8:19 P.M., Monday, August 24, 2009
Moose Island, Maine
Darkness was coming earlier as August faded into September. You could really notice it now. Summer was nearly over.
Tabitha was growing more restless and cranky by the hour. She was lying on Harlan’s sleeping bag, wanting to talk. Harlan lay next to her on his ground cloth, wanting to sleep. He had always subscribed to the military theory that in a combat zone, and he considered this to be one, it was always a good idea to sleep whenever possible, for as long as possible. After all, you never knew when the shit was going to hit the fan and you were going to have to stay awake for a whole hell of a long time.
‘I’m hungry,’ Tabitha announced.
Harlan sighed, sat up and rooted around in his pack. He found another of his Nature Valley breakfast bars and tossed it to her. She’d already eaten four. After this he only had one left.
‘I’m sick of these things,’ she said. ‘They’re disgusting.’
He didn’t answer.
‘Isn’t there anything else we can eat? Can’t we go someplace and get some pizza or something?’
‘No.’
‘I want to go home,’ she said.
‘You can’t,’ he told her.
She unwrapped the bar and started munching.
He handed her his canteen. She drank.
Fresh water wouldn’t be a problem as long as they stayed here. A clear stream ran behind the house. You never knew these days but it looked unpolluted. Problem was he wasn’t sure how long they’d be safe here. The danger wasn’t from tainted drinking water but from searchers trying to locate either or both of them. Better, he figured, to get moving sooner rather than later.
What was bothering him was that he’d have to take Tabitha with him. His initial plan had been to get Riordan to come after him alone. One on one. Mano a mano. But if Riordan knew the child had seen his face, she wouldn’t be safe anywhere. Not until Riordan was dead. It was a chance Harlan couldn’t take. Not for himself. Not for Tabitha. If only to honor the feelings he’d once had for her sister, he wasn’t going to let this child die.
She watched him watching her. ‘Aren’t you going to eat anything?’
‘The breakfast bars are for you. I can handle the fruit with mouse turds. I’ll open one of the cans later.’
‘I’m bored,’ she said. There were no games in the house. The TV didn’t work because the electricity was turned off. There weren’t even any books she could look at. Just some yellowed year-old newspapers piled in one corner of the living room and no light to read them by.
He studied her for a minute sitting on the floor munching the breakfast bar. He wondered if she trusted him enough to answer the question. He didn’t know. But he couldn’t think of any good reason why later would be a better time to ask it than now. ‘Tabitha. Where is the package Tiff gave you?’
She finished the last bite and licked her fingers for the crumbs before answering. ‘I can’t tell you. I promised Tiff I wouldn’t tell anyone. No matter what.’
‘Tiff is dead.’
‘I know Tiff is dead. Still I promised I wouldn’t tell.’ The little girl picked up the stuffed bear with half its head shot off and hugged it to her body. ‘And a promise is a promise.’
‘Tabitha, I need you to listen to me carefully. I know a promise is a promise and Tiff would be proud of you for keeping your promise. But I promised Tiff something too. I promised her that, if anything happened to her, I’d do my best to keep you safe.’ Okay, Harlan told himself, maybe that was stretching the truth. But Tiff would have wanted him to make a promise like that. At least she would have if she’d thought of it. ‘You want us to get the December Man before he gets us, right?’
Tabbie nodded, looking down at the bear in her lap rather than at Harlan’s face. ‘Yes.’
‘The only way I can do that is make the December Man think that I’ve got Tiff’s package. That I’ve got what she put inside the package.’
‘Drugs?’
‘That’s right, drugs. Drugs that can hurt people. Make them sick. Even kill them. You wouldn’t want that, would you?’
‘No.’
‘All right, then. Where is the package?’
Tabitha sighed deeply. ‘Here.’
‘Where?’
‘Harold has it.’
She passed the bear to Harlan. ‘The package is inside.’
Harlan squeezed Harold. Felt an oddly shaped hard object inside. Turned the bear over. Saw the stitches Tabbie had sewn along the back seam. He got up and took Harold into the kitchen. Tabitha followed. He cleared off some space on the counter, lay the bear down and then rooted around till he found a paring knife in Toby Mahler’s grandfather’s kitchen drawer.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Okay if we cut him open?’
She looked down at the bear with half its head shot off. ‘I guess so. He’s ruined anyway.’
‘He’s your bear,’ Harlan said. ‘Do you want to do the honors?’
Tabitha nodded.
He gave her the knife. She took a deep breath, slid the tip of the blade under the first stitch and cut. When all the stitches had been pulled out, Tabbie opened the bear and pulled out the package.
She looked up at Harlan. He nodded. ‘Go ahead, open it.’
Tabitha felt there ought to be more ceremony to the opening of the package. Maybe they should say a prayer or something. This was the last thing Tiff gave her before she was killed. But Tabbie couldn’t think of anything to say. She tore open the wrapping paper.
Inside she found an opaque plastic water bottle, a big one, and also three stacks of money, each held together with a purple rubber band. The bill on top of each stack bore the likeness of President Ulysses S. Grant. Tabitha had never seen a fifty-dollar bill before and she stared at Grant’s picture for a minute before putting the money aside. She held up the bottle to the moonlight coming through the kitchen window but couldn’t see anything. She shook it. Heard some rattling and then unscrewed the top. The bottle was filled with small greenish oval tablets. Thousands of them. She picked one out. Saw the number 80 stamped on one side. The letters CDN stamped on the other. She handed it to Harlan.
‘Oxycontin?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Canadian, I think.’
Harlan dropped the pill back in the bottle and screwed on the lid.
He picked up one of the stacks of bills. Slipped off the rubber band and started counting. The bills were all fifties. He counted 125 of them: 6,250 dollars. He counted the other two stacks. All the same. A total of 18,750 dollars. That settled one issue. If they were on the run for any length of time they wouldn’t have to worry about money.
‘Is it real?’ Tabitha asked. She’d never seen so much money in her life.
‘It’s real. And I guess, because you’re Tiff’s sister, whatever’s left after this is over is yours.’
‘Mine?’
‘Yeah. Except for one thing,’ Harlan muttered under his breath. ‘The December Man’s gonna want it back.’
‘He can have it,’ Tabbie muttered back. ‘The pills too. I don’t want any of it.’
‘He can’t have it back,’ said Harlan.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I say so.’
They went back into the living room. Harlan put the money and the pills into his backpack and went down on to the ground cloth. ‘Now try to get some sleep while you can. We may have to leave here tomorrow.’