The Protector

by David Morrell

  But instead of the distinctive rack of emergency lights on a police car's roof, Cavanaugh saw the anonymous silhouette of a Taurus approaching at moderate speed. He returned to the sidewalk.

  When Jamie stopped, he got in and slumped on the passenger seat.

  She drove away at an equally moderate speed.

  "Any trouble getting the car?" Cavanaugh asked.

  "On the contrary. The police were glad to see me move it so they could have room for another fire truck. How bad are you hurt?"

  "I reopened the wound."

  Neither of them spoke for several moments.

  "You could have been killed trying to save me," Cavanaugh said.

  "I didn't think about that."

  "You weren't afraid?"

  "Only for you."

  Cavanaugh looked down at his shaky hands. "Tonight, I felt afraid."

  Driving, Jamie glanced from where her headlights illuminated the darkness. She gave him a quick stare. "You just had a lot to react to."

  "It was more than that. Something happened to me in that basement." Cavanaugh trembled. "For the first time, I found out what fear is." He felt more blood oozing from his wound. "I was hoping we wouldn't have to do this. We passed a Wal-Mart on the way from the motel."

  "Wal-Mart?" Jamie asked, bewildered.

  "We're going to need some things. Trash bags. A hotplate. A saucepan. A ..."

  * * *

  PART FOUR

  Threat Confrontation

  * * *

  1

  The hotplate's coil glowed. Through steam escaping from the open bathroom door, Cavanaugh could see the unit on the counter in front of the makeup mirror. A vague outline of a saucepan was visible on top of it. The pan contained boiling water, a curved sewing needle, and fishing line.

  Cavanaugh was slumped in the tub while the hot shower sprayed smoke and grime off him.

  "You've got more bruises," Jamie said. "By morning, you'll have trouble walking."

  "I won't need to walk. We're spending tomorrow in the car."

  "And maybe part of tonight?"

  Cavanaugh turned his head and studied her. "You're as quick a learner as Prescott."

  "Except I don't go around setting fires. We can't stay here much longer, correct?"

  "Correct. There's always a neighborhood busybody who notices unfamiliar cars on the street. He or she will remind the police about it. One of the policemen will remember the attractive woman who moved the car after the fire started. Meanwhile, the neighbors behind Karen's house will tell the police about the injured man and the attractive woman who ran out of the house and disappeared. It'll take the police a while to get organized, but before midnight, they're going to be looking for a man and a woman in a dark blue Taurus. Time to hit the road."

  Jamie glanced toward the pan on the hotplate. "Think it's boiled enough?" she asked.

  "Ten minutes. If the germs aren't dead by now ..."

  "Turn off the shower." Jamie blotted the wound with surgical gauze, then coated it with Betadine germicide that she'd bought from Wal-Mart. The gouge looked clean enough that there wasn't a need to put Cavanaugh through the pain of more hydrogen peroxide. Quickly, she applied antibiotic cream. Then she hurried to the pan and used tongs, which she had swabbed with rubbing alcohol, to take the needle and fishing line from the boiling water. She set them and disinfected scissors onto antiseptic pads at the side of the tub.

  "You should have been a nurse," Cavanaugh said.

  "Yeah, that's always been my ambition: to sew up gunshot wounds. You're absolutely sure you need to do this?"

  "The wound has to stay closed, and the bandage isn't working."

  "We could always try barbed wire and a staple gun."

  "Funny."

  "Keep laughing." Jamie knelt beside him at the tub. "No matter how gentle I try to be, this'll hurt."

  Cavanaugh's face felt as taut as his nerves. "I've had it done to me before."

  "I imagine."

  "But the guy doing it wasn't as good-looking as you."

  "Flattery's great. Tell me more sweet things while I do this."

  "You're tough."

  "So are you." Jamie pushed in the needle.

