EIGHT

•   •   •

Karen sped along Interstate 76, tears blurring her vision of the road, not paying attention to her speedometer. Her pulse banged in her head and neck; she could even feel it beating through her abdomen. Sweat wet her hands, and her mouth suddenly felt as if it were lined with cotton fabric.

This was the plan. She kept reminding herself she’d done the right thing. She glanced at the passenger seat. Only she should have Lilly with her. The plan was that she and Lilly would take the truck and drive east, drive to Harrisburg, find Joe Kennedy, and get his help. But it was just her. She’d messed it up; she’d left her daughter behind.

God, take care of my baby.

And the worst part was that she didn’t even know what had happened to Lilly. When the man fell and the second shot hit the other agent, she instinctively dropped to the ground. By the time she got her head about her and looked up, Murphy was gone and so was Lilly. She’d scrambled around, fearing for her life with all the ricocheting bullets, looking for Lilly, but it was useless. She was gone. Jed was on the ground, pinned down. Karen knew she had only a small window to do her part, so she fled. If she hadn’t, she knew she might not be alive.

Now, though, the guilt had settled in. She’d left her family. She ran like a coward. No, she ran like Jed had said she should. He said no matter what happened or what it looked like was happening that she should get out of there. That was the most important thing. Take the truck and go. She wasn’t supposed to worry about him.

But she did. She now worried about him. As she ran, she’d looked back and the last image she had was of him pinned to the ground with bullets spitting all around him. She didn’t even know if he made it out of there alive. And she worried for Lilly. Her baby girl. Her only hope was that Murphy was who he said he was and would take care of her. She prayed that her little girl was in good, safe hands.

•   •   •

The men were rough and mean. The one held his arm close to his side and cursed loudly. Lilly was shoved into the backseat of the Jeep and squeezed between the two big men.

Tires squealed as the Jeep lurched ahead. She tried to sit forward, see where they were going, but the man who wasn’t bleeding put a big, thick hand on her chest and pushed her back.

Mr. Murphy, seated in the front, turned around. “You okay, Fisher?”

Fisher cursed again and grimaced. “I’ll be fine. What happened?”

“Ambush,” Mr. Murphy said. “Sniper.”

The other man rifled through a bag on the floor and pulled out a large piece of cloth. He handed it to Fisher.

Fisher took it with a bloody hand and pressed it against his arm. The smell of sweat and blood in the vehicle was enough to make Lilly sick to her stomach. She shivered.

“Who?” the other man said.

A frown touched Mr. Murphy’s lips. “Not sure. Must have been Centralia. They know we’re on to them.”

“How?”

“We got a mole, that’s how,” Fisher said. “Someone tipped them off.”

“Probably thought we’d have Abernathy with us,” Mr. Murphy said. “Thought they’d take him out too.”

The Jeep took the next turn hard, pressing Lilly against the other agent. He smelled of sweat and cologne. The man looked at her but did not smile. He had a kind but stern face; worry darkened his eyes.

Lilly sat back and shut her eyes. The Jeep rocked and leaned as the driver navigated the city streets. But Lilly’s thoughts were not on the road or the Jeep or the other occupants. She prayed for her mom and dad. She had no idea what had happened to them; she was snatched up and taken from the scene so quickly. Her last glimpse was of them on the ground, people running all around, screaming, crying. So she prayed. It was all she could do for them now.

And she listened for the voice.

The Jeep rocked hard to the right as the tires chirped, pushing Lilly into the large man beside her again. She opened her eyes and craned her neck to see out the front window.

In the rearview mirror the driver glanced at Lilly and held her gaze for just a second. Cold fingers tickled the back of her neck. There was something about the man’s eyes she didn’t like, didn’t trust. They were dark and lifeless and unblinking, like a shark’s.

She settled back between the two men and listened for the voice again. It wouldn’t be audible, not like any other voice; this one spoke to the heart, to the part of her that no other voice could reach.

But there was only silence, and as much as she tried not to, as much as Lilly told herself that she had not been abandoned, she couldn’t help the feeling of loneliness that seeped into her soul like a dense fog and colored everything in a drab gray. The voice had always been there before. Always. Even in the deepest corners of the underground bunker, even in the most painful and frightening moments, even when she was physically as alone as any person could be.

