J. Jance - Minor in possession

The blue Chevy Blazer occupied the parking spot nearest the road and as far away from both the restroom and the other vehicles as possible. Like the 4-X-4 that had pursued us in Phoenix the night before, the Blazer was another window-blackened behemoth.

I attempted to glance inside the Blazer as we pulled into the lot. No one was visible, but I didn't want to attract attention by appearing too interested.

Rhonda parked three spaces away, halfway between the other vehicles and the Blazer. As soon as she stopped the car, Rhonda got out and stretched, looking as though she'd been driving for hours. When I got out of the car and came around to stand beside her, she flung her arms around my neck and kissed me passionately on the lips.

"You want necking, fella?" she whispered in me ear. "I'll show you necking."

I pushed her away. "Let's go use the restroom," I said. "We'll try to get the lay of the land."

We stopped long enough to open the hood of the car and let billows of steam roll skyward.

"Should we add water?" Rhonda asked.

"No," I said. "Don't worry about it. It'll cool off of its own accord."

Guy Owens had told us that he'd give us a ten-minute head start, so there wasn't much time for reconnoitering. The restroom, built from roughhewn stones, would have made every environmentalist's conservationist heart go pitter-pat. A brass plaque affixed to an inside wall announced that the chemically treated composting toilets were a totally nonpolluting system and had been manufactured by some little one-horse company in Newport, Washington-wherever that is.

Unfortunately, I was far more concerned with finding adequate cover than I was with nonpolluting toilets. I tried looking out the eye-level window in the men's room, but that was no good. It faced in the wrong direction.

Back outside, I mingled with the occupants of the other two cars, touring retirees holding an informal coffee klatsch, as they drank coffee and munched sweet rolls. They were all totally oblivious to the drama unfolding around them.

One of them, a white-haired little woman leaning on a four-pronged cane, looked up at me and smiled. "Nice weather after all that rain, isn't it?"

I nodded and said nothing. What I wanted to do was tell them to get the hell out of there. To run for cover while spending their kids' inheritance was still an option, but I couldn't. Any sudden change in behavior would have alerted our quarry that we were onto him.

Rhonda still hadn't emerged from the ladies' room when off to the left, just above the parking lot, I spied a slightly raised ledge with a small bench on it. When she finally did appear, I seized her by the hand and dragged her in that direction.

"Let's go sit up there," I urged.

She nodded happily and trotted along, looking for all the world as though she was having the time of her life. People seeing her from a distance would have thought she didn't have a care in the world. They couldn't see the troubled look in her vivid blue eyes.

"What's going to happen?" she whispered anxiously, leaning close to my shoulder.

As if I knew, but I took a stab at it anyway. "We'll sit up there to begin with. Then, when we see Guy pulling into the lot, we can split up and go in opposite directions. At least that way he won't be able to get all of us at once. If it looks like he's getting away, shoot for the tires or the radiator, not the interior. We might hit Michelle."

She nodded. "Okay," she said, but she punctuated the word with a quick hoot of laughter that made it sound as though I had just cracked some incredibly funny joke.

Still laughing, she scampered over to the Beretta to fetch the thermos and bag of food. She came back toward me, smiling and swaying her hips-showing off. It made me wish we were all wearing flak jackets. Whatever was about to go down, I didn't want any harm to come to Rhonda Attwood's sleek little frame. Or my much larger one either, for that matter.

According to Ralph Ames, Rhonda was a talented artist. Now I learned firsthand that she was also a consummate actress. She was vibrant. She was happy. She was brimming over with infectious laughter. She was on. We made our way up to the bench, but she set the thermos down without pouring coffee. Instead, she wrapped her arms around my neck, ran her fingers through my hair, and pulled my face close to hers. The ardor in her probing kisses set fires in my system that almost made me forget why we were there.

Eventually, laughing again, she drew away. "Can you see anything?" she whispered.

"Can I what?"

"See anything. Through the windshield."

"No," I said, chuckling too in spite of myself. "I had my eyes closed."

She punched me in the arm, playfully and seriously at the same time. "Look this time, dammit." And then she kissed me again.

Below, I heard the sound of a vehicle laboring up the hill. Almost ten minutes had passed, so I was sure it was Guy Owens. It had to be. I pushed Rhonda away so I could peer over her shoulder and get a clear view of what was happening. Across the parking lot, the group of retirees chose that exact moment to begin dividing up into separate cars.

Guy and I had spoken briefly about what he would do. Spilling the money was an old trick, trite and cliched, but it had already worked once that afternoon, and it might work again. He planned to get out of the Isuzu, walk close enough for Monty to see it, and then let the money go tumbling all over the parking lot. We figured the diversion would give Rhonda or me or both of us time to get close to the Blazer.

But we hadn't counted on a crowd scene right there in the parking lot.

"Get moving," I urged fervently, willing the old folks to leave.

Rhonda pulled away from me. "Not you," I whispered. "Them! We can't do any shooting at all while they're still in the line of fire, understand?"

She nodded, her body tense and shaking with anticipation, but it never came to that. The crooks must have had some kind of fail-safe system, some prearranged warning code, that told the driver of the waiting Blazer that something was wrong. Long before the Isuzu crested the final ridge, and just as the Dodge Dart started for the rest area's exit, the engine of the Blazer roared to life. It lurched out of its parking place and shot off down the western side of the pass in a cloud of dust, leaving two carloads of shaken tourists staring in its wake.

There was never any question of us firing a weapon after him. It would have endangered a good half-dozen innocent bystanders.

Rhonda and I had leaped off the bench and were racing back to the Beretta as the Trooper came into sight. Frantically we waved at Owens, motioning for him to follow the fleeing Blazer. Fortunately, our desperate message got through. Without slowing down, the Trooper lunged past us and down the other side of the mountain while we were still clambering into the car and groping for seat belts.

We didn't take time to discuss strategy. It wasn't necessary. Rhonda dove for the driver's seat, and I climbed in the other side, rolling down the window as I went, preparing to fire from the vehicle if that proved necessary. The 9-mm was a far better weapon for that purpose than the. 38 would have been, and I had no doubt that I was the better shot.

After all, Rhonda Attwood's business was painting pictures. Mine was catching killers.

We knew both vehicles were ahead of us, but not because we could see them. The steep grades and blind curves limited the sight line. Occasionally we caught sight of the glint of sun on metal, but mostly what we saw were the two distinct clouds of dust that roiled up over the horizon, muddying the clear mountain air behind the fleeing vehicles.

Now, instead of the idiot light glowing, we could smell the odor of overheated brakes. The downgrade was incredibly steep, rocky and washboarded in spots, and crisscrossed by boulder-laden streams still swollen from recent rains.