The Old Man(9)
A bit after dark the night of the wedding he had met Paul. While the reception was going on inside the mansion they had rented for the wedding, Emily had conducted her new husband into the back garden. He and Paul had taken measure of each other that night. He had reassured himself that Emily had chosen a man who would die rather than betray her secrets. And Paul had seen that his father-in-law was the sort of man who was capable of holding him to it. He had been glad for Emily that Paul was intelligent and good-looking. He had been a swimmer in college, tall and lean, with an intense set of eyes. He had been a good husband to Emily so far.
Dave and Carol began to stir in the backseat again. He looked in the rearview mirror for a long time before he was sure nobody was following closely enough to be a problem, and then turned off onto a rural road and let the dogs out to explore a field for good spots to relieve themselves. Then he fed them again. When they were finished eating and drinking, he and the dogs got back in and moved ahead. He had driven the full stretch of daylight, and now it was dark again. The night felt friendly, but he knew he was only feeling the afterglow of having won the first fight. When this night was used up, most of the benefit of that victory would be too, so he kept pushing himself, putting more distance between him and Norwich, Vermont. He fought the increasing weight of his fatigue, keeping himself awake by will alone.
It was already late when he noticed the pair of headlights that wouldn’t go away. He had not seen a persistent follower during the day, or these headlights earlier in the night, and now he was at least four hundred miles from Norwich, Vermont. To Peter Caldwell that meant that the follower must have tracked him using a global positioning system, and then slowly narrowed the distance between them. And the only reason he could think of for a chaser to follow so closely was to get eyes on him before making another attempt to kill him.
Caldwell glanced in the mirror at Dave and Carol. They were sleeping peacefully on the backseat, their barrel chests rising and falling in long, slow breaths. He was going to have to do something, and he knew it would be better for them if he did it while the world was still dark, and their black fur might give them a better chance to survive.
He reached under the seat and retrieved his pistol, ejected the magazine to be sure it was full, pushed it back in, and stuck the weapon in his belt, and then he felt for the spare magazine. The weight told him it was full. He kept going at the same speed for a few more minutes, until he saw a group of rectangular buildings ahead. As he drew closer he could read the green letters at the top of the nearest one, which said HOTEL. He supposed he must be approaching Buffalo, or at least its airport. When he reached the driveway leading to the building he swung abruptly into it and saw DAYS HOTEL flash above him as he went past the sign.
Dave and Carol slid a little and then sat up, always interested in any change. He said quietly, “Hello, my friends. Everything is going to be all right.” He knew that they would determine the opposite from the tone of his voice or the smell of his sweat now that his heartbeat and respiration had accelerated.
He watched the headlights a quarter mile behind dip slightly as the follower applied his brakes, and noted that the driver was one of those who didn’t coast much, but instead always had his foot on the gas or the brake trying to exert control. The man probably oversteered too. Caldwell wasn’t sure if the information would be useful or not. In the long run those habits burned a lot of gas. But if the driver was following him by GPS that didn’t matter, because he could always stop at a gas station and catch up with Caldwell later.
Caldwell took the next turn into the semicircular drive toward the hotel entrance, but then kept driving past it to move around to the back of the building. He turned off his headlights as soon as he was around the first corner and drove up the outer row of cars parked in the lot. He turned into the first empty space and stopped, so his brake lights didn’t show for more than a second, and turned off the engine. He turned off the car’s dome lights, pulled out the pistol, and ducked down.
The pursuing car came off the highway and disappeared toward the front of the building. Caldwell could see it was a black sedan, probably a Town Car. When it was no longer visible, he opened his door and the back door to let the dogs out. The dogs ran across the lane to the bushes. He lay down beside his car and used his cell phone’s screen as a flashlight to look at the undercarriage.
He saw the transponder, a small black box stuck to the underside of the battery mount with a pair of wires taped to the leads of his battery. He reached up and tore it out, and then stayed low to move away from his car. The first vehicle he saw was the hotel’s shuttle bus. He crawled under it and attached the transponder to the battery of the bus the same way it had been attached to his car.
He stood and moved between the rows of parked vehicles toward his car. But as he did, a man emerged from the rear entrance of the hotel. Caldwell ducked down beside the nearest car. His pursuers’ car must have stopped at the front entrance to let this man go into the hotel to search for Caldwell inside. He had come through the lobby to the back of the hotel.
The man began to run. As he ran he took a pistol out of his coat. In the dim light, Caldwell saw the thin red line of a laser bobbing along the pavement as the man ran directly toward Caldwell’s car. He had recognized it.
Caldwell stayed down behind the car where he had hidden and waited until the man had gone past him, and then moved after him. He took out his pistol, hoping there would be something different he could do, but not knowing what it would be. He was fairly sure that the one who had stayed in the Town Car would be on his way around the building to the lot right now.