After that, they were on the move. Ivy didn’t see much for a while, couldn’t get past a dark blur that was unspooling just behind her eyeballs. Her memory recorded a few things only: Harrow tossing Mandrell’s body lightly, like it was filled with straw, into the boat; Harrow untying the line, and the boat drifting away downriver; Harrow picking up the shotgun. They crossed the road, not running, although Ivy formed the impression of tremendous speed. At that point, with her in the middle of the road and Harrow already starting up the path that led to the pickup parked by the broken-down shed, Ivy glimpsed a little movement just to her right. She turned in time to see the huge guy, a bloody mess, raise his head an inch or two off the road. His eyes shifted slightly, found hers, sent some sort of message. Ivy didn’t know what that message was; but it had nothing to do with hatred, revenge, greed, crime, any of that.
She kept going.
Because—because what was the alternative? Telling Harrow? What would happen after that? Ivy didn’t want to see it. And she could think of no other plan: which was why she left the man on the road, still alive. A few steps later came an unpleasant sound her mind refused to identify at first, and then did: sirens, on the way.
They got in the pickup. This time Ivy stayed at her end of the bench seat. Harrow drove away from the broken-down shed. Her body was still in the grip of the sensation of way too much velocity, like a roller coaster taking the last big drop, although the speedometer needle never exceeded the limit. They passed through the scrubby woods, onto blacktop, then back on dirt roads; Ivy totally lost.
“Where are we going?” she said.
“We’ve got options,” said Harrow.
“Like?”
He made a little sound, half laugh, half snort. “We’re starting to sound like an old married couple,” he said.
The remark stunned her on many levels, but three were apparent at once. First, how did he know things like that, the sound of old married couples? Second, what was going on in his mind, that he could have such a thought so soon after what had just happened? And third, he was right.
Ivy stared straight ahead, through a windshield dirty with dead bugs and bird shit. “Did you use me back there?” she said.
“Use you?”
“As a lure.”
“Come on,” Harrow said. “You found Frankie all by yourself. And didn’t you tell me they were outside your place?”
“Yes.”
“Think Frankie was going to leave it like that?” She didn’t answer. “Happen to glance inside that boat?” he said.
“Yes,” Ivy said. If not for Harrow, she would now be at the bottom of the St. Lawrence, weighted down, most likely forever untraceable.
“So what are we talking about?” Harrow said.
They drove on in silence, crossing a highway, back onto a dirt road. Dawn broke around them, but not very bright, the clouds low and heavy.
“What about Betty Ann?” Ivy said. “I thought she was the point of the exercise.”
Harrow looked over. “That’s where it went wrong,” he said.
“One way of putting it,” Ivy said.
“Things happened in the wrong order,” Harrow said. “Like in your story, the scene where Vladek goes to the job interview.”
“I don’t want to talk about my story.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“What happens now,” Ivy said. Was there anything else?
“In what sense?” Harrow said.
“For God’s sake,” said Ivy. “How are we going to find her? Find her and prove your innocence—what’s left of it, before—before…” She couldn’t bring herself to voice the chaos waiting at the end of that sentence, or more likely that was already happening.
“We’ll have to think a bit, that’s all,” Harrow said. “Which is why it’s good we’ve got these options.”
“Maybe I’m stupid,” Ivy said. “Go over them for me.”
“Nothing stupid about you, teacher,” he said.
“And stop calling me that,” Ivy said, her voice rising. “I don’t want to hear it again.”
“I mean it with respect,” Harrow said. “But whatever you say.”
They were on a two-lane highway now, winding up through steep hills, snowflakes drifting down, way too early in the year. A few cars came toward them around the bend. Harrow switched off the headlights—just the one, Ivy remembered. The cars went by, the last a state trooper. He had a coffee cup in one hand, didn’t even glance at them.
Harrow laughed that low laugh. “No reason they know I’m gone, not quite yet,” he said. “They’ve still got work to do. Nothing to tie you to me, or us to Mandrell. Maybe they’ll think the three of them went down in some drug thing gone bad.”
As long as the huge guy dies soon, before the police get to him: that was Ivy’s immediate thought. And yes: Die soon. Because otherwise she was just like everyone else in Harrow’s life so far, no help. He was capable of violence, yes, but only in self-defense, or in her defense. He’d killed three killers. Horrible, and she knew her mind wasn’t going to let go of what she’d seen, but she had to hold on to fact one: he was innocent of the crime that had started all this. What had happened at the boat ramp could be explained, as long as they found Betty Ann.
“Anything left to eat?” Harrow said.
That stunned her, too, but only for a moment. She had to toughen up, and fast. “Just an apple,” Ivy said, feeling inside the bag.
Harrow bit into it. “Never seen this kind before,” he said. “What is it?”
“Pink Lady.”
“Best I ever tasted.” He tossed the core out the window. There was blood on his hand.
His body relaxed a little, a hungry man who’d just taken the edge off his appetite. “First they put things together,” he said. “Then comes the search.”
“I know,” Ivy said. She was starting to shake. Had she been in shock? If so, she was coming out of it; and fear was taking over. She hugged herself.
“A search like this is an inflating balloon,” Harrow said. He didn’t seem scared at all. “The center is where whoever it was went missing. Then it expands and keeps expanding. Trying to get away now, that’s what they’ll expect. So the best option is lying low, letting the skin of the balloon pass by.”
The image made sense to Ivy. “And Betty Ann?”
Harrow sighed. “Which will give us time to put our heads together on that,” he said. “While we’re lying low.”
