The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [99]
Without hesitation, Nancy stepped back off the machine’s rear seat, leaving Ellis alone on the bike.
“Go.”
He whipped his head around. The cars were so close, they were skidding to a halt.
“You can’t.”
“Go,” she repeated. “I’ll be fine. I haven’t done anything.”
It took him a split second. “I love you,” he told her, and gunned the throttle one last time.
The Harley roared across the parking lot, its lightened tail end slithering to and fro, before Ellis jumped it over the lower embankment, hit the downward slope like a circus performer, and, barely under control, proceeded toward the distant road far below.
Nancy stood in the parking lot, feeling utterly alone, even the growl of the bike vanishing by the instant. Her legs were trembling with exhaustion and spent adrenaline.
Seeing Ellis reach the road safely and speed off toward Monument Avenue and freedom, she turned to face their pursuers.
The violence she’d expected to follow—shouted commands, drawn guns, handcuffs, being thrown to the ground—none of it came about.
Instead, with the dust swirling around them in the sun, the four cars remained quiet, their lights flashing silently, and a single man in a jacket and tie got out and approached her at a slow, almost leisurely pace.
She watched him carefully, anxious about what he might do. But his hands were open and loose by his sides, his gait relaxed, and as he drew nearer, she saw that his face, older and friendly, was calm, almost reassuring.
He nodded his greeting as he stopped near her. “Nancy?” he asked.
She nodded back, not sure she could trust her voice.
He smiled slightly, which touched his kind eyes. “My name’s Gunther. We should probably talk.”
It wasn’t a friendly room—small, bare, with a steel table bolted to the floor and two metal chairs. There were strategically placed bars on the wall, at waist level, that Nancy figured were used for handcuffs. The lighting was fluorescent and harsh, the floor gray concrete. There was a camera mounted high in one corner.
Nevertheless, the man who’d introduced himself at the college didn’t seem any less peaceful or friendly. He’d brought her a glass of water, asked her if she wanted to use the bathroom. He’d even cupped her elbow supportively as he steered her to her chair, and asked if the temperature was all right.
“Am I under arrest?” she finally asked.
“No, ma’am,” he said immediately. “You can leave anytime you’d like.”
She hesitated, surprised by that, wondering what the catch might be. “Like right now?”
He smiled slightly. “Like right now.”
She frowned, troubled by her own ambivalence. In the old days, when this scenario had been discussed over beers, it had always been punctuated by admonitions to keep silent, be stern, tell them all to fuck themselves.
But now that she was in it, she felt differently.
“I was hoping you might hear me out first,” he then said. “Your choice, though.”
Nancy eyed him cautiously. “About what?”
“Ellis, for one thing,” he answered conversationally. “And Mel, of course.”
“What about them?” She was struck by his familiarity with their names, as if he’d known them for a very long time.
He gave her a slightly crooked smile—a gesture of sympathetic support. “Well, you’re in kind of a bind there, I would say, caught between the two of them.”
Her crestfallen look confirmed what had been somewhat of an assumption, if not a guess.
“I mean,” he added, “I doubt Mel will be too happy about what’s happened. He doesn’t strike me as a man to gracefully fade away.”
She swallowed hard, which was eloquent enough for Joe.
He leaned forward, placing his forearms on the table. “I saw what happened when we picked you up, Nancy. You took a big risk, getting off the bike so Ellis could get away. You didn’t know what we were after. And yet you did it. That was a sign of love. He knew it. I know it. I think you and Ellis have the real deal with each other, and believe me, that counts for something, especially in this world.”
She was visibly confused by now,