Deadline(136)

            Virgil, still talking low, said, “All right, guys, we’re not hiding anymore. My good buddy Will Bacon actually did leave the memory card up here, so just point your guns at anything that moves. I’m coming down.”

            —

            VIRGIL COULD HARDLY BELIEVE the luck—if it was indeed luck, if the card had anything worthwhile on it. Jenkins and Shrake had set up to cover both the stage entrance and the other two corridor entrances, and Virgil rattled down the ladder, and left it standing.

            At the bottom, he picked up his own shotgun and said, “Let’s get out of here, but let’s take it easy. We’ve got the memory card, we just need to get it somewhere safe.”

            They backed out the same way they’d come in, leaving the lights to burn. At the back door, next to Virgil’s truck, Shrake said, “This would be another obvious spot to ambush you. You had to come out sooner or later.”

            Virgil looked out the window at the truck: “Jenkins, you go out first, but don’t go for the doors: just brace yourself up against the front bumper, ready to fire either direction. Then Shrake comes out, and he posts up to the right, and you take the left side. Then I’ll come out around to the left—instead of the driver’s side, I should be okay—and I’ll pop the door and crawl across to the driver’s seat.”

            —

            THE PROCEDURE WAS FINE, and one minute later they were bouncing back around the high school and out to Main Street, feeling a little foolish about all the guns and armor and entry and exit dramatics.

            Shrake, from the backseat, said, “Now, if what you got on that chip is what you think you’ve got . . .”

            “Then we’ve got it all,” Virgil said. “I’ve got a Mac program that’ll run the film. We can load it up as soon as we get back to the cabin.”

            They were just coming to the turnoff for the cabin when Jenkins said sharply, “Hey, Virgil. Stop! Stop the car!”

            Thinking Jenkins had seen something, Virgil yanked the car to the side of the road and asked, “What?”

            “We’ve done everything right so far, but . . . If you really think about it, why would Laughton challenge you in the school? He’d have to creep down all those empty hallways, and if there was a shoot-out, he’d be right there in the middle of town, where everybody could see him coming and going. Same thing about ambushing you at the back door—he doesn’t just have to kill you, he has to find the chip, if you’ve got it. He’d want to get you someplace where he’d have at least a couple of minutes to empty out your pockets. Someplace a little private . . .”

            Virgil looked into the darkness up ahead: “Like the cabin.”

            “Like we thought Kerns would do,” Shrake said.

            Jenkins said, “Shrake and I found that back way in. What do you say we drive around that way? Just . . . to take a look.”

            “All right by me,” Virgil said.

            He waited for a car to pass and then pulled back out on the highway. A bit more than a quarter-mile farther along, Jenkins pointed at a turnoff and said, “There it is—that’s where you go in, there’s a little boat launch just over there.”

            There was a truck in the boat launch parking area, and Virgil said, “Well, I’ll be damned. That’s Vike’s truck. Jenkins, you probably just saved your own life.”

            “Or yours,” Jenkins said.

            “No, I always make you go first,” Virgil said. “I’m going to block his truck in, and then let’s see if we can locate Mr. Laughton back in the weeds.”