*
Eversman kept his eyes on the front door of Silver’s as he and Collins pulled into the lot. The Suburban rolled to a stop thirty feet from the entrance. He expected Dryden and Claire to emerge immediately. Expected them to be watching at the door for the vehicle’s arrival and to come running the moment it stopped.
The bar’s entrance stayed shut. No one came out. No one was even looking through the strip of glass in the door.
Collins shoved the selector into park, and the two of them sat staring at the place. Five seconds passed.
“Go take a look,” Eversman said.
Collins got out and crossed to the door at a fast walk. He went through it. Another five seconds went by, and then he shoved it back open, leaned out, and waved his arm for Eversman to come.
“What the hell is this?” Eversman said.
He opened the passenger door, stuffed the silenced .45 into his waistband, and rounded the Suburban’s hood. He broke into a run and grabbed the front door of Silver’s and hauled it open. Collins had already gone back inside—Eversman could hear him yelling at someone.
“Was there a woman?” Collins shouted.
Eversman’s eyes adapted to the low light. He saw Collins ten feet away, leaning in on one of the servers, a guy in his early twenties.
“Dude, what the fuck is your—”
Collins dropped his volume but managed to sound more intense at the same time. “Did you see him with a woman? She’d be about thirty.”
The kid shook his head. In the same moment, Eversman’s eyes took in three people in a booth to the left: the fiftyish couple and the younger woman who’d jogged to catch up with them on the way in. Party of three, after all.
Collins turned from the waiter and crossed toward Eversman. “Kid says Dryden came in, and then he was gone a minute later. He didn’t see where he went.”
Eversman’s mind raced. He and Collins had maintained visual on the bar the entire time they were driving up to it. Dryden had not come out the front door.
“Check the restrooms,” Eversman said. “Both of them.”
Collins nodded and moved off. Eversman crossed to the back of the barroom, where a screen door led onto a dining patio. Beyond the patio’s railing was a three-foot drop to the ground: a shallow lawn that led to the edge of a pine forest. The bar’s property was butted right up against the woods, a forested hillside rising along the edge of town.
Eversman called on his own mental picture of the wooded slope, as it had looked from his stakeout position five hundred yards away.
The hill was a forested circle, maybe half a mile by half a mile, some kind of protected wilderness land. There was city sprawl on this side, the north edge, and probably farmland beyond the hill’s southern boundary.
If Dryden had entered the woods here—however in God’s name he had known to do so—then he could come out anywhere.
At that moment Eversman’s phone rang. He answered and heard the driver of one of the other SUVs. “We’re at the café. The Calvert woman’s not here.”
Eversman heard a door slam somewhere behind him. He turned and saw Collins coming from the ladies’ room, shaking his head.
Eversman’s thoughts felt as scattered as a crowd running from flames. What was happening? And why? He let the panic stir for two seconds, and then he clamped it down and spoke into the phone. “Look at the wooded hill behind the bar. Dryden is somewhere in those trees. Collins and I are going in from the north. I want you and the other team to go in from the southeast and southwest. Fan out, don’t miss him. Call the other team and coordinate it.”
By this time, Collins was standing next to him. He didn’t need to be told anything. Eversman shoved open the screen door, crossed the patio, and dropped over the rail to the grass. As he sprinted for the treeline, Collins beside him, Eversman thought of Dryden’s background. He had researched the man during the night—had tried to, at least. His résumé was impressive, most notably for the fact that six years of it were invisible. But even that work, whatever it had been, was now eight years in Dryden’s past. He had to be a bit rusty. He was also one against ten.
Crossing into the cool space of the forest, Eversman drew the .45 from his waistband; beside him, Collins took a SIG Sauer from his shoulder holster.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE