Over Yonder, page 17
“What? Why?”
“Miss, if you’d gather your things.”
Amos stood and wedged himself between her and the agents. “How about you tell us what’s going on.”
The guy glared at him. “Sir, she’s not in any trouble. This is a security measure, for her own protection. If she’ll come with us, we can explain everything.”
Amos kept his body in their way. “You’re not taking her off this bus.”
The bus driver was now joining the action. He was getting upset. “Man, I got a [expletive] load of passengers that needs to be in Atlanta by nine. For [expletive’s] sake, can we hurry this [maternal expletive] up?”
Everyone was glaring at Amos as the source of their delay.
“Sir, if she won’t come with us, we’ll have no choice but to arrest her, and you.”
“You just said she’s not in any trouble.”
The agent drew in a breath.
Another agent took the lead and spoke to Caroline directly. “You have five seconds to choose, ma’am, or I’ll be forced to make a choice for your own safety. We can either do this nicely or less than nicely, but your well-being is what’s at stake here.”
Amos took a step toward the agents, but Caroline held him back.
“It’s okay,” she said to her grandfather. “I’ll go with them.”
She lifted her backpack and threw the strap over her shoulder. Caroline began walking down the aisle, and Amos followed a few steps behind, carrying the cat in his arms.
One of the agents placed a hand on Amos’s chest. “You’ll have to stay on the bus.”
“The hell I will. That’s my granddaughter.”
The officers all looked at each other with tired expressions.
The lead agent said, “Family members aren’t allowed in law enforcement vehicles with detainees. It’s regulation. I’m sorry, but I don’t make the rules.”
“Yeah, well, I want to talk to the person who does. Because when I go into a diabetic coma without my granddaughter to administer my medication, I want to know who’s to blame for my untimely and unfortunate death.”
The officers once again exchanged exhausted looks. Dealing with hypoglycemic, type 2 diabetic octogenarians evidently wasn’t in the bureau training manual. After a few shrugs and nervous sighs, the agents all nodded at each other.
“Bring him,” said the agent.
Chapter 34
The traffic jam looked like the world’s longest string of Christmas lights snaking to the horizon. Woody was riding in the grassy median, bypassing the gridlock, driving over drainage ditches and sewer grates, which limited his speed considerably. When the grass got too high in the median, he switched to driving along the shoulder’s rumble strip, leaning on his horn.
Rachel held on to the chicken bar, at times being tossed whole inches off her elevation correction apparatus.
“Hold on tight!” he said.
“I’m holding!”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, but you know Mom’s going to kill you, right?”
“Literally.”
Woody sounded the horn when his truck came to a Land Rover that was blocking the shoulder. There was no way around the Rover because the highway shoulder dropped off into a grassy ravine.
Woody punched the horn again. “Look at this guy.”
“Can you go around him?”
He looked out the window at the drop-off. “Not unless you want to join the ranks of Socrates.”
“What’s that mean?”
He leaned on the horn again. “Come on! I can’t believe this guy.”
But the Rover was not moving. Instead, the motorist rolled down the window. Slowly, a hand emerged from the open window. The hand gesture that followed indicated that Woody should perform an immoral act upon himself.
Woody rolled down his window. “Get off the shoulder! Move forward! Let me through!”
The Land Rover did nothing. The guy’s brake lights remained illuminated. So Woody got out of the truck.
“What are you doing?” asked Rachel.
“I’m going to pray with him.” Woody slammed the door.
He marched across the uneven shoulder, reaching into his shirt pocket and removing the tiny nitroglycerin tablet cannister. He let one tablet dissolve on his tongue.
Woody rapped on the Rover’s glass. The window did not open. So Woody used his heel to kick the side of the vehicle. The Rover’s steel panel was surprisingly flimsy. It dented without effort. Chinese steel. They just don’t make them like they used to. The loud noise got the driver’s attention.
The man inside staggered out of the vehicle. The guy was wearing a pink polo shirt, seersucker shorts, penny loafers without socks, and a smartwatch. He looked like he’d just left the eighteenth hole. The man was wobbling on his feet, slurring his words, and you wouldn’t have wanted to light a match within ten feet of him.
“Don’t kick my car!” the guy shouted. Then he called Woody a name not fit for print.
“You’re blocking the road,” said Woody.
“You kicked my car!”
Woody watched the man shift his weight from foot to foot, struggling to remain upright and erect. The man was about to slither back into the driver’s seat.
“Sir,” said Woody, “do not get back in that car.”
“What did you just say to me?”
“I said step away. You’re under arrest.”
The guy laughed. “You’re not a cop.”
“And you’re not driving.”
The man laughed. “You can talk to my lawyer.”
“Good idea,” said Woody. “Let’s get the law involved. In fact, let’s call the cops right now.”
“Who are you?”
Woody stormed back to his truck and removed zip ties from his toolbox. Zip ties and duct tape were what held half his boat together. The guy watched Woody thread the ends of his zip ties into themselves to get them started.
“Turn around, sir.”
“I’m not turning around. You turn around.”