Tears built behind her eyelids. She pressed them shut, knowing that if she opened her eyes, it would be like knocking down a levee and allowing the floodwaters to flow. And she didn’t want to cry in front of these men. Especially not the driver with his shark eyes.

Eventually, the even rhythm of the tires on the highway lulled Lilly into a semi-sleep state, and a few minutes later it wooed her the entire way into that land of dreams.

•   •   •

Karen raced across Nebraska on Interstate 80, keeping up with traffic but avoiding speeds that would attract unwanted attention. She’d passed the towns of North Platte, Kearney, and Grand Island, barely noticing the road signs and paying no attention to the off-ramps. The road was straight and flat, the sky a vast expanse of varying shades of blue above her. Along this stretch of road there was not much to notice anyway. Featureless land everywhere, mostly pasture. Only a few trees dotted the landscape, a windmill here and there, occasionally a weatherworn barn and farmhouse. Crosswinds buffeted the truck, rocked it side to side, and scoured the road clean of any debris. And once, a tumbleweed even rolled silently across the asphalt, passing without care on its journey to nowhere.

Though Karen noticed most of this, her mind did not fix on any of it. She thought about her family, about Jed and Lilly. She wondered and worried about their safety and offered short, punctuated prayers, pleas. She thought about the mission —mission —and how much Jed had influenced her. She had the thumb drive. The real thumb drive. And she wondered what Murphy would do when he learned the other was a fake. Oh, it had information on it. Pages and pages of detailed information about the tourist attractions in Idaho. If Murphy ever planned a getaway to the northwest, he’d have a head start with researching the area. Jed didn’t trust the man, but he didn’t trust anyone. Karen didn’t blame him. She had her own trust issues. It didn’t mean Murphy was untrustworthy; that was still to be determined. It simply meant that Jed took every precaution available.

Karen also thought of their future. What if they all made it out of this unharmed? What then? Could they ever live a normal life again? And what even was normal anymore? What would she consider to be normal? How far off the path could they stray for her to still consider their existence normal? And did normal even matter? These questions and more blew through her mind, crisscrossing, overlapping, and colliding. It was too much. Too many questions with no answers. She had to try to clear her mind, push the clutter away, and open a space where she could focus on one thing at a time.

She yawned; her stomach grumbled. Eventually she’d have to stop for food and then sleep. She still wasn’t certain whether she’d find a cheap off-the-path motel or just sleep in the car. Some rest stops allowed for travelers to park for up to ten hours. But neither option appealed to her. The idea of a motel was too confining. Usually those rooms had only one way in and one way out. If she was found, there’d be no escaping. But sleeping in the car didn’t exactly appeal to her either. For one, nights in these parts grew chilly and she had no blanket. And two, she would be too exposed. Any nosy traveler could watch her while she slept and she’d have no idea. The thought of a creepy voyeur standing right outside her window, silently watching her without her knowledge, sent a quick shiver through her muscles.

She glanced in the rearview mirror and took note of the vehicles on the road behind her. This was something Jed had taught her to do. He said most drivers were oblivious to their surroundings and would never know whether they were being followed or not. He’d begun to train her to notice things others usually missed. There were six vehicles behind her. A cherry-red Mustang, a gray Ford pickup, a white Cadillac sedan, a white Subaru SUV, and then farther back from the pack, a bluish Mazda or Toyota sedan —she couldn’t tell which —and a silver Toyota pickup. Almost immediately, the Mustang and Cadillac passed her, and the bluish car, which turned out to be a dusty-blue Mazda, caught the pack and eventually passed her as well. The others settled into a comfortable speed behind her, keeping pace at a safe distance.

Interstate 80 cut through miles of grassland and farmland, a long stretch as straight and flat as a yardstick as if measuring off the distance in inches instead of miles. The sky above was so wide it seemed to reach from one ocean to the other, and without a cloud to give it depth, it appeared low enough to touch.

Karen checked her mirrors every few minutes. The Subaru had passed her, leaving the Ford and Toyota pickups. Another car had joined the pack as well, a Nissan sports car, but it moved impatiently from lane to lane and did eventually pass her.

