I waited for Valerie to keep talking and perhaps answer my question. She did neither.

"You're not going to tell me, are you?"

She smiled. "We have to keep some mystery between us, don't we?"

I practically froze. That was exactly what Claire had said to me the night she was killed.

"What?" asked Valerie. "What did I say?"

"Nothing," I finally answered.

But she, too, knew the sound of that nothing. The look she gave me. Still, she let it go. A touch of woman's intuition, perhaps.

Regardless, the next few minutes for me were inevitable. Memories of Claire came like clicks on the meter in the taxi, one after another, especially from our last moments together.

It's often asked, if you knew this was your last night on earth, what would you do? Had that night with Claire been my last night, though, there was nothing I would've changed. Well, almost nothing. I would've never let Claire go.

"Front or back?" asked the driver.

The question snapped me out of it as I looked up to see him pulling into the Comforter Motel. Staring at the nearly empty parking lot, it was easy to wonder if the NO in the NO VACANCY sign had ever been illuminated.

"The back," I said.

As he pulled around, I went over the ground rules with Valerie again regarding Owen. We'd gotten pretty good at cutting deals on the fly.

"I go up and explain the situation, tell him you're here waiting in the taxi," I said. "Then I wave you up, okay?"

"Whoa, excuse me?" blurted out the driver.

I'd forgotten about the other deal maker among us. He wasn't liking the way his end was shaking out. "Is there a problem?" I asked.

"You're only paying me to drive you here," he said. "That's the problem."

I reached into my pocket again for more cash, but Valerie stopped me, reaching into her own pocket. She'd had enough of this guy. Money may talk, but a badge shuts them up every time.

"Let's try this again," she said. "Is there a problem?"

She was holding her badge so close to his eyes she was practically slapping his face with it.

With a slow shake of his head, he got with the program. No problem.

"You can park over at the end there," I said, pointing to an area near a set of stairs.

There was no other sound beyond the engine idling as I stepped out to the back lot and made my way up to the second floor, or the penthouse, as Owen jokingly called it. We had the first room off the stairs, as well as the one next to it with a connecting door. Once again, the two room strategy. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Key card in hand, I eyed the lipstick camera Owen had taped above the sign for the vending machines about twenty feet away.

Then came the last safeguard-the knocking sequence to ensure we were truly alone. I suppose I was fudging that one a bit.

Two knocks followed by one followed by two. The area code of Manhattan. There's no place like home.

Less than a minute later, though, I was back down at the taxi. From the look on my face alone, Valerie knew we had problem. It was the kind no badge could solve.

"What is it?" she asked.

That was part of the problem.

I wasn't sure.

CHAPTER 96.

OWEN WAS GONE.

That was the only thing I knew for sure. Both our rooms were empty. Empty of him, at least. Gone, too, was his backpack, his bag of tricks.

But my duffel was right where I'd left it in one of the closets, everything still inside. My guns, the extra cash. In fact, everything else in the room looked normal.

"Did they kidnap the maid, too?" asked Valerie, standing in the doorway.

Okay, I said normal, not clean. You put two guys in a hotel on the lam for a few days and it isn't going to be pretty.

But that was the question, wasn't it? Had Owen been taken or had he left on his own? There was a Mobil station with a convenience mart a half mile down the road where we'd been picking up some snacks, but the chances of his taking the walk at one o'clock in the morning seemed remote.

"Where are you going?" I asked Valerie. She was headed back out the door, her gun drawn.

"We start with the perimeter," she said.

I understood. Standard police procedure. Start from the outside-in this case, literally-and work your way in.

"His name's Owen," I said.

"What about a last name?"

I must have looked like a stumped contestant on a game show. All this time together and I'd never found out his last name. "Huh" was all I managed.

"Don't worry about it," she said, turning again to leave.

"Wait, don't you want to know what he looks like?"

She stopped just long enough to make me realize that while trust was one thing, the whole truth was another.

