“Yeah. How’s Bill?”
“Dunno. He moved to Oklahoma to raise horses.”
“And maybe some weed?”
“Could happen,” the mayor said. “He always had the quality stuff, back before it was legal.”
• • •
Then the highwaypatrolman called and said he was with a cop named Fagerberg, in the town of Delano. Fagerberg said he had seen a black Jeep Wrangler going through town at about the right time. He knew it was a Wrangler because he desperately wanted one and had researched them; and he’d noticed it because it was traveling at the speed limit, which was not that common.
Sherwood thanked the patrolman.
Lucas knew where Delano was, and they pulled up a map on the fed’s laptop and Lucas touched the screen with a fingernail. “Fastest route to Orono. If you drew a ten-mile circle around the Orono city hall, I bet the Jeep would be inside it.”
The fed with a sense of humor said, “I believe you. I gotta call the office.”
6
The doctor’s name was Carolyn Juarez.
She was short, stocky, middle-thirties with black hair and eyes. Abramova pushed her on the floor of the back seat, and then sat impatiently clicking the Beretta’s safety on and off until Titov came out and got behind the wheel. He let the Jeep roll backward down the sloping driveway to the street, where he started the engine and accelerated away.
Abramova turned in the front passenger seat and began talking to Juarez: “Now listen, doctor. Try to believe. We do not want to hurt you, but we will if we have to, if you try to harm us, or lead the police to us. Earlier today we tried to kill a man, but we failed. He is a demon. Any sane person would wish him dead. My team sometimes kills, but we are soldiers, not murderers. If we were, we would have killed the women at the hospital, because we could have, and it would have given us more time to get away. Do you understand?”
Juarez: “I understand what you said.”
“But you don’t know if you should believe us?”
Silence from Juarez.
“I’ll tell you why you should believe us,” Abramova said. “Because then you come out of this alive. These drugs you will give our friends, the painkillers—you could perhaps give one of them, a…??????´?.” She turned to Titov: “What do you call it?”
“Hot shot,” Titov said.
“Yes.” Back to Juarez. “You could give one of them or both of them a hot shot, but we will know that, of course. Then we will kill you as punishment for killing our friends. Now ask yourself, do you wish to be walking around alive tomorrow or the next day, or do you want to be dead?”
Silence.
“You don’t have to answer us,” Abramova said. “You should think about those options. As I say, we are soldiers, not murderers.”
• • •
Juarez lay uncomfortablyon the Jeep’s floor between the front and back seats. She kept trying to think of what she could do to resist, but nothing occurred to her. She’d managed to look at her watch just before the hood was pulled over her eyes and tried to count the turns the Jeep made, but she quickly lost track, both of the number and direction.
She made one decision: she would believe them when they said she wouldn’t be killed. She’d cooperate, but she’d try to remember every single thing she could about her captors and her environment. If she survived, she would give as much as she could to the police. An occasional glimpse of the watch could be important.
• • •
They went southin a hurry, anticipating a police search for the Jeep. There was virtually no traffic. They passed through a small city, had to jog to follow the track laid down by the iPhone’s navigation system. At one point, a patrolling police car passed them going in the opposite direction but never slowed down. Out of the town, Titov jumped on the gas again. The driving conditions had improved, the fog was beginning to dissipate, and they made it back in less than half an hour.
At the farmhouse, Abramova ran up the front steps and stuck her head inside. “Okay?”
Nikitin said, “Except for the bullet holes.”
She walked back to the car and she and Titov pulled Juarez out the back seat and walked her, still blind, up to the narrow porch.
“Careful, there are steps…Your toes are at the first step, step up now…”
