Second Honeymoon

Chapter 79

SCORES OF MILES of driving, thousands of miles in the air, multiple time zones, and all within twenty-four hours, thanks to a red-eye flight from LAX that we just made with only seconds to spare.

Sarah and I were back in New York and in my car, pulling out of the short-term parking lot at Kennedy Airport.

“Do you smell that?” I asked, fidgeting with the vent. “What’s that smell?”

Sarah laughed. “I think it’s us.”

I sniffed down at my shirt, then recoiled. “Wow—maybe it’s just me. Sorry about that.”

“It’s us, John. Now we have something else in common. We stink to high heaven.”

Showers were in our near future, that much we knew. The agreement before we landed was that we’d drive to my house in Riverside and clean up. The fact that Sarah’s rental car was there made the decision a no-brainer.

The disagreement, however, was about what would happen next.

For the umpteenth time I argued that we should camp out at my house and simply wait for Ned Sinclair to show up.

“It’s not too late to change your mind,” I said as we pulled onto the Van Wyck Expressway, heading toward Connecticut.

And for the umpteenth time she shut me down.

“It’s not my call,” she said. “And speaking of calls, if I don’t make one soon to my boss, I’m going to be in big trouble. Seriously.”

I was pretty familiar with Dan Driesen, her boss, albeit only by reputation—a stellar reputation, I might add.

Quick, name a serial killer active within the last ten years who’s still at large.

Enough said.

“What are you going to tell him?” I asked.

“That it took a while to track you down, but I finally found you,” she said.

“Then what happens?”

“Like I said, you go somewhere safe. And that won’t be your house in Connecticut.”

“The Bureau Hotel, huh?”

“Now with free HBO,” she said jokingly.

“Very funny. Well, kind of funny. No, actually, not funny at all.”

The Bureau Hotel was what agents called the various safe houses across the country that the FBI used. They were mainly for trial witnesses who needed protection, but sometimes, as in my case, an agent was forced to check in.

“Seriously, though, you should decide what you want to do about your boys,” she said.

“I already have,” I said. “If someone’s trying to kill me, I hardly want them at my side, no matter where I’m being stashed.”

“Should they still be at camp, though?”

“Yes—but they’re about to get two new counselors, if you know what I mean.”

She did. “I’ll make the arrangements from your house,” she said.

I thought for a moment about Director Barliss and his perfectly aligned pushpins up at Camp Wilderlocke. I tried to imagine someone telling him that he was about to have two young FBI agents joining his staff for a bit. Other than that, though, there wasn’t much to smile about.

If only to take my mind off everything, I turned on the radio to get the traffic report for the approaching Whitestone Bridge. The station was 1010 WINS—“All news, all the time.”

Amazingly, my timing couldn’t have been any better.

If I didn’t kill us first, that is.

“Look out!” yelled Sarah.

I whipped my head up from the radio to see the back of a Poland Spring delivery truck filling up my entire windshield. Had I been a nanosecond later on the brakes, we would’ve rear-ended it for sure. Boom, smash, air bag city.

And all I could say to her, pointing at the radio, was, “Did you hear that?”