Authors: Thomas Perry
Jane knew that captive warriors had been tormented—beaten, then cut, mutilated, flayed,
then burned. A warrior was expected to remain strong and unyielding through all of
it, to display such incredible bravery that his captors would be shocked and fear
the next Seneca warriors who came their way. Even after the warrior knew he was too
deeply wounded and crippled to save himself, he would still look for a chance to strike,
grab one of the captors, and kill him before his own death came.
In Jane’s mind the stories about captured warriors were distilled into a vision of
a single warrior. His solitude was part of his torment, just as it was part of hers.
She thought about the warrior and pictured him among his enemies until she could almost
see him with her eyes open. She honored him for his courage and his pride, and tried
to behave the way he had. When she began to feel the weakness coming on her, feel
herself becoming too tired to struggle, too hopeless to remain silent through the
pain, she used the warrior’s image to fight it. She thought about the old Seneca warrior
at the darkest time, concentrating hard and continuously. She knew that he had been
one of her ancestors. He would have recognized her face, her hair, her skin, and the
language she spoke, and understood her and known her in spite of the blue eyes she’d
inherited from her mother. And during her ordeal she became, for a brief time, like
that warrior. She had watched until her chance had come, until the two men guarding
her had fallen asleep. Because of that she was alive tonight, walking along a highway
outside Cleveland, and they and their friends were dead.
A part of what was bothering her now was that she could have told Jimmy about all
this, but she’d had a year and still hadn’t told her husband, Carey. She had been
afraid he would never understand, and might say something that would stay between
them forever. What she feared was a rejection of the part of her that was Seneca.
She was a modern, educated woman, and sometimes it seemed to her that it was easiest
for Carey to assume that was all she was—that she was just like everybody else they
had known at Cornell, or even the women they met at cocktail parties and hospital
benefits. Right now she resented him for that, even while she admitted to herself
that the real reason he didn’t know things was that she hadn’t been able to tell him.
She turned around after a few miles and walked back toward the hotel. She considered
calling Carey, but first she analyzed why she wanted to call. She was feeling guilty
for having thoughts about him that weren’t fair. She was afraid that she was being
drawn too much into the Seneca world and a culture that he could never share. She
was afraid the balance that sustained her was being disrupted. Even that thought was
a problem—the Haudenosaunee peoples’ belief that all things needed to be kept in balance.
And she was lonely for Carey, but also irritated at him for not seeing that she loved
him too much to leave him unless she had to.
As she walked on, she decided that none of the reasons for calling Carey was the right
one. She had told him last time not to expect a call. And she had told Jimmy that
getting in touch with people at home was dangerous. It went for her too. A small risk
was still a risk. There was no reason for Carey to listen to her saying over and over
that she loved him and would come home when she could. If she said those words enough
times on long-distance calls, they began to feel like lies.
She stopped in a diner and had a cup of coffee, and then let the waitress refill it
while she sat thinking about her life and her marriage until she realized that she
had been there too long. She got up and continued the walk to the hotel.
When Jane reached the parking lot of the hotel she stayed outside it until she had
walked the perimeter, keeping her path out of the overhead lights that shone down
to protect the parked cars. She studied the Chevy Malibu again to be sure nobody was
watching it, either from another parked car or from the sort of van that the police
used for surveillance. By then she was near the dark side of the building, so she
walked along the brick wall. She looked at her watch. She had been gone more than
three hours. It was late enough now to be sure the hotel’s side entrance was locked,
so she went on to the main entrance.
Through the double glass doors she could see the night desk clerk. He was occupied,
talking with two men who looked like business travelers who had just driven from the
airport and not brought their luggage from the car yet. They were leaning on the long
counter, the three of them all close and preoccupied. As Jane walked by, something
unusual happened. One of the two men came around and joined the desk clerk behind
the counter. He turned the screen of the computer so his companion could see it too,
and they began to scroll down a page that was a series of divided sections.
Jane stood at the elevator and pretended to hit the button, but kept watching the
men without seeming to. As she watched, the man behind the counter raised his right
hand and pointed a finger at one of the lines of text. As he did, his sport jacket
rode up and she could see the gun under it. Jane pressed the button and the elevator
door opened, she stepped inside, and the door slid shut.