The line of traffic began to creep forward ahead of them. Woody was losing precious time. The chain of red taillights began to blink as hundreds of people released their brakes.
“You have three seconds, sir. Turn around or I will disable you.”
The man declared loudly that Woody should go straight to a realm where the worm dieth not. Then the man came at Woody. Woody dodged the man and watched him fall to the gravel. He spun the man around and snapped the zip ties onto the man’s wrists. He guided Pink Shirt into the back passenger seat of his own Land Rover.
“You can’t do this to me,” the guy shouted.
“You can trust me, sir,” said Woody, between wheezing to catch his breath. “You don’t want to go to the place where they put drunk drivers.”
Then he shut the door.
* * *
They handcuffed Caroline and Amos. They said the cuffs were for their own safety but that they weren’t under arrest. Although it felt a lot like being under arrest in Caroline’s book. One of the agents told Caroline to watch her head as he helped her into the back seat of the unmarked black vehicle. Another agent guided Amos into the other side of the back seat.
“Where’s my cat?” said Caroline.
“He’s still on the bus. They’ll bring him soon.”
She turned in her seat to look behind the vehicle. The agents were still on the bus, doing a sweep of the interior. They wore Latex gloves and used flashlights.
Amos and Caroline sat quietly. Through the windows, she could see that traffic was moving again. The long chain of headlamps inched forward. Behind her, she could see the officers flagging traffic.
Amos’s eyes were sober. “These guys are not FBI.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I used to get a paycheck from the US government too. You can smell government workers. These ain’t them.”
“But we’re in a police car.”
Amos shook his head. “This is a Crown Victoria.”
“So?”
“They quit making Crown Vics when you were still making mud pies in the backyard.”
“What’s a mud pie?”
He held out his bound hands. “Where’s the computer thing?”
“The flash drive?”
“Whatever you call it. Give it here.”
She contorted herself, dug through her pocket, and handed Amos the tin box. He opened it, then removed the tiny flash drive.
“What are you going to do?”
“Cooperation only lasts as long as the status quo is unchanged.”
“What’s the status quo?”
“Soon as this guy gets what he wants, he won’t need you or me anymore. We’ve got to find a way to make sure the status quo stays in our favor.”
“How do we do that?”
The old man opened his mouth. He placed the flash drive in his mouth, closed his eyes, and swallowed. “Status quo.”
“What about the pages we printed out?”
Amos darted his eyes to the bus in the distance. “Those documents currently reside at the bottom of the bus latrine.”
They waited in the idling car for what seemed like hours while the agents searched the bus. She could see one of the men emptying her backpack onto the ground. When they were finished, they flagged the bus on, then split off into groups of two. Two agents went toward one car. The other two agents walked toward them.
The door to the vehicle opened. The driver was sturdy looking. He wore a ball cap and an earpiece. He turned to deliver a silvery smile to Caroline, peering through the cage divider.
He was wearing an eye patch.
“Miss me?” he said.
Chapter 35
Woody was seated behind the wheel of a showroom-ready, top-of-the-line, factory-upgraded, leather-upholstered, tricked-out Land Rover Defender, MSRP $110,305. He was riding through the median in style. You could hardly feel the bumps in the road.
“Are you all right?” he asked Rachel, who was sitting in the passenger seat, snuggly secure in her elevation modification mechanism. She gave her dad a thumbs-up.
Woody looked into the rearview mirror.
“How about you, back there?”
The drunk guy in the back seat was cussing and hollering as the vehicle bronco-bucked over the swales like a coaster ride at Busch Gardens. The guy had apparently unbuckled himself and so was bouncing around like a metal ball in a can of spray paint.
Without warning, Woody slammed the brakes. The Rover’s bumper almost slammed into another vehicle that had unexpectedly moved in front of the vehicle.
The guy in the back seat shot forward. “You son of a—”
“Dad!”
Woody weaved around the car and hit the gas.
“Talk to me, Rachel.”
“Something’s changed,” she said.
Rachel held the phone for both of them to see. The dot started blinking.
“What’s blinking mean?” said Woody.
“Means they’re changing directions.”
“Are you sure that’s what it means?”
Rachel looked at him flatly. “Dad. I literally use this app all the time.”
In the meantime, the guy in back was spitting venom. “You’re going to get in so much trouble. My lawyers are going to put you under the jail. You don’t even know who I am, you low-down—”
Woody mashed the gas.
The guy was sucked backward into his buffalo-leather-upholstered seat. But the acceleration was short-lived. Woody hit the brake pedal and came to a skidding stop. He could feel the man collide into the backs of their seats.
“She’s turning around now,” said Rachel. “She’s coming toward us.”
“Turning around?”
“I want your full name, you sorry sack of elbows. Because when my lawyers are through with you, you won’t even be able to brush your own—”
“Hold on to your butts,” said Woody.
Woody spun the wheel and stamped the pedal. He made a two-point turn in the median, and the innards of the Land Rover went flying against the windows. Rachel held the overhead bar. The guy in back made contact with the vehicle ceiling on more than one occasion.
