Epilogue

Space and silence and empty fields running to woods. Among the bare-stripped branches, a crow sits black-winged, eying a deserted road.

Dead stems and husks of maize are bent and ragged beneath the piled snow. The sky outside the farmhouse is flat, opaque, no wind, no movement of air.

Whicher rises from his place at the window.

He crosses the room, boots loud against the wooden boards of the floor.

Inside the house, time is suspended, a world on hold.

Lauren DeLuca sits by a fire in an open grate, her face still, her eyes half-closed.

“Is Anthony awake?” Whicher studies her.

No reply.

The marshal takes up the pot from a drop-leaf table—pours hot coffee, filling up a china mug. “I’ll go on and take him some up.”

He walks by Lauren, toward the hallway.

She reaches out, places a hand on the arm of his suit.

He stops.

She looks up. Her eyes hold his.

Nothing moves inside the house, the only sound is flame lapping at the firewood, a clock ticking in the hall.

“It’s alright,” he says.

Her eyes cut away.

The marshal raises the mug, gestures at the door.

He steps from the living room, walks along the hallway to the foot of a staircase.

Climbing slow, he reaches the next floor, sets the mug down on a bureau top.

He knocks at the door to a bedroom. A muffled voice comes back.

“It’s Whicher...”

He listens to the sounds of movement from inside the room.

“You want coffee?”

The door opens. Anthony stands in the frame. He’s dressed in jeans, a sweater, socks.

“You catch some sleep?”

“No,” Anthony smiles. “Well, maybe.” He flattens his messed-up blonde hair.

Whicher holds out the mug.

The young man takes it.

“You doing alright?”

“I guess.”

“Tired?”

“A little.”

“Keeping warm?” The marshal looks him over.

Anthony takes a sip at the mug of coffee. “I’m keeping warm.”

Whicher scans the small room—an antique bed, a closet, a view out over white fields. “There’s food in the refrigerator. You want, I could fix something for y’all?”

“I’ll come down,” Anthony says. He grabs a pair of new-bought boots off the rug on the floor. “At the ranch, the cookhouse was one of my jobs,” he says. A smile forms across his face. It quickly fades.

The marshal steps from the room, clips back down the staircase, checks the window in the hall—nothing out there.

Lauren shifts in her seat at the fireside.

“You want to eat?” Whicher says.

“Is he alright?”

The marshal nods. “He said he’s going to come on down.”

Lauren stands, picks a shawl from a chair back. She wraps it around her shoulders. “Will you call the hospital?”

“I already called.”

“Will you call them again?”

“They’re safe,” the marshal says.

She looks at him.

“Kinawa’s in the hospital in Rapid City. Maddie Cook and Agent Rimes are somewhere they can be protected.”

Lauren doesn’t respond.

“You did all you could.”

Her face is suddenly tight. “I remember every second—every second from when that man got into the Jeep...”

Anthony’s footsteps sound on the stairs in the hallway.

“They never would’ve found Janice Rimes,” Whicher says, “without you.”

She shudders.

The marshal eyes her. Beneath his breath he says; “Don’t let him see you’re afraid.”

The young man enters the living room.

Lauren steps from the fireside, puts her arms around him.

“What?” Anthony says.

She grins. Lets go, steps back.

Anthony catches the shawl as it falls from her shoulders, his face coloring. “I’m alright,” he says. “Come on, look, I want to fix us something to eat.”

“I can do it...”

“Laur...” He steps away, shakes his head.

In the kitchen, Anthony pulls open the door of the refrigerator. “Huh,” he says. He runs a hand over the food on the shelves. “How about steak? Steak and eggs. Bell peppers, onions. Everybody eat that?”

Beyond the picture window at the sink, the winter fields stretch to woods—stark, vivid, etched in white. The middle of the Illinois countryside, hundreds of miles from Rapid City, from Redwood. A safe house, isolated—a farm two hours from Chicago.

“Laur?” Anthony looks at her.

She nods.

He turns to Whicher.

“You cook it,” the marshal says, “I’ll eat it.”

The flight to Illinois was last-minute, the weather just holding—a prop plane arriving in Peoria before nightfall—an FBI agent to meet with them, drive them out to the farm.

Whicher watches as Anthony takes a fry-pan from a hanging row of saucepans and skillets.

Lauren searches in the cupboards, finds a stack of plates, lays out three on a marked-up, oak table. Anthony slices onion, lights the stove, puts the pan on the flame.

The marshal steps from the kitchen, walks back down the hallway.

Behind him is the sound of footsteps.

He reaches the living room—Lauren enters after him, she pushes the door closed.

“Something on your mind?” He walks to the window.

She studies the floor. “There’s no time.” She steps toward the fire, frowns. “The trial starts tomorrow...”

He levels his gaze on her.