  * * *

  2

  Cavanaugh woke to the rhythm of the car. As headlights flashed past, he found himself lying on the backseat on a blanket, one of the items that Jamie had bought from Wal-Mart. Then he was alert enough to see the imitation sheepskin covers on the front and rear seats, which Jamie had bought from Wal-Mart as well and which concealed the bloodstains he'd left. The car was brand-new, but already it was on its way to being trashed. Somehow he found that amusing.

  "Where are we?" he murmured.

  "I thought I heard you moving back there. We're south of Poughkeepsie. Did you sleep okay?"

  "Yes." He slowly sat up. The headlights passing on the opposite side of the highway hurt his eyes.

  "How's the shoulder?"

  "Stiff. I passed out?"

  "You passed out."

  "And you said I was tough."

  "Are you thirsty? The bottles of water are on the floor back there."

  Cavanaugh peered down and saw them in the shadows. He opened one.

  "Hungry?" Jamie asked.

  "For a thin woman, you sure think a lot about food."

  "Just for that, you can't have any doughnuts."

  "Doughnuts?"

  "Chocolate-covered. You can't expect me to drive all night without something to eat to keep me awake."

  "What time is it?"

  "Around one."

  "Did you have any trouble cleaning the motel room?"

  "Nope. I did what you told me and put all the bloody towels and clothes into the garbage bags I got from Wal-Mart. I threw the bags in a Dumpster at a construction site. The towels don't have the motel's name on them, so nobody can trace them to us."

  "Fingerprints?"

  "I wiped the room clean and left the key, along with a tip. Just the way you told me."

  Cavanaugh studied the sporadic traffic. "Tired?"

  "Getting there."

  "Find a place where we can switch places. I'll drive for a while."

  "Are you able to?"

  "I can steer with my right arm. Once we get into New Jersey, we'll find another motel."

  "And then?"

  "As soon as I get organized, I'm going after Prescott."

  * * *

  3

  "Good God, what happened to this car?" the automobile paint shop's owner said.

  The question was rhetorical. Red and green Day-Glo paint had been sprayed over most of the Taurus.

  "Damned kids," Cavanaugh said, although he himself had done the spraying.' "I leave it on the street for a half hour, and this is what I find when I get back."

  "The whole thing'll have to be repainted."

  "Don't I know it, and the dealership says vandalism isn't covered under the warranty. They want a fortune to repaint it."

  The owner got interested. "How much?"

  Cavanaugh named so high a figure that the guy would make out like a bandit even if he gave a discount.

  "How does a hundred and fifty cheaper sound?" the owner asked.

  "Better than I was going to have to pay. But I need the job done in a hurry."

  "Sure, sure. What color do you want? The original dark blue?"

  "From the day I chose that color, my wife hated it. She says I she wants gray."

  * * *

  4

  "Sam Murdock," Cavanaugh told the Philadelphia bank clerk.

  "Sign here, Mr. Murdock."

  Cavanaugh did.

  The clerk compared the signature with the one that the bank had on file and entered a date next to where Cavanaugh had signed. "I see it's been a while since you came here."

  "Last year. Too bad. I always say, when you have to go to your safe-deposit box, you've got trouble."

  The clerk gave Cavanaugh a sympathetic look, obviously attributing the scrapes on Cavan
augh's face to the trouble he referred to. "May I have your key?"

  Cavanaugh, who wore a suit and tie and who'd gotten his hair cut short to get rid of the singe marks, gave it to him.

  "Will you be needing a cubicle?"

  "Yes."

  The clerk led Cavanaugh and Jamie down marble steps to a barred metal gate, which he unlocked. Beyond, in a brightly lit vault, were walls of small gleaming stainless-steel hatches. The clerk glanced at the number on the key Cavanaugh had given him. He went to a wall on the right, put the key in a ten-bytwelve-inch hatch near the bottom, inserted another key, this one from a group he carried on a ring, and turned both keys simultaneously.

  After opening the hatch, he pulled out a safe-deposit box and handed it to Cavanaugh. "The cubicles are just outside."

  "Thank you."

  Cavanaugh randomly chose the second on the right and went inside with Jamie, closing the door. In the process, without seeming to, he checked the walls and ceiling for hidden cameras, doubting there were any but maintaining his habits all the same. He set the box on a counter and leaned over it, as did Jamie, so that their backs concealed the box's contents.

