warm heat from her face as he turned and leaned toward her and swerved the van toward the shoulder.
‘I want to try to kiss you through the mesh,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to get to know each other again. Try turning your head toward me again. Do it quickly.’
She didn’t really try but there would be time to get to know each other again. There were rules he wanted her to memorize but those could wait until they were at the house.
Now the traffic up ahead slowed. It distracted and agitated him. He wanted the timing to be very clean today. The drive south was long. They slowed to a stop and he saw police and emergency vehicle lights.
‘An accident,’ he said and felt her breath on the back of his neck. She was already working on him. He loved it how quickly she adapted. There were other police vehicles up there and if he’d been alone he would have turned on traffic radio to make sure it was an accident.
‘I was out of money,’ she said. ‘That’s why I was after her. She must have told you.’
‘She did.’ He turned. ‘Money isn’t going to be a problem any more.’
She didn’t answer and then said, ‘Money probably doesn’t matter any more.’
‘You think I’m going to hurt you? Is that why you say that?’
‘You’ve hunted me for years. You’ve kidnapped me. You ordered me into a van at gunpoint. Is that the person I knew once? Or were you always that person?’
‘I spent five years in a cage.’
‘I’m sorry about that but I couldn’t pretend there was a mugger.’
‘It’s OK, but it has to be even.’
‘What has to be even?’
‘We’re not going to talk about that yet.’
‘That’s fine, and I’m OK dying, I really am.’ Her voice quavered. ‘There won’t be any satisfaction in it for you and maybe God will forgive me for what we did to John.’
‘You aren’t going to die but it has to be even.’
She didn’t say anything for over a minute and they barely moved forward.
‘Cody?’
‘What?’
‘Are we really going to live together?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re going to keep me somewhere.’
‘For five years and then we’ll travel all over the world.’
‘Five years to match your five years?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK.’
More police cars now and a fire engine, but no smoke and no ambulance and they sat for ten minutes before the cars ahead started to move slowly forward. He questioned her more about the lost years and she told him she caught fish out of Bucks Lake and worked as a waitress, and did other seasonal stuff for employers who preferred to pay her under the table.
Then she asked, ‘Did you kill the San Francisco homicide inspector, the tall one, the one who arrested you?’
He gave her the same frankness she’d given him. It was the right way to start again and every word spoken at this stage was important.
‘I did.’
‘What about the wife of the other one?’
‘Are you going to ask me about Alex Jurika next?’
‘I am.’
‘After the first time we make love I’ll tell you everything that’s happened.’ He pointed through the windshield. ‘Looks like it’s moving again.’
It was but everything was flowing into one lane and there were more police cars. Must have been something else, he thought, not an accident, but whatever it was looked like it was over. When they got closer and he saw two cops standing directing the flow he said, ‘Get back and get down.’ When she lay on her side in the back he asked, ‘Do you want to be with me?’
‘I don’t know yet. You’ve got to give me time.’
‘I’m the same Cody.’
‘Then after what I did, why wouldn’t you just kill me?’
‘I’ve thought about killing you.’
‘Then just do it.’
‘I had a long time to think about it. I know you got scared that night. I knew ahead of time exactly what was going to happen so I wasn’t scared. But you didn’t have a chance to prepare. The cops knew you were lying. Did you know they knew?’
Even though they were getting close to the cops directing traffic, he turned and looked at her. He wanted to see her answer.
‘I couldn’t tell anything,’ she said.
‘Well, they knew you didn’t see me shoot John, but they also knew if they didn’t have you they wouldn’t be able to make the case stand.’
Stoltz checked her once more, and then pulled his cap down and blocked part of his face from view with his elbow resting on his driver’s door as the cop