The Protector (2003) (24 page)

"You could have been killed trying to save me," Cavanaugh said.

"I didn't think about that."

"You weren't afraid?"

"Only for you."

Cavanaugh looked down at his shaky hands. "Tonight, I felt afraid."

Driving, Jamie glanced from where her headlights illuminated the darkness. She gave him a quick stare. "You just had a lot to react to."

"It was more than that. Something happened to me in that basement." Cavanaugh trembled. "For the first time, I found out what fear is." He felt more blood oozing from his wound. "I was hoping we wouldn't have to do this. We passed a Wal-Mart on the way from the motel."

"Wal-Mart?" Jamie asked, bewildered.

"We're going to need some things. Trash bags. A hotplate. A saucepan. A ..."

*

PART FOUR

Threat Confrontation

Chapter
1.

The hotplate's coil glowed. Through steam escaping from the open bathroom door, Cavanaugh could see the unit on the counter in front of the makeup mirror. A vague outline of a saucepan was visible on top of it. The pan contained boiling water, a curved sewing needle, and fishing line.

Cavanaugh was slumped in the tub while the hot shower sprayed smoke and grime off him.

"You've got more bruises," Jamie said. "By morning, you'll have trouble walking."

"I won't need to walk. We're spending tomorrow in the car."

"And maybe part of tonight?"

Cavanaugh turned his head and studied her. "You're as quick a learner as Prescott."

"Except I don't go around setting fires. We can't stay here much longer, correct?"

"Correct. There's always a neighborhood busybody who notices unfamiliar cars on the street. He or she will remind the police about it. One of the policemen will remember the attractive woman who moved the car after the fire started. Meanwhile, the neighbors behind Karen's house will tell the police about the injured man and the attractive woman who ran out of the house and disappeared. It'll take the police a while to get organized, but before midnight, they're going to be looking for a man and a woman in a dark blue Taurus. Time to hit the road."

Jamie glanced toward the pan on the hotplate. "Think it's boiled enough?" she asked.

"Ten minutes. If the germs aren't dead by now ..."

"Turn off the shower." Jamie blotted the wound with surgical gauze, then coated it with Betadine germicide that she'd bought from Wal-Mart. The gouge looked clean enough that there wasn't a need to put Cavanaugh through the pain of more hydrogen peroxide. Quickly, she applied antibiotic cream. Then she hurried to the pan and used tongs, which she had swabbed with rubbing alcohol, to take the needle and fishing line from the boiling water. She set them and disinfected scissors onto antiseptic pads at the side of the tub.

"You should have been a nurse," Cavanaugh said.

"Yeah, that's always been my ambition: to sew up gunshot wounds. You're absolutely sure you need to do this?"

"The wound has to stay closed, and the bandage isn't working."

"We could always try barbed wire and a staple gun."

"Funny."

"Keep laughing." Jamie knelt beside him at the tub. "No matter how gentle I try to be, this'll hurt."

Cavanaugh's face felt as taut as his nerves. "I've had it done to me before."

"I imagine."

"But the guy doing it wasn't as good-looking as you."

"Flattery's great. Tell me more sweet things while I do this."

"You're tough."

"So are you." Jamie pushed in the needle.

Chapter 2.

Cavanaugh woke to the rhythm of the car. As headlights flashed past, he found himself lying on the backseat on a blanket, one of the items that Jamie had bought from Wal-Mart. Then he was alert enough to see the imitation sheepskin covers on the front and rear seats, which Jamie had bought from Wal-Mart as well and which concealed the bloodstains he'd left. The car was brand-new, but already it was on its way to being trashed. Somehow he found that amusing.

"Where are we?" he murmured.

"I thought I heard you moving back there. We're south of Poughkeepsie. Did you sleep okay?"

"Yes." He slowly sat up. The headlights passing on the opposite side of the highway hurt his eyes.

"How's the shoulder?"

"Stiff. I passed out?"

"You passed out."

"And you said I was tough."

"Are you thirsty? The bottles of water are on the floor back there."

Cavanaugh peered down and saw them in the shadows. He opened one.

"Hungry?" Jamie asked.

"For a thin woman, you sure think a lot about food."

"Just for that, you can't have any doughnuts."

"Doughnuts?"

"Chocolate-covered. You can't expect me to drive all night without something to eat to keep me awake."

"What time is it?"

"Around one."

"Did you have any trouble cleaning the motel room?"

"Nope. I did what you told me and put all the bloody towels and clothes into the garbage bags I got from Wal-Mart. I threw the bags in a Dumpster at a construction site. The towels don't have the motel's name on them, so nobody can trace them to us."

"Fingerprints?"

"I wiped the room clean and left the key, along with a tip. Just the way you told me."

Cavanaugh studied the sporadic traffic. "Tired?"

"Getting there."

"Find a place where we can switch places. I'll drive for a while."

"Are you able to?"

"I can steer with my right arm. Once we get into New Jersey, we'll find another motel."

"And then?"

"As soon as I get organized, I'm going after Prescott."

Chapter 3.

"Good God, what happened to this car?" the automobile paint shop's owner said.

The question was rhetorical. Red and green Day-Glo paint had been sprayed over most of the Taurus.

