free Wi-Fi service, which she used to locate the urgent care clinics in Las Vegas, New Mexico. There was only one, which would make this task much easier than she could have imagined. She looked up the local police department next and found a tip hotline. Janeal was about to call it from her disposable phone when a call came in on her personal line.
She snatched it up.
“Yes.”
“Ms. Johnson. How are you feeling?” Who was this? Alan?
“What are you . . . I asked you not to call.”
“An urgent matter—”
“Not now.” Urgent? What could be more urgent than her present situation?
“Milan Finch has filed a complaint with the board and asked them to—”
“I said not now. I can’t . . . It will have to wait.”
“But Mr. Sanders—”
Janeal closed the phone. Mr. Sanders? Ah. Thomas. She didn’t really care.
Janeal put Alan behind her and placed her call to the Las Vegas police.
“Hi. Yeah. I’m calling about that guy who’s been in the news, that drug guy who escaped a few days ago?”
“Salazar Sanso.”
“Yes, that one.”
“May I have your name and number, please?”
“Oh no. I mean it took my husband all kinds of persuasion to get me to call you at all. This doesn’t sound like a man I want to run into.”
“What information do you have?”
“Our daughter—well, we were out for a hike before we went into Santa Fe for a vacation. She got quite a gash in her arm on a fall, so we took her in to the urgent care center there in your pretty little town.”
“What time was this?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Around nine or ten this morning. But as we were going in, you know that man, the one on the news, he was coming out of that center with a blond woman. Bold as day!”
“You’re certain it was him.”
“As certain as I am that he didn’t see me, if you know what I mean. He got into this pretty little car, a silver sporty thing. What was it again, honey?” She covered the mouthpiece, then said, “A Miata. A Mazda Miata.”
“Did you see which direction they headed?”
“Oh no. I was afraid he’d spot us staring, you know? And then where would we be? Poor victims on some homicide documentary, I’m sure. No, I've told you everything I know. My civic duty for the day.”
“We’ll look into it.”
“Well then, you’ve been real nice. I hope you have a very nice day.”
Janeal ended the call and threw the phone into the trash on top of her clothes. She mentally calculated how long it would take the tip to filter out to Robert’s people at the DEA, and then to Robert. There was no way of knowing for sure.
She supposed it didn’t matter in the end. Her first objective was to get Robert away from Katie, and she had more than twenty-four hours to make that happen. She’d be patient.
In fact, she’d be patient by waiting with them. What did she have to lose at this point? If she knew Robert at all, he’d already told Katie about her.
And Janeal wanted to set her own version of the story straight.
Callista sat in the driver’s seat of the Miata and refused to put the key in the ignition.
“You’re risking everything for a stupid, stupid girl,” she argued. “We could be across the border by nightfall, but you want to stay here, where the world is crawling with agents who have a much better idea of where you are, thanks to that bungled tryst last night.”
Callista’s tirades were stale now. Sanso found he had come to prefer Janeal’s mode of argument, which was calmer and sharpened by her like-mindedness.
Sanso adjusted in his seat to make himself more comfortable. The gunshot had gone clean through the fleshy part of his bicep, lucky for him. The wound in his liver still had quite a bit of healing to do, in part because the scuffle with Robert had aggravated the damage.
“I’m not driving this car until you agree to leave the States today.”
Sanso opened his car door and swung his legs out to the curb of the abandoned lot where she’d pulled off. If she wouldn’t drive, he would.
“Don’t even think about it, Salazar.” She twisted in her seat, following him with her eyes as he walked around the back of the car. He’d taken the top down, also against her objections, after leaving the urgent care facility. “We had two days' lead time to get you out of here, and then you went and told her where we are. How long do you think it will take her to call the cops and get on with her life? An hour? Maybe less?”
Sanso opened the trunk and leaned into the compartment on both hands. It was here somewhere. He allowed himself a snarl in Callista’s direction. She didn’t understand the bond he and Janeal shared. She couldn’t possibly imagine that Janeal would not betray him in such a fashion. Janeal had chosen him over Katie, over Robert, and she would be his in the end. In fact, she already was.
It was hard to forgive Callista’s ignorance, though.
“This is not the time to be a brickhead,” she was saying.
There was the leather bundle he was looking for, hastily crammed under the carpeting that hid the spare tire. He pulled it out and untied it, then unrolled the casing slowly.
“We need to go,” she insisted. “Now.”
Sanso straightened and shut the trunk, then approached Callista. She twisted forward to watch him in the rearview mirror. “Get in the car, Salazar. You rest. I'll drive. To Mexico. Do you hear me?”
He reached the driver’s side and leaned over her, bending to kiss her on the forehead.
“Oh, I hear you,” he said. He sensed her relax, then he drove the six-inch knife he’d retrieved into the back of her neck. “The problem is, you don’t hear me.”
Callista slumped against the wheel, paralyzed but not dead. It wouldn’t take long. Opening the car door, he lifted her petite frame with his good arm and resituated her in the passenger seat.
“I’ll give you a good burial, my dear. You’ve been good to me through the years. But you seem to have forgotten your place. You’ll pardon me now while I go pay a visit to my love.”