  The raised lid revealed two thick manila envelopes and a blue cloth pouch, the bulging halves of which were zipped together. Cavanaugh put everything in a briefcase that he'd bought in a store down the street a few minutes before entering the bank.

  Jamie opened the door. Managing to hold the briefcase in his left hand without indicating that his arm was compromised, Cavanaugh returned the safe-deposit box to the clerk, who put it back in its slot in the vault, closed the hatch, rotated the keys to their original positions, and gave Cavanaugh's key back to him.

  "Thank you," Cavanaugh said.

  * * *

  5

  In a cash-not-unusual motel, Cavanaugh waited while Jamie closed the blinds. Then he put the contents of the briefcase on the bed. The first stuffed manila envelope contained five thousand dollars in twenties.

  "I see you've been saving for a rainy day," Jamie said.

  The second manila envelope contained a birth certificate, credit card, passport, and Pennsylvania driver's license for Samuel Murdock. The driver's license and passport had Cavanaugh's photograph. "A present from Karen five years ago." Memories of her made him pause. "As she reminded me, you never know when another identity might come in handy. I'm on the eastern seaboard a lot, so it's easy to come to Philadelphia once a year. I take the credit card from the safe-deposit box and use it to buy a few things so the account remains open. I also renew the driver's license."

  "Why Philadelphia?"

  "It's convenient. Halfway between New York and Washington, cities where I often work."

  "Where do you get the bills for the credit card?"

  "They're sent to a private mailbox-rental business here in Philadelphia."

  "Which forwards them to a private mailbox you rent in Jackson Hole under the name of Sam Murdock but that you never told me about," Jamie said.

  Because of his stitched shoulder, Cavanaugh resisted the urge to shrug. "A benign secret."

  "I just love getting to know you better. Does Global Protective Services know about this other identity?"

  "Nobody does."

  "What's in the pouch?"

  "A present for you."

  "Gee."

  Cavanaugh unzipped the pouch.

  Jamie picked up what was inside. "What's that joke you once told me about the compliment men most like to hear from women? 'Oh, honey, I just love it when you tinker with engines and bring home electronics, power tools, and firearms.'"

  The object Jamie held was a match to Cavanaugh's Sig Sauer 9-mm pistol. Like Cavanaugh's, it had been modified. Its factory-equipped sights had been replaced with a wide-slotted rear sight and a front sight with a green luminous dot that made aiming easy. All the interior moving parts had been filed and then coated with a permanent friction reducer to discourage jamming. The exterior had been comparably smoothed so there weren't any sharp edges to snag on anything. A flat black epoxy finish prevented light from reflecting.

  Cavanaugh watched to make sure that Jamie followed the precautions he'd taught her. Because the Sig didn't have a safety catch, care was all the more necessary. Holding it with her right hand, keeping her index finger out of the trigger guard and the barrel pointed toward the bed, she used her left hand to ease back the slide on top, checking to see if the weapon had a round in the firing chamber. It did. She pressed a button at the side and released the magazine from the grip, grabbing the magazine as it dropped.

  "Nice catch," Cavanaugh said.

  After setting down the pistol, Jamie picked up the magazine and inspected the holes on the side that showed how many rounds were in it. "Seems to be full, but you never know until you check, right?"

  "Right," Cavanaugh said. "It can be downright embarrassing if you assume an unfamiliar pistol has a full magazine and it turns out you're a round short when you absolutely need it." Jamie thumbed every round from the magazine, counting. "Eight," she said, confirming that for the model 225 the magazine had indeed been fully loaded. Some other types of 9-mm pistols held more ammunition, but their consequently large grips made them impractical as concealed carry weapons. In addition, pistols with a large magazine tended not to fit the average-sized hands of most shooters, making aiming difficult. "Careful you don't break a fingernail."

