Quicksilver(33)

“Could be, but probably not,” she said.

Sparky said, “There are plenty of real people who’re eager to make a buck corrupting others with drugs. The wormheads don’t bother with stuff like that. They seem to have a unique agenda.”

“What agenda?”

“We haven’t quite figured it out yet,” Bridget said.

Sparky said, “Who’s the new member of the team?”

“They called him Hitler, but I call him Winston.”

As if to confirm his awareness of the name change, Winston let out a howl that rose from bass to soprano.

“He’s an attack dog,” I said.

Winston leaned against me and licked my neck.

I said, “He could kill with his breath.”

“Those creeps haven’t taken care of him,” Bridget said. “We’ll take him to a veterinarian as soon as we can, get him a bath, a teeth cleaning, make sure he has all his shots.”

“We’re on the run for our lives,” I reminded her.

“That doesn’t mean we won’t bathe and brush our teeth, Quinn.”

“So you’re keeping him?”

She looked back at me and smiled. “I’m keeping you, aren’t I?”





|?16?|

The motel rated only one star, but the rooms were as clean as they were threadbare. Three side-by-side units were available. It was the kind of place where you didn’t need to present ID if you paid cash up front. In fact, the clerk at the front desk was so incurious that he would probably take your cash and give you a room key even if you showed up with bloody hands, holding a dagger in your teeth.

We gathered in the middle unit, where Bridget would bunk. We emptied the duffel on the bed. The three of us sat there to count the money, while the newest fugitive among us consumed two cans of gourmet dog food that we had bought at a supermarket en route.

Winston didn’t seem to mind that he was eating out of a soft plastic bowl that was a cheap version of Tupperware, also purchased at the market. He kept looking up from his meal with what seemed to be an expression of astonishment, as if to say, If there’s stuff this good, why the hell were they feeding me cheap kibble with eyeballs?

When I’d counted thirty-five thousand and Bridget had forty thousand, she combined our piles of cash and placed them in another plastic container with a lid. “Grandpa can finish the count. Let’s you and me go find a car.”

“It’s ten past ten,” I said. “Who’s selling a car at this time of night?”

“We’ll find out, dear.”

“Can’t it wait till morning?”

“No. The Buick is already hot. We’ve got to dump it.”

“You kids have fun,” Sparky said.

Winston leaped onto the bed, perhaps to assist with the tabulation.

I said, “You seem to have reformed Winston, but somewhere down inside he’s still the attack dog that was. Should you really leave your grandfather alone with him?”

Leading me out to the Buick, she said, “Grandpa would never hurt him.”

Because the motel was fully booked, its sign had been turned off. In the infinite sea of darkness overhead, uncountable stars glowed like channel lights. With its dry climate, Tucson has limited cloud cover, enjoying more hours of sunshine than almost any other city in the country, and its night skies offer the spectacle of eternity.

Bridget drove because her psychic magnetism was more developed than mine and because she was far more confident than I was that we could find someone who would sell us a car at that hour.

“Confidence,” she said, “improves the efficiency and accuracy of the magnetism.”

“What were you confident of finding when you found the bomb factory instead?”

“Don’t be snarky, Quinn.”

“No, I’m really curious.”

We cruised along a boulevard, turned onto a lesser street, segued into an alley while she said, “Last year, we took a road trip to Austin. Grandpa had a friend from the old days he’d fallen out of touch with. Harry Peacemaker. Rumor was Harry moved to the Austin area, but we couldn’t find a phone listing. So while Grandpa told me colorful stories about this Peacemaker guy, we let magnetism take over. It pulled us to this small industrial building with a sign that said PEACEMAKER UNITED. We went in through the main door. No one was in the public area. There was a call button, but it didn’t work. Grandpa being Grandpa, he opened the gate in the counter and went looking for someone, and I followed him. We found this big room with maybe a hundred assault rifles and shotguns racked along one wall. In the center of the room were these tables where three guys were building bombs with bricks of C-4 plastic explosives and cell phones for triggers. You’d think terrorists would have at least some sense of security, but no. Of course, the kind of people who’re into such things are usually eight cards short of a full deck.”

“So the peacemakers were bomb makers.”

“A lot of people these days are the opposite of what they say they are, and a lot of them probably don’t even realize it. They’re opposed to racism even as they act like racists. They’re opposed to fascism, even as they act like fascists. The world’s gone weird.”

“On the other hand, if you blow someone up, they rest in peace thereafter, so then you would be sort of a peacemaker. What happened in the bomb factory?”