“Where are we going, Nicolette?”
“You’re not going to like this,” she says. “But you’re driving me to Cotter’s Mill.”
Part 5
65
Nicolette
Jack says, “No.”
“Point the car east. Turn left at Texas.”
“Have you ever been on a road trip?” he says. “That’s not how it works.”
Being made fun of by a guy you have a gun on (it’s actually on the seat, but he has no way to know that) is kind of demoralizing.
“Do it! I want to go home! I want this to end! Do it!”
Jack’s voice drops when he shouts. “Don’t be stupid! Assess your target! If Mendes wants you dead, what do you gain by delivering yourself to his doorstep?”
I tell him what I have to tell him. I don’t care if he likes it. “I’m just going to talk to him. Then I’m going to turn him in.”
Jack says, “That’s your whole plan? Turn left at Texas, yell at Mendes, turn him in? That’s not a plan you’ll survive.”
“It is now. Do it!”
Jack pulls off the freeway. I really hope this isn’t a wave-the-gun-to-get-my-way moment.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket—the real one, not the burner. He says, “I need directions to Cotter’s Mill, Ohio.”
The phone says, “These are directions to Cotter’s Mill, Ohio,” in its friendly, robotic voice. It’s the only friendly voice in the car.
“Thank you.”
We drive along in more silence, which is better than listening to someone tell me I’m an idiot. Then he says he’s hungry.
66
Jack
I want a burger and a fistful of Tylenol. I don’t know how Nicolette plans for us to drive for thirty-seven hours and forty-three minutes—according to my phone—to get to her house, but at some point she’s going to have to let me eat and sleep.
She says, “Is your headache getting worse?”
“Why?”
“I have to look this up. Gently drop your phone into the back.”
“I’m not dropping my phone. Shoot me.”
“Obviously, you’ve become deranged. Look up a doctor. You might have a concussion.”
“You knocked me unconscious. Good call.”
“Pull over. Find an urgent care on your phone. Like, in a shopping mall.”
Bakersfield is crawling with urgent cares. I pick one as far out of town as possible, on the edge of the middle of nowhere. Every portion of my head has its own separate, insistent pain: throbbing here, aching there, my forehead trying to tear itself off my face.
Nicolette is walking along slightly behind me, beyond arms’ reach.
“Don’t look back at me like that. Come at me, and I’ll seriously shoot and make up why.”
“You’d really shoot me in cold blood?”
She doesn’t answer.
It’s probably my head, but I feel as if I’m standing outside of myself, watching the weirdest situation imaginable unfold, knowing I created it but unable to take anything like control over it.
“Don’t even.” The scorn coming from behind me could knock over even someone less concussed. “You thought I cut somebody’s throat. How do you know what I’d do? Maybe being hunted down by a preppy jerk turned me into the very thing you thought I was. Think about that.”
I would think about that, but my head hurts too much.
67
Nicolette
So great, I gave him a concussion.
He tells the doctor he’s Gerry Rheingold, which he signs so messy, you can’t tell what his name is. He says he was horsing around with some guys over football, and it got out of hand. Go, Niners.
The doctor is old and dried-up and couldn’t care less how it happened. I’d be a better doctor after two weeks of online medical school. I, at least, would know to sweep the rabbit-size dust bunnies out of the waiting room.
I say, “Don’t you have to check his blood pressure and take his temperature and everything?” So he does, but he doesn’t like it.
When he touches Jack, bare-handed, I wonder if he washed. If he’s an old drunk who came looking for drugs and tied up the real doctor in a broom closet in back.
Bottom line, it’s okay for Jack to sleep. Which is all he wants to do besides eat. I have to wake him up every two hours to make sure he can talk straight and his pupils match. If he gets worse, I have to haul him to another doctor.
Which means I have to put down the gun. Let him have the backseat. Drive the car myself. Trust him a little.
I don’t mind.
It feels like the right penance for doing what I did to him. For once, I feel morally superior. I bashed him when I didn’t have to, and I’m cleaning it up. Because I’m not actually scared of him. I’m more pissed off at him. Which, now that I wrecked his head, I’m calling off and driving.
Even with a concussion and no power, Jack is bossy.
“You’re sure you can drive manual?”
“Guess what? Girls can drive stick. Just last week, ladies got the vote. Get in.”
“The gun can’t be in the car.”
“Says who?”