Relentless

it.
    “John Clitherow told me to abandon our car,” I said. “We were in such a hurry to find a place to lie low, I thought as long as we kept the Explorer out of sight in Marty’s garage …”
    “Could there be a tracking device on it?”
    “John just said Waxx’s resources seem supernatural and we shouldn’t underestimate his capabilities.”
    “You mean we gotta buy a new car?”
    “There’ll be a public record of the sale. I don’t know how long it takes for that to show up on DMV records where some supernatural hacker might be able to find it.”
    Penny said, “What’re we supposed to do—
steal
a car?”
    “That would be wrong,” Milo advised.
    “I was being sarcastic, honey.”
    “I hope so,” Milo said.
    We rode in silence, and then Penny said, “Milo, I want you to understand something.”
    “What?” the boy asked.
    “Your dad and I sound a little lost right now. We’re not lost. We’re thinking. We’re not the kind of people who just take crap like this. My family blows up things. If your dad had a family, they’d blow up things, too. Your dad is smart, he’s quick, and he’s brave, which he proved today, proved forever. We’re going to figure this out, and we’re going to strike back, and we’re going to make this Waxx sonofabitch regret he ever stepped into our lives.”
    “Vengeance,” Milo said, as he had said to me in his room two days previously, when the review was published.
    The word sounded less offensive now than it sounded then.
    “Justice,” Penny said. “Call it justice. One way or another, we’re going to
crush
Shearman Waxx with a big damn load of justice.”
    I began to wish I’d spent the past ten years writing thrillers, because then perhaps I would know something useful about tracking devices, electronic surveillance, phone tapping, and techniques of evasion when pursued by psychopathic book critics.
    In the storm-dimmed light, most drivers were using headlights, which inspired happier thoughts of the impending Christmas holiday by transforming the falling rain into tinsel streamers, the foaminggutter water into angel hair, and every puddle into collections of silver ornaments waiting to be hung on a tree.
    “Hud called me on my cell phone,” I said, “but I immediately called him back on the disposable. That couldn’t have been how Waxx found us because he was already watching us then. He opened fire a couple minutes later.”
    “I thought you only had the disposable.”
    “No. I’m keeping my phone in case John Clitherow decides to contact me again.”
    “What did the Hud call about?”
    “Heard our house blew up. Thought you might want to dump Alma, get a new agent.”
    “What’s he trying to imply—that Alma blew it up?”
    “No. But he seems to feel you should be worried that Alma’s clients are dying on her.”
    “Gwyneth Oppenheim?”
    “He wants you to think maybe Alma’s good karma is past its expiration date.”
    “And now her clients are going to die like flies?”
    “Should I invite him to your funeral?” I asked.
    “No way, not the Honker,” Milo said from the backseat, and Lassie issued a low growl.
    After I pinched my nose and honked, I said, “He thinks a blown-up house could get me on
Oprah.”
    “Well, that’s a big step up from
Dancing with the Stars
.”
    “It was like three years ago he wanted me to do that, and I
still
haven’t taken samba lessons. I am such an ungrateful client.”
    “Remember that dinner, I’d finished the first bunny book. He spent an hour arguing, Pistachio shouldn’t be
a purple
rabbit?”
    “He said purple on book jackets doesn’t sell.”
    “He urged me to go green for the environmental crowd.”
    “And make the rabbit a kitten,” I recalled.
    “Pistachio, the green kitten. Except he said Pistachio wasn’t a good name for marketing.”
    “Hey, I forgot that part. What name did he suggest?”
    “Toot. Toot the green kitten.”
    “Toot. I guess that works if you’re marketing narrowly to little kids who’re cocaine addicts.”
    With a faint note of disapproval, Milo said, “Are you guys thinking how to get another car?”
    “Yes we are, dear,” Penny said. “We’re multitrack thinkers.”
    “We already have a slew of ideas,” I said. “We’re carefully evaluating them before we decide what to do.”
    Milo said, “I have a pretty good idea.”
    Penny and I glanced at each other, and I said, “Yeah? What’s that?”
    “Well, but you’re the parents,