Of course he couldn’t say that, and he didn’t.
Guilt and shame were added to the swell of other emotions he was already feeling.
Guilt, shame, whatever you wanted to call it. The precise name didn’t matter. It was all bad.
“Nothing,” he said.
He could feel her relaxed body tense just a bit and then that tension was released.
Malloy replied, “You can talk to me, you know.”
“I’
m fine. It was great. It was beyond great. Thank you. I…Thank you.”
His words rang hollow even to him.
He turned away from her and fell asleep on his side.
She lay there for a bit watching the sharp edges of his muscular back before she turned in the opposite direction and eventually fell asleep.
Robie did not slumber long. He woke thirty minutes later. He was dressed, out the door, and back on the road two minutes after that.
He saw the headlights behind him about ten miles outside of Grand. They stayed with him the whole way, never speeding up, although he gave the vehicle several chances to pass him.
When the bullet cracked the rear glass of his truck, he smiled. That was all the confirmation he needed.
God help you, whoever you are.
Chapter
52
JESSICA REEL HAD watched from her window as Robie drove off into the night after speaking with Patti Bender.
Part of her wanted to run down the stairs and stop him. Not only because she thought she knew where he was going, but because people had been trying to kill them ever since they had set foot in Grand.
But she had not run down the stairs. She had not tried to stop him.
She had sat like a slug at the window watching him go off.
She had seen him glance toward the sheriff’s station, where the police cruiser was not parked. The thoughts in his mind had been easy enough to decipher. As was the identity of the person he had phoned as she again watched from the window.
Valerie Malloy.
She shifted her position and looked across at the bar. It was ten o’clock now and it seemed like the place was just getting going.
And Jessica Reel, ever the woman of action, decided she needed to get going, too. She was tired of sitting here doing nothing.
She gunned up, left the hotel, and walked across the street. She spotted the stretch limo and wondered for a moment if the Randalls were at the bar. It seemed unlikely. She doubted the couple would stoop to drinking beer with the great unwashed.
She entered the bar and took a few moments to look around.
In one corner were a half-dozen Apostles, though she didn’t see Dwight Sanders among them.
In another corner were several burly men wearing Confederate caps and do-rags and others with T-shirts that said DON’T TREAD ON ME.
Someone had put money in a jukebox, and a few couples were doing their best drunken moves on the small dance floor set up on the right side of the bar.
Sitting at the bar was the limo driver she had seen out at the bunker. The one who had thanked them for taking the Randalls down a peg. That explained the stretch parked outside.
She walked over to the bar and sat down next to him. He glanced up from his beer and flinched.
“So how are the Randalls?” said Reel.
He smiled and swallowed some of his beer.
“Who gives a shit? He don’t even tip. Punk’s got more money than God and he can’t even slip me a fiver? And she just sits there either checking her phone or fixing her makeup. Oh, and I’ve been ‘instructed’ to not make eye contact with her.”
“Well, that might be a good thing. You look at Medusa, you get frozen.”
“I’ve been in a few.”
“Ever killed anybody?”
She stared at him. “Now, is that a proper question to ask a lady?”
He looked sheepish. “No, sorry. I ain’t thinking straight. No offense.”
“So was that the first time you’d driven the Randalls out to the bunker? Lambert told us this was the first time they were coming to actually stay there.”