The kid looked at him strangely, then laughed shakily and shook his head. “Man, I don’t know. She’s gottta be pissed at you, though.” “But you have no idea where she is?”
“Not a clue. Grandpa put her up someplace, I don’t know where. You want me to give her a message if I see her?” “Yes. Tell her that I apologize, that I’m sorry for everything. Tell her I’ll be in touch.” “Why, where are you going? Peter?” Alex peeled himself off the wall and stepped closer. “Hey, don’t be stupid, if you’re thinking of being as stupid as I think you are. These guys aren’t just playing with you, you understand that, don’t you?” “Yes, I do understand.”
Alex took that in, realizing from the look of devastation and surrender in Peter’s face that he indeed did understand. “Wow. So what are you gonna do?” he asked. “Watch my ass,” said Peter, a phrase he had heard over and over on the base. He knew he had already said far too much. Inching back toward his door, he began to make goodbye gestures. Alex Davies glanced over his shoulder, then approached Peter and socked him lightly on the arm. “I’m with you, man,” he said conspiratorially. Then, with a cautionary arch of his brows, he raced off down the corridor. The instant the kid was out of sight, Peter ducked back into his room, grabbed the duffel bag and went out onto the balcony, moving quietly as a cat. Looking down, he saw the sentry, still on guard, and on a cell phone talking to someone who sounded like a girlfriend. Luck, thought Peter. Bastard’s breaking regulations and giving me a break all at once. In one smooth move, he vaulted over the railing-feeling in that split second of falling utter release and commitment. And then he slammed into the kid and took him to the ground. The kid didn’t have time to yell before Peter had him up against the wall, nailing him with a left hook and a right cross that drove his head back into the stucco, dropping him like a sack of lead shot. He looked at the guy’s weapons. In his heart a blind fury was growing, fed by lack of information, a tsunami of guilt and the overwhelming sense that his life would never be peaceful again. This was beyond life or death. This all had to do, he realized with a blinding insight, with the survival of this woman who had loved him so completely that his entire being had been altered. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to protect and defend her and make a place for themselves outside the madness his life had become. So be it. Removing the guard’s service pistol, he then unloaded the rifle and threw the clip of ammunition into the trees. Then he turned and ran. Beyond the breezeway he veered past the core labs through a field of waisthigh grass toward the motor pool. The Humvee that had brought him from the gate was in its berth; the keys were in it. It was the simplest of matters to slip inside. He did not have so much as a second thought, nor any thought at all when he came to the front gate doing nearly sixty and saw that the guard had already been alerted. The muzzle flashes registered no more than heat lightning on a distant horizon; he felt no fear whatsoever. He slammed the accelerator to the floorboard and crashed through the gate, sending the guard diving for his life. Peter was vaguely impressed by his driving skills. After the BMW episode he hadn’t cared much for speed, but now his right foot had a mind of its own, and even his hands seemed to know what to do. Without a moment’s hesitation he put the Humvee into an effortless J-turn that snapped it ninety degrees onto the two-lane blacktop and out of sight before another base vehicle could follow. He followed the road over the hill, then slowed and cut stealthily into the bush, taking care to leave no signs of egress. Then he struck off cross-country, sometimes on farm roads, sometimes on cattle lanes, once even following a stream, as he had seen Hopalong Cassidy do once in a film he had loved as a kid. He smiled grimly. This was fun, really it was. Perfect for the job, the Humvee flew over the varied terrain with all the competency its engineers had designed and the taxpayers had paid for. Something to be said for the military after all, thought Peter bitterly. Even better, this would save him from traveling on five miles of twisting highway and keep him away from roadblocks. The bay. All he could concentrate on was reaching the bay.
Elizabeth had decided to drive into town and get lost among the tourists. But when she arrived at her Honda, she found it up on the hoist of an Island Towing truck. The driver, a native with long hair and lots of attitude, looked up with a don’t-fuck-up-my-day look. “What the hell you doing?” she demanded. He didn’t bother to take the cigarette out of his mouth, or to stop lifting the Honda. “Confiscating this car. “At three in the morning?”
“Best time to find it home.”
“But that’s my car.
“I think it’s Hertz’s car.”
He locked off the hoist and walked back to his truck’s cab, pursued by Elizabeth. “But they have my American Express imprint!” “Card’s no good,” the driver said. “No credit, no car.” He slammed the truck’s door and fired up the engine. Elizabeth raced back to her car and squinted through the windows to see if she had left anything inside. The tourist map and the rental agreement were jammed between the front seats, but before she could open the door the truck was gone, taking her Honda with it. “Fucker!” Her shout was lost in the night, and with the truck’s unmuffled roar, she knew the driver hadn’t even heard her. Not that he would give a rat’s ass, she thought. She stood for a moment, furious and wondering what the hell to do next. Then another kind of thought came to her: the coquis were silent. Looking around her, she realized it was completely dark and utterly quiet. She was alone and so very small against the stars. She walked back through the gate. For some reason it was open. As usual, the ex-matador was tipped back in his folding chair, and the thought came foolishly to her that she ought to report him. Maybe that would put Greeley enough on the defensive that she could enlist his aid in renting another car. But she didn’t have the heart. She called to the old man. “Toro! Toro!”
He didn’t stir.
Then she noticed something under his chair, a glint of moonlight in a widening pool. Stepping closer, she saw that his pants were also dark with it. It was too thick, too red to be anything but blood. For some reason she couldn’t scream, though terror shrieked in- side her head. She crept closer, hoping she could somehow help him, the hair on her arms rising like insects crawling on her skin. Despite the darkness, she now could see that his throat had been slashed from ear to ear. She was running before she knew it.
She tore across the parking lot and into the hotel, taking in with a desperate animal awareness just how open tropical places were: open verandas, open terraces, strips of thin bamboo where doors should be. In the darkened lobby, she stopped. She could hear music from the owner’s apartment. “Ivor! Call the police!”
No answer.
She wondered if he had decided to have nothing more to do with her. “ivor?” His door was half-open.
She went to it and tried to ease it open a little further, but it wouldn’t budge. Something was up against it on the other side. From the way the flimsy door gave at the top but not at the bottom, she knew that whatever it was, it was on the floor. Putting her shoulder to the door, she got it open far enough to poke her head through the opening. What she saw sickened and terrified her. There was Ivor, an ashen mask of horrified surprise on his face. Next she noticed the blood. A moment later she realized she was standing in it. Turning on her bloody heels she ran back to her room, slamming the door and bolting it. The lock was old and worn and the whole door so flimsy it could be penetrated with a fist. Grabbing a heavy wooden chair, she tried to wedge it under the doorknob, but it wouldn’t hold. She looked around for something even heavier to drag in front of the door, but the largest thing in the room was the bed and it was so light she could move it with her knees. Quickly, she snatched up the phone. There was still no dial tone, but now there was some noise on the line and, after a pause, a man’s whisper. “Russell? You get her?”