From his principal:
Chris,
I heard about your house fire, and I wanted to offer to you to come stay at our place for as long as you need. Gail and I have a spare bedroom and would be happy to put you up. I’m so sorry this happened. If you need anything, let me know.
Andy
And from the head of the science department:
Chris,
I hope you’re okay. I’m off on vacation but heard about what happened from Dolores, who said that the news said that no one was hurt in the fire. But that sucks even so. I just wanted to say that I’ll be back next week and if you need any help, I’m happy to do what I can.
Lynn
There were several other offers of help, sympathy, and questions from curious friends and coworkers. Obviously, the news stations had reported that he’d survived the fire. The emails were unanimous on that point.
Even before sifting through the ashes looking for bodies, the police would have seen that there was no car in the driveway and figured he was away when the house went up. After the fire was out, they’d have confirmed it by going through the debris. So that meant that everyone knew he was still alive, which was both good news and bad.
The next one was from an unknown email address, [email protected].
Mr. Franzia, it is imperative that you return to Guildford as soon as possible. You’re taking a tremendous chance by being on your own, where there’s no way we can protect you. Contact me immediately.
J. Hargis
P.S. I am assuming that my business card was destroyed in the fire. My cellphone number is (703) 555-1003.
Chris gave a grim chuckle. Protect him? They’d done fuckall to protect him from having his house blown up. He’d take his chances on his own.
He deleted it without responding, just as he’d done with Hargis’s voicemail message.
The next one was the one he was looking for—[email protected].
Chris,
That is horrible! I’m so sorry I didn’t write yesterday, but I thought you were safe, and so was I, and I didn’t have anything new to tell you. I got busy with other things and didn’t see your email until two hours after you sent it, by which time you were probably sound asleep.
Has it occurred to you that it sounds like they’re getting a little desperate? Think about it. All of the others were killed quietly, simply, nothing flashy. Nothing that would attract notice. The fact that they destroyed your house – that’s going to make the news, cause some attention. Either they’ve given up trying to be subtle about things, or maybe they have some reason for changing their tactics. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but I thought of that and thought I should mention it.
I’m still fine where I am. I am so worried about you, though. I hope you’re being careful. Please contact me when you can to let me know how things are, and that you’re okay.
Take care.
Elisa
Chris clicked Reply.
Elisa,
I’m so relieved to hear from you. I’m okay for now, and am going to hit the road shortly. I don’t want to stay in one place for long. I don’t know how many traces I’ve left, nor how easy it is to track my whereabouts. I was so dog-tired last night that I didn’t care, but today I’m going to be more careful. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.
Chris
Chris sent the email, then signed out. He stretched, stood, and headed back toward his room. There was nothing to pack up. Just grab Baxter and go.
He used the ATM in the lobby to withdraw the maximum amount of cash his access card would allow, which turned out to be five hundred dollars. He was able to get another five hundred as a cash advance on his VISA card. He looked at the stack of bills sitting in his hand in some amazement. He’d never held that much cash before.
One less set of footprints. Once he left the hotel, no more using plastic unless it was imperative.
As he was passing the front desk in the lobby, the clerk, a middle-aged African American woman with short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a brass nametag that said Luanne cleared her throat. “Sir? Excuse me, sir?”
Chris turned. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry, but I thought… you’re staying in 107, right?”
Shit, the hotel staff had found Baxter.
Wait—how the hell did she know who he was?
Chris tried to keep his voice steady, “Yes, that’s me.”
She smiled. “I thought so. I remembered you from yesterday. I wanted to let you know. There were two men here looking for you.”
Chris’s heart gave an uneven little gallop against his ribcage. “Really?”
“Yes. They wanted to know your room number, but hotel policy is that we can’t give those out unless we’ve received prior authorization. I offered to call your room for them, and they said to, but you weren’t there.”
“I was at breakfast.” It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to modulate his voice. They’d found him. He had to get out of here, right now!
“It occurred to me afterwards that you might have been,” Luanne said. “Well, they said they’d be back in fifteen minutes. So I thought I’d let you know.”
“Okay,” Chris said. “Thanks.” He frowned. “Was one of them kind of small, with dark hair, and the other this big blond guy that looks like a linebacker?”
Luanne shook her head. “Nope. They both looked like generic suits to me.” She laughed. “Sorry, that’s not much help. But they had a kind of business-professional look. White guys, maybe mid-forties, both had brown hair. One of them wore glasses.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
“If they come back, do you want me to give them your room number?”
“No!” Chris said, a little more forcefully than he intended.
Luanne didn’t seem surprised at his response. “No problem, sir. I’ll call you if they come back, then?”
“Sure,” Chris said. With any luck, he’d be long gone by then. He added, “Can I go ahead and check out now? I’ve got to pick up my stuff, but I can leave the card key in the room, and it’ll save me another walk to the lobby.”
“Of course.” She clicked on her computer keyboard, and called up his account. “Are you leaving this on your VISA card, Mr. Franzia?”
“Yes.”
