This probably wasn’t a trap. The odds that Mary Varvara Bell had foundallof Blaze’s contacts, especially one that was supposed to be confidential under HIPAA and whom he hadn’t contacted in over a year, and then had the manpower to threaten or bribeallof them were infinitesimal.
Though not zero.
The tall buildings of upper Manhattan and then the Bronx glowered down on the other side of the car where Sarah was staring out.
“It’s after midnight, and yet everything’s so busy,” she said. “I’m not sure whether to be inspired by all the work getting done or afraid because only criminals go out at night.”
“A little of both, I’d guess. I would say that not only criminals are active at night because many Navy SEAL operations are performed around zero-dark-thirty, but I think I’d only make your point.”
As they crossed the massive bridge spanning the Hudson River, the water’s reflection smeared the city’s streetlights like runny oil paints. Traffic thinned as they drove away from the city and into the bedroom communities of Rockland County, New York.
Yellow signs portraying leaping deer flashed in the headlights along the sides of the highway.
Sarah turned to Blaze as they drove. “There aren’t any big buildings here.”
He nodded. “We’re in Rockland County, not Manhattan. It’s suburban and will turn rural.”
“This close to New York City, there’re houses?”
“There are farms and huge wilderness state parks. Bear Mountain State Park off Exit Fourteen is famous for its bears.”
Sarah went back to staring out the window. “I thought the whole East Coast was nothing but big skyscrapers and apartment buildings.”
God, Blaze was a dick because he justhadto needle her. Lack of sleep had sapped his willpower, and he couldn’t resist. “Even Maine?”
She didn’t take the bait. “Like, from Boston to Washington DC. This is weird. You always see Times Square with huge buildings all around it. I thought it was representative.”
And now he felt like a heel because he’d been a dick. “It’s barely representative of Manhattan.”
As she turned her head and stared out the windows again, her eyes were so wide that she looked like she might reach out to touch the stars in the dark sky as they drove northward away from the city glow that blotted out the features of the sky. “I never knew.”
Blaze had to work on being less of an asshole. “Wait ‘til I take you to Europe. You’ll love Paris.”
Her shocked blinks and then grin were more of a reward than they should’ve been, and Blaze had half an inclination to drive all the way to Boston and rent a private plane to smuggle his little hayseed without a passport into Europe.
His ears popped as they drove from sea-level Manhattan into the mountains of Rockland County.
Blaze prayed that this was not a trap.
3
HUNTING CABIN
SARAH
The hunting cabin was located down a dirt road cut through thick woods, and Sarah was praying that Aston Martin designed their sportscars’ suspensions and skid plates as well as they did their speedy engines.
Her truck would have been fine bouncing down the dirt road, of course. Granted, her Ford would’ve given up its ghost after the first hour if she’d tried to drive it from Kalona to New York, but it would have crawled over these basketball-sized rocks embedded in the trail without a sputter.
Yeah, Rock-Land County, New York. She got it.
Riding in the car was like sitting inside a black egg.
The night was dark. The cabin was dark. The forest around them beyond the car window was dark.
Dark-dark-dark.
The car’s headlights were a movie projector throwing a film of stumps and rocks that bumped under the tires on the dark screen ahead. Massive tree trunks slid to the sides of the trail as they neared.
