Lind drove the speed limit southwest down 7th Street, trying to blend in with traffic. Trying to ignore the little pinprick of panic that had started to itch in his mind.
The black woman would have memorized his plates. She would have called them in to the police. Right now, the police would be looking for the car.
Remove yourself from the scene without being detected. Don’t attract undue attention. Secondary objective.
Lind checked the road for police cars. Checked his rearview mirror, oncoming traffic, the parking lots that lined the road. He saw a couple cruisers. They didn’t follow him. He kept driving.
He followed 7th Street until it merged with the highway and turned south to cross the Mississippi River, and he drove past the lakes and the grassland and forest until he reached the airport turnoff. He parked in the rental car lot and waited as a man scanned something off the windshield. The man grinned at Lind. “Enjoy your visit?”
Lind didn’t answer. The man frowned and handed Lind a receipt, glanced back at him once before hurrying away. Lind was already walking to the terminal. He found a garbage can and tore up the receipt, just like he’d been taught. Then he rode the concourse tram to the main terminal building and found the Delta line.
The woman at the counter frowned when she read his alias off the computer. Lind felt the little niggle of panic return. “You’re a frequent flier, you know,” the woman said finally. “You could have skipped this whole line.”
Lind relaxed. “Next time,” he said. He took his ticket and walked to the security lineup. The guard waved him through. The metal detector didn’t beep.
He boarded the plane with the frequent fliers and the first-class passengers in the priority lane. Sat in his window seat as the plane slowly filled, as it taxied from the gate, as it careened down the runway and reached a safe cruising altitude. He didn’t look out the window. He didn’t read the in-flight magazine. He sat in his seat and wondered if the black woman and her companion constituted undue attention.
Two and a half hours later, the plane landed in Philadelphia. It was dark outside, and raining. Lind walked off the plane and out through the terminal to the parking garage, where he retrieved his car and drove away from the airport.
He drove along Interstate 95 over the Schuylkill River and into downtown Philadelphia, navigated the busy, rainy streets, and parked in an underground garage and rode the elevator to the apartments above.
He stepped off the elevator to his apartment on the building’s top floor. Kicked off his shoes and then moved from room to room, turning on every light he could find. When the whole place was daytime bright, he went into the living area and turned on the television and turned up the volume. Took a TV dinner from the kitchen freezer and heated it in the microwave, brewed a strong pot of coffee, and brought the dinner and the coffee into the living area.
It was dark out, and rainy. The city’s sounds were muted far below. Lind ate his dinner and drank from his coffee mug, sat on his couch in the middle of his bright living room, watching the television play an endless loop of movie previews. He sat on his couch all night, drinking coffee and watching the TV, praying his phone would ring again soon.