Save Me

Chapter Seventy-three

WELCOME TO HOMESTEAD SNACK FOODS, read the sign, and Rose saw it with new eyes. The campus was quiet without the hubbub of school groups and visitors, but the streetlamps and the windows in the corporate offices blazed with light, like a plastic town in a model train set-up. Bright, false, and lifeless.

She cruised down the access road, passing the exits signed for VISITORS, BUSES, and MAIN PLANT. The main plant had no windows to show the lights inside, but she could hear the faint noise of the production machinery. Clouds of steam spewed from the smokestacks, hissing when they hit the cool night air. The employee parking lot was only partly full, and Rose remembered from the tour that a third of the employees worked the night shift.

She kept an eye out for Eileen’s van but it wasn’t anywhere in sight. She hadn’t seen it in the rearview mirror on the way over, but she hadn’t gone slow enough to let Eileen catch up with her. She had a different plan in mind.

She took a left at the Conference Center sign, peeling off onto a long road that wound through the trees and fed into its large parking lot, almost full to capacity. Lamps illuminated the lot at regular intervals, casting cool light on the still cars. She parked at the back near the entrance, as far away from a lamp as possible, then cut the ignition, scanning the scene.

The lot was quiet, because everybody was already at the huge party at the Conference Center. The building had floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and inside, hundreds of dressed-up couples danced on the wooden floor or ate at round banquet tables, lit with candles. A large band played, and the thumpa-thumpa of bad seventies rock carried on the night air, then the horn section segued into some sort of fanfare. Men in tuxes ascended a decorated dais, presumably the Homestead CEO and other corporate officers. The last tuxedoed man in line was Senator Martin, who climbed the steps waving his hands, and the crowd broke into applause loud enough to be heard in the parking lot.

Rose checked the building entrance, on the side of the building facing the corporate offices. Smokers stood outside the main doors, the red tips of their cigarettes glowing, and two security guards were talking, visible only because of their bright white shirts and caps. Parked off to the side was a white sedan that read PLANT SECURITY, and she guessed that Senator Martin would have his own security detail inside.

Rose cracked her driver’s side door, slipped outside, and stole across the access road to the other side, then ducked behind the shrubs. The ground was cool and the shrubs scratchy, but she stayed low, and waited. It didn’t take long.

Eileen’s blue van cruised slowly down the access road to the conference center, approaching the parking lot.

Rose got up into a crouching position, but stayed behind the bush.

Eileen glided into the lot and parked in a space far from the entrance to the conference center, near Rose’s car. The window on the driver’s side was closed, but Rose could see Eileen because of her light hair.

Eileen had faced the van so that she’d be away from the conference center, just as Rose had thought she would.

It was time to go.

Rose counted.

One, two, three.