She watched one couple separate themselves from the others. The woman, who had long, dark hair, lifted it off the back of her neck to let the air cool her. She followed her escort away from the building and then stopped under one of the lamps mounted on a pole in the lot. The man was big and tall, with a short, thick beard with a little gray in it, but the woman was the one who caught Leah’s attention.

She was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with black printing on it. There was a picture of a broadsword with the hilt up and the blade down, so it looked like a cross. And above the handle were the three letters “SSS.”

Leah slumped low in the driver’s seat of her rental car and let her eyes follow them. The man opened the driver’s side of a red pickup truck and got in, and the woman headed for the passenger side and climbed in after him.

Leah waited to hear the man start the pickup before she turned the key on her rental car.

34

Bob Carpenter drove the red pickup out of the parking lot behind Wally’s Sky Club. As he accelerated, the rear tires threw a volley of pea-size gravel into the air, where it bounced off the cars in the last row.

Charlotte said, “Jesus, Bob. You’re driving way too fast.”

“I’ve got the truck under control. I drive it every day of my life, so it’s like part of my body. Don’t tell me you’re scared.”

“Yeah, I’m scared. You’re under the influence, for one thing. You’ve got control in the parking lot of a bar lit up like Christmas, but we’re driving onto a dark road through thick woods. What happens when that twelve-point buck leaps into the road? Deer don’t hang around at bars, but a hundred yards down the road we could be dead. It happens all the time on these mountain roads.”

“If it’s a twelve-point buck, I’ll pistol-shoot him and make him into a trophy. You can hang our socks on his antlers to dry.”

Charlotte put her hand on his thigh. “Slow down for me, Bobby.”

He took his foot off the gas pedal, but he also took his eyes off the dark road and looked at her instead. “There. Is that slow enough?”

“It’s a start,” she said. “Just pay attention to the road. I don’t want to spend the night in a jail or a hospital, or move into a cemetery tomorrow.”