Infamous (51 page)

The machine. Holy moley, he was talking about a TechWhiz 7842—I just knew it. It was, absolutely, his MO. And once Brian turned it on, A.J. wouldn’t be able to reach Alison to warn her.

I closed my eyes and jumped, willing myself to wherever it was that A.J. was, but wound up back in Brian’s car.

“
Son
of a bitch!” I said.

But maybe I was supposed to be there for a reason, because right when I popped in, Brian said into his cell phone, “I want you and Neil to meet me—where we talked about.”

And wasn’t
that
frustrating. “Come
on,”
I said. “Give me more than that to work with.”

But “Bring a shovel”—words I didn’t want to hear—and “I’ll see you there,” was all he said before he hung up.

And with that he reached over and flipped the switch on what was, indeed another of those deadly little cell phone jammers.

I closed my eyes and jumped, willing myself to A.J.—but again, I wound up in Mel’s old kitchen, where Skip, aka Loco, was pocketing his cell phone. And okay. There was definitely a reason for my jumping here. Skip, after all, knew where he was supposed to meet Brian—although, by then it might well be too late for Alison and Hugh.

“Get dressed,” Skip now told Neil.

But Neil shook his head. “I’m not going to do it,” he said. “This deal isn’t worth killing people over. It’s just not.”

“Too late,” Skip said.

Neil disagreed. “No,” he said as he stood up and went toward the phone that was hanging on the wall by the kitchen cabinets. “It’s not too late. I’m done, man. I’m not going to be part of this any longer.” He picked up the phone.

“What are you doing?” Skip asked.

“I’m calling your boss,” Neil said, punching in a series of numbers. “I’m going to tell him what I just told you. I’ll find some other way to pay back the money I borrowed. As of right now, I’m out.”

It was then that Skip reached into his jacket and drew a semiautomatic handgun, one of those newfangled ones with a very large clip. None of this six-bullets-and-then-you-need-to-reload business that I’d dealt with my entire gunfighting career. If you could call that dark part of my life a career.

“Hang up the phone,” Skip ordered Neil, who turned to look at that giant gun with what I thought of as somewhat foolish shock. You don’t dance with—or borrow money from—the devil and then get to be all surprised when he reveals that he’s evil. “You dumb piece of shit.”

Neil hung up the phone. He used his hand to sweep off a film of sweat that had suddenly appeared on his wide forehead. He didn’t say a word. He just stared at the gun pointing at him, and then he stared into Skip’s eyes. And whatever he saw there made him turn and run.

But Skip shot him in the back. Twice. Neil hit the floor and skidded, leaving a gruesome trail of blood. Skip watched as Neil’s legs twitched a few times and then finally stopped.

Skip then turned, and walked out the front door. He passed right through me, but he didn’t even seem to notice the shock or chill.

We were in trouble here. We were in deep,
deep
trouble.

And this time, when I jumped to A.J., I reached him.

*  *  *

Jamie popped in just as A.J. was paying a parking fee, with a ticket that he’d found conveniently tucked into the sun visor of the truck.

The truck that he’d borrowed from the short-term lot.

He’d searched for one with a set of keys hidden up on the tire or inside the wheel well or under the front bumper.

It had taken him a while, but he’d finally hit pay dirt. And he now kept his face hidden in the shadows beneath the brim of the baseball cap he’d found in the truck’s front seat, aware that there was a security camera behind the woman who was taking his money.

“Have a nice day,” she said, as he pulled away, and he put the window back up and headed for the exit.

“Brian’s here,” Jamie told him, and A.J. nearly went off the road. “He got a haircut. He’s following Alison and Hugh. Both cars—Hugh’s Jeep and Brian’s black sedan—are about forty-five minutes ahead of us.”

“God damn it, she’s supposed to be—”

“Well, she’s not,” Jamie cut him off. “Brian’s got a cell jammer in his car, he’s using it, but I think you should call Alison just in case they manage to pull out of range. Leave a message. They need to drive to the nearest police station, or at least go somewhere public, with a lot of people around.”

A.J. immediately dialed his cell phone, but his call to Alison went right to her voicemail. He quickly left her a message, then called his mother.