Another few clicks. “Then you’re all set. Would you like a receipt?”
“No, no need.” He probably wouldn’t be alive long enough to pay the bill. Chris fought back an unexpected urge to laugh.
“Thank you for staying at the Super 8. Hope to see you again soon.”
Not likely. “Thanks.”
He made it back to his room without running. He opened the door, called for Baxter, tossed the card key on the coffee table, and made it out into the parking lot without incident.
A minute later, he was pulling back out onto the road and following the signs for I-90 West.
—
Chris crossed into the state of Ohio at a little before ten in the morning. He drove a steady seventy miles per hour with the sun shining into his rear window and Baxter snoozing on the passenger seat. Near Euclid he started catching glimpses of the flat expanse of Lake Erie. The traffic began to increase as he approached Cleveland.
Even staying on the interstate, Cleveland was a snarled mess of twisty roads, lane changes, and traffic jams, and it took him nearly an hour to clear the city and continue west. At least the proximity to the city made the selection of music on the radio better. He finally settled on 100.7, WMMS—Cleveland’s Rock Station—and passed the time listening to the Gin Blossoms, Linkin Park, and Green Day.
By the time he got past the last of the Cleveland sprawl it was nearing noon, and his stomach growled. As he crossed into Elyria Township, he saw a sign for the Last Exit Before Toll, and decided he’d wait to stop until the first service plaza on the Ohio Turnpike.
Middle Ridge Service Plaza turned out to be a sprawling, dome-shaped building housing the usual assortment of fast food restaur
ants, a mini-mart, and the Ohio Heartland Gift Shop. He got some takeout Chinese food for himself, was able to pick up a bag of dog kibble and a pair of small plastic bowls for Baxter in the mini-mart, and bought two Ohio State University t-shirts for himself in the gift shop. He could keep wearing the same jeans day after day, but a clean shirt was more important. He made a mental note to pick up a couple of pairs of boxers and a package of socks next time he saw a K-Mart.
He sat at a picnic table in the sunshine, eating his General Tso’s chicken, with Baxter sitting next to him contentedly munching kibble from one of the bowls. He watched the people going into and out of the service plaza, idly wondering if any of them were suddenly going to turn and kill him.
Weird how quickly you get used to an idea.
Any of these people could be one of Them. No way of knowing.
The desk clerk at the hotel said that the two men who were looking for him were ‘generic.’ After all, that’d be an advantage, wouldn’t it? It’s only in action-adventure movies that the bad guys look visibly evil. In real life, evil looks like everything else, until it acts.
As he retrieved Baxter’s food and water dish and deposited the takeout containers in the trash can, the thought crossed his mind that maybe the people who were looking for him in the hotel could have been FBI, dispatched by Hargis and Drolezki to catch up with and protect him, or bring him back to Guildford.
There was no way to tell whether that was right until it was too late, though. It all came of having enemies and friends that looked exactly alike.
Back in the car, back on the Turnpike heading west toward Indiana and beyond. The terrain was mostly flat and getting flatter. Behind were the rolling hills of the western Alleghenies, ahead the pancake cornfields and straight-edge horizons of the Midwest. Exits for Sandusky, Fremont, and Elmore zipped by. Then there was the Rust Belt urban jungle of Toledo, its skyline graced by two huge glass-fronted skyscrapers and a dozen smaller, grime-stained office buildings. After crossing I-75, there was nothing but farms, silos, and billboards advertising evangelical churches and revival meetings.
Chris saw the sign saying Last Ohio Exit at just before four in the afternoon. By then, the sun had swung around to the west and was shining into his eyes, and the glare had given him a headache. He was torn between pushing onward out of fear and finding a place to stop out of simple fatigue.
Where was he headed? West. Stupid choice, probably, but he knew it wouldn’t turn him back. Whether it was because that was where he thought Elisa was, or because it was where the whole thing had started thirty years ago, was impossible to know. But now, this moment, he needed somewhere to hole up for a while. Some little pissant town in Iowa where no one would ever think of looking for him. Continuing to drive was pointless.
After all, he didn’t even know for sure if Elisa was still in Minnesota. She could be anywhere. Going to St. Cloud was a good way to get caught. Going west at all was crazy.
And yet he kept driving.
He saw the sign saying Pay Toll Ahead and slowed down, pulling into the cash only lane to pay his fare. Ahead of him were a pickup truck and a minivan packed with luggage and children.
He couldn’t hide forever. It had to end at some point, most likely by his getting caught and killed. What other outcome could there be?
He was just one guy, one naïve high school teacher from Nowheresville, upstate New York, against people who are capable of creating undetectable poisons, sneaking into his house and tampering with beer in his fridge, executing a fatal hit-and-run, and impersonating electric workers to rig your house to explode, all without getting caught. How could he hope to get away from people that powerful?
The pickup pulled through, and Chris edged his car up.
A surge of determination rose in him. He might not have a chance, but he’d sure as hell evade them for as long as he could. Even if they caught him, he’d give them a good hard run.
