The Lonely Mile(46)
Martin thought briefly about getting her some of the ibuprofen from upstairs—although he didn’t think her head injury was severe, he figured she had to have a massive headache—then decided, forget it, she brought this on herself, it won’t hurt her to suffer a little bit, make her get the message loud and clear: Don’t cross Martin. He wants you, but he’ll kill you if he has to.
He watched her for a moment as her respiration smoothed out and her breathing became slow and steady. She was asleep. Lucky little troublemaker. She’d caused this disaster and then got to sleep like a baby, while Martin still had things to do. Life was so unfair sometimes.
He sat and watched his angel for a while, filled with lust and longing despite all the trouble she had caused him tonight. Finally, he rose unsteadily and headed to the stairs. It was time to get to the hospital, preferably before he passed out and bled to death.
CHAPTER 42
May 28
IT WAS BARELY 5:30 a.m. Agent Canfield had told Bill to meet him at one of the only places open at that time in the morning—a coffee shop in the tiny town of Union, just off the interstate, not far from the rest stop where this whole mess had begun. And the coffee was surprisingly good. Not as good as at Smokin’ Joe’s at that rest stop, but still, better than average.
He had been surprised at how quickly Angela answered the phone when he called, given the fact that it was the middle of the night, and he knew how exhausted she had looked in his apartment before she left. She must sleep with the cell phone next to her head on the pillow, he thought, because it had barely begun to ring when she was on the line. And she had sounded awake and alert. “Canfield.”
Bill had paused for a second, actually pulling the receiver from his ear and staring at it in surprise. He had expected it to ring a while. “Yes…uh…” Now that he had her on the phone, what should he call her? He decided to stick with formalities. He didn’t know if the FBI was in the habit of monitoring the calls of its agents, but figured he’d better be careful. And maybe she didn’t even want him to use “Angie” any more, after the events of a few hours ago. “Agent Canfield, this is Bill Ferguson. I’m sorry to bother you at this ungodly hour, but you asked me to call if I thought of anything helpful, and, well, I have.”
A moment of silence followed, and Bill could hear the rustling of covers in the background. He pictured the pretty agent sitting up in bed, hair tousled and falling in unruly masses around her face, nightgown riding up her long legs. It wasn’t an unpleasant image.
She coughed and cleared her throat. “Okay,” she said. “What is it?” She sounded distant, preoccupied, and he assumed she felt uncomfortable talking to him.
“You remember I told you the guy drove an old, piece-of-crap truck out of the plaza parking lot after the failed kidnapping? And it had been repainted, but the paint job was fading? Well, there was green block lettering, three rows of it, on the side of the cargo box. The lettering was just beginning to show through the fading, amateur paint job. I remember now what it said.”
Now she sounded focused, all business. “How soon can you meet me?”
“Just tell me where and when. I’m not going back to sleep now, that’s for sure.”
The agent had then suggested this coffee shop. Bill was aware of its existence, but wondered how Agent Canfield had known about it.
Now they sat facing each other across a small table, steam rising from their cups. Canfield had ordered some kind of latte thing, and for Bill, it was his usual, basic, black coffee. They were alone in the cramped dining area, at least for the time being.
“So you saw portions of the original paint job?” Agent Canfield stared at Bill with an intensity he found equally fascinating and disturbing. She was dressed in a loose-fitting t-shirt, which did nothing to hide her figure, and a pair of sweat pants like the ones college kids wear with the name of their school running down one leg. Instead of a school, though, Agent Canfield’s said “FBI” in gold lettering. She had obviously thrown on the first things she dug out of a bag.
“Yes,” Bill nodded. “There were three rows of green, block lettering painted diagonally across the side of the truck’s cargo box. None of the rows were completely visible on their own, but I could make out a few letters in each row.”
“And they were?”
“The letters in the first row were ‘SPE,’ and in the middle row were the letters ‘FAR,’ with the letters ‘ET’ running along the bottom.”
Agent Canfield wrote the notations down in a small spiral pad Bill hadn’t noticed until just now. He wondered where she had been keeping it, since she wasn’t carrying a purse or any kind of bag. Probably, the sweat pants had pockets. Although she wrote quickly, Bill could see, even from the upside down position of the pad, that her handwriting was neat and legible. She wrote the letters in a descending diagonal pattern on the page, then spun it around so he could look at her handiwork. “Like this?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
She flipped the notebook around again on the table and stared at it, taking a sip of her latte. Her eyes never left the page as she drank. She shrugged. “Okay, I give up. What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure.” Bill shook his head, frustrated. “I feel like I’ve seen this before, or something similar, on a vehicle in the area, but nothing is coming to me. I’ve been thinking about it pretty much non-stop since I called you, and I just keep drawing a blank.”