Runner (8 page)

"I'm sorry," said Jane. "For my sake and yours, I hope they never find you or Stewart. You seem to care about him."

"When I got here, I didn't have any money left. I didn't have anything much to trade. I told him that I would pay him by being his personal whore."

"You don't have to tell me this."

"Yes, I do, because I want us to understand each other. When I was running I got to the point where I knew I would do anything to be safe again, and I figured that was something he'd want. It was going to be pure business, but I discovered that the idea, the badness of it or something, excited me. What happened since then is that we fell in love. If I had to open somebody's artery again to hold on to the life we have here, I'd do it in an eyeblink."

"Not mine. I'll keep your secret."

Francine glanced toward the door to the sitting room. "Will she? She's a kid."

"I'm betting my life on her."

"You are," said Francine. "There are people looking really hard for her and for you. Things have changed since the last time you were running. There are more people in the chasing business these days. I want you to be careful, because if you fuck this up, I'm probably dead."

"I'll do my best." Jane put her arms around Francine and held her for a moment, then released her.

Jane heard a door open behind her. "Jane?" It was Christine.
Francine opened the door beside her and disappeared into Shattuck's workshop.

"What was that about?" Christine asked.

"We were wishing each other good luck."

"Good luck?"

"Yes. You'd be amazed at how much depends on luck."

"Now you're scaring me."

"Good."

The door opened and Francine said, "He's done. Your traveling documents are ready."

Jane went inside and examined the driver's license, the Social Security card, and the birth certificate. They were superb forgeries, all in the name Linda Welles. "Who's Linda Welles?"

Stewart said, "I like to give an old customer like you a bargain now and then. Linda Welles is an identity I grew. The Visa card is real, the birth certificate is a duplicate of a real one. The license has a counterpart in the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles. All I changed was the photo."

"Thank you." Jane took her cell phone and a credit card out of her purse. She looked at the phone number on the back of the card and dialed, listened to a recording, punched in the numbers on the front of the card, and then handed the card to Stewart. "Hello. Yes. My name is Cecilia Randazzo. The reason I'm calling is that I'm about to make a kind of big charge on my card, and I wanted you to know it's real. Forty thousand dollars." She answered a series of questions from the woman on the other end of the line, then disconnected. She said to Stewart, "All done. Charge away."

He scanned the card in his scanner, then returned it. Jane gathered up the false identification and said, "Thanks, Stewart. Take care of Francine and keep her safe." She turned to go.

"See you, Janie."

Jane stepped out the door, swept Christine to the front entrance, and stopped while Francine scanned the neighborhood. Jane said, "Persuade him that he's got enough money to retire, and get him out of here."

In a minute Jane was driving, and they were already out of town. It was after four
A.M.
now. They didn't speak much, just let the dark landscape float past the windows and the headlights reveal new stretches of road that weren't different from the last ones. Route 20 intersected with a big county road a couple of miles past the next town, and Jane felt an urge to take it, but she decided it would be better to keep going on the highway for a bit longer. They were making good time, and she wanted to do most of their traveling before the sun came up.

She began to consider where she would go when the road reached the Hudson. Years ago, when a runner showed up at her door with chasers close behind, she had simply started the car and begun to drive. When she was sure she had built up enough distance, she had gotten them both on an airplane. Even in those days, when she could walk into an airport, dream up a new name, and buy a ticket, flying had been a risk. Once a person stepped onto a plane there wasn't much mystery about where and when she would step off.

As Jane crested a rolling hill and began to coast down, she saw two big unmarked black American cars pulled across the center of the road in a V shape, with a third in the right lane about ten yards beyond. That would be the chase car, in case someone ran the roadblock. She said, "Roadblock up there. Sit up and look innocent."

Christine sat up and looked. "Is it the police?"

"It looks that way. I don't see how it could be the people who are searching for you."

"I don't either," said Christine. "They'd have to be psychics. But I'm scared. Can we turn around and go back the other way?"