Miles rolled under the tires of the truck and the scenery rarely changed. Karen began seeing signs for a rest stop ahead. At the stop she pulled off the road and found a parking space. Checking her mirror, she noticed the Toyota had followed her and parked a few spots away. With the glare on the windshield, she couldn’t tell who was driving and if there was a passenger or not. Karen remained in the truck for a few minutes, waiting to see if the driver would get out of the Toyota, but the door never opened. She needed a better look but didn’t want to put herself into odd contortions trying to see past the other two cars parked between her truck and the Toyota. She decided the best course of action was to exit the vehicle and use the restroom —she had to go, anyway —and then on the way back to the truck, she could get a good look at the driver.

Trying to behave as casually as she could, she opened the door and stepped out, resisting the urge to look at the Toyota. Wind pushed her hair around her head so that she had to hold it out of her face with one hand. On her way to the restroom, she had a sudden niggling that she was being followed. At the restroom door she turned back and scanned the rest stop, but no one walked behind her; no one lurked near parked vehicles. The Toyota sat as it had been.

Upon emerging from the restroom, Karen glanced at the truck. She noticed a man in the driver’s seat. He was big and his form took up most of the window, but she couldn’t make out any defining features until she got closer. Not wanting to stare, she looked around the rest stop, paused at the Silverado, and shielded her eyes against the bright sky. As she panned her head, pretending to take in the scenery, she held her gaze briefly on the man behind the wheel of the Toyota. He had a large head, bald, and oversize ears. His hands were on the wheel and they too were large and meaty. The hands of a construction worker . . . or a hired killer. He appeared to be in his late forties or early fifties. He turned and caught her watching him. For a moment as brief as a single tick on a clock, their eyes locked, and in that time he smiled and nodded.

A buzz ran up Karen’s neck and across her scalp. It was as if the man had recognized her or identified her. His smile was not a friendly one, not the smile of a stranger being cordial; rather it pushed his mouth into a sinister curve, one that spoke of evil intent or a malicious warning.

Now shaking like she’d just seen the ghost of John Wayne Gacy, Karen got into the Silverado and wasted no time getting back onto the interstate. She checked her mirrors; the Toyota had not followed her.

Her mind spun a thousand different tales with a hundred different endings, but each one resulted in her getting caught sooner or later. The thumb drive burned a hot spot in her pocket. She should get rid of it, toss it out the window, destroy it, anything. But what would that solve? They would still be after her, and when they caught her, they’d never believe she didn’t have the drive in her possession. They’d torture her, inflict unimaginable pain to get an answer she did not have. Or maybe they’d torture Lilly or Jed. Either way, they wouldn’t stop until one of them was dead.

A quick glance at the rearview mirror turned her blood to ice. The Toyota was there again, several hundred yards back, but its form was unmistakable. Karen gripped the wheel tight with both hands and stepped on the accelerator. But going faster wasn’t going to shake her pursuer. He’d just go faster too. On these roads where straightaways offered no cover and crossroads only came once every fifteen to twenty miles, there was nowhere to hide. Faster wasn’t the answer.

Karen decided to slow down and look for an opportunity to shake the truck. She’d exit the interstate at the next town, maybe go to the police. But Jed had said no police. She couldn’t trust anyone. Then maybe she could lose the truck with a series of turns, doubling back on her path multiple times until the driver grew frustrated and gave up.

She knew that wouldn’t work either.

And the Toyota was gaining ground on her. Closer it inched, now in the passing lane. Karen stepped lightly on the accelerator, slowly increasing the truck’s speed. She didn’t want to make it obvious that she’d spotted her pursuer and didn’t want to give away that she planned an escape. But the Toyota kept pace with her and eventually inched closer again.

Before she could react, the truck was on her left bumper, then to the rear door. She expected the glass next to her to explode at any moment as the driver discharged a weapon in her direction. But as the truck pulled even with her, she glanced at the cab. A woman sat in the passenger seat, laughing and singing. She turned her head toward Karen and smiled. The truck sped ahead, then drifted into the right lane.

It wasn’t until the truck was well ahead of her that Karen realized she’d been holding her breath. She exhaled and was overcome by emotion. Suddenly, like the unpredicted arrival of a summer thunderstorm, sobs racked her frame. Tears obscured her vision. She choked and coughed and cried as relief hit her like the sudden and violent breaching of a dam. When she had composed herself enough to read signs, she noticed the town of Emerald approaching. Two miles later Karen steered the Silverado off Interstate 80 and into the parking lot of the Starlight Diner and Truck Stop just outside Lincoln.