11
I
n the elevator Jane pressed the key on her phone. “We’ve got to get out. Pack whatever
you can in the next three minutes and then start wiping fingerprints off every surface
we touched. I’ll be there in a minute.”
As soon as the elevator door opened she was out and running along the fourth floor
hallway. Before she reached the door of their suite she had her key card out, and
when she reached the door she stuck the card in the reader and opened the door just
far enough to slip inside, then set the deadbolt.
Jimmy was stuffing his new clothes into his backpack. Jane stepped past him into her
room, rolled her clothes and placed them in her backpack, then went into the bathroom
and swept the cosmetics and soaps into a plastic bag. After she put the bag into her
backpack she took a hand towel and began wiping every surface. She stepped to the
door, saw Jimmy wiping doorknobs and counters with a napkin from the coffee service,
and tossed him a hand towel. “Use this. While you’re at it, check the window for watchers
or suspicious cars, but don’t get spotted.”
Jimmy stepped to the window and looked out the lower right corner for a few seconds.
“I don’t see anybody out there. There’s nobody near our car.”
“Good. Keep wiping. Anything either of us may have touched.” She put all of the dishes
from the cupboards into the dishwasher, added soap, and started it. She picked up
the magazines from the coffee table and put them in a trash bag, then swept everything
from the refrigerator into the bag after them.
Jimmy had completed his circuit of the suite, so Jane said, “All right. Go down the
stairs.”
Jimmy went while Jane stayed a few seconds to wipe off the door and its inner and
outer handles, and let it swing shut. She slipped into the stairwell just as she heard
the elevator bell ring.
At the bottom of the stairwell, Jane edged past Jimmy, slipped out the door, and moved
to the small enclosure where the garbage dumpsters were hidden from view. She emptied
the bag of trash into a dumpster, then crumpled the bag, tossed it in too, and walked
with Jimmy to the Chevrolet Malibu. She set her backpack on the backseat, and got
into the driver’s seat. Jimmy sat beside her.
She started the car and backed out of the space, then headed toward the exit from
the parking lot. “If they’re going to take us, it will be in the next few seconds,
before we hit the street.” She drove at a moderate, unhurried speed to the exit, signaled,
looked both ways, and pulled out into the traffic on the highway. She matched her
speed to the other cars, and eased the Malibu into the stream of cars in the left
lane. For a few seconds, she kept glancing at the side mirrors for any sign that they
were being followed. Then she turned to Jimmy. “How’s your mom?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “Somebody traced the call?”
“I’m not absolutely positive what happened,” she said. “I would have liked a chance
to get a better look at what the men I saw in the lobby were doing, but I didn’t think
it was a good idea to stick around. They looked like plainclothes police officers
of some kind. I saw the guns but not the badges, so I can’t swear to that. They were
with the desk clerk looking at the guest list on his computer. What I’m hoping is
that they’ll go through it all, not figure out that you were staying in a room registered
in a woman’s name, and move on to the next hotel. When you called your mother you
were in the hotel?”
“Yes,” he said. “Jane, I’m really sorry. I thought that if I was using a throwaway
phone, nobody could trace it to me.”
“That’s right,” she said. “But if they were monitoring your mother’s calls, they would
know she got a call from a number that was pinging off a particular tower outside
Cleveland. That’s what they wait for.”
“I can’t believe I was too stupid to think of that,” said Jimmy. “I’m ashamed of myself
for putting you in danger along with me.”
“I don’t want to go on and on about this,” Jane said. “But you’ve got to listen to
whatever I tell you and take it seriously. I’m willing to take some of the blame for
this, because I didn’t explain why we can’t call home, just told you not to. And if
we’re in trouble, then the person who will suffer most for it isn’t me.”
“I’m so sorry. I just thought—”
She interrupted. “It was a mistake. But this is a special situation, where we can’t
make mistakes. None. I know my way, and you don’t, so pay attention—all the time.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Jane drove on in silence, checking the side mirrors frequently in case she’d missed
something earlier. There were still no cars staying too long back there, but she knew
she had to take more precautions to be sure. “Take the battery out of your phone and
toss it out the window. Then the phone.”
