“Is somebody likely to show up?”
Shrugging, Tucker finished signing and pushed the papers back across Keith’s desk.
“In trouble, old buddy?”
“Sarah’s ex isn’t too happy about us,” Tucker said lightly, ever inventive. “Let’s just say he knows some pretty ugly customers and we’ll both be better off if the trail ends here.”
“No problem.” Keith looked through the glass half wall of his office where he could see Sarah standing outside in the showroom apparently watching traffic pass the car lot. “I thought she looked a little ragged. You too, buddy. And now coming all the way to Chicago to trade your car in is starting to make a little more sense.”
“I want Sarah to have some peace finally, that’s all,” Tucker said in one of the few utterly truthful statements he’d made today.
“Yeah, I imagine you’d do most anything for a pretty lady like her.” Keith grinned, then added, “My guys are switching your stuff from the Mercedes to the Jeep, including the tag. While they’re doing that, I’ll have our bank transfer the balance I owe you to a branch of your bank here in Chicago.”
“Tell them I’ll be by for the cash within an hour,” Tucker said.
Keith raised his brows. “Is the ex that close? I was hoping I could buy you two lunch.”
“We need to be on our way, Keith, but thanks.” Tucker glanced back over his shoulder, and added, “I’ll wait with Sarah while you finish up in here, okay?”
“Okay.”
Tucker came up behind Sarah as she stood looking out at traffic, approaching her warily. He couldn’t help wondering how on earth Keith had mistaken them for lovers; two more guarded and isolated people would be hard to imagine.
She had withdrawn from him almost completely during the journey to Chicago. They had gotten motel rooms both Saturday night and last night but had spent less than six hours in them each night. Tucker, for one, had barely closed his eyes since they had left the cabin on the lake, and on Sunday morning Sarah had come to breakfast hollow-eyed and strained, saying in answer to his insistent questions that she’d had another vision. The yawning grave again, and the whisper of voice she couldn’t quite understand, but this time accompanied by the sounds of bells—“like church bells”—and the sight of a Celtic cross.
Neither of them had said much after that.
“Sarah?”
She looked at him, unsurprised by his approach but with distant eyes, as if she returned from someplace else.
“Keith’s taking care of the final details, so we’ll be out of here in just a few minutes.”
She nodded, but said only, “Did you notice it?”
“Notice what?”
“That.” She pointed toward the passing traffic.
He looked in the direction she indicated, but it took him several moments to realize what she meant. Across the street, at a slight angle to the car lot where they stood, was one of those places that sold stonework. There were all kinds of things outside the building advertising the business: birdbaths, statuary, columns, benches and tables—even tombstones. Off to one side, curiously isolated and leaning a bit, was a Celtic cross. A big one.
“I saw a Celtic cross, canted to one side.”
“Is that—?”
“It’s the one I saw in the vision.” She turned her head to look up at him again, her expression still. “A part of the journey. We were meant to come here all along. Do you still believe it was all your idea?”
“Sarah, there must be other crosses like that one, especially in the northeast where so many Irish settled. We’ll probably see dozens of them once we head north again.” He questioned her certainty not because he doubted her, but because he didn’t like to think that his decision to come here had been less his own idea than the dictate of fate.
“There may be thousands of crosses for all I know. But that one is the one I saw.”
He gazed into pale brown eyes that were distant and wary and very sure, and sighed. “Okay. But it still doesn’t mean your life will end the way the vision did. That is not going to happen.”
Slowly, she said, “Switching cars like this…it’ll give us a head start maybe. A few days’ grace, if we’re lucky. But they will find us eventually. They want me too badly to just give up.”
“We’re going to use the time we have,” Tucker told her. “I’ll disable the GPS in the Jeep so nobody can track us that way. Hopefully they’ll believe the trail ends here, at least for a while. In the meantime, while we’re heading north toward whatever it is you feel is so important, we’ll use the computer every chance we get and keep gathering information until the pieces start to come together.”
“Couldn’t they trace that? If we connect to the Internet even wirelessly?”