“We’re not gonna buy a car. At least, not a normal car.”

  “Okay.”

  “When you’re driving a stolen vehicle, what do you do with it?”

  I shrugged.

  “Seriously? You never watch any cop shows?”

  “Prison TV was limited to the shopping network and the Disney channel.”

  “All right. Say you steal a car, and you need to flip it quick. Where do you take it?”

  “I dunno. I guess a chop shop.”

  “Exactly. And where do you buy a car that you don’t want traced?”

  “Probably from the same place.”

  “Two for two! Momma’s so proud.”

  “But how do you find a chop shop in a town you’ve never been to?”

  “It’s not as hard as you might think. All you gotta do is find the smallest dealership in the game—the guy who’s barely struggling to hold on, who’s willing to do anything to survive ‘cause the competition is just killing him.”

  “And that’s your chop shop?”

  She winced and shook her head. “No! Of course he isn’t! The criminals aren’t struggling. More than likely, he’s trying to run an honest business. But he knows who isn’t. He knows who’s skating the edge, selling after-market parts or cars. And he either wants in on the action, or he wants to screw the other guy so he can get ahead.”

  “Okay.”

  “So you just gotta go in there, figure out which one he is, and ask the right question.”

  “All right. So how do we do that?”

  She flapped Malcolm’s badge at me. “Well, luckily, one of us is a private eye.”

  Chapter 10

  We agreed to do this in tandem. Mel would go in first and clearly lay out the signals that she was looking to trade one hot car for another. If he was our man, we’d be ready to deal. On the other hand, if the guy threw her out of his office, I’d rescue her with the private investigator shtick, and get him to point us in the right direction.

  I pulled the Mustang into a seedy looking establishment with broken asphalt for the parking lot and a line of touched up used cars featuring bright display signs on their windows. Most of the cars looked like they’d had their rust spots painted over, and I questioned whether or not they’d get us even out of the state, let alone all the way down to Florida.

  Mel climbed out first and sashayed into the dealership’s office, her hips swinging like a bell. I shut the car off and followed after, looking around at the collection of cars glistening in the afternoon sun.

  The doorbells jangled when I went inside, and the look on the salesman’s face—like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar—told me everything I needed to know. Mel patted the man’s hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “He’s with me.”

  “Oh,” the man sighed.

  I ambled up to the counter and gave him my best, winning smile. He glanced nervously at me, and returned his eyes quickly to Mel. I realized my half-melted smile must not be quite so winsome.

  “So yeah, I can… can help you out. You know. One hand rubs the other.” He grinned sheepishly.

  “Oh, you’re such a dear,” she gave him a pouty smile, then reached over the counter and kissed his cheek. He blushed.

  I glowered at him, pointing across the desk at the camera mounted on the ceiling. “First things first,” I growled. “That’s gotta go. No footage.”

  “Oh, no problem.” He splayed his hands. “It’s not even on.”

  “Bull crap.”

  “Well, you’re right, technically. What I mean is that I’ll delete the footage. I mean, we don’t want any record of this little transaction, right?”

  “Do it now.”

  “Oh yeah. Sure. You can trust me.”

  “Show me.”

  “Whoa, hey. Relax. We’re on the same side.”

  Mel touched his hand again. “Don’t let him scare you, none. He’s just a big pussy cat.”

  I pulled my gun out and set it firmly on the counter.

  “Big scary pussy cat,” he muttered, and pulled back from the counter. He moved past me toward the back office. Mel followed, giving my buttocks a firm squeeze as she passed. I grinned tightly and followed.

  In the back room, little more than a closet, the salesman quickly pulled up the video feed from the front of the store. It was all on digital. “See?” he said. “Do this all the time. Just loop hour long feed of nothing happening into it and save the file. Boss never knows a thing.”

  “Just take care of it.”

  “Done,” he replied. “No record. It’s not even recording anymore. I usually do this at the end, you know, so I know how much time to splice. That’s the only reason.” He tapped a few keys and turned around triumphantly. “Satisfied?”

  “All right. Show us what you got.”

  He nodded, and I could see that he was sweating a bit. I wondered how many times he’d done this before. He didn’t look like he was having a good time.

  “Your daughter explained that you’re looking to unload a Mustang, and you’re looking for something a little less, shall we say, recognizable.” He opened a box on the side of the wall and started pawing through the keys there.

  “Nothing more than five years old,” I added, ignoring the daughter comment.

  He cleared his throat. “Sure. Got just the thing. It’s a Toyota Tundra. Good on gas. Ubiquitous. VIN is clean.”

  “Ain’t you got anything American?”

  His jaw went slack, as if he wasn’t sure how to answer. Mel shook her head. “We’ll take it.”

  He nodded quickly, clearly relieved. I rolled my eyes.

  “Right this way,” he said, and led us out back.

  The truck waited in the parking lot had a full tank of gas and looked shiny new. “Hasn’t been in an accident has it? Flood?”

  He stared at me, clearly irritated. “You want the Car Fax on it? I told you: it’s clean.”

  “Just tell me it ain’t gonna break down after a hundred miles.”

  He shook his head.