“What have you told them—the FBI? About the money?”

The marshal takes a long breath.

“The money I stole,” she says, her voice flat. “From the Coletti’s.”

He turns, stares out of the window—out across the frozen field of maize.

“Are you going to tell them?”

He thinks of her, her and Anthony—a life ahead of them; a world of watching the back door, of covering traces. He studies a red-stained barn at a corner of the farmyard, its timbers twisted with age. “No,” he finally says.

Lauren moves to the window, pulls the shawl about her shoulders. “You’re the only person I’ve ever told.”

Whicher steps aside, takes a piece of cordwood from a stack by the fire.

“Do you remember,” she says, “back on the bus—that Greyhound bus?”

He feeds the wood into the hearth.

“That Greyhound bus,” she says, “when we were headed for Denver? You told me about a man you were taking out to a prison?”

Florence ADX.

Maitland—Cutter Maitland. Caught with human remains.

“He said you and he were just the same, you remember?”

The marshal doesn’t reply.

“Guard dogs. Only working for different sides.”

Whicher straightens. Listens to the sound of Anthony moving in the kitchen, dull noise echoed down the hallway.

“You’re not,” she says. “You’re all that’s left.”

He looks at her a long moment.

“The only thing standing in the way...”

He tilts his head.

“Of the violence,” she says. “All the greed, the craziness.” She moves from the window. “All I want is to protect my brother. When this is over, I won’t be separated from him again. I want him with me—wherever we end up.” She steps closer. “What will you do? Will you go back to Texas?”

He nods.

“But if you had a choice—another choice?” She takes another step, only inches from him. “When this is all over. The trial. Everything...”

She searches his face. Doesn’t let him look away.

Whicher walks the fence line in the breathless air, winter sun low above the frozen wood. An iron-smell rises from the ground, dead stalks of maize crunch beneath his boots. His eye follows a line of telephone poles—stretching out along the only road.

Nothing is moving. Nothing out there, to the far horizon. A single, burr oak, leafless. Crows gathered among its branches as the light begins to fail.

He takes a last look at the deserted road, the empty fields, the cold, dark woods. Turns in the weak, brass light of sunset, heads for the house.

He scans its board facade, its windows, empty. Snow on the shingle roof.

And Lauren.

Lauren standing out on the porch.

Arms wrapped about her. Silent. Watching.

He makes his way up through the yard—by the red-stained barn. Sets his hat.

“Teach me how to shoot?”

He looks up at her, standing on the porch deck. Low sun at the side of her face.

Beyond the house, across the empty plain, night is coming, stealing in.

“Would you teach me?”

He reaches the foot of the stairs.

“When I close my eyes,” she says, “I can see that man. So close.”

The marshal pictures the corridor—upstairs in the college building—blood-quick movements, shots, a frenzy, trying to stay alive.

“I never want it to be that close to me again,” she says. She holds her hands together—out in front of herself, arms extended, as if aiming a gun.

He climbs the steps. “You think that can keep it all away?”

She drops her hands to her sides. “Then what?”

The chill of a breeze moves against his skin. “Witness security will keep you safe. Once the trial is done—nobody ever got killed.”

“You told me that,” she says. “You told me once before.”

“Long as they don’t break the rules.”

She looks at him, head slightly on one side.

He watches the shadows start to lengthen down the side of the barn. “McBride will be here soon. He’ll take you into the city.”

She dips her head.

“I’ll stay here with Anthony. Until they tell me where to go.”

“Don’t leave him.” Her voice is tight in her throat. “Promise me...”

“A lot of officers work protection...”

“They’re not you.”

He lets his gaze sit, unfocused, on the middle-distance. “The doctors say he needs to rest up, eat, stay warm.” He shifts toward the door of the house.

“There’ll be enough,” she says, “when this is all over.”

He lets her words run. Doesn’t answer.

“You stayed,” she says.

He stops, looks into her face. Feels the pull in his gut, the shard of something.

“When Kinawa was shot,” she says. “You could’ve taken him out. But you didn’t. You stayed.”

“That’s it?”

She places a hand on his shirt front. Blonde hair, eyes intense, a smile at her mouth. A sad smile. “That’s all there is.”

A single set of headlights washes over the blackened land. Flecks of ice are blowing under the porch roof, the marshal watches the slow sweep of the beams.

The vehicle is turning, leaving the long, straight stretch of road.

Anthony steps forward from the shadows on the porch deck. “Do they really have to take her tonight?”

“Trial starts in the morning.” Whicher checks his jacket is open, loose—he feels for the Glock at his hip. “McBride called. He was off of eighty, south of the interstate corridor. He said to be ready.”

The sound of the motor carries, now, above the soft moan of the wind.

“What about us?” Anthony says.

“We stay here tonight.”

