52

Amherst, Massachusetts

“Rise and shine.” Ernest peered inside the driver’s door. He held three coffees and a hot chocolate in a carrier. Salem had never smelled anything so good.

“Our new ride is behind the museum, about a ten-minute walk from here. We can ditch this car. Make sure you take everything you own out of it.”

Mercy sat up like a little soldier, handed Ernest his jacket, grabbed her Dora the Explorer knapsack and the hot chocolate, and stood next to the car, her eyes sleepy, blond hair soft-looking and messy. She must have done this early-morning-car-switch maneuver a lot.

Bel was slower to rise.

“There’s an ATM on the way,” Ernest said once they were all outside the car. “You can withdraw cash on your credit cards, and then don’t touch them again. You got rid of your phones?”

Salem sipped the coffee. It burnt her lip. She nodded, wiping at the pain. It amazed her how easy it was to lie, to not feel anything, not even guilt. The day had warmed considerably since her pre-dawn jog. The fuzzy peach glow had made good on its promise, delivering a golden globe hanging two hours above the horizon. The sun had burned off all the fog and taken with it their visible breath.

They set off toward the museum. Salem wondered what time it was, reached automatically for her phone, and then stopped, her pulse lurching. “You got us phones?”

“Yeah,” Ernest said, his face lighting up. He pulled two black flip phones out of his pocket and stopped to hand one to Salem and one to Bel. “They’re precharged and aren’t traceable, unless you start making regular calls to someone you know, and someone the FBI knows you know. They can watch the accounts on that end.”

Bel handed her coffee to Salem so she could power up the phone she’d just been given. “You’ve been on the run a while?”

“My whole life, seems like.” He was matter of fact. “Hey, Mercy, I want you to stay in the park outside when we go into the museum. You can hide in the bushes.”

Salem’s head jerked toward Ernest. “What?”

Ernest scratched his hair just above the ear. “I don’t want her recorded on any cameras or near any danger.”

“No way,” Bel said. “We’re not leaving a child alone in a strange town in November.”

“It’s okay.” Mercy took a long draw off her hot chocolate. “That’s how we do it.”

“Not anymore.” They reached the side of the bank, and its outdoor ATM. Bel slapped her hand over the camera, withdrew the maximum from her credit card account, and kept the camera covered while Salem did the same. They tossed their empty coffee cups and credit cards in the trash bin outside the bank.

A woman inside the lobby of the Emily Dickinson Museum was unlocking the front door just as they walked up.

Salem rubbed the back of her neck, beginning her counting exercises to soothe her unease.

If the museum didn’t house Samuel and Lucretia Dickinson’s gun, they’d reached a dead end.

Whichever of their moms was alive, she wouldn’t be for much longer.