  “Good, ‘cause if I have to come back here, I ain’t gonna be happy.”

  “Look man,” he said, “you don’t know me, and I don’t know you, and that’s the way it stays. But I’ve been doing this awhile, and I know my business, and the one thing I don’t want are repeat customers. Let alone unsatisfied ones. You think I don’t know the score?”

  I held up a hand. “All right. I believe you.”

  “A thousand dollars and the other car, and we’re done here.”

  I glanced at Mel, wondering if she had that much, but she was already unfurling the roll of bills and counting out hundreds. She held out the cash. The salesman took it, passing her the keys, and then held out his hand to me.

  I fished the Mustang’s keys out and passed them over. He looked at Mel. “Sweetheart, why don’t you go and bring that other car back around here?”

  She took the keys from him and hurried back through the main door. I waited by the truck as the salesman opened the gate. A minute later, Mel roared through the opening. I expected to see a look of satisfaction on the man’s face when he saw the Mustang, but he showed no emotion whatsoever. I wondered what Larry would think when he found out what became of his car.

  Too bad for him.

  Mel parked the Mustang beside the Tundra, and the salesman produced a packet of papers. “Title, registration, and proof of insurance,” he said. “This’ll last you ten days, and then you’ll need to put it in your own name, or whatever.”

  I nodded and said nothing.

  “Right,” the man answered. “Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll start my inspection.”

  “Better let us get our stuff out first,” I said, moving toward the trunk.

  He nodded and climbed into the driver’s seat, making a note of the mileage before popping the hood.

  I lifted the trunk and removed the shotguns and the bags she’d packed for us, handing them over to Mel who slipped them inside the Tundra. When I shut the trunk, the salesman was bent over the back wheel.

  “What the hell is this?” he asked, straightening. When I looked, he held a black device in his hand.

  “Let me see that.” I reached for it.

  “That’s a tracker, isn’t it?”

  I stared at it, dumbfounded.

  “You bringing heat down on me?”

  I remembered now. Curly, bent over beside our vehicle while I was in the service area. He must’ve been installing it on our car. It still didn’t explain how those guys found us.

  Unless they already found Larry. Or worse yet, they knew of my fake ID and pinned my location from the calls those cops in the diner made. I could see how that might’ve happened. Still, how’d they catch us so quickly? And if they could do that, why’d they need a tracking device on us?

  There were things here that didn’t add up. Things that pointed in a direction I didn’t want to go.

  Mel appeared at my elbow. “What’s that?”

  “Tracking device. Those private eyes at the rest stop put it on there.”

  “You knew about this?” the salesman demanded.

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t lie to me, man! I’ve been straight with you.”

  “We didn’t know.”

  “You know what? Forget it. The deal’s off.”

  “The hell it is.”

  “Go on now. Give me the keys back. I don’t wanna see either of you no more.”

  I shook my head. “Mel, get in the truck.”

  “Hey,” he stuck his finger at her as she moved toward the Tundra. “Don’t you do that. That’s still my truck.”

  “That was your truck,” I replied. “You sold it to us.” I moved past him to the front door. He grabbed my elbow.

  Big mistake.

  I whipped around, slammed my palm into his nose, feeling it crunch beneath my blow. The salesman crumpled to the ground. I bent down and picked up the tracking device where he dropped it.

  “We’re done here,” I said. “You understand?” I pulled the gun out and pressed it on to the base of his skull. “Tell me you understand!”

  “O-okay. Take the truck. Just go. Please!”

  I shoved him toward the pavement with the gun barrel and left him quivering on the ground. I kept the gun trained on him as I climbed into the truck. It roared to life when I turned the key. Shifting into gear, I steered around the Mustang and left the salesman lying face down on the ground. As I passed the gate, I couldn’t help but notice the camera mounted on a light pole aimed at the back lot. The camera had witnessed the whole thing. I wondered if we’d been recorded.

  There was no time to find out. I suppose he could use it to cry innocence if anyone came looking for us or for the Mustang, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  As we left the dealership behind, we pulled up alongside a pickup truck with West Virginia license plates and a load of furniture wrapped together with twine and a loose fitting tarp covering the back.

  I unrolled the window, and just before the truck took off at the green light, tossed the tracking device into the back. This done, I turned on my signal and headed back toward the expressway.

  Chapter 11

  We didn’t encounter any more legal difficulties the rest of the day. The Tundra drove a lot smoother than Larry’s old Mustang had, and it was a far cry better on gas. As the miles slipped beneath us, we passed through Pennsylvania, heading for the outskirts of Philadelphia.

  Mel remained silent for most of this trip, choosing to listen to FM radio with her bare feet propped on the dashboard. I toyed with lustful fantasies as I watched her resting, grateful that she had at last relaxed, but another part of me remained keenly aware of two things.

  One, we were still driving a vehicle with questionable provenance, one that wouldn’t stand close scrutiny by any law enforcement personnel. I handled this concern by setting the cruise control on just a few miles above the speed limit and making sure I followed the traffic laws carefully. Two, and this weighed more heavily, I couldn’t shake the nagging suspicion about how those private investigators had found us so quickly.