“Lying low where?” Ivy said.
“You know where,” said Harrow. “It’ll be like one of those retreats.”
She laughed. One of those laughs with bitterness in it; she heard that distinctly.
He reached across, touched her knee, very lightly, but the electric feeling went through her just the same. “Let’s not fight,” he said.
A childish remark, or possibly teenage: Ivy knew that, but couldn’t help responding to it anyway. “Did you bring the money at least?” she said, thinking somewhere along the way they might need it.
“What money?” Harrow said.
“The ten grand,” said Ivy.
“I’m not a thief,” Harrow said.
That was the whole point. Ivy slid over next to him.
Back in cabin four at Wilderness Lake, under the rose-colored duvet, in that little world of its own: at first a world in motion and then still, except for the snowflakes outside the window.
“Claudette showed me the Valentine’s Day card you gave Betty Ann,” Ivy said. “The one about the longest fall and the softest landing.”
“Yeah?”
“You must have really loved her.”
“Must have.”
So quiet in cabin four on Wilderness Lake that Ivy actually heard a snowflake make the tiniest thump against the window. “And now?” she said.
He faced her, his eyes looking tired for the first time since the escape. “Far from it,” he said. Then came a little smile. The rest—You’re the one or I’m in love with you or something like that, he left unspoken, but Ivy heard it anyway, in her mind.
His eyes closed. So did hers.
Ivy slept a deep sleep, dreamless until the end, when her mother started whipping up some icing in the electric mixer, and Ivy sat up on the counter, waiting to lick the mixing blades.
Then came a sudden, violent motion next to her, like an eruption. Ivy awoke, startled. Harrow was halfway across the room, headed for the window. From not far away, and getting louder, came the whap-whap drone of a helicopter. Harrow peered up through the glass. The wound on his back looked red and sore.
“State police,” he said, stepping away from the window.
The sound grew louder, for a moment or two loud enough to vibrate the cabin roof, then quieted and finally faded to nothing.
“Thank God we didn’t have a fire going,” Ivy said.
Harrow turned to her, uncomprehending.
“Or they’d have spotted us,” Ivy said. “From the smoke. This way, it’s just a vacant camp off-season.”
“And that red car of yours?” Harrow said. Parked right outside the cabin.
Ivy jumped out of bed, threw on her clothes.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“We’re leaving, right?” Ivy said. “In the pickup.”
“Won’t work,” Harrow said. “They’ll have roadblocks up in an hour, even less if he’s radioing in.”
“But maybe we can get out first.” She could hardly keep from running out the door.
“Maybe,” said Harrow. “But we wouldn’t get far.”
Ivy paced back and forth, one flawed idea after another spinning through her mind. Then she thought of the expanding balloon, and the strategy of lying low. “What if we do it again?” she said.
“Do what again?”
“Lie low.”
“How?” said Harrow.
It turned out to be a three-step process.
Step one: Ivy drove the Saab to the end of the dock, opened the windows, shifted to neutral, got out. Harrow gave the car a push. It splashed down in the water, floated for a few moments, more and more sluggish, then with a heavy wobble sank out of sight. Bubbles burst on the surface, big and small, then just small. A paperback book floated up. Ivy recognized it, the novel Ferdie Gagnon had lent her. It got waterlogged, sank back down. Too late, she remembered her cell phone; but who would she call and what would she say?
Step two: they carried the rowboat, Caprice, from its winter storage place under cabin two down to the water. All their things went inside, plus the shotgun and a bottle of gin Harrow found in cabin one. They left everything the way they’d found it and got in the boat. Looking back, Ivy noticed a broken pane in the side window of cabin one. Had it always been like that?
Step three: they rowed out to the craggy island, the one that could have been lifted from a medieval painting. Harrow rowed the first few hundred yards, but Ivy saw it hurt him; she took over the rest of the way. They hid the boat under branches on the far side of the island and climbed to the top, four or five hundred feet above the water. Ivy showed Harrow the cave, with its little entrance, just big enough for a crouching person.
“How did you find this place?” he said.
“By accident.” If she believed in them anymore.
“It’s perfect.” Harrow put his arm around her, kissed her on the lips. “We’re in the driver’s seat.”
The snowflakes kept falling, still not many, and far apart, no snow sticking to the ground. A strange snowfall: it reminded Ivy of confetti. They entered the cave.
Not long after that, maybe only ten minutes, the droning whap-whap returned. Ivy and Harrow sat side by side on the cave floor, just out of the light from the mouth. The sound intensified, grinded overhead, lessened, and then went silent. Harrow crept out of the cave. Ivy followed. They crawled across the ledge, peered through the rocks.
The helicopter—dark blue, blades still—stood on the little sandy beach in front of the cabins. Half a dozen squad cars, maybe more, were parked here and there. Lots of tiny people, all in uniform, were moving around—in and out of the cabins, along the dirt road, by the pickup, into the woods; one little figure spent a few seconds on the dock. From time to time they bunched together for a minute or two, then separated and tried the different places again. Later a canine unit arrived, and a dog led its master around the camp.
The woods darkened, then the sky, and last the lake. Lights flickered around the camp. Then headlights started flashing on. The helicopter took off, soared in a long rising curve and disappeared in the night. Ivy and Harrow stayed on the ledge, invisible. The squad cars drove away, one by one, taillights blinking through the trees and then gone; all of them in search of a red Saab.
“Wish I’d met you long ago,” Harrow said.