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“She said something about not seeing the place for a month,” Catton said. “If she shows up, we’ll have to deal with it.”
“You mean, kill her,” Foss said.
“We capture her, we capture her,” Scott said. “We keep her tied up. We can’t hide for long, anyway. We’ll have to get out in a night or two or three…”
“If she does show up…we could use her car,” Catton said.
There were implications to that: if they took the woman’s car, then something final would have to be done about her. Maybe they could tie her up, lock her in a closet, call the police from somewhere and tell them where she was.
Subscript: Or kill her.
“Taos, then?” Catton asked.
Scott turned in his seat to look at Foss. “I think it’s the best chance.”
Foss was looking out the window, thinking about it, worrying, and then he turned to Scott and nodded. “Taos,” he said. “We gotta call Danielle.”
Scott did that, explained their thinking, and Callister agreed with the decision to go to Taos.
—
They were stillfifteen minutes out of town but had no idea of how long they had to get to the hideout. Catton tended to think in terms of dozens of black-uniformed federal agents swarming the townfrom their federal helicopters. Foss thought that the federal government was so useless that they were probably dealing with a couple of bureaucrats and a few sheriff’s deputies and local cops.
They took the main highway going south, made it quickly to the edge of town. Catton knew her way around Taos, turned west just inside the built-up area, and circled around to the south, and then back east, on city streets. The house they looked at wasn’t quite tumbledown, but was thoroughly neglected, probably one reason it hadn’t been rented. They crossed the main highway, found the cross street they were looking for. The house was surrounded by a coyote fence, made of six-foot bark-on sapling poles, and was dark; they pulled into the driveway, Callister behind them.
Scott jumped out to lift the metal garage door, which the real estate agent had told them was manually operated. Scott had it up in a minute, and when Catton had the Cadillac inside, he dropped the door behind it; Callister pulled her Subaru onto a gravel patch behind the fence, out of sight from the street.
Catton said, “Well, we’re here, for what it’s worth.”
Callister said, “Better than being out there.”
The door between the garage and the house was locked, but the door was hollow and Foss kicked it in. They got their bags from the vehicle, carried them inside, which was furnished, but just barely. Two beds in each of two bedrooms, a couch, two battered and stained easy chairs, with what might have been one of the original flat-panel TVs, barely three feet across, sitting on a rickety table. What looked like an antique floor lamp stood in one corner of the living room and when Scott tried to turn it on, nothing happened.
No power.
“We’re camping out,” Callister said, looking around.
“That’s okay, we couldn’t risk any kind of light anyway,” Scott said.
Foss opened one of his bags, took out a laptop and turned it on. “I can see a couple of Wi-Fi signals,” he said. “If I can get on one…”
“That would help,” Scott said. “It’ll be dark soon. You and Danny could walk out to that supermarket we passed. What was it? Smith’s? Pick up enough food for a couple of days.”
Catton began, “If the feds swarm the place, the town…”
They spent a half hour talking about possibilities, and then one of the phones rang. Scott had put them in a briefcase, and he snatched the case off the floor and shook the phones out and picked up the one with a lit screen.
He turned on the speaker. “George?”
“We’re stuck in the RV,” George Smithe said. His voice was weak, unsteady. “Rose is gone. She shot at somebody and they shot back, so it must have been police and she might be dead. A helicopter came in…”
“I told you,” Catton muttered.
“I’m talking to the others, and we’re going to tell them the excuse, like we planned,” Smithe said. “We’re gonna blame it on you, Lionel.”
“That’s just fine, that’s what we agreed,” Scott said. “I’m not going to make it through this anyway.”
“The glassware is still locked in the box up by the driver’s seat, we can blame that on Rose…”
