The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,69

hands were trembling; his breath smelled like vomit.

“Go on now,” Richards said. He shot a look at Davis, holding his pile of comic books. “You too, junior. The both of you, get the fuck out of here.”

They scrambled off into the snow. In the few minutes since the van had pulled up, the sun had lifted from behind the mountains, giving the air a pale glow. Richards bent into the van and undid Carter’s shackles.

“You okay? Those boys hurt you anywhere?”

Carter rubbed his damp face. “They didn’t mean nothing.” He swung his feet from the bench and lowered himself stiffly onto the ground. He blinked and looked around. “They gone?”

Richards said they were.

“What this place?”

“Fair question.” Richards nodded. “All in time. You hungry, Anthony?”

“They fed me. McDonald’s.” Carter’s eyes found the security detail, standing on the dock above them. His expression told Richards nothing. “What about them?” he asked.

“They’re here for you. You’re the guest of honor, Anthony.”

Carter narrowed his eyes at Richards. “You really shoot that guy if I’d said to?”

Something about Carter made him think of Sykes, standing in his office with that lost look on his face, asking him if they were friends.

“What do you think? You think I would have?”

“I wouldn’t know what to think.”

“Well, just between us, no. I wouldn’t have. I was just fooling with him.”

“I thought you was.” Carter’s face broke into a grin. “Thought it was funny, though. You doing him like you did.” He shook his head, laughing a little, and looked around again. “What happen now?”

“What happens now,” Richards said, “is we get you inside, where it’s warm.”

EIGHT

By nightfall they were fifty miles past Oklahoma City, hurtling west across the open prairie toward a wall of spring thunderheads ascending from the horizon like a bank of blooming flowers in a time-lapse video. Doyle was fast asleep in the Tahoe’s passenger seat, his head wedged into the space between the headrest and the window, cushioned against the bumps in the road by a folded jacket. At times like this, Wolgast found himself envying Doyle, his powers of oblivion. He could turn his own lights off like a ten-year-old, put his head down and sleep virtually anywhere. Wolgast’s fatigue was deep; he knew the smart thing would have been to pull off and change places, catch a few winks himself. But he had driven the whole distance from Memphis, and the feel of the wheel in his hands was the only thing that made him think he still had a card to play.

Since his call to Sykes, their only contact had taken place in a truck-stop parking lot outside Little Rock, where a field agent had met them with an envelope of cash—three thousand dollars, all in twenties and fifties—and a fresh vehicle, a plain-wrapper Bureau sedan. But by then Wolgast had decided he liked the Tahoe and wanted to keep it. He liked its big, muscular eight-cylinder engine and swishy steering and bouncy suspension. He hadn’t driven anything like it in years. It seemed a pity to send a vehicle like that into the crusher, and when the agent offered him the keys to the sedan, he waved them off imperiously, without a second thought.

“Is there anything on the wires about us?” he’d asked the agent—a fresh recruit with a face pink as a slice of ham.

The agent frowned with confusion. “I don’t know anything about it.”

Wolgast considered this. “Good,” he said finally. “You’ll want to keep it that way.”

The agent had then taken him around to the sedan’s trunk, which sprang open to meet them. Inside was the black nylon duffel bag he hadn’t asked for but still expected.

“Keep it,” he said.

“You sure? I’m supposed to give it to you.”

Wolgast shifted his gaze toward the Tahoe, parked at the edge of the lot between two dozing semis. Through the rear window, he could see Doyle but not the girl, who was lying down on the backseat. He really wanted to get moving; whatever else was true, sitting still was not an option. As for the bag, maybe he needed it and maybe he didn’t. But the decision to leave it behind felt right.

“Tell the office anything you want,” he said. “What I could really use is some coloring books.”

“I’m sorry?”

Wolgast would have laughed if he were in the mood. He put his palm on the lid of the trunk and pushed it closed. “Never mind,” he said.

The bag held guns, of course, and ammunition, and maybe a couple of armored