The Rover was positioned on the highway shoulder of the oncoming lane, ready to join the flow of traffic. In the distance, they could see a vehicle approaching. A law enforcement vehicle, about half a mile away. The car had a light bar, but it wasn’t flashing.
“Is that them?” Woody asked.
Rachel zoomed in on the screen. “Pretty sure that’s her.”
“You’re in so much trouble. When I tell my dad about this, it’s over for you. If you knew who you were dealing with, you’d be—”
Woody hit the gas.
All eight cylinders howled for mercy. The Rover had more getup than a NASA Falcon 9 on its way through the exosphere.
In a few seconds, Woody was tailing the vehicle. It was a Crown Vic. Plain black. No identification. Side-mounted spotlight. Light bar on top. A push bar on the front bumper. The plates were civilian. He kept a steady pace behind the vehicle, staying a few car lengths back.
Woody looked into the rearview mirror. The man was currently puking onto the floorboards. The whole car was beginning to smell. Woody rolled down the back windows.
In the car ahead, he saw the back of his dad’s head.
Chapter 36
“Where are you taking us?” asked Amos.
After a long drive, the agents’ vehicle veered off the highway. Tires crunching on gravel. They had long since shed their ballistic vests and false badges. They had started talking differently too. Less officially. More swear words.
“Hey, spitwad,” said Amos. “I asked you a question.”
Nobody responded.
“Hello?” said the old man.
The cat was growing restless on Caroline’s lap. Growling so that his rib cage was vibrating. His claws were digging into Caroline’s thighs.
“Excuse me?” said Amos. “Someone start talking to me or we’re going to have a problem back here.”
The men up front were talking but not to him. So Amos started beating on the caged partition. The partition was flimsier than it looked.
The men stopped talking and looked back at him. “Stop doing that,” said the guy with the patch.
Amos used his palms to smash the cage divider again. This time the grating looked like it might give way.
“I said stop it.” The man with the patch was remarkably calm. “Tell me what you need, please? Use your words.”
“I have to go to the bathroom. El baño, estupidos.”
“I’m sorry. You’re going to have to hold it.”
“You don’t look very sorry. And I’ve been holding it an hour. I have a prostate as big as a watermelon. The upholstery back here is about to get baptized if you don’t let me out.”
The two men sighed and traded looks. Amos gyrated his hips so that his rear made squeaks on the upholstery, scooting around in his seat to drive his point home.
But the men in the front seat ignored him.
Amos used his boots to kick the cage divider this time. The grate rattled loudly. One of the brackets came loose and one side of the cage disconnected from the vehicle.
“I said . . .”
Kick. Kick.
“I have got . . .”
Kick.
“To go . . .”
Kick.
“Pee!”
Kick, kick.
Eye Patch turned in his seat to face the old man. He shouted so loudly Amos could see the veins in his neck bulging. He removed a pistol and trained it on Amos. Before Eye Patch could say anything, the other guy interjected.
“Watch the road,” said the other man. “Just pull over and let him use the bathroom. He can’t run off anywhere out here. He can’t even run. Look at him.”
In a few minutes, the car pulled into an abandoned gas station with an unlit parking lot. There was nothing around for miles but vacant highway, tall pines, and a spotless night sky.
The vehicle eased to a stop. The car’s headlamps illuminated the abandoned filling station so that it looked almost haunted in the darkness. The station’s front windows had been covered with plywood. The tall gas station sign, once a Texaco, was leaning downward. There were no lights around for miles. No traffic on the old highway either. They were in the sticks. The roads twisted and turned like giant eels.
The driver turned the pistol on Amos again. “You’d better make this quick or you’re going to be very sorry.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Amos said. “We get it. You’re the silent, brooding type. Now let me out of this car.”
Eye Patch stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind him. The loud slam of metal on metal caused the cat to grow uneasy in Caroline’s lap. Caroline groaned in pain as the cat sank its claws deeper into her thighs.
Eye Patch yanked open her door and pressed the pistol to the old man’s temple. Hard steel rested against Amos’s hairline.
The man shouted, “Get out! Both of you!”
But the cat had embedded its claws into Caroline’s thighs. “I can’t!” Caroline said. “I have a cat in my lap.”
Amos crawled out of the car on shaky legs.
“You too,” the man said to Caroline.
“I don’t need to go to the bathroom.”
“I said get out!” Eye Patch swore, then reached into the car and grabbed Caroline by the hair. The cat hissed wildly and clung to Caroline’s body, clawing at the fabric of her clothes. Caroline screamed.
“Let her go!” shouted Amos.
“Shut up!”
The guy attempted to remove the hissing cat from Caroline’s body by grasping the cat’s tail.
Grasping an angry cat by the tail teaches a man something he can learn in no other way.
Chapter 37
Woody’s vehicle came screeching into the abandoned gas station. His headlights were aimed on the Vic, all its doors slung open. What he saw mystified him. One man was stumbling around, screaming, with something attached to his face. Whatever was clinging to his head had a tail. The man was shouting in agony.
