Caldwell was in Zoe’s room, lying beside her. The night was cool, maybe an early taste of fall, and there was a steady wind that made the big trees in the neighborhood rock back and forth and their millions of leaves set up a steady hiss and shudder. There was a new moon, so the sky was mostly dark. Caldwell was a little more on edge than usual. When he was in special ops the trainers had taught him to plan operations for nights like this. The additional darkness made it easier to move unseen, the unusual coolness made people shut their windows and muffled sounds, and the wind covered incidental noises.
Zoe’s breathing was soft, slow, and regular as she slept, still touching him, her bare arm across his bare chest, her long hair swept back behind her neck.
He closed his eyes and let sleep take him too. When he woke in the darkness, the dogs were both on their feet, staring at the closed door of the room. One of them began a low growl, and the other added to it.
Caldwell slid out from under Zoe’s arm, stood, and put a hand on each of the dogs to silence them. He stepped into his pants and shoes, picked up the gun he had hidden under them, then slipped his shirt on over his head. He kept glancing at the dogs. They weren’t agitated, just standing alert and ready, staring at the door as though they were awaiting a person’s approach. But the dogs wouldn’t imagine an intruder. They had heard or smelled something.
Caldwell opened the bedroom door an eighth of an inch and looked out into the hallway and past it to the living room. The room was empty and the apartment’s front door was still closed. He opened Zoe’s door farther and the dogs slithered out ahead of him. He stayed low as he moved into the open.
He slipped into his bedroom and looked at the monitor of his security system. The screen was divided into quadrants, and when he scanned them, he was relieved at first. What the four cameras were seeing wasn’t a street full of Chicago police cars or a federal assault team suiting up in military gear. But he saw movement. It looked like the shape of a man coming toward the front of the house. He tucked in his shirt and put on the sport coat with the extra ammunition, because it was dark gray and would make him harder to see. He looked at the monitor more closely.
Three human figures were on the front steps, one of them kneeling by the door, and the other two standing behind him to shield him from the street. Caldwell watched the man manipulating something with both hands. The dogs lowered their heads. Their approach must have been what the dogs had heard earlier. Now it looked as though the man was moving a pick and tension wrench in the front door lock. The man put something in his pocket, fiddled with the doorknob, and then stood up.
Caldwell slipped out of his room and closed the dogs inside. He hurried to Zoe’s room and shook her awake.
“Zoe, there are men breaking into the building. They’ll be through the front door and coming up the stairs in a minute. Get dressed, lock yourself in the bathroom, and lie down in the tub. Go!” He snatched up the clothes she had left on the chaise, took her arm and pulled her to the bathroom, pushed them into her hands, and shut the door.
He stepped into the kitchen and turned on the water in the sink, then went down to the end of the hallway and lay on his belly, the pistol in his hand.
There was the clicking of metal on metal, this time at the door of the apartment, twenty-five feet from him, then the clack as the dead bolt retracted into the door. The door opened slowly and a pair of male shapes stood in the doorway, silhouetted in the dim light from a streetlamp shining through the first-floor windows. They each held something in one hand, and he knew the objects had to be guns, but they looked longer than pistols.
From behind Caldwell’s bedroom door the dogs began to bark and snarl, and both men turned toward the bedroom and braced themselves for an attack, their guns ready. The dogs scratched at the bedroom door, but couldn’t get out. The scratching told the two intruders that the dogs weren’t able to get at them, so they stepped deeper into the apartment.
Now the men heard the sound of running water coming from the kitchen, and it seemed to puzzle and distract them. They turned and stepped toward the kitchen, their weapons raised.
Caldwell picked that moment to emerge from the hallway and stop behind them. “Stand still and drop the guns.” He squatted and aimed at the man on the right.
The two turned in unison and fired, spraying sparks from the muzzles of their weapons. Both shots went high, and Caldwell squeezed his trigger. He had chosen the man on his right because he knew he could fire and move his aim to the left faster than to the right. The man went down, and before the man’s partner could lower his aim Caldwell fired at his chest.
