Page 11 of Dodge

“Exactly right. Jon could’ve got a judgment and had the sheriff levy on it. But he took the matter into his own hands.”

Greene frowned. “Any Stockholm syndrome?”

When hostages form an emotional bond—sometimes even a romantic one—with their kidnapper.

Lombardi laughed. “That is a situation I do not want to even imagine.”

The marshal looked around again, squinting at the woods. He’d been doing this frequently. The gaze was intense.

“You think she has a long gun?”

“Don’t know. I heard she did some shooting in the army. She was in for a year before she got kicked out. Dishonorable. Suspected of stealing small arms for the black market.”

“She could be targeting us?” Lombardi too looked around, spine shivering.

“She won’t know this car. But it’s a habit—looking. Ever since that text she sent.”

“Must get tiring.”

“Beats the alternative.”

Constant Marlowe was reflecting that motels like the Western Valley Lodge—old, cheap, built on funky land—always smelled the same.

Cleanser and something gamy, an almost human-body smell.

And not perfumed necks or wrists. From the nether regions.

Marlowe was presently rearranging furniture.

Her Honda was elsewhere, a half mile away, in an abandoned car wash bay. A lot was abandoned in the scuffed town of Harvey, adjoining slightly less-scuffed Upper Falls. Plenty of spots to hide a sedan, even one as orange as hers.

She’d been here for thirty minutes after making some stops on her way from Hogan’s Tap Room. Her jacket off, Marlowe muscled the low, wide dresser to a spot about twelve feet in front of the door. She then began filling the drawers with gallon jugs of distilled water. Eighteen of them. It was a trick she’d learned from a mob triggerman. While the barrier wasn’t wholly bulletproof, it could be counted on to deflect and absorb enough incoming slugs to give you some cover, confuse your attacker and buy you time to return fire.

Some might consider this excessive, even paranoid. But up against this particular opponent there was no such thing as too much preparation.

She examined what lay on the bed—the contents of her backpack, along with the recent purchases. Her eyes strayed to one small plastic bag, yellow. She debated. She wanted to indulge. Constant Marlowe had trouble with impulse control.

Like the time she parked a slug in the knee of that minder at a trafficker’s warehouse. Which she did because she couldn’t help herself.

The bag?

Later. Now, she had to remain vigilant. No distractions.

Every so often she would look out the window at a pile of junk across the parking lot. What she studied while doing this was the mirrored medicine cabinet door that she’d unscrewed fromits hinges. Outside she’d propped it against a trash bag and aimed it in the direction of the front of the parking lot. She could glance through the slit between the two curtains, look at the mirror and get an early warning of cars coming this way.

Even five seconds made a difference.

On the floor behind the dresser she set out the magazines for her pistol—not the hidden Bodyguard but her big 9 mm. A total of forty-five rounds was at her disposal, plus one in the chamber.

She set the bedside lamp between the dresser and the door. She clicked it on and removed the shade. This would blind an attacker and illuminate him.

She looked at the yellow plastic bag again.

No.

Settling herself behind the waterlogged piece of laminated furniture, she gripped the SIG Sauer and flicked off the safety, waiting for her prey, thinking of how best to place the kill shot.

The motel was a worn-out place that wouldn’t’ve been stylish even in the late ’50s when it was fresh-paint new. Functional then, functional now. At the end of the day: uuuuuugly.

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