“Just get me some food.”
Ten minutes later, Diesel pulled into a gas station and handed me a twenty. “I’ll do the gas, you do the food,” he said.
“Boy, you really know how to treat a girl right.”
“Now what? Would you rather pump the gas?”
I played the vending machines and came away with a couple granola bars, a couple snack packs of peanuts, two Little Debbie cakes, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, an assortment of gummi bears, and two bottles of water.
I got back into the SUV and put the bag between the two front seats. Diesel looked in the bag and took one of the Reese’s.
“I thought for sure you’d go for the granola bar,” I said.
“No way.”
“Ranger would take the granola bar.”
“And Morelli?”
“The peanuts.”
“And what about you?” Diesel asked.
“The cake.”
He put the SUV in gear and turned onto the road. “I knew it would be the cake.”
I ate one of the cakes, the remaining Reese’s, and the peanuts while Diesel drove. He’d picked out five houses he thought deserved a closer look, and he was searching for the best road in to the properties. We were in the heart of the Barrens, and I was bleary-?eyed with the monotony. Scrub pines, sand, and some high-?bush cranberries. I couldn’t imagine how Diesel was finding his way without a Taco Bell to serve as a landmark. Remembering to turn right at the large pine wasn’t going to do it for me.
“Here we go,” he said, swerving off the paved road onto hard-?packed dirt.
He drove for a quarter mile on the dirt road and parked in a small clearing. We got out of the SUV and off-?loaded the ATVs. The sky was growing darker by the minute, hanging just above the treetops.
I tipped my head back and studied the cloud cover. “This doesn’t look good.”
“No, but I can’t let rain stop me. I’m running out of time. I can’t see Wulf hanging in the Barrens much longer. Even with the proximity of Atlantic City, it’s not going to hold his attention. If the technology is worth something to him, he’ll move Munch to a more obscure location and lock him down. And then Wulf will find a more entertaining environment.”
“Then let’s do it. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor lack of a bathroom will stop me.”
I followed Diesel’s ATV down the dirt road. There were several forks, but Diesel knew his route. He slowed just before he came to the first house and went off-?road into the pines. We parked the ATVs and moved in on foot. The house was more decrepit than it had appeared from the air. The yellow paint was faded and peeling. The small front porch sagged. Its step had been replaced by a cinder block. A tricked-?out Ford pickup was parked in the yard not far from the front door to the house.
We skirted the house and looked in the garage window. The garage was wall-?to-?wall junk. A rusted washing machine, stacks of newspapers, a bed mattress with the innards spilling out from a huge rip in the middle. There was a mountain of big plastic bags, which I suspected from the smell leaking out of the garage contained garbage. We walked around back and looked in the kitchen window. The kitchen looked a lot like the garage.
A skinny young guy in jeans and a wifebeater shuffled into the kitchen and threw an empty beer can into the sink. The sink was already full of beer cans, and the can rolled off the pile and fell onto the floor.
Diesel rapped on the back door and opened it, and the skinny guy looked at Diesel blank-?faced, too trashed to be surprised.
“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” Diesel said.
“He ain’t here, man. I’m the only one here.”
“Yeah, but maybe you’ve seen him around. Red hair, short guy, about your age or a little older.”
“No, sorry. Haven’t seen the little dude.”
“How about a guy with shoulder-?length black hair and really pale skin.”
“The vampire. Shit, he almost ran me off the road twice.”