The second man was hit, but he was still on his feet. Before he could slip into the kitchen for cover, Caldwell fired again and the man dropped.
Caldwell checked the two men and found neither had a pulse. He picked up their pistols and set them on the coffee table. The barrels were elongated by the addition of silencers, and it occurred to him that the only shots he had heard were his own. He frisked the bodies and found wallets and passports, but it was too dark to look at them, so he pocketed them and hurried to the bathroom door. “Zoe. It’s me, Peter. Come out.”
There was a click of the lock and Zoe peered out. “Are you okay? That sounded like gunfire.”
“That’s why I wanted you in the tub, where you wouldn’t get hit with a wild shot. Those two were the shooting team, but there will be other men outside. We’ve got to get out of here before they realize we’re alive.”
“Have you called the police? We can wait right here for them.”
“We can’t wait,” he said. “Please. Just do what I ask, without any questions. Our lives depend on it right now.”
“What should I do?”
“We’ve got no more than five minutes. Throw anything with your kids’ pictures or addresses into a bag. Don’t call anybody, or turn on any lights. If they see you, they’ll kill you.”
“Why would they kill me?”
“Because it’s their job. I’ve got to go out there for a minute, but I’ll be back for you. Don’t let the dogs out of the bedroom.” He held up the small Beretta he had fired. “The safety is off. If anybody but me comes in the door, aim and fire.” He set the gun on the bed and hurried out.
He stopped at the coffee table, picked up one of the pistols he’d taken from the two dead men, and hurried down the stairs to the ground floor landing. He had seen a third man on the security monitor, and knew there might be others. He went to the windows at the sides of the house. There was nobody visible out there. He picked a window, opened the sash slowly, then unlatched the screen, slipped out, and crouched beside the shrubs that grew there.
Caldwell remained motionless for a few seconds and then a few more as he stared into the night in one direction then another, waiting to identify the shape of a man or for a shadow to move. He made his way along the side of the house, crouched again, and looked around the corner. He could see a man in the shadows, leaning against the garage and facing the back stairway of the house. As Caldwell watched, the man took out his phone and checked its screen, apparently expecting a text message from the men inside. In the glow Caldwell could see the man’s face. He was the young man who had tried to rob him, James Harriman.
Caldwell thought about trying to go back around the house to get behind him, but the young man had taken a position with his back to the garage, facing the stairs to the kitchen door. Caldwell took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and stepped away from the corner of the house aiming the pistol with its silencer at the man’s head. “Hello again,” he said.
The young man spun his head to look. “Hey!” he said. It was simply an expression of shock, with no other meaning.
Caldwell could see him lean away from the garage, shifting his weight forward, bending his knees a little as he began to raise his hands. The young man was preparing to make a move. He ducked and lunged toward Caldwell, trying to take him down in a quick tackle.
He was fast and powerful, but Caldwell had been prepared. He sidestepped and batted the young man’s arm down with his free hand, so he could keep the pistol aimed at the man’s upper body. When the young man’s momentum brought him up against the house, Caldwell was still with him, the silenced pistol still between them.
Caldwell said, “Put your gun down and step away from it.”
“I don’t have a gun.”
“Then when I search your body I’ll find nothing?”
“Okay, okay,” the young man said. He took a pistol out of a shoulder holster and set it down, then stepped back with his hands up. “What happened upstairs?”
“They weren’t good enough for this,” Caldwell said. “Now I’m going to ask you a few questions. You’ll live as long as you answer and don’t move. Who were they?”
“They’re foreign. I was told to bring them to where you lived and then get them away when they were done.”
“You work for the government?”
“Yes.”
“Show me an ID.”
“I don’t carry one.”
“Why?”
“You know,” the young man said. “I bet you didn’t either.”
“You’re working for military intelligence. What do they want from me after all this time?”
“I think they’re trying to do a favor for somebody. Whoever sent those guys.”
“How did they know I was Daniel Chase and living in Vermont after all these years?”
