trouble? I’m a professor of English literature at Yale for heaven’s sake. I just want to talk to her. What room?”
No answer. Now was the time to apply a little cash. He flipped up a fifty, which the clerk pawed out of his hand. With a grunt he went into the back office and came out with the register. He opened it on the desk and turned it around, pointing with a fat finger. Mr. and Mrs. Morton.
“Mr. and Mrs. Morton? They took only one room? Number one-fifty-five?”
The man nodded.
Harry Burr made the face of a father thinking about something he’d rather not think about. “What about ID, didn’t they have to show ID?”
“Sometimes we forget to ask,” he said lamely.
Burr checked the map of the motel and noted that room 155 was in the motel’s back wing, first floor. It was a cheap motel, all the rooms with separate front entrances and no back doors. So much the better.
He straightened up. “Thank you, thank you very much.”
“No noise or I call the cops.”
“Don’t worry.” Burr went out to his idling car, pulled out of the drive-through, reached in the glove compartment, and felt the reassuring grip of the Israeli Desert Eagle .44 magnum semiautomatic, his working firearm. He grasped the suppressor and affixed it to the muzzle and laid it on the seat next to him as he eased the car around to the back of the motel.
There wouldn’t be any noise if Burr could help it.
58
“Out the window? Are you nuts?” Abbey stood in the door to the bathroom, hands on her hips.
Ford ignored her. He pulled open the cheap sliding aluminum window in the bathroom. He shoved Abbey’s suitcase out, pushed out his own. “Now you.”
“This is crazy.” But Abbey obeyed, ducking her head out and wiggling through the window. Ford handed her the laptop and drive and then he squeezed out. They were behind the motel. There was a weedy service drive, a chain-link fence, a drainage ditch, and then a large parking lot surrounding a frowzy mall. The sky was gray and a light drizzle fell.
Abbey picked up her suitcase. “What now? Call a cab?”
“To the mall.”
“It isn’t open yet.”
“We’re not shopping. Just follow me.”
“Why are we running?” Abbey asked. “What’ve you done?”
“Later.”
Abbey followed Ford across the driveway. He tossed their suitcases and his briefcase over the fence. “Go.”
“This is ridiculous.” Abbey grabbed the chain links and climbed over, dropping down the other side. Ford scrambled up and over.
“Keep up.”
He took off at a jog across a trash-strewn strip of grass, jumped the drainage ditch, and headed into the parking lot. Abbey heard a faint squealing of tires and turned to see a yellow New Beetle tearing down the service road behind the motel. It screeched to a halt, the door burst open, and a man jumped out, kneeling.
Ford grabbed her arm and yanked her behind a parked car. There was a thunk and the side windows blew out in a spray of glass.
“Jesus Christ!”
Another thunk as a round punched into the car.
“Just stay down. Forget the suitcases. Follow me.”
Ford took off at a crouch, scuttling between the parked cars. After a moment Abbey heard another squeal of rubber and the Beetle had taken off. She could see it heading at high speed for the main road.
“He’s coming around into the parking lot here,” Ford said. “Run, and I mean run.”
He sprinted toward the only section of the parking lot where there were cars, his jacket flapping behind him, still carrying his briefcase. Abbey ran to keep up. She glanced over her right shoulder and could see the yellow car whipping along the main road, then the screech of tires as it slewed into the mall parking lot and came bombing toward them.
“Get down.”
They crouched behind a battered old Ford pickup and Ford immediately began to work on the lock. In a moment he had the door open. “Crawl in, stay down.”
Abbey obeyed, crawling into the cab and staying below the window. Ford got in beside her, shoved the briefcase behind the seat, and popped the glove compartment. He pulled out a screwdriver, pried off the cover and panel around the ignition tumbler, exposing a panel clipped to the rear. He stuck the screwdriver into the ignition switch, turned it—and the car fired up.
Abbey lay crouching on the floor in front of the seat, head down.
“All right,” said Ford. “Hold on and keep on the floor.”
She heard the engine roar, the floor vibrating, and the