"Damned kids," Cavanaugh said, although he himself had done the spraying.' "I leave it on the street for a half hour, and this is what I find when I get back."

"The whole thing'll have to be repainted."

"Don't I know it, and the dealership says vandalism isn't covered under the warranty. They want a fortune to repaint it."

The owner got interested. "How much?"

Cavanaugh named so high a figure that the guy would make out like a bandit even if he gave a discount.

"How does a hundred and fifty cheaper sound?" the owner asked.

"Better than I was going to have to pay. But I need the job done in a hurry."

"Sure, sure. What color do you want? The original dark blue?"

"From the day I chose that color, my wife hated it. She says I she wants gray."

Chapter 4.

"Sam Murdock," Cavanaugh told the Philadelphia bank clerk.

"Sign here, Mr. Murdock."

Cavanaugh did.

The clerk compared the signature with the one that the bank had on file and entered a date next to where Cavanaugh had signed. "I see it's been a while since you came here."

"Last year. Too bad. I always say, when you have to go to your safe-deposit box, you've got trouble."

The clerk gave Cavanaugh a sympathetic look, obviously attributing the scrapes on Cavanaugh's face to the trouble he referred to. "May I have your key?"

Cavanaugh, who wore a suit and tie and who'd gotten his hair cut short to get rid of the singe marks, gave it to him.

"Will you be needing a cubicle?"

"Yes."

The clerk led Cavanaugh and Jamie down marble steps to a barred metal gate, which he unlocked. Beyond, in a brightly lit vault, were walls of small gleaming stainless-steel hatches. The clerk glanced at the number on the key Cavanaugh had given him. He went to a wall on the right, put the key in a ten-bytwelve-inch hatch near the bottom, inserted another key, this one from a group he carried on a ring, and turned both keys simultaneously.

After opening the hatch, he pulled out a safe-deposit box and handed it to Cavanaugh. "The cubicles are just outside."

"Thank you."

Cavanaugh randomly chose the second on the right and went inside with Jamie, closing the door. In the process, without seeming to, he checked the walls and ceiling for hidden cameras, doubting there were any but maintaining his habits all the same. He set the box on a counter and leaned over it, as did Jamie, so that their backs concealed the box's contents.

The raised lid revealed two thick manila envelopes and a blue cloth pouch, the bulging halves of which were zipped together. Cavanaugh put everything in a briefcase that he'd bought in a store down the street a few minutes before entering the bank.

Jamie opened the door. Managing to hold the briefcase in his left hand without indicating that his arm was compromised, Cavanaugh returned the safe-deposit box to the clerk, who put it back in its slot in the vault, closed the hatch, rotated the keys to their original positions, and gave Cavanaugh's key back to him.

"Thank you," Cavanaugh said.

Chapter 5.

In a cash-not-unusual motel, Cavanaugh waited while Jamie closed the blinds. Then he put the contents of the briefcase on the bed. The first stuffed manila envelope contained five thousand dollars in twenties.

"I see you've been saving for a rainy day," Jamie said.

The second manila envelope contained a birth certificate, credit card, passport, and Pennsylvania driver's license for Samuel Murdock. The driver's license and passport had Cavanaugh's photograph. "A present from Karen five years ago." Memories of her made him pause. "As she reminded me, you never know when another identity might come in handy. I'm on the eastern seaboard a lot, so it's easy to come to Philadelphia once a year. I take the credit card from the safe-deposit box and use it to buy a few things so the account remains open. I also renew the driver's license."

"Why Philadelphia?"

"It's convenient. Halfway between New York and Washington, cities where I often work."

"Where do you get the bills for the credit card?"

"They're sent to a private mailbox-rental business here in Philadelphia."

"Which forwards them to a private mailbox you rent in Jackson Hole under the name of Sam Murdock but that you never told me about," Jamie said.

Because of his stitched shoulder, Cavanaugh resisted the urge to shrug. "A benign secret."

"I just love getting to know you better. Does Global Protective Services know about this other identity?"

"Nobody does."

"What's in the pouch?"

"A present for you."

"Gee."

Cavanaugh unzipped the pouch.

Jamie picked up what was inside. "What's that joke you once told me about the compliment men most like to hear from women? 'Oh, honey, I just love it when you tinker with engines and bring home electronics, power tools, and firearms.'"

The object Jamie held was a match to Cavanaugh's Sig Sauer 9-mm pistol. Like Cavanaugh's, it had been modified. Its factory-equipped sights had been replaced with a wide-slotted rear sight and a front sight with a green luminous dot that made aiming easy. All the interior moving parts had been filed and then coated with a permanent friction reducer to discourage jamming. The exterior had been comparably smoothed so there weren't any sharp edges to snag on anything. A flat black epoxy finish prevented light from reflecting.

Cavanaugh watched to make sure that Jamie followed the precautions he'd taught her. Because the Sig didn't have a safety catch, care was all the more necessary. Holding it with her right hand, keeping her index finger out of the trigger guard and the barrel pointed toward the bed, she used her left hand to ease back the slide on top, checking to see if the weapon had a round in the firing chamber. It did. She pressed a button at the side and released the magazine from the grip, grabbing the magazine as it dropped.