Nikki picked up a folder and threw it at her. Murphy barked, uncertain if this was a new game or something else entirely. When he heard his mistress burst out laughing, he lay down, his huge head between his paws.
“For the moment, everyone in…our little…uh…group is going to Utah. Then we’ll kick everything up a few notches and go on from there, but first we have to get there undetected and safe and sound. Charles has forty years’ experience under his belt whereas I’ve had”—Nikki looked at her watch—“fifteen minutes. I rest my case.”
“You’re doing just fine, dear,” Annie said. “I just wish I wasn’t so worried about Pearl.”
Three thousand miles away Pearl Barnes, aka Harriet Woonsocket, aka Rosa Sanchez found herself being eaten alive by sand fleas as she huddled in the scrub brush along the side of the road. Overhead, the sun blazed as it baked her surroundings. She was down to her last two bottles of water and had to pee.
The only vehicles she’d seen in the last hour were two farm tractors moseying down the road at ten miles an hour, one kid on a motorized scooter followed by a mean-looking dog, and a farm truck full of hay. She wondered if traffic would pick up once the heat of the day passed. What bothered her more than anything was that she was drenched in her own sweat and was sure she smelled to high heaven. God, if the other justices could only see her now they’d die laughing. Well, let them. That was her other life, and this was now. So what if she was soaking wet and smelled. She was alive and still had her reputation intact.
More minutes passed. More sand fleas. Pearl continued to sweat. She looked at her watch. Ninety minutes were almost up. Where was her help? She fished out her cell and was getting ready to punch in Annie’s number when she heard it, the sound of a car. Not a pickup, not a tractor, not a kid on a motor scooter but the purr of a car’s engine.
Pearl sucked in her breath as she scrunched down in the spiky, dry, crackly undergrowth. Her salty sweat dripped into her eyes, burning them unbearably. She swiped at her eyes as she tried to blink to clear her vision. She saw the flashing blue light but there was no siren. An unmarked police car. From the little she knew about police cars she rather thought they used Crown Victorias. The car was still too far down the road to make out what it was. It was moving slowly, as though the driver were eyeballing both sides of the road, looking for someone.
Pearl tried digging herself deeper into the ground, but the sand was too hot, dry, and packed solid to allow for any indentation. She prayed the driver of the approaching car had less than twenty-twenty vision.
Overhead, the sun continued to blaze. What looked like two buzzards flew overhead. “Just what I need, buzzards to pick my bones clean,” she muttered.
She was so low to the ground that her ears picked up another sound. She flattened her head against the ground and listened. Two wheels. Maybe it was her help. Maybe it was the cop’s reinforcements. Pearl’s heart kicked up an extra beat. Her death grip on the handheld GPS tracker didn’t slacken one iota.
The two wheels were closer, almost on top of her. She heard the engine throttle back. Her help. She was almost sure of it. One hundred minutes. To gamble or not to gamble? She got to her knees as she waved her hand crazily. The engine stopped, idled, and she heard a voice that sounded all gravelly and hoarse. An old voice that had seen too much whiskey and way too many cigarettes. Like she cared.
The blue light came to a stop right behind the motorcycle. Oh, God, Pearl thought, a standoff.
“Okay, olly, olly out! Come on, Rosa, enough of this bullshit,” the gravelly voice shouted so the officer, if that’s who he was, could hear. “There’s rattlesnakes out here and you know how afraid you are of snakes. Come on, Sweet Cheeks, climb aboard and let’s kiss and make up. Rosa! I’m sorry I looked at that young girl. All I did was look. It’s okay to look, honey, as long as you don’t touch. Hey, there’s a police officer here. Come on, honey, old Jess is just waiting to wrap his arms around you before he decides to run us in for something or other.”
That was good, the man on the cycle had given up his name. Pearl straightened up and stepped out of the brush. She knew how to play the game. “Swear on the dog you won’t look at another woman, ever again, Jess!” Pearl deliberately avoided looking at the officer in his spiffy uniform. This discussion was between her and her man.
“Okay, okay, I promise. Now get your skinny-assed butt on back, and let’s go get us a little drink. I’m parched.”
Pearl was about to swing one leg over the back of the ferocious-looking Harley when the police officer spoke.
“Not so fast, you two. Show me some ID, and, mister, I clocked you at ninety-seven miles an hour on that bike. That’s a two-hundred-dollar ticket in these parts in case you’re interested.”
Jess, if that was his name, removed his helmet and lowered his Ray-Bans.
He stared at the cop for a full minute as he tried to take his measure. Mean little eyes, cocky as sin, Elvis on steroids was his final assessment. Jess knew without a doubt he could take that cop on, and with only one or two moves reduce him to dust, if need be. He slid off the bike in one fluid motion. “I’m going to reach into my hip pocket for my wallet, Officer. Is that okay? I guess maybe I was speeding but I was worried about my woman here. Like I said, she’s afraid of snakes. Hell, she’s afraid of just about everything but me.”
He laughed to show what he thought of that statement. The patrol officer remained stoney-faced.
The officer backed up a few steps, his hand on the gun at his hip. “Do it. Nice and slow. Have the woman hand it to me.”
Jess swiped at the sweat on his forehead before he pulled the wallet from his pocket. He handed it to Pearl who in turn handed it to the cop.
The officer flipped open the wallet and said, “You’re Jess Dewey, aged sixty-six, and you reside where?”
“Yuma, Arizona. At times. Other times I’m on the road. I head up biker conventions. Me and Rosa, that’s what we’ve been doing until she got all prickly with me and lit out on her own. Plan is to go on up to Montana and spend some free time before the next event. Something wrong with that, Officer?”
The policeman ignored Jess. “Ma’am, I need to see some ID.” Pearl dug into the pocket of her cargo pants and came out with a wallet and a cruddy-looking passport that looked too shoddy to be a fake. The stamps showed she went back and forth to Juarez, Mexico, once a month.
“You two stay put. Give me those keys until I verify this information.”
Jess tossed the key to the officer and turned away. Pearl followed him.
“He’s a cop, but he’s also a polygamist,” Jess told her. “I saw his picture in the paper about two weeks ago. He wants to run us in so bad he can taste it. I don’t know about you, but I think our best bet is to cut and run. I can take the guy with no sweat. What do you want me to do, ma’am?” Jess asked.
“Exactly what you just said, and get me someplace safe. I don’t think either one of us should use a cell phone right now. What do you think?”
“I have to use mine. I might do freelance work, but I have people I have to account to. If I’m going to take this guy out, those people have to be able to pick up the pieces. Capisci?”
The cop was walking back toward them, Rosa’s passport and both their wallets in his hand. “I’m going to have to ask you to come along with me back to the station. The chief has a few questions he’d like answered.”
Jess’s eyes swept the cop. He was smiling, but it did not reach his mean little eyes, and Jess wasn’t about to take any chances. As Jess reached for his wallet, he grabbed the man’s wrist at the same time and bent it backward while his other hand chopped at his throat. The man went down, gagging and gasping for air. “Watch him,” Jess hissed, as he ran to the patrol car. Quicker than a snake he removed the flashing blue light and disabled the two-way radio. He pocketed the cell phone