Instead of being irritated by the question, she flashed him another one of those mesmerizing smiles of hers and said in a voice laced with amusement, "I'm twenty-six."
"My God!" Zack heard himself blurt, then he closed his eyes in disgusted disbelief at his gaucheness. "I mean," he explained, "you don't look that old."
She seemed to sense his discomfiture, because she laughed softly and said, "Probably because I've only been twenty-six for a few weeks."
Afraid to trust himself to say anything spontaneous, he watched the windshield wipers carve a steady half-moon in the snow on the windshield while he reviewed his next question for any trace of the tastelessness that had marred his previous words. Feeling this one was safe, he said, "What do you do?"
"I'm a schoolteacher."
"You don't look like one."
Inexplicably, the laughter rekindled in her eyes and he saw her bite back a smile. Feeling completely disoriented and confused by her unpredictable reactions, he said a little curtly, "Did I just say something funny?"
Julie shook her head and said, "Not at all. That's what most older people say."
Zack wasn't certain whether she'd referred to him as being "older" because he actually looked like an antique to her or if it was a joking retaliation for his ill-advised remarks about her age and appearance. He was puzzling over that when she asked what he did for a living, and he answered with the first occupation that seemed to suit what he'd already told her about himself.
"I'm in construction."
"Really? My brother's in construction work, too—a general contractor. What sort of construction work do you do?"
Zack barely knew which end of a hammer to use on a nail, and he sorely wished he'd picked a more obscure job or, better yet, had remained completely silent. "Walls," he replied vaguely. "I do walls."
She took her eyes from the road, which alarmed him, and regarded him intently, which alarmed him even more. "Walls?" she repeated sounding puzzled. Then she explained, "I meant, do you have a specialty?"
"Yes. Walls," Zack said shortly, angry with himself for having begun such a conversation. "That's my specialty. I put up walls."
Julie realized she must have misunderstood him the first time. "Drywall!" she exclaimed ruefully. "Of course. You're a drywall taper?"
"Right."
"In that case, I'm surprised you have any trouble finding work. Good tapers are usually in great demand."
"I'm not a good one," Zack stated flatly, making it clear he wasn't interested in continuing that conversation.
Julie choked back a startled laugh at his answer and his tone and concentrated on the road. He was a very unusual man. She couldn't decide whether she liked him and was glad of his company … or not. And she couldn't get over the uneasy feeling that he reminded her of someone. She wished she could see his face without those sunglasses so she could figure out who it was. The city vanished in the rearview mirror and the sky turned the heavy, ominous gray of an early dusk. Silence hung in the car and fat snow smacked her windshield, slowly gaining an edge on the car's windshield wipers. They'd been on the road for about a half hour when Zack glanced in the outside rearview mirror on his side—and his blood froze. A half mile behind them, and closing fast, was a police car with its red and blue lights rotating furiously.
A second later, he heard the siren begin to wail.
The woman beside him heard it, too; she glanced in the rearview mirror and took her foot off of the gas pedal, slowing the Blazer and angling it onto the shoulder. Zack reached into his jacket pocket, his hand closing on the butt of the automatic, although he had no precise idea at that moment exactly what he meant to do if the cop tried to pull them over. The squad car was so close now, he could see there were not one, but two cops in the front seat. They pulled around the Blazer…
And kept going.
"There must be an accident up there," she said as they crested the hill and came to a stop behind what looked like a five-mile traffic jam on the snowy interstate. A moment later two ambulances came tearing around them.
Zack's rush of adrenalin subsided, leaving him shaken and limp. He felt as if he'd suddenly exceeded his capacity to react with violent emotion to anything whatsoever, which was probably due to his having been trying to execute for two days a carefully thought-out escape plan that should have been a guaranteed success by virtue of its sheer simplicity. And would have been if Hadley hadn't postponed his trip to Amarillo. Everything else that had gone wrong was a result of that. He wasn't sure even now if his contact was still in his Detroit hotel, waiting for Zack's call before he rented a car to drive to Windsor. And until Zack was further away from Amarillo, he didn't dare stop to find a telephone. Moreover, although Colorado was only 130 miles from Amarillo, with a tiny piece of Oklahoma's Panhandle in between, he needed to be traveling northwest to get there. Instead, he was now heading southeast. Thinking his Colorado map might also contain a small piece of the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, he decided to occupy his time productively by looking for a new route from here to there. Twisting around in his seat, he said, "I think I'll have a look at a map."
Julie naturally assumed he was checking his route to whatever Texas town his new job was located in. "Where are you heading?" she asked.
"Ellerton," he replied, sending her a brief smile as he reached past the folded down back seat for his duffel bag near the tailgate. "I interviewed for the job in Amarillo, but I've never been out to the site," he added so she wouldn't ask questions about the place.
"I don't think I've ever heard of Ellerton." Several minutes later, when he neatly refolded the map with its typewritten sheet on the top, Julie said, "Did you find Ellerton?"
"No." To dissuade her from asking any further questions about the location of a nonexistent town, he flashed the typewritten sheet at her as he bent over the seat to put it back into his duffel. "I have detailed instructions right here, so I'll find it."
She nodded, but her gaze was on the exit up ahead. "I think I'll get off the interstate here and take a side road to get past the accident."
"Good idea." The exit turned out to be a rural road that ran roughly parallel with the interstate then began angling off to the right.
"This might not have been a good idea after all," she said several minutes later when the narrow blacktop road began to wind steadily further away from the main highway.