“Where’s yours?”
“Battery’s dead.” He held out his right hand. She placed her phone in it. With his hands propped on top of the steering wheel, he opened the back of her phone, removed the battery, and dropped it into his left coat pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Making it impossible for you to record anything I’m about to tell you.”
“I had no intention of recording it!” Thrusting her hand toward him, she said, “Give me back my phone.”
He laid the phone in her palm but kept the battery. “For the time being, anything I say is off the record. Okay?”
She gave a curt nod.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“Fuck you.”
He snickered. “Good enough.” He let her stew for a moment, then said, “Several times you’ve asked what caused my split with The Major.”
Still miffed over the phone, she answered stiffly, “A perfectly valid question.”
“It was the Pegasus bombing.”
Her vexation immediately changed to captured interest.
“You also wanted to know what caused my severance with the ATF.”
“Yes.”
He looked across at her. “Same thing.”
He held her gaze for several seconds, then returned his attention to the icy roadway. The SUV was better equipped to drive on it than his car would have been. Carson was good for something.
They rode in silence for half a mile before Kerra said, “Well? Talk to me. You had a quarrel with the ATF and with The Major over the bombing.”
“Yes.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“I will.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
He drove past the motel without even slowing down. She turned her head to look at the neon sign that blurred and then disappeared in the freezing fog and mist behind them. “You passed the motel.”
“Did I?”
“You know you did, Trapper. What’s going on?”
“I’m concentrating. Trying to keep this thing from skidding off the road and still maintain some decent speed.”
“We don’t need to maintain a decent speed.”
“We do if we don’t want them to catch us.”
“Catch us? What are you talking about? Who’s after us?”