Page 40 of The Lie Maker

“Depends,” she said. “Bottom line, we wouldn’t be sending them into hiding if they weren’t in real danger. Why?”

I shook my head, figuring she was looking at me and would understand I wasn’t ready to answer the question. Finally, I said, “You think Scorsese could find a place to pull over and we could get out of the car and have a talk?”

“Scorsese?” she said.

I forgot she wasn’t in on my own private joke. “Can your driver find us a place to stop? I mean, we’re far enough away from wherever you’re hiding Bill that I’d never be able to figure out how to get back there. You think I could lose the blindfold?”

“Sure. Let me.”

I felt her hands on me again as she worked her fingers under the edge of the cloth and lifted it up and over my head.

“Thanks,” I said, blinking a couple of times as my eyes adjusted to the light. We were, in fact, on a major highway, moving along with other cars and huge tractor-trailers. I could see that we couldn’t pull over just yet.

“There one of those service centers coming up?” I asked.

Gwen asked the driver, who said there was one about five miles ahead.

“We’re making a pit stop,” she said.

Seven minutes later, we were taking the exit to one of those sprawling roadside centers with a gas station and bathrooms and a food court with a variety of takeout choices. The place was popular with truckers, who had parked their rigs around the back of the building.

The side door slid open and Gwen got out first. I followed.

“You want to go in and freshen up or anything?” she asked.

“No,” I said, and nodded to the far reaches of the parking lot, which butted up against some low, rolling, manicured lawns. “Let’s take a walk.”

Gwen told the driver we were going to be a few minutes, and if he wanted to take a break, he was welcome to. As an afterthought, she asked him to grab her a coffee.

“Want anything?” she asked me.

I shook my head.

“Okay, let’s walk.”

I led her over to the grassy area, hands in my pockets, thinking about how I was going to broach this. I spotted a couple of picnic tables, went to one, and sat down. Gwen swung her legs over the opposite bench and sat across from me.

“Well?”

“When you asked me to take this on, I asked you if there were any other reasons you picked me, other than that your people considered me a good prospect, based on the characters I’d created in my books.”

“That’s right,” she said.

“Nothing else?”

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind,” she said, glancing at her watch. “You’re not the only one I’ve got doing this kind of work.”

“How thoroughly did you check me out?” I asked.

Gwen cocked her head to one side. “Thoroughly enough,” she said. “No criminal record, no associations or affiliations with groups on our watch list. You came up pretty clean. You got into some shit when you were a kid. Found some police reports about you running away from home. They had to put out a missing persons bulletin on you once or twice, but you always came back. Or someone went to get you.”

“How far back did you go?”

“I’m guessing not far enough,” she said.

“It struck me as one hell of a coincidence that you’d pick someone like me,” I said. “Someone with more than a passing acquaintance with the witness protection program.”

Her face fell. “Jesus Christ, what are you saying? That I picked a relocated witness to work for the program? You’re fucking kidding me. There’s no way in the world that could happen. Unless all that stuff about your teenage years was manufactured. Christ, they’ll fucking fire me.”