"I don't think so. That's the best way I know to get stopped and have the car searched."

"So what? We don't have anything illegal in the car, do we?"

"Nothing but a few thousand dollars in cash and a few driver's licenses in different names."

"But what if it isn't the police? What about those people—Stewart and Francine? Did you tell them Richard's name? They could have called him while we were sleeping."

"That didn't happen." Jane slowed her Volvo and watched two men get out of one of the cars and step toward them. There was one walking toward each side of the car, and each held a large flashlight in his hand. That wasn't reassuring to Jane. It looked like what police did when they were checking cars looking for a fugitive.

She rolled down her window so she would be able to hear them. She could see that the two wore sport coats. There was a badge pinned to the belt of the man who was walking toward her. She said, "See? That one has a badge."

"No!" said Christine. "That's—"

"It's them!" the man shouted. He sidestepped quickly as he reached across his chest and under his coat.

"Get down." Jane wrenched the wheel toward the man and pressed the gas pedal. He sprinted for the side of the road. When his feet hit the gravel shoulder, he spun around to face the Volvo with the gun in his hand. His instant of understanding was visible in the headlights as he realized that he had not run far enough. There was a loud thump as the Volvo hit him, and a series of bumps as he rolled up and over the hood toward the windshield. Jane held the wheel to the left to keep the car spinning, and the centrifugal force
threw him off onto the pavement. Jane saw him bounce, roll, and then lie still.

Jane turned off the headlights and accelerated up and over the hill. She realized she had heard shots behind them, first one gun firing a round, then three rapid shots, and then a second shooter firing steadily.

Christine yelled, "You hit him!"

"We each had a weapon, and mine's bigger," said Jane. "Sometimes I wish it were faster." She stepped harder on the gas pedal, steering with both hands and straining her eyes to keep the car on the pavement.

"My God," said Christine. "How can you see anything? It's completely dark."

"I don't have to see much—just where the road is." Jane steered for a few more seconds, still accelerating, but then let the car's speed stay constant. "We're out of sight and out of range for the moment. Did you hear any bullets hit the car?"

"I don't think so. What does that sound like?"

"You'll know when you hear it. We're alive and the engine still runs, and I think we're going to have to get rid of this car anyway. It'll just be easier with no holes in it." Jane looked in the rearview mirror every few seconds. "They're not following us. I wonder what's keeping them." She looked again. "I get it."

"Get what?"

"There weren't five of them back there, only three. They must have gone ahead to set up the roadblock, and the others have been coming along behind us. Now they'll be waiting for us somewhere along this road."

"What can we do?"

"There was a turnoff for a county highway back there. We'll
head for that as fast as we can. Most likely the two who were following us will have heard we're coming back this way, and they'll be trying to block the road so we'll have one roadblock ahead and one behind. If we're faster than they expect, then maybe we can make the turn and never meet them."

Christine felt the car accelerating again, and pushed her body back into the seat. "Don't you think we could turn on the headlights?"

"I can make out the broken white line. As long as I keep it a foot to my left, we'll be okay. Just check your lap belt so it rides around your hips, tighten the chest belt so it's comfortable and holds you still, and let this happen."

Christine was silent, just did as Jane had said. Jane watched the dark road, concentrating on keeping her speed as high as she dared, and steering partly by the memory of the road she had from driving it in the opposite direction and partly by staring down at the blur of lines coming at her from the darkness like projectiles, then slipping past her left tire. After a couple of minutes she caught herself letting the moonlight on a stretch of bare ground ahead fool her into interpreting it as part of the pavement, but she managed to correct the car's course and stay on the road. She looked into the rearview mirror for a second, but saw no sign of the cars from the roadblock, not even a glow of headlights approaching the top of the rise. Jane returned her eyes to the road ahead, and after the next turn, the rise was out of sight.

A set of headlights appeared far ahead of them, then another set. "Two cars," said Christine. "Do you think it's the others?"

