“I’ll bet you a week’s salary that they called the good doctor the minute Sally was out of there. Wasn’t it strange the way Mrs. Harrison tried to make Mr. Harrison look like the strong, firm one? I’d hate to go toe-to-toe with that old battle-ax. She’s the scary one in that family. I wonder if they gave her any money.”
“I hope so,” James said. “It makes my belly knot up to think of her driving a clunker around without a dime to her name.”
“She’s got your credit cards. If they didn’t give her any money, she’ll have to use them.”
“I’ll bet you Sally is dead on her rear. Let’s find a motel, and then we can take turns calling all the motels in the area.”
They stayed at a Quality Inn, an approved lodging for FBI agents. Thirty minutes later, Quinlan was staring at the phone, just staring, so surprised he couldn’t move.
“You found her? This fast?”
“She’s not five miles from here, at a motel called the Last Stop. She didn’t use her real name, but the old man thought she looked strange, what with that man’s coat she was wearing and those tight clothes he said made her look like a hooker except he knew she wasn’t, and that’s why he let her stay. He said she looked scared and lost.”
“Glory be,” Dillon said. “I’m not all that tired anymore, Quinlan.”
“Let’s go.”
18
SALLY TOOK OFF her clothes-peeled the jeans off, truth be told, because they were so tight-and lay on the bed in her full-cut girl’s cotton panties that Dillon had bought for her. She didn’t have a bra, which was why she had to keep James’s coat on. The bra Dillon had bought-a training bra-she could have used when she was eleven years old.
The bed was wonderful, firm-well, all right, hard as a rock, but that was better than falling into a trough. She closed her eyes.
She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Through the cheap drapes she could see an all-night flashing neon sign: HOT HARVEY’S TOPLESS GIRLS.
Great part of town she’d chosen.
She closed her eyes again, turned on her side, and wondered where James was. In Washington? She wondered what Noelle had said to him and Dillon. Why hadn’t Noelle told her the truth about that night? Maybe she would have if there’d been more time. Maybe. Had Noelle told her the truth, that both her father and her husband had conspired to put her in Beadermeyer’s sanitarium? Both of them? And Noelle had bought it?
She wondered if her grandparents had called Doctor Beadermeyer, and if the Nazi was on his way to Philadelphia. No, he’d wait. He wouldn’t want to chase shadows, and that’s exactly what she was and planned to be.
No one could catch her now. The three hundred dollars would get her to Maine. She’d go to Bar Harbor, get a job, and survive. The tourists would flow in in only three months, then she would have more cover than she’d ever need. No one would find her there. She knew she was seeing Bar Harbor through a seven-year-old’s eyes, but it had been so magical; surely it couldn’t be all that different now.
Where was James? He was close, she just knew it. She hadn’t exactly felt him close, but as she’d told her grandparents, he was smarter than he had a right to be.
She devoutly hoped he was at home in Washington, in bed fast asleep, the way she should be right now but wasn’t. How close was he?
“Damnation,” she said aloud. She thought about it a few more minutes, then got out of bed. She would just get to Bar Harbor sooner than expected. Still, she’d spent $27.52 on this room. To waste that money was appalling, but she couldn’t sleep.
She was out of the room within five minutes. She revved up her motorcycle and swung batk onto the road, the garish lights from Hot Harvey’s Topless Girls haloing around her helmeted head. It was odd, she thought, as she passed a Chevrolet-she would have sworn that James was nearby. But that wasn’t possible.