restaurant to let me know.”
“And you would have come running because Moira missed our dinner plans?” Jack was right in his face. “You promised her you would tell me she had to work late. Once again you’ve lied. You’re a piece of work, you know that?”
“I’m a piece of work?” Eric yelled, then lowered his voice when he noticed the SWAT officers looking their direction.
“I was a little busy—getting shot at!” Jack said as Eric stomped off the porch. “Sorry if I upset your plans for the evening, lover boy.”
“Up yours,” Eric called after him, and saw the SWAT officers were smirking.
Eric made it halfway to his car and stopped. He took some deep breaths to clear his mind. He would like nothing better than to wipe the smirks off those goons’ faces, and when he became the prosecutor. . . well, things would be much different.
But more than that, he wanted to go back and make things right with Katie—and Moira, too. No matter how hard he tried, they resented him. It was always “Jack this” and “Jack that.”
But he was here now, and Jack would be leaving. He loved Katie and they were engaged, so Jack should be the one leaving. He shook off his anger. “That’s right.” He put a look on his face that was both serious and supportive. “Okay, here we go,” he said softly, and walked back to the house.
He walked onto the porch and tried the front door. It was locked.
The officers laughed openly as Eric stomped off again.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Book was in search of new wheels. The Taurus might have been seen leaving the school bus parking lot. He had almost run down a prostitute and her client or pimp or whatever when he pulled onto the street. People like that were paid by the police to keep an eye out. He couldn’t take the chance that they were giving Murphy a description of the car right now.
A billboard on Interstate 64 read, THE OLD BARN RESTAURANT—an appropriate name for a restaurant surrounded by bean and cornfields. Book slowed at the exit ramp and saw a building with sun-bleached planks in the shape of a barn with a red tin roof and a covered porch that was supposed to be inviting. The parking lot in front had a few possibilities, but as he entered the exit lane he spotted two police cars parked side by side in the lot across the street.
Book sped up and passed the exit. The next town ahead was just a dot on the map called Griffin, Indiana. The clock on the Taurus’s dashboard read two o’clock. He didn’t know where the boss was, or what time it was for her. He guessed it didn’t matter, because the boss never sounded like she had been sleeping whatever time he called. If he found a phone in Griffin, he’d make the call.
He took the off-ramp for Griffin. He liked the idea that the town was close to the interstate. They might have need of the Taurus, and this way it would be easy to retrieve. He drove through cornfields so tall his headlights created a tunnel through the darkness. Just when he thought he would never find the town, the cornfields turned to soybeans and then to open fields. Soon he drew up at an intersection with a café shaped like an old-time train station.
He pulled into the cinder parking lot, where he killed the engine and shut his headlights off. A closed sign was in the window, but he didn’t need to go in. A pay phone hung on the outside wall.
He sat in the car and scouted his surroundings. Two dozen one-and two-story homes lined one side of the road for two blocks before cornfields closed in again. Everything was dark and closed up tight as a drum. All of the houses had shiny pickup trucks parked either in front or in their weed-strewn gravel driveways. It was a hillbilly’s dream.
A half dozen old cars and pickups were clumped together at the other end of the parking area. If he was lucky, the vehicles belonged to over-the-road truckers. If so, no one would report their vehicle missing for a while, and he only needed it for a day.
As he stepped out of the Taurus, he noticed the front of his shirt and pants. Even though his clothes were black, the fabric betrayed smears and streaks where Clint’s blood had soaked into the material. Thinking of Clint getting shot