Free Assassin's Express by Jerry Ahern Page B

because you subconsciously think you’re missing something you should be able to see but can’t see.”
    â€œNuts,” he told her, putting on the directional signal and starting to edge slightly into the right-hand lane; the exit for the rest area was coming up.
    â€œNo—we’re subject to a great many subconscious stresses. I didn’t know if you knew that or not.”
    â€œYou into horoscopes, too?”
    â€œI’m serious,” she insisted.
    Frost shot a glance toward her, almost losing the trailer, he thought, then riveted his stare ahead of the car again. “I know you’re serious—that’s the problem. Why don’t you look at the map or something?”
    â€œNo—I told you, I gotta go to the bathroom.”
    â€œYou can’t read when you gotta—?”
    â€œNo. I know where we are—you’re just trying to tell me to shut up.”
    â€œYou got it, kid.” Frost smiled. He almost lost the trailer again, he felt, cutting the wheel ever so slightly right and aiming the car and the trailer up into the exit.
    â€œWe’re in New Mexico—and if we could go a little faster than that lousy fifty-five you’ve been doin’, we’d get into El Paso before the owls go to sleep, too.”
    â€œWell—if you don’t like the way I’m drivin’, then I can fix that really easy,” Frost told her.
    â€œNo—you just drive away and meander along—I’ll go to sleep.”
    â€œLike hell you will,” Frost answered.
    Frost eyed the sign telling cars pulling trailers to pull right in the rest-area parking lot. He was pleased to find the lot relatively empty with a clear path to a drive-through space. He started cutting the wheel—on time for once—and eased the big LTD through the space.
    There was a loud sigh from Jessica Pace on the seat beside him. “ ’Bout time—the old kidneys were about to scream, baby.” She laughed.
    She started to get out of the car, but Frost reached across and grabbed her left arm. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” he began, “but there’s kidding and then there’s kidding. I like a girl with a sense of humor—I really do. But I don’t like grossness in a man, let alone a woman—why don’t you stop trying to be a bad caricature of one of the boys, huh?”
    Her eyes bored into his but Frost’s right eye never wavered. His voice low, he said, “We’ve got a long way to go yet. I know that what you’ve got under all that red hair is really important, that you’re under a lot of pressure—the whole nine yards. But a couple thousand miles more of the way it is now and I promise you, after you spill what you know to the President, I’m gonna clip ya right in the teeth.” She didn’t say anything, just shook his hand off her left forearm and started out through the passenger door.
    Frost cut the ignition and dropped the keys into his pocket. He got a Camel from a half-crushed packet in his jeans jacket, and lit it with his battered Zippo. Then he stared at the half-transparent reflection of his face in the tinted glass of the windshield. He decided he missed Bess even more than he’d realized, talking the way he had to Jessica Pace. If she wanted to be the way she was, she had every right to be. He wondered then, for the billionth time, he decided, if Bess had died just because violence seemed to be attracted to him and she had gotten caught up in it? He’d heard or seen the phrase in countless movies and books, but somehow, despite its triteness, it seemed to capture the essence of the thing—wallowing in self-pity. He’d been doing that. Jessica Pace would never have cold-cocked him that day back at Deacon’s aunt’s house; he would have handled the thing at the hospital less sloppily.... He promised himself something. There had been no leads, no way