Runaway

by Anne Laughlin

  Jan locked the room door behind them and then opened her car door for Catherine. “I considered it, but I want to see what’s out there first.”

  The Jeep bounced along a rutted dirt road, its gravel cover long since spit off to the side. Jan followed a blue dot on her phone’s GPS until she came upon a row of dilapidated ranch houses. The address Jan found on the county assessor’s site was the last in the row. There were no streetlights, but the blue glow of TV screens shone from every front window but the last one. Jan pulled up across the street and stared at the dark house. A party was rocking the house next door, the heavy bass thundering out into the street and cars lining the driveway and crowding onto the lawn.

  “It doesn’t appear Mr. Conlon or anyone else is at home,” Catherine said.

  “Let’s go find out.”

  Jan didn’t bother knocking on the door. The house was dark inside, the blinds and drapes left wide open. They circled the house, staying low. The noise from the party made Jan nervous, leaving her unable to tell if anyone was approaching.

  “What I need to know,” she said, “is whether Conlon’s just out for the night or they’ve taken off for Idaho.”

  They were standing in the backyard, where the scrubby lawn ran right up to the wall of the house. There wasn’t a sliding glass door leading to a patio. It wasn’t that kind of house. The mud from the yard had coated the basement windows, but one of them was cranked open.

  “If you had a mind to break into the house, it looks like they’ve saved you some trouble,” Catherine said.

  “I have the mind, but I don’t have the body. Will you fit, do you think?”

  Catherine handed the revolver to Jan and quickly angled her body feet first through the window. The only thing that seemed to have a hard time making it through were her breasts, which flattened disturbingly against the dirty glass as she slipped through. Jan ran around to the front to meet her at the door, ready to shoot it open if she heard anything.

  Catherine flung the door open with a bright smile.

  “Lovely digs, and we have the place all to ourselves.”

  “Let’s clear it, just in case.”

  She handed the gun back to Catherine and they worked their way through the house room by room. Jan wasn’t a law enforcement officer, but she knew how to clear a room. Still, she felt a little cowed by Catherine, who stepped into a room and swept it with her gun in a way that dared anyone to pop up and try to shoot her. There was just something about the way she did it that was sexy as hell. Jan was in serious trouble with this woman. If Catherine were to stop right in the middle of the sweep and blow her nose, Jan would probably think there was something enchanting about the way she did it. It had become as bad as that.

  There was no one in the house, but plenty of evidence they hadn’t been gone long. The dryer was still warm in the basement, the shower stall still wet in the bathroom. But other than the crappy furniture and knickknacks, the food in the kitchen, and the overflowing trashcans, there wasn’t anything left in the house. The closets and bathroom had been cleaned out. They got to work on the trash.

  Jan went through the basement while Catherine started upstairs. A plastic bag from a grocery store held some garbage near a mattress on the floor. There were a couple of Tampax wrappers, an empty can of Red Bull, used Kleenex, and a receipt for a cash purchase at the Kroger. A brush had been left behind at the sink, and there was used soap in the shower. The hair in the brush looked like it could have been Maddy’s. The rest of the basement was even less promising. An ancient workbench held tools that hadn’t see any work in a long time, a laundry room with rickety old machines, and a utility room with an ancient furnace and a rusty hot water heater. No secret rooms or hidden caches of weapons.

  She bumped into Catherine at the top of the stairs from the basement.

  “I was just coming to get you,” she said. “I think I’ve found something.”

  Catherine was holding a plastic garbage bag that she placed on the dining room table. She handed over a receipt she’d dug out of the bag.

  “I found this in one of the bedrooms. It looks like they’ve recently loaded up on outdoor equipment and clothing,” she said.

  Jan used her flashlight and looked at the long receipt from Walmart. The purchase had been charged to David Conlon two days earlier. Jan smiled.

  “Fantastic. Maybe he’ll charge his way across the country.”

  “Yes, he may just be dumb enough to do that. But in case he’s not, there’s something else here that might help,” Catherine said.

  She pulled out a sheaf of documents, copies of real estate listing sheets for property in Idaho.

  “This is great,” Jan said. “Did you see anything else up here worth looking at?”

  “Not unless you want to see the lovely collection of used condoms I discovered.”

  “I’ll pass. Let’s take this bag with us and head out.”

  The music was still blaring through the walls from the house next door. Jan poked her head out, looking for partiers who may have stumbled from the house. There was no one out there. Jan closed the door behind them and they trotted to the Jeep.

  “I know this isn’t relevant, really, but I’m glad to be out of there,” Catherine said. “I found it depressing, somehow.”

  “Yeah, there’s something a little depressing about everything around here.”

  “What do you think that is? I don’t know anything about Michigan.”

  Jan shrugged. “There are a lot of things about Michigan that are great. But obviously things are tough in this part of the state. I think it’s a hard life here.”