“The intelligence guys told me it was time and technology. Even old records got computerized after you disappeared. Now it’s easy to find out that the serial numbers of the money you took had turned up over ten or so years, most of them in New England. They found your old service pictures and used a new algorithm to age your face, and then searched public surveillance recordings in New England with face recognition programs for a year or so. A bunch of guys who looked like you got spotted, but agents eliminated all of them but you.”
“Why were the two killers upstairs carrying passports?”
“I was supposed to get them to the airport and put them on a plane tonight, right away.”
“A plane to where?” Caldwell said.
“They’re from Libya.”
“If I leave you alive, will you give the intelligence people a message?”
“Right now that sounds like a good deal.”
“All I was trying to do from the start was take back the money and return it to the government. My bosses cut my communication, and then set me up to get arrested. The offer is still open. I give them the full amount I delivered to Libya and brought back. They tell whoever sent these guys that they killed me. Nobody ever sees me again. Got it?”
The young man hesitated. “What happened to the two guys upstairs? Are they dead?”
“Of course.”
“That means your count is up to five.”
Caldwell shrugged. “I didn’t go after them. They came after me.”
“Look,” said the young man. “When you could have shot me or thrown me to your dogs as a chew toy you gave me eating money and let me go. I’ll say what you want. But if they don’t buy your deal, don’t be surprised.”
“I won’t be. Humor me.”
“Suit yourself. But can you at least make me look right?”
Caldwell moved instantly and struck him across the forehead with the pistol. He fell to the ground, unconscious. Caldwell opened the garage, backed in, and came back with a roll of duct tape. He wrapped the man’s wrists and ankles, dragged his unconscious body a few feet from the garage, and propped him against a tree. He used a length of baling wire he found in the garage to tie him to the tree. He could see that he’d hit Harriman in the right spot, just at the hairline. It was the hardest part of the skull, but the wound bled freely down his face to his shirt.
Caldwell ran back up to the apartment. He calmed the dogs and let them out of his room, put on the topcoat that held the cash and identification kit, and went to Zoe’s room.
She was sitting dazed on the bed. Beside her was a leather overnight bag with a shoulder strap. He said, “Ready?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Those two men are dead,” she said. “You shot two men to death.”
“They came here to murder me, and they would have murdered you too.”
“Why? Why did they come here? Just because you’re rich? There are thousands of rich people in Chicago.”
“Please, Zoe. I’m trying to save your life. As soon as we’re away from here I’ll tell you everything, and answer any question you can think of. But the danger isn’t over. It’s coming closer and closer.”
“Go if you want, but I can’t be part of this. And in about two minutes I’m calling the police.”
He picked up the pistol she had left untouched on the bed, and pocketed it. He went into his bedroom, put a few things in his coat pockets—wallet, keys, pocketknife—and returned to Zoe’s room.
She was standing now, facing the window. She shook, as though she was sobbing, but he couldn’t hear her, and in the dark he couldn’t be sure. As he approached, she started to spin to face him.
The duct tape was already in his hands. He wrapped the first strip over her mouth and around to the back of her head. As her hands came up to tear it away he spun her around again so she couldn’t face him, threw her down on the bed, wrenched her wrists around behind her, and wrapped them with duct tape too. He continued the tape upward to her elbows, so she had no hope of wrenching her hands free. She rolled to try to kick him away.
Caldwell put his arm around both legs and stepped down to her ankles, wrapped them around and around with duct tape, then put the rest of the roll in his topcoat pocket. He took her bag. “Others will be here soon. I had hoped you’d cooperate, but either way I can’t leave you here to die.”
He lifted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and hurried to the door. The dogs ran ahead of him to the back stairway and down to the ground. They went immediately to the young man propped up against the tree, sniffed at him a little, and returned to Caldwell.
He put Zoe in the passenger seat of the car and secured her there with the seat belt. He opened the back door of the car and the dogs jumped up onto the seat. Then he got in, started the car, and drove. When he reached the street, he did not pause to watch for approaching cars. Their headlights would have lit up the block, and stopping for them would have been more dangerous than pulling out in front of them. He accelerated up the street before he turned his headlights on.
