IT TOOK an hour to reach the mountains, and twice she stopped on empty roads deep in the forests to wait five, ten minutes for shadows who never appeared. Eventually, she pulled up in front of a tidy little cabin made of planks and sheet metal. A narrow coal chimney stuck up like a damp cigar. She parked next to a filthy pickup truck with Virginia plates and got out, stepping onto the moist carpet of dead leaves. There were three loose steps leading up to the screen door, and when she rapped on it the doorframe shivered as if ready to fall off.
“Hey!” she heard, but from behind, and turned to find Kevin Moore, in heavy boots and flannel, climbing out of the woods, a shotgun hanging from a strap over his shoulder. Just like she’d imagined. There had been three Kevin Moores in the Boulder-area telephone directory, and this had been the only one living outside the city limits.
She raised her hands in surrender, coming down to meet him. “Remember me?”
“I remember,” he said without breaking stride.
“How long have you been up here?”
He took the shotgun off his shoulder and carried it in both hands as he passed her and approached the steps. “Five months, about.”
“Neighbors?”
“There’s a nice couple up the road. We share recipes.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, Agent Proulx. I’m not.”
“So you’re not a hermit.”
He shrugged, not caring what she thought of him. “Want to come inside?”
He’d gained some weight since they’d spoken in Watertown. Back then, he’d had the thin and wiry frame of someone who’d spent weeks on the road, and when he’d answered her questions in the ambulance he’d spoken in short, clipped phrases. He’d been in shock, of course, but his answers had been lucid and detailed, with a manic undercurrent, as if he hadn’t quite come down from the contact high you get from touching the Revolution. Since then he’d gone cold turkey, and eight months later his body was returning to its equilibrium. Perhaps to replace that high, he’d taken up smoking, and his little cabin in the woods reeked of the Marlboro Golds he took from a carton marked with a persuasive color photo of open-heart surgery. He offered her one, but she declined.
They sat in his kitchen and drank bitter tea he prepared from Lipton bags. He was, he told her, on extended leave.
“You mean you’re out of the Bureau?” she asked.
“My paperwork’s still in order.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m still meditating on it.”
It was an answer of sorts. “Still in touch with Janet Fordham?”
“Keeping my distance.” He grinned. “The news these days doesn’t help. The idea that very soon the whole world will have access to a report with you in it is a little disconcerting.”
“Your name will be redacted.”
“But I’ll be a subject of speculation. Pressure will be applied. Someone along the way will slip up, or more likely leak, and then there’ll be a caravan of television vans leading up to this place. I’ll probably have to leave the country,” he said, nodding toward the back of the cabin. “Got my passport and a change of clothes all ready.”
“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” she said.
He looked at her a moment, frowning, as if she’d said something inappropriate. Then he took a drag. “The rules of conduct have been broken for a long time. You’ve been in town, right?”
“The marchers.”
“Three days straight. Just to force the government to release a single FBI report a few days sooner than planned. You’d think there’d been a massacre or something. Nine people were killed in Watertown. You know how many people were killed on the streets of Chicago last week? I don’t see anyone marching for them.”
“The report,” she said. “Have you seen it?”
He shook his head. “I told them what I knew, then I got the hell out of there. Is it damning?”
“I wasn’t on the distribution list.”
He raised a brow, curious.
“I wasn’t in a position to argue the point.”
A look of understanding passed across his face. Though he’d been lying in an ambulance when she attacked Jakes, he had to know about the incident. He said, “Well, we’ll both be able to read it soon enough. PDF download.”
She looked at the brown liquid in her cup, muddy at the bottom.
“So?” he said. “What’s this about?”
“Can’t I make a nostalgic visit?”
He smiled. “You know what I remember about you? That short time we sat together in the ambulance, talking through everything, you had your phone in your hand. Every couple of minutes your eyes would move over to it, checking for messages. You’d even pick it up and look at it while I was speaking. It was pretty rude.”
“Sorry,” she said.
“You’ve been here a half hour now, and you haven’t taken it out once.”
“I’m trying to break my addictions.”
“No, you’re not. People like you never do.”
She wanted to ask what that meant, people like her, but more important she wanted to know why he didn’t seem surprised by her appearance. He showed no worry that she was sitting in his cabin, the place he’d come to hide away—from many things, but the Bureau in particular. Or was he simply a terrific actor who, on the inside, was frantically running through his options, all the gradations of fight-or-flight?
He got up and threw the dregs of his tea into the sink, then refilled the electric kettle and switched it on; it hummed. He turned to look down at her, hands behind himself against the edge of the counter. “So? Why don’t you tell me, Rachel. Tell me what you’ve come here to find out.”
I’m here because the Bureau is trying to kill me, she wanted to say, but she didn’t know Kevin Moore, not really, and she didn’t know where he stood in this. She didn’t know where anyone stood.
“Everything,” she told him. “I’ve come to find out everything.”
He said nothing, just stared at her, the gears in his head working away. What was he thinking? Had he already sent a signal to Johnson and Vale while she wasn’t looking? Maybe he’d sent it from the woods, after he’d seen her but before he’d said “Hey.” Or was he merely what he seemed to be, a mildly disillusioned undercover agent who wanted to be left alone?
He straightened and took her teacup away, poured it into the sink, opened a cabinet, and brought out a bottle of Knob Creek bourbon. He put a splash into her cup and poured more for himself. He brought the drinks to the table and sat across from her again. He had made up his mind.
“Thank you,” she said, then took a sip; the taste of smoke filled her mouth.