  It made sense that they’d tied my fake ID to the car those cops in the diner had called in. And I’d pretty much told them what direction we were heading in by mentioning Florida. Surely that made us easier to track.

  Still, it seemed that they’d found us just a little too easily. And the simplest explanation was that they’d been tracking us in one way or another from the beginning.

  Which meant they were on to Mel somehow.

  (or Mel was helping them).

  I shook my head, unwilling to entertain that notion. It didn’t make sense. I was already in prison. The authorities had me right where they’d wanted me. Mel was the one who broke me out. She wouldn’t be cooperating with the cops. No way.

  But then again, these weren’t cops after us. So who might she be cooperating with?

  Toward the end of my bombing spree back in Ontica, when I’d been trying to force the government to give my kids back to me, Detective Rogan had told me a story about Mel—one I’d refused to believe then and didn’t believe now. Not really.

  He’d said Mel was a sociopath. That she’d burned the homes of her foster families before, and had used me to take out her new family. I didn’t believe it because I’d seen the evidence. I had her stepfather’s laptop in my possession. I’d seen the videos of the child trafficking ring on its hard drive. I knew that Mel was telling the truth to me.

  Right up until she turned me in.

  But even that had been because I’d left her alone and the cops found her, forced her into it, made her turn on me or face imprisonment herself.

  No, whatever was happening, however they’d found us, Mel was, at worst, an unwitting participant.

  In which case, I had to find out how they were tracking her.

  ***

  We stopped that evening at another motel just over the Delaware border. Mel paid in cash and came back from the office moments later with the room key.

  “How much money have you got left?” I said as she opened the door to our room.

  “Little less than five hundred.”

  Five hundred? “Seriously? That ain’t gonna get us that far.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know. Didn’t think I’d have to be buying a truck, though.”

  I shut the door behind us. “We need to talk.”

  She wrapped her arms around me and planted a kiss on my lips. “Mmm. We’ll get the money,” she murmured, letting her hands trace over my arms, deliberately heading south. I pushed them away.

  “It’s not the money.”

  She captured my palms and guided me toward the bed. “I am sure,” she said between kisses on my neck, “that whatever it is,” she unbuttoned my shirt, “can wait. Right?”

  I opened my mouth to object. She grabbed my junk. “Right?!”

  “Ah ha,” I winced. “Right.”

  “Good.” She nodded and lay back on the bed. “Ravish me.”

  I stared at her a moment, then surrendered and pulled my shirt off.

  ***

  After the ravishing, I fell asleep for a time, despite the fact that I meant to ask the burning questions weighing on my mind.

  I woke to daylight streaming in through the windows, and the smell of coffee wafting through the room. Mel was seated at the table, perusing her laptop.

  I propped myself up on an elbow and watched her a moment. When she happened to glance my way, she grinned and leaned back in her chair, a happy smile on her face. “Hey.”

  “Morning.”

  She was wearing my shirt, unbuttoned in the front, and nothing else.

  “I made coffee.” She pulled her own cup to her lips and took a sip.

  I’d already seen everything under that shirt, and still I found it enticing. “I noticed.”

  “If you want some, you’ll have to come get it.”

  I snorted. “We still talking about coffee?”

  She grinned. “Maybe.”

  I threw the covers off and climbed off the bed. She watched me approach, still holding her coffee. I bent down as if to kiss her, and then slipped the cup from her hands. “Thanks,” I said, taking a sip.

  She slapped my backside. “You rat! Get your own.”

  I took another sip and handed it back to her before heading for the carafe waiting in the bathroom. “Speaking of getting your own,” I called, “if we’re gonna get out of here, I’m gonna need that shirt back.”

  “Too bad,” she called. “I stole it fair and square.”

  I brought the coffee into the room. “I’ll trade you for it.” I poured the brew into her cup. She tilted her head back and looked up at me. “But then I’ll have nothing to wear.”

  “And this is a problem?” I bent forward and kissed her, letting my free hand roam beneath my shirt. She gave a small moan as I caressed.

  “Mmm,” she said between kisses, “keep this up we ain’t getting anywhere.”

  I withdrew and sat down beside her. “Speaking of which, we still need to talk.”

  “Money worrying you? ‘Cause I’ve come up with a couple of solutions.”

  “No, it’s not the money.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve been puzzling about those investigators.”

  She grinned. “Heh, you said ‘puzzling.’”

  “You don’t use the word ‘puzzling’?”

  “Nobody uses the word ‘puzzling’ anymore.”

  Marvelous. Way to make a guy feel young, Mel. “Anyway. I’m trying to figure out how they found us so quickly.”

  She furrowed her brow. “They had that tracker thingy.”

  “Yeah. But they didn’t put that on till the rest stop. I saw the fat bald guy doing something to the car when I came in. I didn’t put it together till that salesman yanked it off the car.”

  “Okay…”

  “But how’d they find us in traffic before the rest stop?”

  She angled her laptop around. “Look here, Grasshopper. It’s not as hard as you might think.”

  Grasshopper. I wondered if she knew what show that was even from. I’d practically grown up on Kung-Fu. She tapped a few keys and showed me a screen.