Jane squinted at the two sets of headlights coming toward them. One car pulled to the left as though to pass, but it was the front car. Now there was one car coming at them in each lane. Jane switched on her headlights.

The car approaching in Jane's lane blinked its high beams on, then off.

Jane switched on her brights and left them on. She kept her foot on the gas pedal, maintaining her speed toward the car in her lane.

"Don't play chicken with them!"

"I'm not playing," said Jane.

The pair of cars stayed together, streaking toward them. In one of the cars, the driver punched the horn three times, then stiff-armed it, holding it down so the sound started high and seemed to go down the scale as the cars approached.

The row of four headlights kept growing bigger and brighter. The two cars seemed to be linked, impossible to separate, impossible to avoid. Christine put her hands in front of her face. "Oh God oh God," she said.

The car in Jane's lane wavered a little, then altered its course slightly and moved to the shoulder of the road to allow Jane to pass between the two cars, but Jane muttered, "It's not that easy." She pulled onto the shoulder, too, so she was once again on a course to collide with the car.

"Stop! You're crazy!" Christine shouted.

The driver of the car that was approaching them had no choice except to veer farther to the left and sail off the shoulder in the only direction that was open, into the sloping field below the road.

Jane and the remaining car passed each other at high speed, and she looked into the rearview mirror as she moved along the highway. The car in the field was stopped, enveloped in a cloud of dust. Jane couldn't tell how badly it was damaged. The car on the road pulled over. Its white backup lights came on, and it backed up until it was close to the spot where the other car had stopped. Jane saw the dome light go on and off, and someone ran from the car across the road, and then she lost sight of them.

Jane drove faster now, searching for the junction she had remembered, and then took the turn. She glanced at Christine. "You okay?"

Christine was breathing heavily, as though she had run a race. There were tears running from her widened eyes. "I can't believe you did that."

"I didn't chase them. They chased us."

"You know what I mean."

"They're hired hands. That means they're willing to kill us for money. It doesn't mean they're willing to die for money."

"You bet our lives on that? And my baby's life, too. You weren't just trying to get past. You wanted to force that car off the road."

Jane turned to look at her in curiosity. "Of course." Then she returned her eyes to the road and kept driving.

Carl McGinnis lay on his back, exactly where the white car had thrown him, on the damp, weedy slope beside the shoulder of the road. He could smell the sweet aroma of crushed plants near his head. He knew he was hurt badly. He suspected he might be in some kind of shock, and he suspected that if he moved what was waiting for him was pain, so he had not tried to move yet. Breathing was difficult, so he supposed he must have broken some ribs. He lay there staring up at the sky with an expression like a man listening.

Steve Demming's head and torso appeared above him, a deeper darkness bending to block the night sky. "Carl, I know it hurts. But can you tell me how bad it is?"

Carl was unable to make out Demming's face well enough to read his expression in the dark. He was too frightened to complete the inventory of his injuries. He knew there must be a reservoir of pain waiting, and it would burst and overwhelm him if he moved in the wrong way. He had heard impatience and frustration in
Demming's voice. What Demming wanted was to hear Carl say, "I'm all right," and then watch him get up and walk it off. Carl could tell that he wasn't going to be able to stand up. He stared up at Demming's dark shape against the sky, but was unable to gather enough air into his lungs to calm his impatience.

Carl heard a cell telephone buzz, then Demming's voice again. "Yeah?" There was a long pause. "I hear you. Jesus, what a night. You might as well keep coming and meet us. We're still set up here. Carl got hit by her car. Yeah. It looks that way. Okay. Bye." Carl heard Demming's heavy footsteps receding, and then some low conversation with Pete Tilton.

Carl heard one of the car doors open and shut, and the sound of the car engine as one of the two men moved the car off the road and parked it on the shoulder, then the same thing repeated as they moved the other car. Then there was silence again. He couldn't move his head enough to see, but he supposed they were sitting together talking inside one of the cars, while he was out here in the open, alone and helpless. After a while Carl heard more cars approaching from a distance.