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Of course he couldn’t say that, and he didn’t.
Guilt and shame were added to the swell of other emotions he was already feeling.
Guilt, shame, whatever you wanted to call it. The precise name didn’t matter. It was all bad.
“Nothing,” he said.
He could feel her relaxed body tense just a bit and then that tension was released.
Malloy replied, “You can talk to me, you know.”
“I’
m fine. It was great. It was beyond great. Thank you. I…Thank you.”
His words rang hollow even to him.
He turned away from her and fell asleep on his side.
She lay there for a bit watching the sharp edges of his muscular back before she turned in the opposite direction and eventually fell asleep.
Robie did not slumber long. He woke thirty minutes later. He was dressed, out the door, and back on the road two minutes after that.
He saw the headlights behind him about ten miles outside of Grand. They stayed with him the whole way, never speeding up, although he gave the vehicle several chances to pass him.
When the bullet cracked the rear glass of his truck, he smiled. That was all the confirmation he needed.
God help you, whoever you are.
Chapter
52
JESSICA REEL HAD watched from her window as Robie drove off into the night after speaking with Patti Bender.
Part of her wanted to run down the stairs and stop him. Not only because she thought she knew where he was going, but because people had been trying to kill them ever since they had set foot in Grand.
But she had not run down the stairs. She had not tried to stop him.
She had sat like a slug at the window watching him go off.
She had seen him glance toward the sheriff’s station, where the police cruiser was not parked. The thoughts in his mind had been easy enough to decipher. As was the identity of the person he had phoned as she again watched from the window.
Valerie Malloy.
She shifted her position and looked across at the bar. It was ten o’clock now and it seemed like the place was just getting going.
And Jessica Reel, ever the woman of action, decided she needed to get going, too. She was tired of sitting here doing nothing.
She gunned up, left the hotel, and walked across the street. She spotted the stretch limo and wondered for a moment if the Randalls were at the bar. It seemed unlikely. She doubted the couple would stoop to drinking beer with the great unwashed.
She entered the bar and took a few moments to look around.
In one corner were a half-dozen Apostles, though she didn’t see Dwight Sanders among them.
In another corner were several burly men wearing Confederate caps and do-rags and others with T-shirts that said DON’T TREAD ON ME.
Someone had put money in a jukebox, and a few couples were doing their best drunken moves on the small dance floor set up on the right side of the bar.
Sitting at the bar was the limo driver she had seen out at the bunker. The one who had thanked them for taking the Randalls down a peg. That explained the stretch parked outside.
She walked over to the bar and sat down next to him. He glanced up from his beer and flinched.
“So how are the Randalls?” said Reel.
He smiled and swallowed some of his beer.
“Who gives a shit? He don’t even tip. Punk’s got more money than God and he can’t even slip me a fiver? And she just sits there either checking her phone or fixing her makeup. Oh, and I’ve been ‘instructed’ to not make eye contact with her.”
“Well, that might be a good thing. You look at Medusa, you get frozen.”
He laughed. “Can I buy you a beer?”
“Why not.”
He ordered and then held out his hand. “We were never formerly introduced. Tommy Page.”
“Jessica Reel,” she replied, shaking his hand.
Her beer came and they tapped bottles. Page ran a hand through his thick gray hair.
Reel took a swallow of her beer and said, “So you been driving limos long? Doesn’t seem like there would be much demand out here.”
He shrugged. “I used to work at an ore plant that went out of business. Then I worked on an assembly line for a car parts company that went under too when Detroit and the Big Three cratered. Then I got a job at a grocery store stocking shelves. Got downsized from there and went to a McDonald’s flipping burgers. My paycheck kept shrinking and my back kept getting sorer and sorer. Finally, got old enough for Social Security. I inherited the limo from my old man. He had a funeral home business. I kept it in the garage. Then when this Uber thing took off, I was like, what the hell. I can put on a suit and drive a fucking car. Did some weddings and proms. And I got some gigs taking people to Denver and back. Parties and crap like that. And I knew Roark Lambert from way back. He hires me to bring his rich clients to the bunker. The pay’s okay. And I can’t sit around and do nothing. I ain’t dead yet. Right?”
“Right,” replied Reel, sipping her beer.
He grinned. “You two really shook those assholes up. They were screaming about what they were going to do to you.”
“You took them back today? To their jet?”
“Yep. I don’t think she liked the bunker much. All she was talking about was jetting off to the Hamptons. That’s in New York somewhere, right?”
“Long Island. Very wealthy. On the water. Homes there go for like forty million.”
“Are you shitting me? Forty million bucks for something you live in?”
“Yep. And for a lot of those folks it’s their second or third home.”
“Damn. Might as well be on another planet far as I’m concerned.” He paused. “I’ve worked since I was sixteen with some unemployment here and there. I’m sixty-six now. That’s fifty years. One night I added up all the money I’ve made. Want to know how much?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Sounds like a lot. But not over fifty years. Comes out to less than twenty grand a year. Thing is, I know folks who made even less than that. Look, I made shitty choices, I know. Dropped out of high school. But my dad died so I had to help out, you know. Maybe I should have joined the military, learned a trade. Too late now.” He gave her a sideways glance. “So you’re a Fed from DC?”
“That’s right.”
“I bet you make good money.”
“I guess.”
“You look like you could handle yourself in a fight.”
“I’ve been in a few.”
“Ever killed anybody?”
She stared at him. “Now, is that a proper question to ask a lady?”
He looked sheepish. “No, sorry. I ain’t thinking straight. No offense.”
“So was that the first time you’d driven the Randalls out to the bunker? Lambert told us this was the first time they were coming to actually stay there.”
