good Land Rover with a full tank of gas."
The Land Rover-a massive white beast, liberally splashed with mud to show it wasn't just a suburban wannabe's dream-sat unattended in a grove near the wildly unlikely beauty of the farmhouse. All around it, I could see evidence of either Marion's or Erik's tinkering-grass just a bit greener, trees surreally gorgeous, perfect flowers spreading petals to the sun.
The Land Rover looked like a massive mechanical roach on the wedding cake.
I tried the door, hoping Marion wouldn't have been anal-retentive enough to turn on alarms in the country ... no panicked shrieking followed, but the handle clicked and failed to open.
"Locked," I said to David. He reached over my shoulder and touched the door. Metal thunked.
"Open," he disagreed. The door swung wide.
We climbed inside in silence-for me, tired and hurt as I was, it was like scaling K2-and once I was perched in the comfortable seat, looking out through the smoked-glass windows, I let the flavor of another woman's car flow over me. Subtle scents, not as well aged as Delilah's odors . . . herbs, mostly, and fresh grass, dirt. Nobody had abused this baby with decomposing fast food or spilled coffee; if Marion spilled anything, I guessed it would have been herbal tea. There was a single silver thermos lying on the backseat. Coffee, I hoped. Erik looked like he was manly enough to swill a cup now and then.
David must have thought I was waiting for divine inspiration about the lack of car keys. He reached over and touched the ignition with one finger. A blue spark jumped, and the engine purred.
"You're handy if I ever want to get in the grand theft auto business," I said. "Any other neat tricks you can do I should know about?"
It was a loaded question, and he was right not to answer it. He sat back in the seat and fastened his safety belt. I attached mine, slipped the Land Rover in gear, and bumped gently out of the meadow and back up onto the blacktop of Iron Road, where I hit the accelerator hard. There were a few tense moments for me, watching the rearview mirror, but I didn't see the Wrath of Marion pursuing, and there wasn't a lot she could have done to affect us at this distance, in a car, on a paved road. Earthquake, maybe, but that would put others in danger, and Marion had scruples.
Hopefully.
Even so, I felt tightness ease in my shoulders as I made the left turn from Iron Road onto the highway again.
I turned right, heading north. David stirred, but I beat him to the comment.
"They're expecting me to head south," I said. "And I will, but not this way. I need to get lost before they think about using the mundane cops to track us-this tanker truck isn't exactly inconspicuous."
"And a vintage Mustang was?"
Well, he had a point. I sped north to the next farm-to-market intersection, took a random turn to the west, and followed some roads that didn't have signs and probably didn't need them; if you didn't know where you were going, local theory was, you didn't belong there anyway. I studied the dashboard. Marion had popped for the addition of a global positioning system. I activated it and looked the map over while I was driving. So did David, intensely interested; he traced routes in silence with his fingertip, showing me alternatives, until we locked in one that took us through midsize cities in Kansas, heading for Oklahoma City.
"There's a shorter route," he pointed out.
"I'm starting to worry about the shorter routes. Anyway, I have a good friend who lives near Oklahoma City, so we'll go there first."
"And-?"
"And I'll figure it out from there."
"Well, that's a hell of a long-range plan."
"You're shutting up, now, right?"
He did. It was kind of a shame, because I had a lot of questions. One of them was, of course, what would happen to Delilah, my sweet midnight-blue baby. The idea that Erik or-perish the thought- Shirl might end up driving her made me almost turn the Land Rover around and go back.
We must have gone about thirty minutes in silence before I asked him, "So you really don't have a master?" Because I still couldn't believe it. Well, sure, in the stories . . . there were always old copper lamps