True Fiction (Ian Ludlow Thrillers #1)(28)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ian drove south on a flat stretch of Interstate 5 in Oregon that was bordered on both sides by dry, weed-strewn farmland, unmarked warehouses, and rusted mobile homes. Margo was asleep in the passenger seat, her head propped against the window, the jar of coins on the floor between her feet.

He liked the open road. There was something about driving, about putting his troubles in the rearview mirror and looking at a ribbon of asphalt stretching out into infinity in front of him, that cleared his head, bringing him peace and perspective. That was why whenever he was having problems in a relationship, or trouble plotting a story, he’d just get in his car and drive to San Francisco, Las Vegas, or Phoenix. He’d inevitably find the answer on the road. One of his girlfriends accused him of running away from his problems. (The truth was she resented her captive audience escaping during her most dramatic and overwrought performances.) But it was the opposite. He was running toward his problems, only from a different direction. This time, however, the girlfriend would have been right.

He’d killed a woman in Seattle in self-defense and he wanted to get as far from that corpse, and that memory, as he could. But escaping the people who’d sent her wouldn’t be nearly as simple. At least he wouldn’t have to run from the police, too. He was sure the CIA would clean up the crime scene for him, not to save him from prosecution, but to serve their selfish interests. They wouldn’t want the body to lead back to them or to focus any law enforcement attention on him. The last thing they wanted was the police finding him before they did and Ian telling them what he knew, no matter how ridiculous his story would sound. So this was one instance where his interests and his enemy’s were the same.

The Mustang hit a pothole. The bump jolted Margo awake and rattled the coins. She sat up, stretched, and rolled her head around to relieve her stiff neck. The first thing she noticed was the wretched stench from outside. That’s why Ian had been breathing through his mouth for the last few miles.

“We must be passing through Millersburg,” she said, “which is the best way to experience the town.”

He knew she was right about where they were because he’d seen a road sign a while back but he didn’t see anything along the road now that could qualify as a landmark.

“How do you know that’s where we are?” he asked.

“It’s known for smelling like a mountain of manure, though it’s better since they closed the paper mill that used to be beside the freeway.” She gestured out the window at the weed-choked foundations and parking lot that remained behind a chain-link fence. “They tore it down a few years back.”

“So why does it still stink?”

“That’s from the sewage treatment plant and the zirconium mining.”

“Must be a lovely place to live,” he said. “I guess the people get used to it after a while.”

“Or everything smells and tastes like shit and they accept it as normal because that’s the price they have to pay to live at all.”

He gave her a look. “I’m guessing we’re not talking about Millersburg anymore.”

“All I signed on for was taking you around to a couple of bookstores,” she said. “Now I’ve got killers after me. What the hell did I do to deserve this?”

“Nothing at all.” Ian considered apologizing again but he didn’t think that would make a difference.

“They’re not going to stop because we killed that bitch last night,” Margo said. “They’re going to be even more pissed off. Next time they’ll send four people like her, only armed with machine guns and hand grenades.”

“They’ll have to find us first.”

“Where are we going?”

“We need to disappear. I have a friend who’s been living off the grid for a while now. I’m hoping he can teach us how to do it.”

“So that’s it. We just run and hide.”

He glanced at her. “Do you have a better idea?”

“Yeah, let’s go to the FBI.”

He didn’t see how that was any less suicidal than going to the police but he decided to try a different argument. “And tell them what?”

“The CIA crashed that plane into Waikiki and it was your idea and now they want to kill you to cover it up.”

“That sounds crazy,” Ian said.

She turned in her seat to face him. “It’s the story you told me and I believed it.”

“Because you saw them try to kill me. You have evidence.”

“There you go. We tell them how the CIA hacked a parked car and tried to—” She stopped, hearing her own words, which didn’t sound believable even to her. “Okay, forget that. We tell them about the bitch who tried to kill us.”

“The woman I impaled with a fireplace poker in the ransacked house where we stole this car.”

“Yes,” Margo said, then thought about it. “Okay, forget that, too. Just tell them the CIA part.”

“I can’t prove any of it,” Ian said. “I don’t even know the name of the guy who recruited me.”

“What about those three dead writers? Doesn’t that prove something?”

“I’ve got no evidence that they were murdered.”

“They’ve tried three times to kill you.”