“We stay, Lauren goes?”

Whicher looks at him.

The vehicle makes another turn, coming closer now, approaching the farm.

Anthony shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“This all was set in train a long time ago,” the marshal says.

The young man watches the headlights a moment longer. “I better go tell her.” He steps back from the rail, crosses to the door. Disappears into the house.

The vehicle slows, pulls in from the road. It steers up over frozen gravel in the yard—a Ram pickup, black and chrome.

Rolling to a stop in front of the old barn, the driver shuts off the motor—Whicher sees McBride in the yellow glow of the dome light.

He eases forward on the porch.

McBride steps out of the truck. He breathes the cold air, eyes the dark expanse of land. Grabs his coat from the passenger seat, slips it on.

“You see anything out there?” Whicher says.

“About two vehicles since I left the interstate.” The inspector crosses the yard to the raised porch. He climbs the ice-covered steps.

“Where y’all fixing for her to stay tonight?”

McBride shrugs. “Wherever the DA’s office tell me. Cells maybe, at the courthouse.”

“Come on inside,” Whicher says. He leads the man into the farmhouse, down the hallway, footsteps sounding from a room upstairs. “I get you something?”

McBride shakes his head. “I need to get her into the city, they’re getting nervous in Chicago.” His eyes cut to the ceiling.

Whicher turns from the hallway, shows McBride through into the kitchen.

The lights are out. It’s warm, still, suffused with the smell of home-cooked food.

Beyond the kitchen window, the dark is unbroken.

The marshal pours himself coffee from a pot on the stove.

McBride studies the night beyond the window. “Lonely place,” he says.

Whicher nods.

“But safe.” The inspector crosses his arms on his chest. “WITSEC—in its essence.”

The marshal leans against the countertop. “She wants to relocate,” he says. “Her and Anthony.”

“Together? She told you that?”

“Could she?”

“She could.” McBride exhales. He turns back to staring out of the blackened window.

“It’s all she wants.”

“What they want,” the inspector says, “what they all want, is their old lives back.”

Whicher takes a sip from the cup of coffee.

“Family,” McBride says. “Friends. Their roots. An end to all the lies.”

The marshal glances across the room at the older man. “They ever get it?”

“Some of that,” the inspector nods. “Some of that WITSEC will allow.” He unfolds his arms. “Family contact’s something we have to manage, but it happens. Matter of fact, we think she called her grandmother—in San Francisco...”

The marshal looks at him.

“Before she set out for the trial. We think that’s how Coletti’s people knew...about Lauren, about how we’d be moving her.”

“Y’all think that’s how they knew about the train?”

McBride studies the backs of his hands.

Whicher thinks of Lauren—in McCook, in the waiting room, at the deserted station—she’d been calling her then.

“We knew about her,” the inspector says. “Her mother’s mother. She lives out in San Francisco, North Beach, the Italian-American community. She probably let slip something, some small thing—to somebody she thought she could trust. We’re checking phone records from Lauren’s apartment.”

Footsteps are on the stairs in the hallway now, two people descending.

“FBI say the Coletti’s have folk out there,” McBride says. “They knew Lauren had to be in Chicago; the trial’s about to start. All they needed was the departure point.”

Whicher pushes up off the countertop.

The inspector looks at him. “You did good.”

Lauren reaches the foot of the staircase, Anthony behind her.

“You kept them both alive,” McBride says.

Lauren stops. Turns around. Still the question in her face.

The marshal squares his hat, rubs a hand across his jaw. He sweeps open the jacket of his suit, leads the way outside.

Anthony stands on the porch in the light from the house.

McBride descends the steps, crosses the yard—he opens up the Ram, puts the truck keys into the ignition. He starts the motor, takes a pace away, checks his watch. “Two hours to Chicago,” he says, “we better get moving.”

Whicher takes a long breath, holds it.

Lauren brushes by him, walks over to the passenger side of the pickup, still wearing the ranch coat—his coat.

She puts a hand to the collar.

He shakes his head. “Keep it.”

Her eyes hold his.

She breaks off. Opens up the door, steps into the cab.

McBride crosses the yard to stand at the foot of the stairs. “Once the trial is done,” he says, “WITSEC will make her disappear.”

For the longest time Whicher doesn’t reply

McBride studies him. Finally he nods. “Only way to protect her is to let her go.”

Whicher stands silent in the raw air.

The inspector walks to the pickup, swings open the driver’s door, climbs up behind the wheel.

He backs the Ram out, brakes, straightens onto the road.

The motor rumbles beneath the hood.

He hits the gas, steers the truck forward, headlights bright at the edge of the snow-bound fields.

The marshal watches.

Minute after minute. Till the light is finally gone.

Wind and the cold returning, seeping in.

To silence.

At the edge of a darkened world.