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“Check it out…”
The Ford’s reliable bum brake light burns and the car slows. Amber uses the handbrake and lower gears to reduce her speed. We’re a quarter mile behind. From the other side of the road, I see one quick flash of headlights. Another vehicle parked off to the side, facing our way. There’s actually a shoulder there, and beyond it a large house nearer to the road. The Ford angles over and illuminates an SUV. It parks front bumper to front bumper, and the blonde leaves her headlights on.
We’re still on the road and I’m praying nobody comes flying up behind us. We’ll be like one of those teenage road tragedy movies they used to show in high school drivers’ ed. Amber slowly eases over to the left. I can’t see if the shoulder extends this far or whether we’ll hit the side of a hill or go into a gully. When the tires finally crunch on gravel I take a breath. The handbrake cranks noisily in our little cockpit.
“Are those your guys?”
I look ahead and my heartbeat triples. It’s them. The two are wearing suits, standing in front of the SUV, learning in toward the blonde. She’s talking. I study her face, her features. Stu slams his hand down on the hood of the SUV and shakes his head. Why do I get the impression I am the subject of this conversation. They stand this way for maybe five minutes. Then they turn off their car lights and darkness reclaims the environment.
“They don’t look like Feds to me,” Amber whispers.
“Why not?”
“The way the big one slouches. The woman looks way too glam.”
If they are walking toward us with guns we’d never know it. The only sound in the car is our breathing. Next I feel my hand on the door latch. The mechanism responds with a metallic click and the door opens. My legs start to swing out, the only sentience in my body is blind rage. My hands are palsied with anger.
“What are you doing?”
“Pam.” It’s all I can manage. The ground scrunches under my shoes.
“If you get out of the car, they’ll kill you, too.” Amber roughly grabs my arm and I reluctantly slide back into the seat and ease the door shut. “Thank god, the dome light is broken,” she says. I know she’s thinking it’s a display of macho. Insanity is more like it. I climb back inside my body, breathing heavily.
Flashlights flare. They swing like three lightning bugs, out into the road but then away from us. They move up toward the big house. It’s completely dark, not even a porch light. I can see a piece of the blonde’s coat lighted
for just a second, then they’re gone.
Amber starts the car and slowly glides toward the other vehicles. In less than thirty seconds we’re past, with no sign of the agents. The house is tasteful and must have commanding views of the water. It also has enough of a window of light through the trees that I can make out a for-sale sign in front.
Another quarter mile in darkness, then Amber lights up the Jetta and takes off on the windy road to the freeway. Before we get there, she pulls into a Shell station parking lot and stops the car.
“What were you going to do back there?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Get revenge.” I am still feeling shaky from the primal instinct that took over my body.
“Don’t be stupid.” She stares ahead, then unfastens her seatbelt and turns to face me.
“If you want to get back at them, do it on your terms, not theirs.”
“You said maybe it was over. I should let it go.”
“I never said let it go,” she says.
I don’t know what to do. I can’t go to the police. I can’t get help from the newspaper. Maybe I’m not safe on the street or in my own bed. I just say slowly, “They won’t let it go. And Pam is dead and those motherfuckers are still taking up oxygen.”
“Help me work my story then. They’re somehow involved with the disappearance of Megan Nyberg. Now they’re connected to the murder of your friend. If I can break this story…”
“The paper doesn’t want it.”
“They don’t know what they want,” she says vehemently. “They’re running scared and making bad decisions. If I—if we—can bring in this story it’s going to be a lot more than a tabloid missing-girl thing. It’ll get me out of the suburban bureau. If the paper closes, it will get me a job somewhere else. If the whole industry is dying, at least let’s go down swinging! Let’s go down with some integrity!”
I stare into the night. “It might get you killed.”
“Journalists are killed every day in the world. It doesn’t stop them. Fuck, I need this story!” She nearly shouts the last words. Then I feel her hand in mine. She has long fingers. She speaks quietly. “I remember as a college student walking into the Chicago Tribune’s headquarters on a cold winter afternoon. No appointment, no meeting upstairs, just a wannabe gazing in solemnity at the walls around me. All that hushed cold smell of marble, the feel of history. For me, it was a little like a visit to a historic cathedral. Even then the Tribune wasn’t the paper it once had been, but for a kid from a small town, it represented everything I held in professional reverence. I bought a reporter’s notebook that day somewhere, a real one, and just carried it around, maybe like a talisman.”
I squeeze her hand and can’t risk trying to speak. I’ve cried enough today.
“Help me. I need a veteran as a partner. You haven’t lost your fire like so many of the people your age.”