"He's tall, slender, with brown hair, s.h.a.ggy. Does this with his hands from time to time," she said, doing a perfect imitation of his dry wash routine. "Oh, and for the record, his last name is Lewis."

She walked out.

I stood there in shock, wondering how Valerie knew all that, and equally confounding, why she hadn't just told me in the first place. There were no quick answers. What there was, though, was something in my eye line. Owen's laptop.

He had it linked to the lipstick camera outside, our makeshift surveillance system. Since the moment he'd first hooked it up, it had been sitting atop the c.r.a.ppy-looking credenza featuring the TV, plastic ice bucket, and the Yellow Pages.

Now the laptop was in the middle of the queen bed closer to the bathroom. I mean, right in the middle. As if the bed were its pedestal. The only thing missing was the neon sign over it that was blinking, Look at me, Trevor!

I walked over and tapped the s.p.a.ce bar, waking up the screen. I expected to see the same running image that had been there for days, the walkway outside both our rooms. Only, now there was something in front of it. A picture.

No, make that a message. But only for me.

In a pop-up window was an ill.u.s.tration off Google Images, one of those goofy clip-art signs that read GONE FISHING.

Now I just had to figure out what it was supposed to mean. Fishing for what?

"What are you looking at?" came Valerie's voice by the door. She was back.

I had a split second to make a decision. Given our track record, telling her it was nothing was off the table. It had to be something. But did it have to be the whole truth?

This trust thing was getting a bit tricky.

"Behind you," I said. "That's what I'm looking at."

I spun the laptop around, but not before clicking the ill.u.s.tration closed. What remained was the feed from the outside camera.

"Clever," she said, tracing the angle to the sign for the vending machines. "Owen's doing, I a.s.sume?"

"It seems you'd know that even better than me," I said.

That got me a smirk but nothing more. She was far more concerned with taking one more lap around both rooms to see if there was something she'd missed the first time. There wasn't.

"All right, grab your stuff," she said. "Let's get going."

"Going?"

"You didn't still think you'd be staying here, did you?"

Actually, I hadn't thought anything. But Valerie obviously had.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Someplace with inside doors," she said.

CHAPTER 97.

"GOOD MORNING, Mr. Mann, how did you sleep?" asked Jeffrey Crespin, my human alarm clock. He'd taken it upon himself to shake me awake at six a.m.

How did I sleep? It's the crack of dawn.

"Sparingly," I was tempted to answer. But it was too early and I was too tired for glibness. "Fine," I said instead.

He was sitting on a folding metal chair at the end of my cot, wearing a blue blazer and jeans. I guess the jeans were how he unwound on a Sunday. "Would you like some coffee?" he asked.

I looked over his shoulder to see Valerie in the doorway, taking a sip from a mug, the string from a tea bag hanging over the edge. She was wearing the same Beverly Sands outfit she'd had on four hours ago, which answered the question of where she'd spent the night. It was here.

Wherever the h.e.l.l that might be.

Not only didn't I know, I was never supposed to know. Hence the Bruce Wayne and Batcave routine after leaving the motel in Arcola. Valerie'd had the taxi take us to an underground parking garage in Fort Meade, where we got into an unmarked van, but only after she put a sack over my head. For real.

Then again, I guess that's why they call it a safe house.

"Yeah, some coffee would be good," I said. "Cream, if you have it. No sugar."

"I'll see what they have," said Valerie before disappearing into the hallway.

Crespin leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. "I suppose there's also tea, but I figured you more for coffee," he said.

"You figured right."

"Funny thing, though. Do you know who never drinks coffee?"

"I give up."

"Frank Karcher."

I immediately liked where this was going, and Crespin could tell. For only the second time, I saw him smile.

"Al Dossari called him?"

"Late last night," he said. "When he was finally feeling better, I presume."

"What did he say?"

"Everything you told him at the bar."

"But as soon as he heard my name ..."

"That was the best part. You'd think Karcher would've told Al Dossari he'd been played by you, but he didn't. He just thanked him for the heads-up."