I stop, shoot a look back at the rear door of the restaurant, then back at the man. “Agent Douglas,” I say, trying to understand exactly how his timing could be so right. Or so wrong. I wouldn’t say the last three years have been good to him, but they’ve changed him. His hair is very short now, and he somehow managed to move ten or so pounds from his gut to his chest. I might have doubted his identity at first, but his voice is permanently recorded in my memory.
He opens the back door of an SUV. “In.”
I jog up, get in and slide across the seat, steal a glimpse of the back entrance of the restaurant again. Sean closes the door and gets in the driver’s side. The only signs that this is some official event are the black color of the vehicle and the weaponry and gauges in the interior. Other than that, little else gels. There are no marshals, no one else with us at all. Sean is unshaven, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans like he just finished weeding his garden. He drives away slowly, waves other cars in front of him as we limp out to the quiet town center.
I look over my shoulder, out the rear window of the car. Though it’s hard to see through the heavily tinted windows, I see Maggie finally emerge from the back door of Mulleno’s and stare at my abandoned Hyundai, then around the area for me.
Just before we turn and drift away, she drops her head and goes back inside.
Right about now the braciole is setting off the smoke alarm.
THREE
Sean doesn’t bother to raise the divider as he drives us out to Route 301. I’ve run the scenario through my mind enough times to come to only one possible conclusion:
“So,” I say, “someone recognized me in the Villages, you guys were somehow tipped off, and then you rushed down here to snag me before anybody—”
“I don’t think rush is the right word, Bovaro.” Sean looks off to his left. “You mind if I pick up a burger real quick?”
I must be on a different plan than the one used for Melody. I lean forward. “I’m thinking… you might want to get me a little farther away first?”
He pulls into the drive-thru for a McDonald’s that’s minutes from closing, puts his window down and orders, turns back to me. “You want anything?”
I sit back, wave my hand.
After he pays and pulls out, I say, “You have no business pretending to be a marshal, not even at Hallowee—”
“No one wants you, Johnny.” He brings a handful of fries to his mouth. One misses, falls to his lap. “Let me rephrase,” I think he says, “no one wants you dead.”
“Who was that guy at Mulleno’s?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
I squint, look at him in the rearview mirror. “Ask?”
“Just some guy.” He opens a straw, submerges it in his soda. I can hear the ice rattle in pulses as he gulps it down.
I lean forward again. “What crew was he with?”
“No crew, possibly a bowling league.” He laughs, then repeats, “Just some guy.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Saw him come out of a pub down the block, looked like maybe he was one and a half sheets to the wind. I offered him twenty bucks to play a practical joke on you.” Sean takes a bite of burger equal to one-fifth of the sandwich. Then, muffled: “Wouldn’t even take the twenty. People are friendly down here.”
“I don’t—wait, why?”
“You know, get your name out there, expose who you really are. It was something fake that I knew you’d make real by panicking, by doing what you’re doing right now: running.”
I put my hand on the front seat to steady myself. “Confusing new protection technique Justice is using.”
“Not Justice. Me.”
“Even worse. Why? Seriously, man, what the—”
“I did it so you could never go back. So that your life in the Villages was wiped out.”
“What is this, some sort of punishment? You want me to understand what Melody went through, is that it?” I punch the back of his seat. “I had a life there!”
Sean lurches forward a little, ignores my anger, takes another mouthful of burger. After a few seconds, he says, “That was no life. An existence, maybe. Not much more.”
“This doesn’t make any—”
“We’re moving on to bigger and better things, Johnny.”
I sit back and begin my tirade. “I want to know right now what’s going on. I still