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"This key lime pie is excellent," Pitt proclaimed.
"I'm not hungry," murmured Kelly.
"Can't let a good dish go to waste," said Giordino, finishing Kelly's dessert.
After coffee and espresso, Pitt paid the check. Then Giordino stood on a chair and peered into the parking lot over the wall of the inn's courtyard, keeping the top of his head hidden in a clump of ivy. "Hekyll and Jekyll are sitting in a big SUV under a tree."
"We should call the police," said Loren.
Pitt grinned. "Plans have already been made." He pulled a cell phone from his coat pocket, punched a number, spoke no more than four words and turned it off. He smiled at Loren and Kelly. "You girls wait in the entrance while Al gets the car."
Loren snatched the keys of the Packard from Pitt's fingers. "Al might find himself in a touchy situation. Better I get the car. They won't shoot a helpless female."
"I wouldn't count on it, if I were you." Pitt was about to refuse, but knew deep down that she was right. Zale's men were killers, but they weren't village idiots. They wouldn't shoot a lone woman; they wanted all four in their sights. He nodded. "Okay, but keep low between the rows of cars. Our friends are on the opposite end of the lot from the Packard. If they start up their car and move before you turn the ignition key, Al and I will come running."
Loren and Pitt had often run together. She was fast. When they sprinted, he beat her by no more than two feet after 100 yards. She ducked and took off like a wraith in the night, reaching the Packard in less than a minute. No stranger to the car's controls, she had the key in the ignition in almost the same motion as she pushed the starter button. The big V-12 fired instantly. She shifted and hit the accelerator a bit hard, spinning the big tires in the gravel. Sliding to a stop in front of the restaurant, she glided over to the passenger side of the bench seat as Pitt, Giordino and Kelly piled inside.
Pitt floored the pedal and the big car surged quietly up the road, accelerating smoothly as Pitt revved the V-12 and shifted gears. She was no tire burner and would never have smoked a drag strip. She was built for elegance and silence and not for racing. It took Pitt nearly half a mile to push her up to eighty miles an hour.
The road was straight, and he took ample time for a long look in the rearview mirror at the big Navigator swinging out of the inn's parking lot, its black paint reflected under a streetlight. That was about all he could see as darkness closed over the country road. The Navigator was coming up fast with its headlights off.
"They're coming after us," he said, in the monotone of a bus driver telling his passengers to move back from the door.
The road was nearly deserted with only two cars passing in the opposite direction. The dense thicket and trees just off the shoulder looked black and uninviting. Nobody but a terror-crazed fool would stop and attempt to hide in there. Once or twice, he glanced at Loren. Her eyes were gleaming from the dashboard lights, and her lips were pulled back in a faint trace of a sensual smile. She was clearly enjoying the excitement and danger of the chase.
The Navigator was gaining rapidly on the old
Packard. Five miles from the restaurant, the driver had crept up to within a hundred yards. The Navigator was nearly invisible, but showed up in the headlights of cars coming from the opposite direction who blinked to warn the driver he was driving with no rights.
"Everybody down on the floor," said Pitt. "They'll be coming alongside any minute."
The ladies did as they were told. Giordino only crouched and aimed his Ruger automatic out the rear window at the approaching Navigator. A curve was coming up, and Pitt pushed the old car for every bit of horsepower her stout old V-12 engine could give. The Navigator was coming up on the outside, the driver steering recklessly into the lane of oncoming traffic. Another thirty seconds and Pitt swung the Packard around the turn, her big tires protesting as they skidded sideways across the pavement.
The instant Pitt had the car on an even track heading up a straight section of the road, he peered into the mirror in time to see two big Chevy Avalanches charge out of the woods like ghosts directly in front of the speeding Navigator. The appearance of the Avalanches, with machine guns mounted and manned in their cargo box, was as totally unexpected as it was abrupt.
The driver of the Navigator was caught completely off guard and whipped the wheel to one side, sending the big SUV into an uncontrollable skid across the road and onto the grassy shoulder, where it lost traction and rolled over three times, disappearing into the thick underbrush in a cloud of dust and a spray of leaves and branches. Armed men in combat camouflage night gear burst from the Avalanches and quickly surrounded the upside-down Navigator.
Pitt eased off on the accelerator, slowing the Packard down to fifty miles an hour. "The chase is over," he said. "Everybody can relax and breathe normally again."
"What happened?" asked Loren, staring out the rear window at the headlights angled across the road and the settling cloud of dust.
"Admiral Sandecker called a few friends and arranged a little entertainment for Zale's hired guns."
"Not a moment too soon," said Giordino.
"We had to make it to a place where two country roads crossed so our rescuers could let us through before moving forward and blocking off our pursuers."
"I have to admit you had me scared for a minute," said Loren, sliding across the seat and clutching Pitt's arm in a proprietary fashion.
"It was closer than I would have liked."
"You dirty dogs," she said to Pitt and Giordino. "You didn't tell us that the Marines were waiting to rescue us."
"The night has suddenly become glorious," Kelly said, inhaling the air blowing over the windshield and through the open divider window between the front and back seats. "I should have known you had the war under control."
"I'll take everyone home," said Pitt, steering toward the lights of the city. "Tomorrow, we take our act on the road again."
"Where are you going?" asked Loren.