Jimmy took the battery out, dropped it on the road, and then the cell phone.
When she reached a small plaza she pulled over and said, “You drive for a while.”
When they had changed places, she said, “Go up there to the right and get on the eastbound
ramp for the interstate.”
Jimmy put the car in gear and drove. As Jimmy pulled onto the interstate ramp, Jane
leaned back in her seat and let her muscles relax.
Jimmy had been watching her. “What’s the plan?”
She said, “If anybody was tracking your phone’s GPS, they’ll go where the last pings
were going.”
“Is that why we’re going east?”
“Partly.”
“What are the other reasons?”
“One is that we’ve already come west, so if someone is following at a distance, or
has just decided to, he’ll assume we’re still going in the same direction, because
that’s what people do. I’ve also found over the years that people who run away tend
to favor places to the south and west, where it’s warm, a little bit exotic, and living
isn’t hard work. Hardly anybody wants to go where it’s cold in the winter. Right now
I’m taking every choice that makes finding us less likely, even if it’s only a tiny
bit less likely. Advantages add up.”
“That sounds smart.”
Jane sat in silence. She decided that her inability to get through to him must have
been caused by the lifelong relationship between them. When they were children they
had been equals. Or maybe the advantage had been a bit on Jimmy’s side. They had been
comfortable playing together, partly because she was a girl who didn’t like sitting
still. She was physical and energetic, and that helped Jimmy accept her. She liked
to run and climb and explore. Jimmy was handsome, strong, and athletic, and Jane—if
she remembered it right—had been tall and bony and unattractive. The first time anyone
had said she was beautiful was in college, and she’d thought they were being sarcastic.
Now, over twenty years later, Jimmy was about the same, but Jane was different. He
seemed to be having trouble accepting the fact that she knew so much that he didn’t.
If he wasn’t going to take what she said seriously, they were both in trouble.
If he had been a stranger, a person who needed her help and came to her to ask for
it, she would have spoken harshly when he’d ignored her orders. She might even have
picked up her backpack, said, “This is as far as I go. You’re on your own,” and left.
She would never be able to do that to Jimmy, but that wasn’t the problem. Maybe the
problem was that he knew it. She looked at Jimmy. “Just keep driving east. When you
get tired, wake me up and I’ll take over.” She leaned back, closed her eyes, and waited
for the gentle rocking and the quiet hiss of the tires on the road to put her to sleep.
Jane woke when the car lurched hard to the side and skidded, throwing her forward
against the restraint of her seat belt. She clutched the armrest but the car fishtailed
as Jimmy struggled to keep the wheels headed forward, then hit the brakes. She saw
a set of taillights to the left, and then a series of them flashing past to the right.
Jimmy shouted, “That guy tried to hit me!”
“Pull to the right, away from him.” She punched the emergency blinker switch on the
dashboard so it began to tick and flash, lowered her window, and stretched her arm
out to signal to the cars coming up, half leaning out to look into their headlights.
“Go now!”
Jimmy moved over one lane and kept going. Jane kept her arm out the window as she
watched for an opening, then said, “Now!” Jimmy made it to the right lane. “Take the
next exit, and get there as fast as you can.”
As he reached the exit a few seconds later and guided the car to the ramp, Jane held
on to the back of her seat and stared out the rear window of the car. “He doesn’t
seem to have made it over to the exit, but he’ll take the next one.”
“He was actually trying to hit me,” Jimmy said. “It was as though he wanted to slam
us into the rail.” He stopped at the bottom of the ramp and then pulled cautiously
into the traffic moving to his right on the road.
“Pull into that lot up there—the hotel—and around the building to the back.”
Jimmy pulled off the road and into the large parking lot that surrounded a twenty-story
hotel. He drove up an aisle filled with cars and around the building, then pulled
into one of the empty spaces at the rear of the building where their car could not
be seen from the street.
“Leave the motor running. This will only take a minute.” Jane got out and walked around
the car, and then knelt beside the driver’s side door. After a few seconds she swung
the door open and Jimmy got out.