Caldwell stared into the rearview mirror watching for a car to appear from around a corner, or to pull out from the curb and follow. But nothing moved. As long as he could, he kept glancing in the mirrors at the long gray strip of pavement, as straight as a surveyor could make it, with pools of light from streetlamps stretching back hundreds of yards. When he came to the turn, he took it, and headed south along streets that were deserted at this time of night.
After a few minutes he pulled into a driveway, then quickly turned up a narrow alley behind a row of buildings. They were all old, redbrick structures that seemed to date back to the building boom after the Great Chicago Fire. When he neared the end of the block he stopped the car.
He reached for the tape at Zoe’s mouth. She tried to lean away, but the seat belt held her. He peeled the tape off her mouth, and he could tell from her expression he was hurting her. “You kidnapped me,” she said. “Are you going to kill me now?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve only bought us a few minutes, and I’m not going to waste one of them killing you. I’m going to tell you what’s happening. About thirty-five years ago I worked for army intelligence. I was assigned to smuggle twenty million dollars to a man in Libya who was supposed to deliver the money to rebel guerrillas trying to overthrow the government. Instead the middleman kept it. He bought fancy cars, started building a big house, and hired bodyguards. The guerrillas in the mountains ran out of supplies and ammunition, starved, and got killed or captured.”
“Peter, I just saw the men you shot to death. You tied me up and abducted me. How can any lie you dream up make any difference to me?”
Caldwell kept talking. “I recovered what was left of the money from the middleman. Instead of helping me get back to the US with it, my supervisors cut off my communication and left me to be caught and tortured to death. I brought the money home by myself. When I tried to turn it in, I learned they’d already declared me a thief and a murderer.”
“Why would they do that? And what has this got to do with anything?”
“They may have been saving themselves from the blame for a failure. They may have felt that the man who had tried to keep the money was more valuable to national security than I was. It doesn’t matter now. Even though I hurt nobody in getting the money back, the official story was that I had murdered Libyans to steal money that was vital to an American operation. Once they were after me, I felt that all I could do was run.”
“For all this time? Over thirty years?”
He shrugged. “Once you run there isn’t any possibility of not running. I was careful, and lived a quiet life. They found me in Vermont last winter. Instead of arresting me they sent a shooter to kill me. The dogs heard him, or smelled him, just the way they did tonight. So here I am. The people who sent me to Libya were all much older than I was thirty-five years ago. Even if I’d known their names, by now they’re all retired or dead. The people who are after me now have no reason to ever stop. The record, if there is one, can never be corrected because the people who wrote it are long gone. It’s fossilized.”
“You must think I’m really stupid to try to make me believe this stuff.”
“You saw those two men in our apartment,” he said. “Did you invite them?”
“Neither did I. You might have noticed that they brought guns with silencers and shot at me. And I swear to you that if you are in that apartment when the follow-up team comes looking for their two shooters, you will die. They can’t leave people behind who know about any of this. The two men in the apartment were Libyans. The one outside is American special ops, working for military intelligence.”
She said, “How can you do this to me? I was in love with you. I don’t know what the truth is, but I know this is a collection of lies. It’s crazy.”
He patted his pockets. “I took their passports.” He took out two bright green folders with gold Arabic writing and a gold heraldic eagle. He held one open in front of her face and opened the car door so the light would come on. Then he held up the other passport for a few seconds, and shut the door. “They were expecting to get on a plane and leave the country right after killing me.”
She was silent, not willing to concede anything.
“Our time is up,” he said. “I’ll let you off, and then you’ll never see me again. I’m very sorry that I answered your ad for the apartment. It wasn’t fair to you. You’re a good person who didn’t deserve to run into me. Now I’ve got to get moving.”
“You’re leaving me here?” she said. “How would you like to be a woman taped up and dropped off in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar part of Chicago?”
“If you’ll promise not to call the cops or tell them anything about where I went, I’ll leave you somewhere safer.”
“Just get us both out of here now.”
