“Their car is still here.”

When pulling into the compound, they’d spotted the blue Honda parked outside the cabin farthest from the office and the road.

“So how’d they leave?” Rawlins asked.

“With the two guys.”

Rawlins and Wilson shared another look of misapprehension. “What two guys?” Wilson asked.

The clerk began to look uneasy. He raised both skinny arms in surrender. “This ain’t none of my doin’, and I want no part of it. I’ll give the owner the money for the cabin. Swear.”

“What two guys?” Wilson repeated.

“All’s I know, they drove in here in a black car. Didn’t stop at the office. Went directly to the cabin. A few minutes later, they drove out again. The dude was in the back seat on the driver’s side. Woman with long hair was on the other side of the back seat. Never saw her face. Just the back of her head through the rear window.”

“Which direction did they go?”

“To the right.”

“South.”

He blinked. “I guess.”

Rawlins persisted. “What kind of black car?”

“Didn’t notice the make, but it was new. Wheels were shiny chrome. Flashy.”

“Mercedes sedan,” Wilson announced, surprising Rawlins, who turned to him for elaboration.

“They were at the café,” Wilson said. “Got there shortly after the doctor and me. They parked across the street, but I noticed the car.” He gave Rawlins a description of the two men. “I remember thinking the car had to belong to the big guy. Clothes were wrinkled, but quality.”

“What about the other one?”

“He was dressed in a dark suit, too, but he’d have looked more at home in a gangsta hoodie.”

“What did they do when they came in?”

“Took a booth. Ate breakfast. Didn’t talk much or show any interest in her or me.”

“What about her? Did she react when she saw them?”

“No. In fact, her back was to them till we went to the door and said goodbye.”

“But that’s where and when she brushed you off,” Rawlins said.

Wilson extended his hand to the desk clerk. “Give me the key to that cabin.”

The attendant fished around in a cluttered drawer and produced a key with a cardboard tag that had the number ten on it. Wilson took it from him. He and Rawlins headed for the door.

“Can I come?”

“No,” the deputies chorused.

The towels in the bathroom were still damp. The bed and pillows had been lain on. Other than that, there was nothing in the cabin cluing them to where Brynn O’Neal and Rye Mallett had gone, nothing identifying the two men they’d left with.

“I don’t suppose you got that Mercedes’s license plate number.”

Wilson shook his head with chagrin. “Not even a partial.”

Rawlins headed for the open cabin door. “Well, lucky for us the café got burglarized last spring.”

Wilson caught his chain of thought and hurried to catch up. “The café has a security camera.”

“Installed the week after the break-in.” Rawlins walked toward his SUV.

Wilson slowed down only long enough to retrieve Marlene White’s key fob from under the rock where Mallett had told her it would be. Wilson had offered to drive the car back for her and park it in the hospital lot. “I’ll leave the key for her at the admissions desk,” he told Rawlins. “Pick me up out front.”

“On the way, I’ll call the owner of the café and tell him to meet us there. I want to see his security camera video.”

“He won’t like it. It’s Thanksgiving.”

“I don’t care if it’s the Second Coming. Brady is still in ICU, condition guarded. Rye Mallett and Dr. O’Neal might have made nice with Marlene, but they still have a lot to answer for.”

3:03 p.m.

“I knew we shouldn’t have trusted her to go alone,” Delores said. “I told Nate as much. This proves my instinct was right.” She reached for the crystal stem at her place setting and raised the glass of wine to Richard.

They toasted and drank.

The traditional Thanksgiving meal was being served to them in their formal dining room. They were having it midday in anticipation of the eventful evening. The senator sat at the head of the long table, Delores adjacent to him on his right. They had dressed for the occasion to keep up appearances of normalcy, if only for their housekeeper-cook.

Minutes before they were due in the dining room, they had received the call from Goliad that they had been nervously awaiting. For the most part, the news had been good. Dr. O’Neal had been located.

However, the circumstances in which she’d been found had sent Delores into orbit. She was still circling.

“What could possibly have induced her to have a rendezvous while the clock is ticking down?” She punctuated the words by stabbing her fork into a slice of turkey breast meat.

“Animal magnetism?”

Her fork clattered against the china plate. “How can you joke about it, Richard? Although the way Goliad has described this pilot, it does sound as though he’s still evolving.”

He smiled. “I doubt he’s that low, or Dr. O’Neal wouldn’t have found him attractive.”

“I don’t care if he’s been named Sexiest Man Alive, what could have possessed her?” She ignored her plate of food and followed the progress of her fingertip around the embossed pattern on the tablecloth. “I hope it was only sex that kept her away for so long. It all sounds very fishy, like she and this pilot have teamed up.

“That business about the receipt sounds like utter nonsense. You’re a senator. Have you ever heard of an FAA regulation to that effect?” Without waiting for Richard’s answer, she threw her linen napkin onto the table and stood up. “I’ll have someone in your office look it up.”

“Delores, sit down.”

His imperative tone halted her. She looked at him with surprised affront.

“Dr. O’Neal is a young, healthy, and independent woman. She wanted to go to bed with the man. Stop making something monumental of it.” He spoke in a measured and reasonable voice, which had much more impact than a rant. It suggested anger barely contained, a fragile control over his temper.

Delores slapped her hand over the center of her chest. “Well, forgive me if saving your life is monumentally important to me.”

He took a deep, steadying breath. “I apologize for using such a strident tone with you. We’re both on edge.” He stood and held her chair. “Please, Del. Let’s finish our meal.”

She sat and resumed eating, but her passivity didn’t last for long. “And Nate,” she said his name with disdain. “He hadn’t even noticed that his colleague was hours overdue.”

He had failed to return their repeated calls, and when he finally had, it was to tell them that he’d received a text from Brynn just before eight o’clock, saying that she would be leaving Howardville soon. He reminded them that he’d been up all night. Thinking all was well, he’d turned off his phone and had gone to bed to nap.

He apologized profusely for his lack of vigilance and was greatly relieved to hear that Brynn was being escorted back by men in their employ. He was waiting for her at his office.

Delores said, “Nate was appalled to learn what she’d been doing during those lost hours and promised to take up the matter with her.”

“Will he revoke privileges, do you think? Or ground her?” Richard asked, keeping a straight face.

“More joking?”

“I just don’t see this as the end of the world. Goliad has the situation in hand.”

She murmured in agreement.

Richard eyed her keenly. “But?”

She stared into the near distance, then set her cutlery on her plate, her food barely touched. “I don’t want to leave anything to chance, or to anyone unreliable, as Dr. O’Neal has proven herself to be. It’s up to us, you and me, to make this work.”

Realizing there was more to what she had to say, Richard leaned back in his chair and patted his lap. She came around and sat in it. In a wifely manner, she adjusted the Windsor knot of his necktie.

“I’ve had an idea,” she said. “It’s rather audacious. Don’t say no until you’ve heard me out.”

“I’m intrigued. What do you have in mind, darling?”

Chapter 15

4:12 p.m.

When they left the cabin, Goliad offered to place the black box in the trunk of the Mercedes, but Rye had insisted on it riding in the back seat with him. It was on the floorboard between his feet. His flight bag was in his lap. Snug in the pocket of his jacket was his nine-millimeter. Sans clip. At Goliad’s insistence.

As Rye reluctantly surrendered the clip, Goliad had told him that as soon as Dr. Lambert signed off on the delivery of the box, Rye would get his bullets back.

He hadn’t specified how.