“You didn’t find anything, right?” Jimmy said. “The SUV didn’t actually hit us, but
he would have if I hadn’t seen him in time.”
“The driver wasn’t trying to smash into us.” Jane pointed at the bottom of the door
just above the rocker panel. There was a small round hole punched in the sheet metal
of the door. “That’s a bullet hole. There’s another one here. The shooter in the passenger
seat must not have been prepared for you to drop back so suddenly. When you stomped
on the brake he had to take his shot after he was ahead of you with his arm trailing
out the window.”
“Why would cops shoot at me?”
“They weren’t the police. Cops give you a chance to let them take you the easy way.
They don’t just open up on a car going seventy in traffic. I also think the shots
weren’t loud enough, so the gun must have had a suppressor. The police don’t use them.”
“I don’t get this.”
“I don’t either. But from the look of the holes, I’d guess he could have been aiming
for your left front tire to get us to pull over. He could also have been aiming at
you.” She sat in the driver’s seat. “Get in. They’ll be taking the next exit about
now. We’d better be gone before they get back here.”
Jimmy got in, and Jane backed out of the space and drove around the big building.
“We’ll change course and stay off the interstate. While you’re watching for the black
SUV, also watch for a sign that says Route Eleven. It’ll be one of those white state
highway signs.”
“Okay.”
Jane drove aggressively, not breaking any laws except the speed limit, but changing
lanes frequently to avoid being trapped behind slow cars and trucks.
Jimmy said, “What kind of person would be coming after me with a gun with a silencer?
Who even
has
a silencer?”
“Last time I looked it up there were thirty-nine states where it was legal to own
one, and Ohio was one of them. You pay a two hundred dollar transfer tax to the ATF,
and wait for them to process your application. If you’re somebody who can legally
own a handgun, eventually you’ll get your silencer.” She kept her eyes on the road,
trying to use each moment to get as far as she could from the highway exit they’d
taken.
She looked into the rearview mirror and said, “If I were you, I wouldn’t be thinking
about hardware. I’d be trying to bring back anything I could about Nick Bauermeister,
or his lawyers, his friends, family, or anything else that would tell us why somebody
in another state would be looking for you.”
“I don’t know. I told you I didn’t kill him. I don’t know anything about him except
that he was a drunk taking a swing at me in a bar. Maybe he had a relative or friend
who’s a badass and doesn’t trust the police to get me.”
“This isn’t one man,” Jane said. “I saw two men at the hotel, and just now there were
a driver and a shooter. The only way anybody could have found us in Ohio was by looking
at your mother’s phone record. That narrows things down.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t the police.”
“Now I’m sure it isn’t. But there could be somebody who works for some police agency
who’s doing a favor, or somebody in the phone company. There are also data brokers
you can reach online who might get a list of calls made to your mother’s phone. Nick
Bauermeister’s angry cousin isn’t likely to have done these things. Angry amateurs
lose control and try to strangle you in court. They don’t hire pairs of killers to
hunt you down two states away.”
“There’s the sign for Route Eleven up ahead.”
“I see it. Hold on.” Jane sped to the intersection and turned right without signaling,
then accelerated away from the intersection down Route 11 to the south. She glanced
in the rearview mirrors frequently as she drove.
Jimmy said, “Do you think the guys in that SUV could have caught up with us this quickly?”
“No, but I’m sure they could dial a cell phone this quickly to tell their friends
where we’re likely to be. If you don’t mind, take a look behind us and memorize the
cars. We’ll be away from the city lights in a few minutes, so study the way their
headlights look, too. If anybody stays with us too long, or adjusts his speed just
to keep us in sight, tell me.”
“Headlights? Just two lights.”
“They’re all different. Brightness, height from the ground, and so on. Look especially
at SUVs, since that’s what just tried to force us off the road.”
Jimmy turned around in his seat and stared for a few minutes. “We’ve got a few candidates,
but nothing conclusive. Two SUVs. One black, like the one on the interstate, and the
other light gray. There’s a white pickup. Looks like a Ford 250 with big tires, a
yellow VW, a little red Fiat, and a—nope, that one dropped out at the Walmart.”