He certainly wasn’t going to lie down and give up just because he was alone.
The minivan pulled through, and Chris moved up to the tollbooth. The toll collector was a young man who already had a deep summer tan, whose shaggy brown hair was streaked with obviously dyed blond highlights. He looked like he couldn’t be much beyond a teenager. A college student, possibly, with a summer job working for the Turnpike Commission.
He handed him the ticket through the open window. The boy took it, and smiled. “That’ll be ten dollars, sir.”
Chris handed him a ten dollar bill.
The boy said, “Would you like a receipt?”
He shook his head.
“You might want to consider not getting on the Indiana Turnpike,” the boy said.
Chris stared at him for a moment. “What?”
“I said,” the boy replied, in a conversational tone, “you might want to consider not getting on the Turnpike. You are going to Indiana, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Why?”
The boy shrugged. “Whenever you go through one of these toll booths, there’s a camera that takes a photograph of your license plate. It automatically records where your car is. So, where you are.”
Chris looked at him, his eyes wide. “Oh.”
“Just a thought. There are lots of ways to cross Indiana besides the Turnpike. Might be a little slower, but I wouldn’t let that influence the decision.”
Chris swallowed. “No.”
The boy grinned at him, showing a row of perfectly even white teeth. “Have a nice day, sir.”
“You, too.”
Chris drove forward, feeling the sweat standing out on his skin, trying to breathe steadily and return his heart rate to normal. He got a ticket at the Eastpoint Toll Barrier at the state line, but ten miles later got off on Exit 144 toward Angola, Indiana.
The sun headed toward the horizon in front of him.
Who was that kid? And why would he tell me that?
He wasn’t one of Them, apparently. Or maybe he was, and was trying to divert Chris onto a different path, one where he’d be easier to find, in small towns, on small roads, in unpopulated areas, instead of the teeming bustle of the interstate.
But he’d been telling himself to go on instinct, and his gut told him to trust the kid. If he was one of Them, why any warnings at all? Why tell him that his license plate was being photographed, and that they could keep track of his whereabouts that way?
His friends and enemies looked exactly the same. So he had to tell them apart a different way. Think about what they said, how they acted. He was smart enough to figure this out. And he’d better be. His life depended on it.
Chapter 8
It wasn’t until 9:30 at night, right outside of Elkhart, Indiana, that Chris found a motel, the Belmont Inn, that would let him stay without requiring that he submit identification.
He signed the register as “Chris Lake,” which seemed like a generic enough name not to be memorable, but didn’t have the invented quality of “John Smith.” Nothing would look as suspicious as hesitating over your own name. It was easy to remember, as well. Lake was his grandmother’s maiden name.
He signed the register, made up an address, and a phone number of random digits. The clerk, a greasy-haired young woman with too much eye-liner, took his registration form and glanced at it briefly. He held his breath, expecting to be asked at least for a driver’s license, but she just said, “Sixty dollars.”
He handed over the cash, and the clerk slid a key across to him without once meeting his eyes.
“Room 9,” she said.
“Thanks,” Chris said, but she was already reading her newspaper again, and didn’t respond. There was a sign that said Continental Breakfast, 6 AM – 9 AM on the wall, but no restaurant in sight. He decided not to ask about it. No sense attracting attention.
And the fact that she wouldn’t look at him meant that she’d be unlikely to be able to identify him, if someone else came asking after him.
Could she be one of Them? It didn’t seem likely. Whoever They
were, he doubted they would show up in the person of a slovenly twenty-something woman who needs to take a shower.
Of course, there was the boy in the tollbooth. Even if he wasn’t one of Them, he knew what was going on. He was just as unlikely.
So Rule One—don’t trust appearances.
Chris went down to his room and unlocked the door. There was a faint odor of stale cigarette smoke, but it wasn’t too bad. Flipping on the light revealed worn carpet that had once been beige but now was patterned with a variety of stains and snags. At least the bed looked reasonably clean, despite a glossy spatter of some unknown substance dried onto the wall next to it. The bathroom had a rust-stained shower and sink, but soap, shampoo, and clean towels were provided.
He went back out and peered down the hall. There was a back entrance, perfect for sneaking in a dog. Given the untidy state of the room, he doubted dog hair would be high on the list of concerns of the housekeeping staff even if he got caught.
Baxter was safely retrieved from his car, the door shut and bolted, and Chris turned the television on and lay back on the bed. He flipped channels until he found a rerun of The X-Files. He smiled. It had been his favorite television series from the time it started, and he owned the whole series on DVD.
Used to.
He sighed, his smile vanishing. It had burned up with the rest of his fucking house.
The episode was a continuation of the Alien Conspiracy story, and he’d caught it in the middle. Mulder was sneaking around in the Russian countryside with his erstwhile arch-enemy Alex Krycek. This one, Chris remembered, ended badly, with Mulder bound to a rusted bed frame with chickenwire and infected with the evil, mind-controlling Black Oil.
Kill Switch Page 8
