“Just tell me where you think she might have gone.” You dumb shit.

“I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.” He shook his head back and forth in the grass as he spoke.

“Guess.”

“She just left. Went away and never came back. I need her.”

“You don’t need her. Straighten up and think for a minute, will you?”

“She said she had a plan. She said we’d get the money and leave this place, just be together, her and me.”

Deluded asshole.

“They fired me from the bank,” said Jeffers. “Froze my accounts.”

There was a lot of that going around.

“Where’s Tina’s room?” I asked.

“Tina’s gone. Gone gone gone gone-”

“Where’s her room!”

“Past my office. All the way at the end of the hall.”

I left Jeffers on the grass, found Tina’s room.

She’d cleaned it out quickly. Naked hangers in the closet along with a suitcase-sized emptiness between some old boxes. Nothing helpful in the boxes. Her dresser drawers were empty. I looked under the bed. Nothing there. I kicked over the wastepaper basket near the bed, and a stack of papers fell out. Credit card bills. Visa. Sears. Phone bills. Junk mail.

I went back into the kitchen, rummaged the fridge and found a can of light beer. My hand hurt again. It was too soon to take another pain pill. I took one anyway, washed it down with the beer. I took a stool. Sat there. Thought. Scratched my head. Drank the beer.

I went back to Tina’s room and picked the old phone bill out of the trash can. There were no local calls listed. I guess they’d be on Jeffers’s bill. This statement was for a calling card. Tina had made twenty-two calls to Spring City, Tennessee.

I went back to Jeffers. He was passed out. I shook him awake, and he opened his eyes flinching at the daylight.

“What is it?”

“Did Tina ever say anything about Tennessee?”

“She has some family there, I think. A brother? Tom. Yeah. Good old Brother Tom.”

“Get straight,” I advised him. “Go someplace. Do you have a relative you can stay with? A brother or something?”

“I don’t know. Let me think.”

“Don’t think too long. Agent Dunn might lose his patience and come for you here. Lay low for a while or don’t. Whatever. I’m going. I have work to do.”

“No.”

“No what?”

“Please.” He started misting up again. “Don’t leave me. Please. I can’t die. I’m trying to die, but I won’t die.”

“You’ll die,” I said.

“I used to be a banker.” He started crying again.

“We all used to be something.”

On the way back through the house, I used Jeffers’s phone, called the airlines, asked questions, wrote down the appropriate information. Then I called Marcie at her hotel room.

“Charlie!” She practically shouted into the phone. “I’m getting pretty God damn tired of sitting in this hotel room.”

“Shut up and listen. There’s a flight leaving for Acapulco in fifty-one minutes. Go get a ticket.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll catch up when I can.”

“When?”

“Maybe a day. Maybe two.”

Maybe never.

Time to drive.

The concrete snarl of Orlando’s tangled road cluster faded away as I took the turnpike to I-75 and aimed the Impala north. The Florida-Georgia state line put itself behind me, then Atlanta, and I branched off toward Chattanooga.

Spring City was a small town along Highway 27 surrounded by low mountains. The temperature had dipped considerably during my trek north, and the sharp wind hissed and whistled through the cracks and creases in the convertible’s top. I’d driven all the way wearing my pea coat and with the heat on.

The dead, flat sky was a uniform gray.

I’d made decent time, stopping only four times to fill up with gas or coffee or take a piss. I didn’t want to risk driving such a distance on pain pills, so my stomach burned with too much aspirin.

At the local Days Inn, I asked for a room and checked in under the name Peter Tork. I wanted something around back, away from the traffic noise. They gave me 126.

I pulled into a service station, hopped out of the car near a pay phone. The wind bit into me immediately, and I pulled the pea coat tight.

I unfolded the phone bill I’d salvaged from Tina’s trash can, dropped the coins into the slot, and dialed the number. It rang three times.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” I said. “Is Tina there?”

“Who can I tell her is calling?” A Southern accent, not too thick.

“I’m an old friend from Florida. Pete.” It seemed plausible enough when I’d rehearsed it, but coming out of my mouth, it sounded pretty weak.

“She ain’t been there long enough to make old friends.”

“Is this her brother Tom?”

“This is her husband Tom.”

Bingo. She told Jeffers it was her brother. Sure. That made sense. Hussy with a badge.

“Oops. My mistake.” I chuckled. Kept it light. “She said to give her a visit if I was ever in the neighborhood.”

“She ain’t here right now. Went out.”

“Whoa, just my luck, huh? And the sky looks like snow too.”

“She’s out right now. Like I said. She went up the mountain. Won’t be back for a while.”

I didn’t know exactly what “up the mountain” entailed, but it sounded like I was in for a wait.

“I’m at the Days Inn, room number one-two-six,” I said.

“You’d better just call back.”

“That’s not going to work. I need you to take a message.”

“Listen, mister, I got things to do and-”

“That’s not going to cut it, Tom.” I put a little heat in my voice. “Now I want you to get a pen and a piece of paper, and I want you to write this down. Are you listening?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell Tina I brought some things she wanted.”

He went quiet on his end, and I tried to puzzle whether he was in on it or just confused.

“Okay,” said Tom. “I think I got your message. I’ll tell her when she gets in.”

“Thanks, Tom. I appreciate the help.”

I hung up.

I felt pretty smug about my little performance as I got back in the car. I’d simultaneously made contact with the kidnappers and let them know they weren’t as clever as they thought. I’d found out where they were and who they were, and I had what they wanted.

Very soon now I would shoot them all stone cold dead and send Amber home to Danny.

The cold was bad on my hand. I finally relented, took a pain pill, and sat in the car until it took effect. I bought a bottle of beer in the service station to help push it down.

I pulled into the rental car place in case Tina had seen the Impala.

Here’s what I said to the guy behind the counter: “Gimme a car.”

His look was so funny.

“What kind of ride do you need, bud?”

Bud.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Just something comfortable. Price isn’t a problem.”

“How about a nice mid-size?”

Wow, this guy had bad teeth. Wait? What was it Tom had said? Up the mountain. That sounded fairly rugged.

“Do you have a Suburban?”

Bad Teeth shouted into the back room, “Hey, Leanne, we still got that red Suburban?”

A female voice floated out of the back room, country accent like Minnie Pearl. “No. That big feller took it.”

“What big fellow?”

“You know. With all the hair and muscles smoking that godawful cee-gar. Looked like Fabian?”

“Fabian?”

“Like on the romance book covers.”

“Lord, woman,” said Bad Teeth. “That’s Fabio.”

“Well, he had muscles.”

“Lou Morgan.” I felt my face twisting up into a huge grin. “Was his name Lou Morgan?”

Holy shit. I’d forgotten all about New Guy. I was losing my mind. He must have followed Tina up here on his own.

The woman stuck her head out of the back room. She was wrinkled and flannel. “That’s it. You know him?”

“I know him.”

“Well, he got the Suburban.”

I’ll be damned. The big, dumb sonovabitch. He’d found his way to Spring City and was hot on Tina’s trail. The town was small, but I still didn’t have time to drive around looking for him. But it sure would have been nice to have some backup. Even if it was Fabian. I laughed.