The Book of Lies

63

They’re wrong,” Naomi said into her earpiece as she eased the steering wheel to the right and struggled to leave the three-lane roundabout that was filled with early morning traffic.

“Nomi, I know you had a head injury, but listen to me: Satellites aren’t wrong,” Scotty replied in her ear. “People are wrong. Rental car companies are wrong. But LoJack tracking systems hidden in some secret spot below a rental car? Never wrong.”

With a long honk of her horn, Naomi tried shoving her way past a silver minivan, but the van wouldn’t budge. “You think I don’t know the hell of morning carpool!?” Naomi screamed through her closed window. Ignoring her, the driver of the minivan pretended to scratch her head while giving Naomi the finger.

“I hope your kid has disciplinary problems!” Naomi shouted back, now making her second lap around the roundabout.

“Nomi, you need to calm down.”

“This is calm,” she said as the VA hospital once again appeared in front of her. “I’m just saying: Why would Cal be here? They had full access to a hospital when they dropped me off last night.”

“Maybe something happened. Maybe one of them got hurt.”

“Yeah, but a VA hospital? Cal . . . Cal’s father . . . neither of them was military. Something’s not right.”

“Just head for the parking garage around back. Based on the records and their LoJack signal, you’re looking for a white Pontiac parked near the southeast corner stairwell.”

Eventually exiting the roundabout at East Boulevard, Naomi passed the VA hospital on her left and followed the signs for the parking garage around back. But just as she made the turn, she noticed, out of her passenger-side window, the wide set of short sandstone and taller red-brick buildings that overlooked the hospital’s parking garage . . . exactly at the southeast corner.

“Scotty, you looking at a map?”

“With a little blinking LoJack logo on it.”

“Fine. Tell me what those buildings are across the street from the VA.”

“Looks like . . . one’s an auto museum, there’s an Ohio historical society, plus a pretty big library.”

The car bucked and bumped as Naomi climbed over the speed bumps in the VA’s parking garage. “What kinda library?” she asked, peering in her rearview.

“You see something?” Scotty asked.

“Not yet. But it makes a damn lot more sense than a VA hospital.”

Half a block back, as Ellis drove past the hospital, he studied the taillights on Naomi’s car, then tapped his own brakes to make sure he stayed far enough away. To be safe, he kept a strong hand on Benoni in the passenger seat, scratching her neck just to ensure she kept her head down. Yesterday, he lost so much by listening to the Prophet . . . by not trusting himself. The bloody red spot in his right eye—the result of a broken blood vessel from the fall through the window—was a reminder of that. But as he’d realized when Naomi ran out of the hospital last night, there was no need for him to attack, or threaten, or do anything else to scare her away.

To be moving this early, Cal had cracked the Map. The Book was close. And since Naomi was so much faster than the Judge—as long as she was doing her job, as long as she had their LoJack signal, Ellis was about to get a whole lot closer.