He drove to the front of the nearby garage, got out, unlocked the door, and opened it. He went inside, drove the new BMW that was inside into the alley, and then replaced it with the old Toyota. He let the dogs out and ordered them into the backseat of the BMW. Then he lifted Zoe out of the Toyota.
She said, “If I promise to go quietly will you please get rid of the tape?”
“No.” He carried her to the BMW, put her in the passenger seat, and strapped her in. He went to the garage, closed it, and locked the door on the Toyota. Then he got into the BMW, restarted it, and drove.
After about fifteen minutes he turned down another nearly deserted commercial street that was lined with warehouses and parking lots. He took out his pocketknife and cut the tape on Zoe’s legs and then leaned across to free her from the seat belt so he could cut the tape on her wrists. He put the car in gear again and drove on. “I’m doing this to be kind. Don’t make me sorry.”
In a moment they were heading southwest on Interstate 55, away from the city. Zoe began the business of pulling the tape off her long hair. “This is really painful. I’m pulling out handfuls of hair.”
He said, “You didn’t give me any choice. It will be light in about two hours. I’ll let you off outside the city with plenty of money so you can take a cab or something. Just don’t go right back to the apartment. There will be people watching it, maybe waiting inside. If there’s a cleanup crew, you’ll be one of the things they’ll want to get rid of.”
Zoe finished taking the tape out of her hair and began pulling the tape from the ankles of her jeans. Her face was close to the dashboard. “Nice car,” she said. “I guess you planned for this night a while ago.”
He shrugged. “Once you realize that you can never let them find you, the rest is obvious. I figured this wasn’t the kind of car they’d be looking for if I moved on. My last two cars were older Toyotas.”
“If you’re so smart, how did they find you?”
“I don’t really know how they found me in Vermont. Probably I made a mistake. I know they searched the Chicago area for five months before a young operator spotted me.”
“The young guy lying by the garage?”
“Yes. I think he figured out that I would try to hide in a neighborhood where there were lots of people who looked like me. He’s smart.”
“Was smart.”
“Huh?”
“You killed him.”
“No I didn’t. He’s the reason I had the duct tape. I wrapped his wrists and ankles. He’s tied to a tree by the garage.”
“You killed two and left the third behind?”
“The first two shot at me. With him, I had a choice. His people will find him and he’ll be okay.”
He drove on in silence for a few minutes, and then noticed that Zoe was staring at him with a strange look on her face, as though she were trying to see through his skull. He turned to look at her. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you off soon. There should be something along this route.”
“It’s still dark.”
“The longer you stay with me, the longer your ride back will be.”
“I’m certainly not going back to that apartment. But if I don’t come home, they’ll start looking for me, won’t they?”
“I’m not sure. The two Libyan assassins are dead. I don’t know who is making the next decision, or even where in the world he is. You could go straight to a police station as soon as you get to Chicago and report the shooting. They’ll examine the crime scene and ask you a lot of questions.”
“The police? Why would you want them involved?”
“I don’t. But once the police have talked to you, they’ll know you didn’t shoot anybody, and you should be safer. The people chasing me can’t very well make you disappear if the police think you’re a witness to a homicide.”
“Oh my God,” she muttered.
She fell silent. She stared out the car window at the flat countryside for twenty minutes before she spoke again. “Were you really expecting me to come with you?”
“I talked myself into believing this wasn’t going to happen. When it did, I was concentrating on making sure you got out alive.”
“Is that all?”
“Of course I hoped you would want to be with me if I had to move on, but this wasn’t the way I thought it would happen. I can’t say coming with me would be a good idea, so I can’t blame you for not doing it.”
“No, you can’t.” She went back to staring out the window. “I hate these tinted windows.”
“Me too. But I figured they’d make it harder to recognize me.” He kept his eyes on the road for a minute or two, and then looked into the rearview mirrors to check for cars that might be following them.
Zoe waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to tell her anything more, she said, “What will you do with the dogs?”
“I have someone who will take them.”
“Where will you go?”
He seemed to come out of a reverie. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you off this morning.”
“I didn’t ask that. I asked where.”
