“I’d be saying something like, ‘Please. Mr. Hager, won’t you step outside voluntarily and not make a scene?’ There’d be no need for mc to suggest slipping out the back way. Besides, what’ve you got to lose?”
“At this point, not much.” Lips tight, he nodded in the direction of the lot. “Hate to leave the Caddy behind, though. I’ve had that car a long time. We’re old friends.”
“Think they’ll send it to Washington, or wherever, with you? They’ll probably take it apart.”
“I guess. I shouldn’t worry about it. It’s just a car.”
“From now on, I’m your witness, your corroboration,” she told him. “Anything happens to you, I’m there to make a note of it. You’re sure you didn’t steal this little guy from a government repository or something?” She gave the alien a brisk shake, to which it continued not to respond.
“I told you, I found him.”
“Why not? I find stuff all the time.” Her tone became urgent. “Look, are you going to let me help you, or are you just going to be one more name for me to jot down on the roll call of my life?”
“You talk funny.” Sliding out of the booth, he remembered to leave a good tip. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’ll go first.” She turned toward the kitchen. With no new customers to attend, the elderly waitress had stepped in back to chat with the cook. At the moment neither of them was watching the front.
“Come on.”
Tucking Jed under one arm, he followed her to the end of the aisle, turning left past the sign that announced the location of the two rest rooms. Another door led through a back storeroom piled high with food and janitorial supplies, past a work sink, and out through the promised rear portal.
There were three vehicles in the small back lot—the cook’s, the waitress’s, and his blond savior’s dark blue van. A three-quarter-ton, it boasted a raised roof with black plastic windows embedded in the rear. Otherwise the side panels were intact, offering plenty of privacy to anyone within.
Loping around to the passenger side, he climbed in through the unlocked door and gently set Jed down alongside the captain’s chair. As Caroline climbed in behind the wheel he registered a made-up foldout bed, several storage cabinets, a small sink, a built-in microwave oven suspended from a cabinet above the sink, and assorted other unspectacular and thoroughly prosaic built-ins.
Backing up and keeping her headlights off, she pulled out of the lot and onto the secondary road which paralleled the highway. After less than a mile the highway curved westward, but the road they had taken continued north. Leaving the last commercial buildings behind, they found themselves in an outlying neighborhood of isolated homes and tall trees.
“They’re not stupid, you know.” Ross Ed couldn’t keep himself from continuously checking the rearview mirror on the passenger side for signs of pursuit. “They’ll figure our that I left with you.”
“Maybe not.” She spoke without taking her hands off the wheel or her eyes off the road. “Nobody saw us leave together. I’ve eaten in there a lot without striking up long-term friendships. Usually I’m not there this late. I didn’t know that waitress, and she doesn’t know me.”
“What were you doing in there?”
“Bad case of the midnight munchies.”
He checked the rearview again. “Can we go any faster?”
“Take it easy. You want to attract attention, speeding along in the middle of the night? You’ll notice there’s not a whole lot of traffic to blend in with.” She slapped the wheel, fairly bouncing in her seat. “Damn! This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks!”
He made himself settle into the comfortable, high-backed chair. “You live in Safford?”
“Have been for a while. Working as a checker at the Safeway.”
“Won’t someone start asking questions when you don’t show up for work?”
“They’ll wait awhile. Assume that I’m goofing off, or out with a boyfriend, or something. It’ll be a few days before they check on me. By that time we’re long gone.”
The van struck a dip and Ross Ed’s head threatened to dent the ceiling, an all-too-frequent hazard he faced in the majority of vehicles. “You can just walk away from your apartment and job like that?”
“What apartment? You’re in it. As for my job, it’s not like I was running the production line at Boeing. They’ll just replace me. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I don’t do this sort of thing on a regular basis. Usually I give notice. I just got the feeling you were in kind of a hurry, that’s all.” She grinned over at him. “Carpe diem, and all that.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Never mind.”
By this time Ross Ed had decided that this was a woman it would be nice to Get To Know. What he had at first taken for flirtatious playfulness masked a streak of genuine independence. He had the feeling she didn’t much give a damn if she was picked up by the army or not. In that event, he felt it would not be out of place to feel sorry for the army. Anyway, who was he to be questioning her? She’d just saved him … or at least prolonged his freedom.
“By the way, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She chuckled. “They don’t know what kind of car I’m driving, which way we’ve gone, or when you left.” She checked the rearview on her side. “Still nobody back there. I wonder how much longer they’ll sit around waiting on you?”
“Hard to say. If they think I just ordered, they might hold off an hour or more.”
“That’s the spirit. Meanwhile we’ll put lots of Arizona between us.”
“Where we headed?”
She eyed him expectantly. “Where’d you want to go? Do they know where you were heading?”
“No. I haven’t told anyone except a few friends back home, and they just know I want to see the Pacific.”
“So they’ll have to search from Canada to Mexico. That ought to give ’em pause.” She considered. “We could cut up and over on Highway 70 through Globe into Phoenix, or east and down to Lordsburg.”
“No,” he countered sharply, “not Lordsburg. I’ve been to Lordsburg.”
“Me, too. Can’t say as I blame you. Okay, how about we get back on one-ninety-one and head for Clifton? Although if they managed to track you to Safford, they might block the road up that way, too.” She wrenched hard on the wheel and Ross fought to keep his balance in the chair as they began bouncing up a narrow dirt road.
“Since I’ve been working in Safford I’ve done a lot of camping around here. There are dozens of roads that cut through the San Carlos reservation. It’ll be a little rocky, but we can take our time and work our way northward without having to worry about roadblocks. We’ll pick up pavement again outside Fort Apache.”
