Among the gear in the truck, Shaw had brought a prepaid mobile hot spot. Its boosted connection let him use his laptop while on the road. He set the open computer on the passenger seat. Each time traffic on the George Washington Bridge stopped, which was every fifty feet, Shaw typed a few words into a secure chat application.
The first to reply was Wren, just as the jam was beginning to disperse in the express lanes on I-80. She leaned in toward the lens, her black-coffee hair like a second frame in the chat app’s window.
“Van?” she whispered.
“Where are you?” He had to turn his attention to the road. She would see his right profile, the one without the scars.
“I’m down the road from home, using Lettie’s computer.”
Shaw nodded. The odds that the SPD would tap a girlfriend’s phone or Chromebook, on the chance that a fugitive suspect might call her, would usually be as low as a snake’s belly. Warrants like that didn’t come easy. Nor did the personnel hours. But Paragon would have no such limitations if they had managed to find Wren.
“I’m okay,” Shaw said. “I’m safe. How are you doing?”
“Staying strong and going crazy, depending on the minute. This is . . . I hate worrying about you all the time. And then I feel guilty for not wanting to care so much. A bad spiral.”
“I’m glad you care. I’m to blame for putting you in this spot.”
Wren attempted a smile. “We’ll flame out together.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Sneaking around is strange. It’s as though I’m eight again and scared my parents will find me out of bed and stealing macarons from the kitchen. Are you used to this?”
Shaw wasn’t quite sure how to answer. He’d had to go into hiding before. But breaking out of custody was new territory, as was being under the shadow of a homicide charge. Maybe multiple charges by now.
“No,” he said, “and I hope this is over before the novelty wears off. Did you hear from Hollis?”
“He called Francine. She handed me the phone.” Wren shook her head. “Does this make my roommates your accomplices? Or his? Hollis said to contact him if we see anyone hanging around the house. I could tell from the way he said it that he wasn’t only talking about policemen.”
“Just a precaution,” Shaw said. “There’s probably no reason to worry.”
“I’m still going to look both ways twice before I cross the street. This must be what they call a healthy paranoia. Tell me something that I can do. Anything. I do not sit well.”
Shaw had known Wren long enough to recognize her terse phrasing as a riptide threshing below the surface.
“Addy,” he said. “And Cyndra. Cyn most of all. Addy will fret, but she’s seen a lot worse than me going on a sudden secret vacation.”
“About that. I spent the afternoon at Addy’s house earlier this week, hoping to have some time with Cyndra. She barely came out of her room.”
“I thought it was me she was mad at.”
“She is. She’s angry with everything. You and me, our relationship, that’s . . .” Wren made a gesture that Shaw missed while driving. He guessed it was something Gallic and expressing her frustration. “That issue is just a way to divert herself. Addy had a better perspective. She thinks Cyn is mad because you might go away.”
“Go away?”
“To prison.”
Cyndra’s dad had been a convict for most of her life. Absent.
“Goddamn, Wren.”
“Yes. I want to hold her and tell her it will be all right.”
“But we don’t know that it will.” Shaw’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“She eats her dinner in three bites, Addy says. When she eats at all. I wish I knew what to do.”
“If Cyn was like me, I’d say give her some space. Tell her . . . tell her I want to talk to her. Just her and me. Addy can figure out where and when.”
“Like this? From the road?”
“I’ll make it happen. Even if she wants to just hurl shit at me for an hour, at least that’s something. Let her get some of the poison out.”
“She loves you.”
“I loved Dono, too. Doesn’t mean I didn’t want to brain him with a crowbar every second Tuesday.”
Wren’s laugh was one of Shaw’s favorite things about her. Loud and unabashed. “I know what you’re doing, making jokes. How can you be the cause of my trouble and the salve?”
“Is it working?”
“Yes. But salves are temporary. You’ll have to come home to cure me.”
“On my way. I’m going to sort this out, Wren.”
Somehow.
After Wren hung up, Shaw had a mental vision of himself lighting fuses and running. The wick sputtering and sparking, inching ever closer to disaster. The women in his life left behind to deal with the wreckage.
Even before escaping custody, Shaw had habitually scanned his rearview while driving for anything out of the ordinary. Checking for a car matching his speed too closely or suddenly reappearing after being out of sight for a time, which might signal two or more tail cars working in tandem. After nearly a week on the run, that practice had become as reflexive as pressing the brake pedal to slow. He knew that most of the vehicles behind him were the same as those that had been there five miles before. Nothing weird about that, not on a busy multi-lane just outside the nation’s largest city.
So why couldn’t he shake the feeling that someone was following him?
The Jansson Building, for starters. He wasn’t certain that whoever had been coming up the staircase to the eighth floor had been hunting for him. But he didn’t have to be certain. He had to trust his instincts. And his gut said that inside the building, and out on the street, and right now in the truck, he was being watched.
Not cops. Cops would have bottled up the Jansson Building or taken him on the street if they’d needed an extra couple of minutes for backup to arrive. Paragon’s agents. Had to be.
Which meant his truck was burned.
The Ford’s previous owner had sprung for the extra-capacity fuel tank, and Shaw had topped it up in Brooklyn. Enough gas to carry him over seven hundred miles. He could remain on the interstate all the way to Indiana and see which car or cars went the distance.
Of course, time for him meant time for them. They might already have reinforcements waiting ahead, multiple teams trading off the intensive work of surveillance. Ready to converge whenever Shaw dared to stop. Or force him off the road if he didn’t.
It would be smart to pick the battlefield before they made their move. Shaw pulled up a map application on his phone and began to review the spiderweb of highways over the states ahead.