He said, “You should realize that I’m a very big catch for these people, and I’m getting bigger every hour. Knowing things can hurt you a lot.”
“I suppose.”
“If they think you know where I am, they’ll do what they can to get you to tell them.”
“Do you believe they’d torture me or something?”
He glanced at her and turned his eyes back on the road. “I don’t know. I’ve been out of that world for over thirty-five years. But making people like them think you’re an accomplice instead of a victim is a bad idea.”
Zoe stared out the window for the next hour, looking at the increasingly open country while they cleared the circle of dense population around Chicago. The car left the interstate just at dawn. She could see that they were surrounded by farmland, and Caldwell seemed to be on his way deeper into the country. The road he had chosen was deserted. It intersected now and then with unmarked narrow asphalt roads with gravel shoulders, but in the weak gray light she saw no houses.
Then she felt a deceleration as Caldwell took his foot off the gas pedal. She saw they were coasting onto the gravel shoulder. When he stopped, a cloud of dust caught up with them and blew past.
She looked for signs. “Where are we?”
“We’re outside Springfield,” he said.
He turned off the engine. “I’m sorry to stop so far from the city. But I’ve got to give myself a little head start before you talk to the police.” He reached into his coat pocket and took out a thick envelope. He held the envelope open while he pulled out a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills.
Her eyes weren’t on the money, but on the envelope. “What’s that?”
He held out the money.
“Not that,” she said. She reached for the envelope. “This.” She held the envelope open and took out a California driver’s license. “That’s my picture. It’s the one you took with your phone in the living room.” She reached in and took out a passport. She opened it, and looked at the front page, where there was another picture of her. “This looks so real.”
“That’s because it is,” he said.
“How did you get this?”
“A long time ago I got my wife to apply for a passport in that name, so this was just a renewal. When you renew they ask for fresh pictures, so I sent yours. You don’t look that much like her, but she had long brown hair and blue eyes like yours. The passport had never been used, and there was no reason for them to think Marcia Dixon was up to something after all these years of good behavior.”
She took out a credit card, then another. “Marcia Dixon. Marcia Dixon. When did you do all this?”
“When I took those pictures. You can keep the passport and license. Maybe they’ll come in handy. Just don’t let anybody catch you with passports in two different names.” He set the stack of money on the console beside her. “And put this money away in your overnight bag. Walk back up the road the way we came, and you’ll get to the interstate. There are gas stations and fast-food places where you can call a cab. What you want is a ride into Springfield. Tell the driver to let you off at the state capitol building. It’s a good place, because there will be hotels and restaurants nearby. If he asks how you got to the interstate, tell him your car broke down and got towed. Your husband is going to wait for the car at the dealer’s and meet you in Springfield when it’s ready. Mentioning a husband means you don’t have to know all the details. Do you understand?”
“You’re good at this stuff.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean you’re a good liar.”
“Yes, I know. You’d better get started now.”
“I’m not going,” she said.
“I told you I’d set you free. This is a perfectly good place.”
“I’m sure it is. I told you I could see how clever you are. But I’ve thought this through again since you woke me up in the middle of the night. At that moment I thought you were completely different from the man I knew. But you’re the same.”
“I don’t want you to go with me, Zoe.”
“When you did all this to get me a new identity, you must have expected me to run away with you, right? You must have at least hoped I would.”
“This isn’t a productive conversation. We’re wasting time.”
“Then let’s get going. I’ll drive if you’re tired.”
“Zoe, this isn’t something you want to get in on. You picked right the first time. When I got you those papers and cards I didn’t know this was going to happen. I thought I’d lost the hunters again, probably for good. The forgeries were just a precaution, and if all went well, we’d never need them.” He paused. “It’s stupid to even talk about this.”
“Probably,” she said. “Let’s go. Do you not want me to drive your new car, or what?”
“A week from now I’m more likely to be dead than alive. If you’re with me, so are you. A hostage is never more likely to die than when the authorities are trying to rescue her. This is your way out.”
“I don’t want a way out. I want to go with you. I’ll be anyone you want, and I’ll do anything you say, without question. You can even change the terms, and I won’t complain. Just take me along.”
