The cabin was littered with drink cans, empty bottles of cheap bourbon, local takeaway containers, and stained maps of the Mexican coast. Wallace watched them with red-rimmed eyes, tried for a sneer, and failed. “Come to see a dead man walking?”
“What does he have on you?”
“Wrong question.” He lifted a half-full glass of something that had long lost its fizz. “The dice are loaded. The war’s over, the good guys lost. The game is fixed. That’s all you need to know.”
Noah stood there, uncertain what to say. So Jenna asked, “Is there anything we can do to help?”
Wallace showed her a bottomless gaze, so empty the color of his eyes no longer mattered. “Different question, same answer. You don’t give him what he wants, you’ll find yourselves exactly where I am soon enough.”
* * *
They left Morro Bay and followed the main road back inland. Noah skirted around San Lu and headed north on the Miramar Bay highway. Jenna was glad for the silence. She had seen Wallace’s dark, hopeless gaze on some of her patients. Not many. Those who had it were the hardest to reach. They had lived with a true pessimist’s bitter perspective. Facing death was for some a source of unending terror, but not most. The others, they took it as the ultimate confirmation. Jenna’s attempts to be a friend in their final hours often met with bitter rejection.
For Jenna, the empty highway became adorned with the same faces she recalled on the trip from Santa Barbara. One patient after another flashed into view, as clear as the signs and structures they passed. Only now there was another one added to the mix. Wallace Myers. His bottomless gaze filled her with a silent desperation. A need to shout the words aloud.
I want to live.
But as she started to speak, Noah said quietly, “I think we’re being followed.”
* * *
Three minutes later, Jenna told Amos, “Noah made me call. I feel sillier than he did telling you about a noise in the dark.”
“Not possible,” Noah said.
“A dark Mercedes S-Class with a blanked-out windshield is tracking you north,” Amos said. “You were right to call.” Noah’s phone was set on the middle console and connected to the pickup’s speaker system. Jenna found a margin of comfort in how seriously Amos took this. “Read me the license.”
She swiveled around and knelt on the seat. “California plates,” she said, and read off the number.
As she started to swing back around, the car braked and swung left. “Wait, Amos. They’ve turned off.”
“Just the same, you did right. I’ll alert Zia.”
“Amos, no. They’re gone.”
“Do you have a pen?”
“Yes.”
He gave her a number. “That’s Zia’s private cell. I’ll give him a heads-up.”
“Amos—”
“Just in case, Jenna.” He cut off.
Five minutes passed. Ten. Long enough for Noah to say, “Maybe I was wrong to say we should call.”
“Amos didn’t think so.”
“Hang on.” A long look in the rearview mirror. “They’re back.”
“What?”
“Don’t turn around. Call Amos.”
Soon as she started in, he asked, “Have you told Zia?”
“Not yet.”