As her phone was ringing, Jamie told him, “Skip Smith—Trace Marcus’s assistant—is part of this. I just saw him kill Neil Sylvester.”

“Jesus!”

“Yeah.”

His mother picked up. And A.J. quickly told her what was happening, asked her to call the police and request that they stop Hugh’s Jeep on the road between Tucson and Jubilation.

She hung up to do just that, but A.J. didn’t have much faith that she’d get through—let alone convince anyone to take her seriously.

“Go to Alison,” A.J. told Jamie. “Stay with her.”

“I will,” Jamie said. “What
you’ve
got to do is call the main production office for the movie, and ask them to connect you with two people who work in the mess tent. A man named Rob or a woman named Charlotte Lombardi.”

“The FBI agents,” A.J. said. “What makes you think they’re going to believe me?”

“Because,” Jamie said, “you’re going to tell them the whole truth. You’re going to tell them about me.”

There was a car behind them.

Alison didn’t know when she’d first noticed it—certainly not until they’d left the highway for the state road that took them up into Jubilation. For a long time, there’d been a car in front of them, its red taillights glowing in the darkness. But sometime in the past few minutes, it had turned off, leaving them alone on the deserted stretch of road leading up into the hills.

Alone except for the headlights behind them.

Alison opened her phone—and got nothing. No reception.

Hugh’d put his own phone in the cupholder, and she opened that, too.

Again, nothing.

She searched the Jeep, looking under the seats and even crawling into the back to rummage through all of Hugh’s stuff that was back there, wishing she had a flashlight.

“What are you looking for?” Hugh asked.

“What does a cell phone signal jammer look like?” she asked in response as she jarred her injured arm. “Ow!”

“Oh, come on,” Hugh said, but then he looked at his lifeless phone, and then looked in the rearview mirror. “Oh, shit. Really?”

“Don’t slow down,” she warned him. “Don’t speed up. Just tell me. If one were back here, would I know it?”

“Yeah, it’s about the size of a cheap DVD player,” he said, watching her in the rearview, his face lit from the dash. “It would either be plugged into the car or running off a battery—either way it would be warm to the touch.”

Alison peeked out the back window at the lights. As far as
she could tell, it was a car, not an SUV or a truck. “Okay now, speed up,” she told Hugh. “Haul ass. Get us away from him—as far as you can.” As soon as she got a cell signal, she was going to dial 9-1-1. And hope that the state police would be able to trace her call.

Hugh NASCARed away, downshifting to give the Jeep’s engine more power.

But the car behind them leapt to keep up.

If Hugh hadn’t been fully convinced before, Alison knew that he was now certain they were in trouble. “In the back,” he told her as he drove even faster, “in the black case. The combination is four-two-four-five. Open it, Alison.”

He was talking about his gun case. It was perhaps the last remaining part of his summers-in-Montana childhood that he still always carried with him.

But Alison had never fired a weapon, and it seemed likely that if they started a gun battle, it would be one they wouldn’t win.

So instead, she sat back in her seat and closed her eyes, lifting her face to the sky the way she’d seen A.J. do, and she said, “Jamie, I need you!”

“Are you kidding me?” Hugh said.

“Shhh,” she said. “I need to concentrate. Jamie! Where
are
you? We’re in trouble and we need your eyes!”

I was right in the middle of telling A.J. everything I knew about Rob and Charlotte, everything I’d overheard—including their conversation about Rob’s brother John, and about Rob’s dumbass suggestion that he hook Charlotte up with his friend whose name I couldn’t remember. Danny maybe. No—Donny. That was it.

One minute I was telling A.J. about Charlotte’s asking Rob to get her cell phone charger—another conversation to which no one else had been privy—and the next I was jumping to God knows where.

Except then I knew exactly where, because I heard Alison’s voice, clear as day inside my head, shouting, “Jamie, I need you!”

And there I was, like a genie pulled from his bottle at my mistress’s command.

It was kind of weird, because even when A.J. called for me, there was choice involved. I didn’t
have
to go.

But maybe something or someone else was involved here, because I saw right away what was going on.

Brian’s black sedan was racing up the hill after their Jeep, its front mere feet from their rear bumper. And every now and then it surged forward and gave them a little kiss.

