Former President (eBook)

-13-

Billie’s got Redhead’s SUV in sight about a mile ahead as we turn left, which I register as north, on the Sonoma Highway. I can see that catching sight of the 4Runner before reaching this intersection was key. From The Fig to here involved only local roads, but the two-lane Sonoma Highway stretches around long bends in both directions that would have meant taking a fifty-fifty shot had we lost our visual.

Billie rolls through the stop sign at the junction, quickly passing a Ford F-150 laden with landscaping tools. As we accelerate and sweep around the first wide, easy turn, it’s hard not to clock the beauty of the rolling hills, farmhouses, and vineyard rows of the valley.

“Keep your distance,” I say. “Half-mile gap’s probably good.”

“No problem,” Billie says.

We lose sight around some turns ahead, but the 4Runner stays in view on the stretches, and judging from Redhead’s lackadaisical speed, it doesn’t appear she’s made us. Also didn’t hurt that she departed with her take-out before the full Bozos multijurisdictional convoy roll-up in the heart of the Glen Ellen business district.

Speaking of such, the Yukon follows us some distance back, remaining fairly unobtrusive in our mirrors. The GMC is running solo — my detail seems to have ditched their Highway Patrol escort now that they’ve found me.

We’re headed in the direction of the inn, which spikes my problem-solving synapses another notch. How could the letter-writer, sending me out here with a reservation and four photographs in a Bible, know she was dispatching me to exactly the right place? And if so, why send me at all? The directive — tell me what you see — must merely have been a demand to confirm something the letter-writer already knew. And with that swagger in Redhead’s step, I’ve got some rising suspicions about the letter-writer and the supposedly unassuming role she claims to hold in Washington. All of which calls the letter-writer’s entire story into further question.

I feel a pang of anger, a sort I’ve felt before: it’s the kind that hits most presidents a few weeks after the inauguration, the point at which you’ve been exposed to the realities hidden from ordinary citizens like popcorn and dust under the living-room rug. In many ways I’ve been immune to the rage for years, but it’s flowing again now, an angry objection to injustice that works similarly to the converse of love: once you know how to feel it, you will always feel it as long as you’re paying attention. I just haven’t been paying attention — to either — for one hell of a long time.

The knee-jerk conclusion here is that a federal agent is somehow involved in a kidnapping, and if the facts here approximate the way things typically work with government agencies, that’s just going to be the tip of the iceberg. And whatever it is that she’s up to, Redhead wouldn’t be the type to undertake it of her own initiative. Whether this legitimizes or debunks the letter-writer’s take on recent history and her call for help remains unclear.

“Is there some point at which you intend to fill me in on what exactly we’re doing here?” Billie says.

I blink back to the moment. The alarming implications of the Federal Agent Strut in a woman ostensibly linked to the abduction of a government employee’s daughter dictate that Billie shouldn’t be told much — I don’t want her exposed to these people, and I don’t want them exposed to her. The problem with all of this is that Billie is a relentless person who regularly runs marathons at top speed as the third leg of all-day races in hundred-degree heat. She may not know what she’s getting into, but if she becomes insistent on staying involved, I’m fairly certain I’m incapable of holding her back, or holding all the information back in the meantime. So I can’t stay entirely silent.

“Somebody asked me to do her a favor,” I say. “It has to do with some unpleasant business. There are people connected with her work in government who’ve engineered the unpleasantness. What we’re doing now is part of the favor, which logic would dictate I shouldn’t be granting. But I’m not typically known for following a course based solely on logic.”

“Unpleasantness,” she says. Then, “The woman in the 4Runner isn’t the one you’re doing the favor for, though.”

“No.”

“The favor’s the reason we came up here.”

She says it flatly, so there’s no telling whether another emotional layer lurks behind her question.

“No.” We wind around a long bend and the 4Runner reappears ahead of us on another straightaway as I sense the importance of my answer. “The favor gave me the opportunity to ask you to come. My reservation at the inn was arranged by the person who asked me to help her — but I meant what I said, that I’d decided against it. I wasn’t going to help, but your dour morning mood that day in your shop pulled me out of my hang-up on both.”

“Both?”

“Taking a leap with you that I should have taken six months ago, and agreeing to help with the favor.”

Billie works the wheel for a second or two.

“What kind of help were you asked to provide?”

We’re at the point of establishing our trust. If I can’t be truthful before the third kiss, then she’d certainly be wise to suspect me of the potential for great mendacity later on. But the plain fact is that there are things in government I’ve seen — and overseen — that she hasn’t. And wouldn’t want to. She’ll be safer in the dark, but Billie’s trust is something I don’t care to lose.

“Somebody went missing,” I say. “This person may have been kidnapped, if not killed, and the redhead we’re following probably has something to do with it.”

“Is the somebody who went missing a woman, or a man?”

I hesitate but increasingly find my stonewalling efforts futile. “A woman.”

“Adult, or child?”

“She’s an adult.”

“And the person who asked you to help? How well do you know her?”

Relentless.

“I don’t know her at all,” I say, “though she claims that we’d previously met. She wrote me a letter asking for my help. And since when did you attend interrogation school?”

“I’ve been through a divorce,” Billie says. “So along with the rest of the baggage I bring with me on any trip, to wine country or elsewhere, is a trust meter with a precision read-out. Is she related to the one who’s missing?”

“The woman who’s missing,” I say, all but giving up, “is her daughter.”

We drive for another mile in silence and I see that we’re approaching Kenwood. The valley floor is off to our left, vineyards visible between stands of oak trees. To the right lies a combination of evergreens and oaks, more woods and hills than fields, the steep, rising, forested slopes signaling the base of the foothills.

“I shouldn’t have asked you to come,” I say.

Come to think of it, I shouldn’t have come myself.

But had I not, my long-neglected synapses would not be firing like they are now. Redhead’s Federal Agent Strut has stirred dregs of bitterness I thought I’d put aside for good. The shot of adrenaline I’m feeling tells me that pulling my head out of the sand was one of the better decisions I’ve made in years.

Billie turns and fixes her gaze on me.

“Yes, you should have,” she says. “And I’m glad I came too. Among other reasons, you’ve got a spring in your step, the countryside is breathtaking, and I’ve just learned you’re a really good kisser.”

I feel myself smile in spite of the circumstances.

“Thought that was just you,” I say.

“That was decidedly mutual.”

Billie takes a hand from the wheel and, with it, touches my knee. It transports me back to our night with Gomez. I like the fact that her touch is on me, rather than Gustavo the cycling date.

Ahead, the 4Runner’s brake lights flash and the SUV exits the highway to the right. Billie gradually slows as we watch from our rapidly closing half-mile gap.

“Don’t follow just yet,” I say. “Continue on the highway.”

It’s only a few seconds before we fly through the intersection. With a quick flash of sunlight on its tailgate, the 4Runner disappears uphill into the woods.

I catch a glimpse of the sign at the intersection on our way by: Nuns Canyon Road. I don’t know this specific lane, but I’ve spent my share of time up here, and I know this sort of road. It won’t have an outlet to another highway.

“Don’t you want to follow her?” Billie says.

“Those weren’t my instructions. I’m just supposed to report the sighting.”

“But we already did more than that,” she says.

“There’s no outlet on these side roads,” I say. In the side mirror, I confirm...