Ghost Country

Chapter Forty

He faded in and out. More out than in. His head hurt like hell.

He was lying on thin, bristled carpeting. There was something rumbling beneath it. His thinking cleared a bit, and he understood that the rumbling came from a spinning axle.

He opened his eyes. He was lying bound on the floor of an SUV. He was in the back. The rear seat had been removed to make a flat storage bay. The vehicle was still in the city. The high steel and stone and brick faces of buildings slid by overhead.

He heard Finn and at least two other men talking up front. He heard a wash of static and then he heard Finn tell someone in another vehicle-or a number of vehicles-to take 495. A minute later the roof of a tunnel drew across the view, and the city was gone. The hum of the tires echoed in the enclosed space.

Travis took in fragments of the conversation between Finn and the others. Pieced together what'd happened. They'd hauled his unconscious body down through the ruin of Garner's building and carried it two blocks to where it was safe for them to come back through the iris-inside a private garage. They didn't have Paige and Bethany. The two of them had been long gone by the time Finn's men had reached the bottom of Garner's building.

The procession of SUVs traveled for a long time on the freeway. Travis didn't bother keeping track.

Finn made a phone call. It wasn't on speaker, but over the drone of the vehicle's engine, Travis heard it ring four times before voice mail answered.

"Audra, it's me," Finn said. "Everything's tied off here, at least as well as it can be. I should be on-site about eight hours from now. I'll call you again from the air."

He hung up.

Travis considered what he'd heard. Audra. Alive. It wasn't all that surprising. He might have guessed it if he'd thought about it, given what he'd realized at Garner's place.

A few minutes later the motorcade pulled off the freeway. It took a series of turns and short jogs, and finally stopped. One of the front doors of the vehicle Travis was in opened and shut. The driver kept the engine running. Footsteps came around the back of the vehicle and then the rear window popped open. Travis heard the whine of jet engines powering up nearby.

Finn leaned in and stared down on him. He had the surviving cylinder tucked under his arm. In the dome light, the man's eyes looked deeply troubled.

"What's going to happen to you about an hour from now," Finn said, "I despise more than anything there is. I wish to hell it could be avoided. But it can't be, this time. There's too much at stake. I need to know what you know, and who else you've spoken to. So please just cooperate with the interrogators. They'll know if you're being truthful. And it'll be over sooner."

His eyes stayed on Travis a moment longer.

"I'm sorry," Finn said. He looked like he meant it. Then he closed the window again, pounded twice on the roof, and walked away.

Travis saw the glow of headlights swing through the side windows as two other vehicles backed out of nearby spaces and took the lead. His own pulled out and followed, and a few minutes later they were on the freeway again.