David Morrell - Assumed Identity

“Drive, Holly! Don’t stop! Drive!”

The car quit skidding and increased speed. Sliding, Buchanan banged his face against the windshield. He glanced frantically over his shoulder, seeing that they’d reached Twentieth Street. A one-way heading north, it forced Holly to veer left into a break in sparse traffic. But the momentum caused Buchanan to slide sideways on his stomach, to his left, across the car’s wet hood. With a travel bag in his left hand and a pistol in his right, he couldn’t grab for anything. But even if his hands had been free, there wasn’t anything on the slick hood to grab.

The car kept veering. He kept sliding. He anticipated his impact on the pavement. Tuck in your elbows. Roll. Keep your head up, he mentally shouted to himself. He couldn’t afford another trauma to his head. And then he was slipping off the right side of the hood. Heart pounding, seeing the sideview mirror, he hooked his right elbow around it, bent his legs up under him, felt a jolt, and dangled. The sideview mirror sagged from his weight. He kept his elbow crooked around it, dangling lower, his shoes inches above the pavement. The car skidded. His shoes touched the pavement. The car slowed. When the sideview mirror snapped off, Buchanan landed hard, rolling in a puddle, the wind knocked out of him, but not before the car had stopped, its momentum throwing him forward.

He lurched to his feet. More headlights blazed toward him. He heard sirens. He thought he heard racing footsteps. Then he definitely heard Holly shout from inside the car. She pressed a button that unlocked the doors.

But instead of opening the passenger door in front, Buchanan yanked open the door in back and dove in, slamming the door behind him. Sprawling out of sight, he yelled, “Go, Holly! Move!”

She obeyed, squinting ahead past the flapping windshield wipers, darting her gaze toward her rearview mirror, straining to see if the sirens belonged to police cars chasing her. But the headlights behind her remained steady, and no men appeared on the sidewalk to shoot at her, and the sirens came from farther away, less intimidating.

“What happened?” she asked in dismay.

As she turned right onto Massachusetts Avenue, steered a quarter of the way around Dupont Circle, and then headed south on Connecticut Avenue, Buchanan quickly explained, all the while remaining low on the backseat, out of sight. Even though their hunters knew what type of car Holly drove, they’d be looking for a man and a woman, not a woman alone.

Holly’s hands were sweaty on the steering wheel. “Are you hurt?”

“I pulled some stitches.” His voice was taut. “If that’s the worst, I’ll be fine.”

“Until the next time.”

“Thank God you just happened to be driving along that street.”

“There was nothing ‘just happened’ about it.”

“What do you-?”

“When you started down Twenty-first Street and they chased you, you ran from the sidewalk and darted between two passing cars.”

“Right, but how did you know about-?”

“The second car, the one that beeped at you, was mine. After the hotel’s parking attendant brought it to me, I decided to drive around the block to see if I was being followed.”

“Sounds like you’re learning.”

“And I also wanted to see if you got out of the hotel okay. I was driving toward you when I saw the fight, but you ran in front of me before I could get your attention. Then you disappeared along P Street. I was past that intersection, so I figured if I turned left onto O, I might get a glimpse of you coming from Hopkins or Twentieth Street.”

“But what if I’d stayed on P Street?”

“You don’t strike me as the type to run in a straight line.”

“You really are learning,” Buchanan said.

“Evasion and escape.” Holly exhaled. “I missed that course when I was in journalism school.”

“I didn’t mean to get you involved. It was the furthest thing from my mind. I’m sorry, Holly.”

“It’s done. But I helped make it happen. I didn’t need to agree to meet you. I could have kept my distance. I’m a big girl. I stopped letting people control me a long time ago. Do you want the truth? I thought you wanted to meet me to tell me something that would put me back on the story. I got foolish and greedy. Now I’m paying the price.”

“Then you understand.” Staying low in the backseat, Buchanan spoke reluctantly. “You realize that because they caught us together, they think we’re both a threat to them. It was a possibility before, but now your life really is in danger.”

Holly tried to control her breathing. “I had another reason for agreeing to meet you. An even more foolish reason. It had nothing to do with the story. Deep down, I wanted to see you again. Dumb, huh?”

Except for the flapping of the windshield wipers and the drone of the engine, the car became quiet.

Holly waited.

She finally said, “Don’t respond. Just let what I said hang there. Make me feel like a jerk.”

“No. I. .”

“What?”

“I’m flattered.”

“You’d better say something more positive than that, or so help me, I’ll stop this car and. .”

“What I’m trying to explain is, I’m not very good at this. I’m not used to anybody caring about me.” Buchanan’s disembodied voice came from the darkness of the backseat. “I’ve never been in one place long enough to establish a relationship.”

“Once.”

“Yes. With Juana. That’s right. Once.”

“And now I’m risking my life to help you find another woman. Wonderful. Great.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Buchanan said.

“I don’t see how. .”

“It’s not just that I was never in one place long enough to establish a relationship. I was never one person long enough. It isn’t me who wants to find Juana. It’s Peter Lang.”

“Peter Lang? Didn’t you say he was one of your pseudonyms?”

“Identities.”

“I think I’m going to scream.”

“Don’t. Later. Not now. Get us out of town.”

“In which direction?”

“North. Toward Manhattan.”

“And what’s in-?”

“Frederick Maltin. The ex-husband of Maria Tomez. There’s one other thing we have to do.”

“Get you a shrink.”

“Don’t make jokes.”

“That wasn’t a joke.”

“Stop at a pay phone.”

“I’m beginning to think I’m the one who needs a shrink.”

At 1:00 A.M., between Washington and Baltimore, Holly parked at a truck stop on I-95. Buchanan got out and used a pay phone.

A man answered, “Potomac Catering.”

“This is Proteus. I need to speak to the colonel.”

“He isn’t here right now, but I’ll take a message.”

“Tell him I got the message. Tell him there won’t be any trouble. Tell him I could have killed those four men tonight. Tell him to leave me alone. Tell him to leave Holly McCoy alone. Tell him I want to disappear. Tell him my business with Holly has nothing to do with him. Tell him Holly doesn’t know or care about him.”

“You sure have a lot to tell him.”

“Just make certain you do.”

Buchanan hung up, knowing that the number of the pay phone would automatically have shown itself on a screen on the “catering service’s” automatic-trace phone. If the colonel wouldn’t accept Buchanan’s attempt at a truce, a team of men would soon converge on this area.

Buchanan hurried back into the car, this time in the front. “I did my best. Let’s go.”

As she pulled out into traffic, he reached for his travel bag. The effort made him wince.

He took off his pants.