The hoses were secured to the tank’s outflow ports with heavy-duty clamps, and though Hager had no expertise working with any of this hardware, he could see at a glance what it would take to unfasten them. There were bolts securing the clamps. The tools to loosen them—no doubt the same tools that had been used to tighten them—lay on utility shelves twenty feet away. Hager went to the shelves, grabbed the only three wrenches he could see, and took them to the nearest port sticking out of the tank. The first wrench he tried fit snugly and turned the bolt with no effort at all.
A dozen turns later, the clamp gave way. Fuel erupted from the port like a sideways geyser, blasting the hose and clamp away and spraying in a gush toward the open space of the work floor. The stink of it filled Hager’s sinuses and lungs. It made his eyes water. Some kind of alarm began sounding at the front end of the tank. It was like the beeping of a forklift backing up, only deeper and maybe a bit faster. It sounded frantic.
None of it was any cause for concern. Hager had never felt so confident of purpose before.
He dropped the wrenches and walked away from the tank, back the way he’d come from. The shower of fuel soaked his back as he crossed through it. He paid the sensation no mind. He sloshed through the puddles that were filling every concavity in the concrete floor. The first glass-walled workstations went by on his left. He ignored them. He was headed for one station in particular, the one where he was sure to find what he needed.
Cobb’s station.
Hager reached it and passed through the open doorway. Even this far from the tank, a film of the spreading fuel had begun seeping under the walls.
Hager went to the desk on the far side of the station. He opened the shallow tray drawer at the top, and saw immediately what he was after.
A Bic cigarette lighter.
*
Dryden watched Rachel. It was clear her attention was directed somewhere far away, though who or what she was focusing on, he couldn’t guess.
The shooting had stopped more than a minute ago. Since then, there’d been no more sounds from outside the submerged car. Dryden and Holly had simply waited, keeping Rachel above the water and letting her do whatever she was doing.
All at once the girl blinked. She looked around, meeting Holly’s eyes and then Dryden’s.
“That’s the end of that problem,” Rachel said.
Before either of them could ask what she meant, she turned her focus away again. After a moment, Dryden heard movement out at the edge of the pond. Little grunts of exertion and words of encouragement. One man helping another to his feet.
In succession, two car doors opened and closed. Engines, already running, revved and slipped into gear. Less than a minute later the vehicles were gone, and there was nothing to hear but the chirping of night insects in the field.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The Ford Escape was still in the farmhouse’s garage. They changed into dry clothes in the house. Holly’s shirts and pants, though too big for Rachel, worked well enough with the cuffs and sleeves rolled. Before they left, Dryden took his phone from his soaked pants and dried it out the best he could. It still worked. He pulled up the recent call list and tapped Harris’s number at the top.
“Remember the cop that was going to nail you for public intoxication,” Dryden said, “and she let you go because you sang her Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely?’”
“Sure.”
“You remember the exact place it happened?”
“Yes.”
“Meet us there Wednesday at two in the afternoon. And bring Marsh.”
“Is that the whole message?” Harris asked.
“Goldenrod,” Dryden said.
He ended the call and tossed the phone in the trash. Holly left hers behind, too; the phones were a type that had built-in GPS and could be tracked by the phone company.
It was plausible enough that the Escape had some kind of tracking on board, too. They left it in a parking lot in downtown Topeka and paid cash for three bus tickets.
*
The meeting place was a café on the waterfront in Galveston, Texas. The day was hot, and the Gulf of Mexico lay sharp and blue under a clear sky.
The five of them took a table on the patio, far from any other diners. Rachel seemed shy around Harris and Marsh; she sat between Dryden and Holly and leaned on one or the other in turn.
There was an idea circling at the edges of Dryden’s thoughts. An unwelcome stray, scratching to be let in. It had been there since around the time they’d left Kansas. He was sure Rachel had picked up on it by now, though he’d done his best to keep it at the margins. But there was no holding it back forever. In the next few minutes, the door would open wide for it.
“A couple of nights ago,” Marsh said, “Western Dynamics suffered a major setback with its program. Maybe the three of you already knew that.”