  Giving him a caustic look, Jamie reinserted the rounds into the magazine, verifying that the spring in the magazine was functional. Then she picked up the handgun and pulled the slide fully back to eject the round in the chamber. She tested the slide several times to make sure it moved freely. "Could use a little Break-free," she said, referring to a type of pistol lubricant/cleaner.

  "It ought to," Cavanaugh said. "It's been in that safe-deposit box for five years."

  "The family that cleans firearms together stays together."

  Jamie shoved the magazine into the Sig's grip, racked a round into the firing chamber, and pressed the decocking lever on the side. That meant there were now seven rounds in the magazine. To make up the difference, she released the magazine, picked up the round that she'd earlier extracted from the firing chamber, pressed it into the magazine, and reinserted the magazine into the grip, giving the pistol its maximum capacity.

  For a moment, Jamie looked as if she thought she was done, and that worried Cavanaugh, because she wasn't, but then she picked up the spare magazine from the pouch, stripped the rounds from it, said, "Eight," and thumbed them back into the magazine. "You'll notice that not only didn't I break a fingernail but at no time did my fingers leave my hands. Should I mention that we ought to get replacements for both magazines? After having been fully loaded for several years, their springs will have metal fatigue."

  "An A-plus," Cavanaugh said.

  * * *

  6

  "Let's go shopping."

  "Great idea," Jamie said.

  "You do the driving." Cavanaugh's shoulder still felt stiff.

  "Where to?"

  He showed her addresses and a map from the phone book. "A hardware store, an auto-supply place, and a gun shop."

  "Fabulous."

  At the hardware store, they bought duct tape, a hammer, a screwdriver, electrical wire, a toggle switch, gloves, coveralls, a section of plumber's tubing, and an assortment of screws and clamps.

  "What's all this stuff for?" "A better mousetrap," Cavanaugh said.

  At the auto-supply place, they bought an air filter, two fog lights, and four chamois cloths.

  Studying the cloths, Jamie asked, "We're going to wash the car? No, that can't be right. The dirtier the car, the less noticeable."

  In the gun shop, Cavanaugh took her to a rack of gun belts. "It has to look like an ordinary belt but be sturdy enough to support the weight of the pistol. The strongest kind has two leather strips sewn together, with the grain on one strip going in the opposite direction from the other. The belt should fit so the stem on the buckle goes
into the second hole. Which one looks good to you?"

  Jamie chose soft-looking black with a square buckle that looked silver. "Goes with the studs on my pearl earrings."

  "And for an accessory"—Cavanaugh turned to the bearded clerk—"do you have any Kydex holsters?" He referred to the sturdy plastic material that his own holster was made of. He liked Kydex because it wasn't affected by rain or perspiration and because it was thin enough to be easily concealed. "What kind of pistol?" Cavanaugh told him.

  "Nice." The clerk reached under a glass counter. "Here's a new model from Fist, Inc." Slightly shorter than the length of Jamie's hand, the nonreflective matte-black holster had an open top, allowing the pistol to be drawn quickly, and a tension screw at the side, which kept the pistol secure. "They call it the 'Dave Spaulding.'"

  Cavanaugh recognized the name of one of the nation's best firearms instructors.

  "Anything else?"

  "Two magazines for the Sig," Jamie said, "and a cleaning kit."

  "And a hundred and twenty rounds of MagSafe 9-millimeter," Cavanaugh added. This type of ammunition had an epoxy resin tip with shotgun pellets embedded in it. When the tip struck a target, the resin fractured and released the pellets. The destructive force was considerable, with the added advantage that the tip and its pellets wouldn't go through a target and hit a bystander. As in any good gun store, the clerk didn't ask why the customer needed so much of a type of ammunition that was never used in target practice.

  Noticing fishing equipment in back, Cavanaugh told him, "I could also use a dozen lead sinkers."

  * * *

  7

  At the motel, they unpacked the various purchases.

  Surveying the objects on the bed, Jamie said, "Apart from the pistol equipment, none of this makes any sense to me."

  "Where'd you put the scissors, needle, and fishing line?" Cavanaugh asked.