“Zoe—”
“Sorry. I don’t know her. I’m Marcia Dixon. I’m on a road trip with my husband, What’s-His-Name Dixon.”
“Henry.”
“Henry? Really?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a respectable name, I guess. So who’s driving?”
“Please think about this, Zoe.”
“I’ve thought of nothing else all morning. I’m thinking we have a long drive ahead of us. I know that if you want to get rid of me you can hurt me, throw me out on the pavement, and drive off. If you kill me they couldn’t punish you worse than they will already.”
“I can’t waste any more time right now.” He reached across her, pushed open her door, and waited.
“Look, I know that you stayed with me for your own practical reasons. You needed a hiding place, and a woman made it look real and settled and normal—not like a hideout, but like a life. I get it. At first you liked the place, and then you liked the sex, and I wasn’t demanding or bitchy or anything, so you stayed, maybe longer than you should have. But I had reasons of my own, and maybe they were mostly selfish too. But over time, something changed for me. It changed for you too. Otherwise you wouldn’t have taken extra risks to make sure I could go with you.”
“You’re right. I did use you. So get out.”
“I know being anywhere near you is a huge risk. But I’d rather take that risk than go back to have the life I would have if I let you drive away without me now. It would be giving up life to give myself a longer time to exist. I would always remember what I gave up. You used me, and I used you too. So keep on using me. I love you, and I can be really useful, and I will be.” She reached for the door handle and shut the door.
He sighed in frustration, put the car in gear, and drove. When they reached the junction with Interstate 72, they swung onto it and headed east. After another hour he left the interstate and kept going, taking the back roads, the long, straight highways that had been replaced by interstates but still carried local traffic.
When they reached the first small, pretty town that had a large park, they stopped to feed the dogs and give them a walk. At another town he sent Marcia Dixon into a small store to buy bottled water, bags of nuts, a box of protein bars, a bag of fruit, and more dog food.
Henry Dixon watched her through the front window. He was aware that a woman in her position might have decided to come along solely to get her kidnapper caught. Right now she could easily be telling the store clerk to call the local police. The television news people would call her a plucky little heroine, and she would be invited on morning talk shows. Maybe they would show footage of her in the foreground with the commander of the SWAT team, and on the pavement in the background there would be a body covered with a sheet. This was the test. Either she was telling him the truth or she wasn’t. He wasn’t sure now why he was so confident that she wouldn’t betray him.
He watched her return to the car carrying the bags of supplies. As she approached, he popped open the trunk and took his time putting the bags inside and moving snacks and dog treats and bottled water to the front seat where they could reach them. Then he let the dogs out to urinate again. As he watched them, he kept listening for the whine of distant police sirens.
She said, “I thought we were in more of a hurry than this. Am I wrong?”
He opened the back door and let the dogs onto the backseat. He stood still for another moment, but he still heard nothing. “No, you’re right,” he said, got into the car, and drove.
After a few minutes of staring into the rearview mirror to reassure himself that there were no cars following, he took out one of his prepaid cell phones and held it out to her. “Call your daughter.”
“Really?” She took the phone.
“Yes. Tell her that you’re leaving the country for a while. Tell her not to call the police, and not to go to your apartment for any reason. Tell her to let your son know you’re okay, and your ex-husband. Tell her you’ll call when you’re back.”
When she was finished, he took the phone apart and tossed the pieces beside the road, one by one.
After another two hours on the road he stopped again and they ate a snack while they let the dogs run. As they were preparing to leave again she said, “I’d like to call you Hank. Is that all right?”
“I guess so. Why?” He let the dogs jump in and closed the back door.
“You look more like a Hank to me. And you were always more of a Pete than a Peter, too. I would have told you eventually.” She got behind the wheel of the car and held out her hand for the keys. “Nobody else will call you Hank but me.”
He got in beside her. “You know we’ll probably be dead very soon.”
“It was never going to end any other way. Lovers all die. And no matter when, it was always going to be sooner than we wanted.”