Free Deep Sky by Lee Patrick Page B

Ten
     
    N ot Paige .
    Later, that would be the only thing Travis remembered thinking as the next seconds played out. Not the calculation of how far they had to go to reach safety, or how long that would take. Not the awareness that he needed to keep the Jeep under control. Not even the fear of another shot.
    Not Paige . That was it. He could handle anyone else in the vehicle dying, himself included. Just not Paige.
    If anybody was screaming, he couldn’t tell. His ears were ringing with increased bloodflow and the wind was keening through the hole above him, drawn by the pressure differential from the missing back window.
    They passed into light on the east edge of town and the first available cross street came up fast. Travis braked and hauled right on the wheel, and halfway through the turn he saw a newspaper box on the streetcorner buffeted by a shot. The papers inside fluttered as if they’d caught a moment’s breeze. Then the Jeep was fully onto the side street and accelerating, with two-story brick buildings shielding it from the shooter.
    The blood on the windshield was running down, each thick drop now a vertical line.
    Travis turned to Paige.
    Her left coat sleeve and the left side of her face were bloodier than the windshield.
    But no more damaged than the windshield, either. It wasn’t her blood—a fact she seemed to be just verifying for herself. She turned in her seat and looked back at Carrie Holden.
    Carrie wasn’t leaning forward over the console now. She was pressed against her own seatback, one hand to the lower left side of her abdomen.
    Her fingers were soaked with blood.
    “Jesus Christ,” Paige said. She repositioned herself so she was kneeling, facing Carrie; she switched on the dome light and bent down to study the wound.
    Her first discovery was notable: the rifle bullet had clipped Carrie’s side—and fragmented in the decoy’s head. Most of which was now gone. As Travis looked more carefully at the blood on the windshield he saw that not all of it was blood. There was gray matter there. And a few chips of bone. He wondered if a death had ever mattered less to him.
    He glanced back again and saw that Carrie had pulled up the bottom of her shirt to examine her own injury. It was all but superficial. The bullet had hit her so far to the side that it had almost missed—a quarter inch would’ve made the difference. The result was like a shallow knife slash to her side. Some bleeding, but no serious trauma. She let the shirt fall back over it and shoved the decoy’s body to the floor.
    Travis glanced at Paige as she faced forward again. He saw her working out the pieces of what’d just happened.
    “I guess it’s possible that whoever killed Garner could’ve found this place,” she said, “if they had the right connections. The government would’ve had no record of where you relocated to, Carrie, but they would’ve seen your name drop off Tangent’s personnel list in 1994. They’d know you were out there somewhere. In the past few years, facial geometry software could’ve probably narrowed DMV records to ten thousand or fewer. Narrow further by age and then look for a real-estate purchase or lease agreement in ninety-four, and they’d be in the ballpark. Wouldn’t take much legwork beyond that point. They might’ve found you five years ago and filed it away under useful .”
    Carrie nodded. She looked emotionally drained, but still alert. “I used to be so careful about everything. Paranoid, even. After a while, it felt nice to think I didn’t have to be.”
    Paige looked at Travis. “I think I was wrong earlier. The note they left for us—I don’t think they did expect us to understand it. Not in full, anyway. If they anticipated our showing up here, they must have known we’d be hard up for information about Scalar. They knew we’d come here to ask Carrie about it.”
    “That makes the trap contradict itself,” Travis said. “Why set up a decoy to get information out