For another moment Dena said nothing. Maybe she thought the guy was kidding. Then his footsteps moved off along the pavement, right past the trunk to the next car in line.
Dryden heard Dena exhale shakily, and a second later the Honda was moving, weaving through the blockade and picking up speed. It crept through one last turn and then accelerated rapidly, and even over the revving engine Dryden could hear Dena up front, breathing.
“Okay, it’s safe,” she called.
Dryden pulled the handle that released the seatback from its hold and shoved it forward and down. Air and light from the passenger compartment flooded the trunk. He saw Rachel next to him, looking pale and almost sick.
“You okay?” he asked.
She managed a nod. She was still shaking badly.
“Come on,” Dryden said. He guided her forward onto the folded-down seats. Outside, the edges of Fresno were sliding by at seventy miles an hour.
Dena looked back at the two of them. She was as badly rattled as Rachel.
“I don’t get it,” Dena said. “I don’t know why he let me go. He just … did, all of a sudden.”
Dryden’s mind went to bad explanations first—old habit. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe someone with a thermal camera had seen that there were warm bodies in the trunk. Maybe there’d been standing orders to let anyone like that go through, to be followed, and someone had given word to the cop at the last second.
“Did the officer have an earpiece in?” Dryden asked. “Did he touch his ear like someone had told him something?”
Dena shook her head. “Nothing like that. He was right in my face, I would’ve seen it.”
“What about someone giving him a hand signal? Did he look away at another cop before he let you past?”
“No. I was watching him the whole time. He was staring right at me and then … he just changed his mind. I still can’t believe it.”
Dryden couldn’t believe it, either. Didn’t believe it. Not quite, anyway. He turned and stared through the back window. He could see the glow of flashers half a mile behind, pulsing against street signs and buildings near the interchange.
Dena seemed to pick up on his tension.
“What is it?” she asked. “Is there something I should know?”
Dryden watched the road behind them a few seconds longer, then turned forward again.
“I don’t know,” he said.
*
They reached Modesto just after two in the morning. Dena stopped first at a Walmart on the edge of town.
“There are things you’ll need,” she said, “and you’ll want to minimize the time you spend in public places like stores.”
Dryden and Rachel stayed in the car while Dena went in. She came back out twenty minutes later with several bags full of nonperishable food, plus a flashlight, batteries, and fresh bandages and antibiotic gel for Rachel’s arm. She’d also bought a baseball cap and a pair of wrap-around Oakleys for Dryden. “Better than nothing,” she said.
They were at the train station ten minutes later. Dena parked and left the engine running, and for a moment no one spoke.
“When I wake up tomorrow morning,” Dena said, “I’m going to lie there for thirty seconds and wonder if I dreamed this.”
Rachel leaned forward between the seats and hugged her. Dena held on for a long time, her eyes closed.
“Thank you,” Dryden said. It was probably the fifth time he’d said it.
Dena opened her eyes over Rachel’s shoulder and looked at him.
“Protect her,” she said.
Dryden nodded. “With my life.”
He hoped like hell it would be enough.
*
A minute later he and Rachel were on the freeway, accelerating into the sparse middle-of-the-night traffic. In his mind Dryden went back over the route he’d eyeballed on Dena’s computer. For a few seconds he couldn’t recall the name of the town right at the end—the one at the U.S. 50 interchange, where the two-lane led south to Elias Dry Lake. Then he remembered: The town was called Cold Spring.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Cobb woke an hour before sunrise, took a long steam shower, and went out on the balcony off his bedroom suite to have a smoke. The bedroom overlooked the valley, its mountain walls thick with snow. Every bit of it glittered in the sharp air, and overhead the brightest stars stood out in the predawn twilight.