Dead Even - Mariah Stewart [5]
“If we were going to play the game, then we would each have a list, and we would each promise to do the other’s list, right?” Lowell said, as much to break the tension as anything else.
“Boy, you don’t give up, do you?” Giordano laughed for the first time that Lowell could remember.
“First we’d have to decide how to figure out who would, you know, do whose people.”
After a moment during which he’d thought this over, Lowell brightened. “I know. We could each pick a number between one and thirty and guess which number the other guy is thinking of.”
Lowell thought this made him appear clever, to have come up with the method of choosing, but Giordano was laughing again, as if the whole thing was a big joke. Which, of course, it was.
“Okay, Channing, you go first. Think of a number between one and thirty, and me and Vince will see if we can guess. Whoever comes closest to your number, gets your list.”
“Why don’t we just keep this simple,” Channing suggested. “Archer takes my list, I’ll take yours, Giordano, and you’ll take Archer’s.”
“Cool.” Lowell nodded, pleased that his new friends were apparently beginning to get into the spirit of things.
“It’s just a game, Archer. Just a game.” Giordano was back to that annoying tone of his.
Lowell shot him a look that said, Of course it is, then turned to Channing, who was being much more fun than Giordano was.
“Okay, so who’s on your list, Channing? Who would I be going to see?”
“I think we should lower our voices,” Giordano insisted. “Just in case someone is listening. Even though it’s just a game . . . and none of this is ever going to happen.”
“Right, right, sure.” Lowell nodded with mounting enthusiasm. “Sure. None of this is going to really happen. It’s just a game. I know that. Just a game.”
Yet even as he spoke, there was a keen sense of conspiracy in the air, and he couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to play the game for real. What it would be like to put his hands around the throat of a stranger, and squeeze until there was no reason left to keep on squeezing. Or to pull the trigger of a gun, and watch a man fall, his life spreading around him in a thin red pool.
He sneaked a side glance at his companions. They knew what it was like, both of them. He’d bet his life on it.
But he’d never really know, he reminded himself. After all, it was just pretend.
CHAPTER
ONE
Fingertips tapped lightly on either side of the rim of the steering wheel, a quiet expression of annoyance favored by FBI Special Agent Miranda Cahill when faced with a vexing situation over which she had no control. The current immovable object was the rental car that had buzzed along nicely from the Natrona County Airport just a short hop from Casper, Wyoming, where she had picked it up, to the spot where it had sputtered unceremoniously to a stop some fifteen miles from Pine Tree Junction.
At least, that was where the last road sign had placed her, but that had been close to half an hour ago. She wondered if perhaps somehow she’d taken a wrong turn. Tough to do, she thought wryly, when there had been so few turns to be taken.
She turned the key in the ignition one more time, praying for a smooth start. Her prayers were answered with the clack-clack-clack of an engine that steadfastly refused to turn over. Battery, maybe. Or perhaps the starter. Either way, the Taurus was dead. And that meant she would be walking the rest of the way to Linden, however far that might be, if she was going to get there today.
Cursing aloud, she got out of the car.
“I should leave you unlocked, you know that?” She spoke aloud to the car, pausing with the key in her right hand. “Let’s see how you like being abandoned out here in the middle of nowhere, all alone. Defenseless. May you be pilfered and vandalized.”
She locked it anyway, tossed her large brown tote bag over her shoulder, and set off on foot toward her destination. Hardly defenseless herself, she slipped her Sig Sauer