So to speak.

“Jamie!” Alison shouted again, because of course she didn’t realize I was there.

So I grabbed her and my arms passed through her, giving both of us that jolt.

She gasped. “Jamie?”

I knew that if we were going to attempt to communicate I had to set some parameters. So I touched her on the shoulder of her uninjured arm. That was going to be my way of saying yes.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Is that really you?”

I gave her another
yes
, hoping she was catching on.

“The car behind us,” she said. “Who is it?” She reached out for me, but I shifted back, away from her.

“Come on, girl,” I said, even though she couldn’t hear me. “Use your brain. How can I possibly answer that question? Keep it simple.”

She was flailing me around, searching for, looking for that electrically charged cold air. But I stayed carefully out of reach.

“Are you still here?” she asked.

I touched her shoulder.

“God,” she said, “that’s weird.”

Yes.

“Are you …” she said, thinking hard. “Are you
agreeing
with me?”

Yes.

“Are you telling me
yes?”

Yes, yes, yes.

“He’s telling me yes,” she told Hugh. “Oh, my God. Okay. Okay. Is it Brian or Gene behind us?” she asked. “Shit. Wait. Yes/no questions only. Okay, Jamie, it is Gene?”

I didn’t move.

“Brian?”

Yes.

“Oh, God. Does he have one of those cell phone jammers?”

Yes.

“Will we make it to Jubilation?” Hugh asked. “Jesus, this is like using a freaking Ouija board.”

“He didn’t say yes,” Alison reported when I didn’t move. “Is he going to kill us?” she asked. “No, don’t answer that. We can’t let him stop us. Right?”

Yes, I agreed.

“Is A.J. safe?” she asked, her heart in her voice.

Yes, I told her, but then I touched her on the knee, too, simultaneously, hoping she’d notice the difference.

“Do you want me to … ask more questions about A.J.?” she asked.

How I loved smart women. Yes.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Is he here, in Arizona?”

Yes.

“Should we go off road?” Hugh asked from the front. “The car behind us won’t get far if we do.”

“He says yes,” Alison reported, after I answered him.

“What the hell is that?” Hugh asked, and Alison looked out the front windshield.

The road we were on was relatively straight at this point, cutting through the darkness of the uninhabited rolling hillside. But way in the distance, as if farther down the road, were several very bright lights.

I elevated and dashed ahead to check, and found that it was a truck with some kind of searchlights attached. Not only was that truck completely blocking both lanes, its driver was none other than my old nemesis Gene of the bushy eyebrows and silver-dollar bald spot.

I zipped back into the car and told Alison, Yes, yes, yes yes yes.

She somehow understood that I was still answering Hugh’s last question and she shouted at him. “Go off road! Now!”

And he turned the wheel hard. The Jeep bounced and the wheels spun and then caught and they half rolled, half slid through the darkness down the hill into a little valley.

Again, I soared up, high above both the Jeep and the sedan, who’d indeed tried to follow and was stopped, nearly up to its axles in sand.

With my unearthly ability both to judge distances and see in the dark, I saw Gene’s truck leap forward, and I knew that Alison and Hugh had about three minutes to either get away or hide.

I could also see that the terrain was hellish in that spot—their best chance lay in their ability to conceal themselves in the vastness of this part of the desert.

Except there weren’t that many places to hide, especially from a truck with a searchlight.

But I looked and immediately saw the entrance to an old mine, and I dove back down into the Jeep and closed my eyes and damn near sat on Alison until she said, “We’re doing something wrong.”

Yes.

“Are we trapped?” she asked, thinking fast. “If we stay in the Jeep?”

Yes, yes, yes.

“Should we get out—go on foot?”

Yes.

“Stop,” she told Hugh, even as she scooped up a bottle of water and her cell phone, taking them with her.

Hugh hesitated, like he wanted to get his weapon from the back, but there was no time. Alison knew that and grabbed him and started to run up the hill. “Are we going the right way?” she asked me.

I passed straight through her, and she got my message and she changed direction, heading more west, stumbling slightly in the darkness. “This way?”

Yes. But then she went too far—this was frustrating for the
both of us. Brian was surely on foot by now, and Gene’s truck could handle this moonscape, no problem.