Page 91 of Gone Tonight
ACTTHREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWORUTH
The Bonneville is illegally parked by the curb in front of the side exit of Pizza Piazzo. My set of keys are in my hand. Our car is unlocked. The wheels are pointed toward the exit.
“Get in!” I command Catherine.
The crowd of shaken diners is gathered outside at the other end of the restaurant. Everyone who was in Pizza Piazzo fled in that direction because it meant running away from the kitchen fire.
That’s what I counted on when I set it using a votive candle and a vat of cooking grease.
Catherine is moving too slowly. She’s dead weight. I’m her polar opposite—electricity sparks through me, filling my limbs with an uncommon strength. I propel her to our car as sirens scream in the distance. The emergency dispatchers will send fire trucks and ambulances as well as police. It’s impossible to tell which responders will arrive first.
Surely by now James has melted toward the edge of the crowd and is detaching himself as he prepares his own escape. The last thing he wants is to be here—the precise spot where he was arrested almost twenty-five years ago—when the cops show up, even if he is wearing a black wig and tortoiseshell glasses as a disguise.
James can’t see us through all the chaos, I tell myself even as my panic soars to a level of near hysteria.
“Put on your seat belt!” I bark at Catherine, then I dart around the hood, sliding behind the wheel a few seconds later.
I yank the dish towel off my face and peel out of the parking lot, the rear of the car fishtailing as I stomp on the gas pedal. As we speed toward the highway, my eyes flick between the road in front of me and the one behind me. I don’t know what kind of vehicle James is driving, but it’s a safe bet he stole it.
Which means he could be in any of the cars or vans behind me, including the truck with a roofing company logo on the side.
I tap my brakes as another police car comes shrieking down the road in the opposite direction. The moment it passes, I accelerate.
It should be almost impossible for James to be tracking us right now, I tell myself. The parking lot was on the other side of the building, and the crowd would have blocked anyone from making a quick escape.
But James found our daughter the day after being released from prison. He must have lured her to the pizza place, and I got here just in time to interrupt whatever he’d planned for her.
James seems almost superhuman.
A chill races through me and I grip the wheel more tightly.
Seeing James again completely unnerved me, even though he had no idea I was watching him from the Bonneville as he entered the restaurant. At first, I didn’t know it was him—his disguise worked—then something about the way he carried himself clicked.
During his time in jail, James shed his civilized veneer, like a creature crawling out of its exoskeleton. Now his surface matches his insides. He presents as a powerful, dangerous man, from his overdeveloped muscles to the way he picked up the serrated knife at his place setting and repeatedly ran his fingertip over the jagged edge as I watched from a side window.
As I approach a stoplight, it turns yellow. I press the gas pedal almost to the floor and run through the intersection a few seconds after the light flips to red.
I’m another five miles down the road before I briefly pull my eyes away from the road to look at Catherine.
She’s curled up in her seat, her eyes vacant, still coughing occasionally.
I press the button to unroll her window a few inches, hoping clean air will cleanse the lingering smoke out of her lungs.
“What is happening?” Her voice sounds small and shaky.
“Listen to me. I need to know why you went to that restaurant. Who told you to go there?”
“What?” She doesn’t seem to be processing my question. I want to shake her. We don’t have time for her to be in shock right now. I need to know everything James knows, fast.
“There was a man sitting alone at a table near you. Were you supposed to meet him? How did he contact you?”
Catherine slowly shakes her head. She appears vague and unfocused, like someone who has had too much to drink and is on the verge of passing out.
“Answer me!”
Catherine flinches as the words roar out of me. They land on her like a slap. She sits up straighter, like she’s coming back into her body.
