“Come on, then. Our hotel room awaits.”
He climbed from behind the wheel, walked around to her side, and helped her out of the cab. Matt locked the doors with the scarred fob and carried Hannah around to the camper door, pausing before he opened it to gaze up at the stars, so bright at the elevation they looked close enough to reach out and touch.
Once inside the camper, he laid out blankets on the pair of bunks by the dim light of the battery-powered wall lamps. “Want to use the bathroom?” he asked, gesturing at an enclosure that housed the portable toilet.
Hannah made a face. “No.”
“Okay. You take the bottom, I’ll take the top. Deal?”
“Pajamas?”
Matt was stumped. He hadn’t considered a change of clothes when he’d been driving, and he wondered whether Jet had had the foresight to pack the camper cabinets with any. He decided to punt.
“We don’t wear pajamas when we’re camping.”
Hannah frowned, unconvinced. “Oh.”
“But we take our shoes off.”
She sat on the bottom bunk and removed her sandals while Matt tried to suppress a smile. He left her to her chore and moved to the door to lock it. By the time he’d done so and returned, Hannah was in bed with the blanket pulled up to her chin.
“Good night, little angel,” he said, and leaned down to plant a kiss on her forehead.
“Better if Mama here.”
Matt nodded. “Yes. It would be.”
He climbed the three rungs of ladder and slipped onto the bed that extended over the truck’s roof, the double-wide mattress yet another reminder of his sudden aloneness, and yawned, the day’s events having taken their toll. He leaned over the edge of the bed and reached for the lamp. “Sleep well.”
“Okay.”
Matt started awake and almost slammed his head against the camper roof a few feet above him as he instinctively tried to sit up. He listened, unsure of his surroundings for an instant, and then remembered: the camper.
The sound of a scrape from beneath him resonated through the shell.
Someone was trying to break into the truck cab.
In an instant he was out of the bed and slipping his shoes on. He slid open a drawer and removed an aluminum flashlight, and then groped on the floor for the tire iron wedged under Hannah’s bunk, doing his best not to wake her. He failed, the iron bumping the wood frame, and she inhaled sharply. He shushed her.
“Keep quiet. Someone’s outside. I’m going to chase them away,” he murmured, and then turned to the door with the tire iron clutched tightly in one hand and the flashlight in the other.
He slid the bolt open, and then he was outside on the grass with the flashlight beam shining on a pair of youths in their twenties, long haired and unkempt, frozen by the passenger door. One of them held a long screwdriver, and Matt could see in his eyes that he was debating charging Matt with it.
Matt hefted the tire iron as though testing its weight, and rose to his full height, the flashlight steady. The gypsy with the screwdriver apparently thought better of escalating the encounter and muttered an oath, and then the pair took off at a run into the night. Matt followed them with the light until he lost sight of them, and stopped to check his watch.
He’d only gotten two hours of sleep.
And he could now choose between hoping the miscreants didn’t come back with reinforcements or moving on.
Matt swung around at a creak behind him. Hannah had opened the door. He forced himself to react calmly and offered a reassuring expression. “I thought I told you to keep quiet.”
“Scary inside.”
He nodded. “I guess it is. Come on. Let’s go somewhere with more lights.”
“Now?”
“That’s what camping’s all about. Staying on the move. Now go put your shoes back on and let’s get going.”
Hannah obliged and returned a half minute later with her blanket. Matt carried her to the passenger door and glanced at the lock; the metal around it was dented from the amateurish break-in attempt.
Two minutes later he was driving back down the road, wondering when they’d finally catch at least a small break.
Not tonight, apparently, he thought with a sigh and sped up as he neared the fork in the road, uninterested in learning what other surprises the gypsies might have in store for the unwary late-night traveler.
Chapter 25
Moscow, Russia
The bolt on the solitary confinement cell door clanked and the low-wattage overhead bulb illuminated. Jet opened her eyes, her body stiff from sleeping on the hard steel bench, and was surprised to see Yulia carrying a plastic tray laden with food. She entered without comment, and the male guard behind her glanced in at them and then closed the door, locking them both inside.