  “Which may be why these young people are getting out.”

  “Right. But I can tell you, Idaho is not the answer. Things are even tougher out there,” Jan said.

  Catherine looked at her. “Is that based on personal knowledge? I don’t know anything about you, I realize. Maybe you’re from that area?”

  Jan turned the Jeep around and drove back toward the motel. She was afraid to tell Catherine anything other than the manufactured biography of herself. Orphaned, raised in foster homes, put herself through school and the like. But for the first time, she was equally afraid of telling a lie.

  “I’ve heard about the job situation out west,” she said. “It’s not necessarily any easier to make money out there. But I think they’re going there to start their own homestead, not to find a factory job.”

  Catherine looked pensive. When they got back to the motel they took the bag into Jan’s room and started to go through the trash.

  “I’ll contact the Winnetka police in the morning,” Jan said. “They can trace the credit card number and hopefully give us an idea where they are.”

  “Can you tell me where you are?”

  Jan was separating real trash from potentially interesting trash. She stopped smoothing out a sheet of paper. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what are your thoughts about what we were talking about earlier? About my decision to leave Ellen?”

  “Do you honestly think that’s what I’m thinking about? I’m a little more concerned about tracking down this girl.” She started smoothing papers again.

  “Are you being honest?” Catherine asked. She was sitting in the chair opposite Jan, perfectly relaxed. Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, making her look younger. She watched Jan, but her look wasn’t challenging. “I know that if you’re anything like me, you can think about work and at least one other thing at the same time. Right now, for me, that other thing is you.”

  Jan sighed. She kept flipping though papers. She couldn’t focus on what was on them, nor could she think of what to say to Catherine. She’d completely lost track of why she was supposed to resist her. If there was no more Ellen, was there any reason to shut her out? Catherine slid her hand across the table until it rested on Jan’s, holding it still.

  All Jan could focus on now was what her body told her to do. Her mind was a mess. She stood and reache
d for Catherine, pulling her up and kissing her, feeling something work its way loose as Catherine’s arms snaked around her neck and pulled her closer. They kissed for a very long time, breaking just long enough for Jan to lock the door, turn off the lights, and guide Catherine down onto the bed. They were well into their lovemaking before Jan realized they were in her room and she’d not left herself her usual exit. She didn’t even want one.

  Chapter Eight

  By mid-day Monday, the two-vehicle caravan to Idaho had made its way well into Iowa, progress that seemed agonizingly slow to Maddy. She rode in the lead car with David, Diane, and Kristi, a camper van with a pop-up top, a couple of sleeping benches, and frilly curtains on the rear windows. Kristi was sprawled on one of the benches, sound asleep with her mouth open and her cap tilted over her eyes. David was driving, with Diane asleep in the seat beside him. Maddy sat on the other sleeping bench, hidden from David by a tie-dyed curtain pulled halfway shut. The curtains and the tie-dye and the fact that the van was painted a mauve color irritated the hell out of her. As if that were the thing to be irritated about in her situation. David was listening to an audio recording of Atlas Shrugged, a gift from Maddy when she arrived in Michigan. Ayn Rand was what brought them together. Maddy had thought that it was enough, but now even Ayn Rand irritated her.

  Beneath her bench were two banker boxes. David put them there after she and Kristi climbed into the van the night before. Most of the other cargo they were bringing to Idaho was being hauled in the pickup truck behind them. Tommy was traveling in the cab with Ed and Warren, a situation that couldn’t have made Tommy very happy. She was still trying to figure out how these people held together, or why. How did a boy like Tommy run in the same group as guys like Ed and Warren? She knew that David was the glue, but she was only beginning to realize how strong the bond was. She had always been on the outside looking in at groups, never a member. Except for her family, but how they stayed together was the biggest mystery of all. The Harringtons had less in common with each other than this band of runaways.

  Maddy’s feet kept hitting the boxes below her as she fidgeted. She glanced toward the front of the van and saw that Diane was still asleep. She got on her knees and slid one of the boxes out. She opened it to find it tightly packed with file folders, all of them unlabeled. This seemed insane. Maddy was a believer in tagging, labeling, hierarchical file structures, and logical organization, all of it on her computer. Just having this much paper seemed stupid. This was why God had invented the scanner and the PDF format.

  She began riffling through the files. There were school records, family legal documents, and a great number of magazine and Internet articles on familiar topics: survivalism, anti-government tax actions, patriot and militia groups. There was a whole file on Ayn Rand and Objectivism. At the rear of the box was a file with names and contact information for members of an Idaho militia group. There was also login information for the group’s intranet. Both the user name and password were long and complicated, too much for even Maddy to memorize. She pulled out her phone and wrote it down.

  Maddy heard a loud yawn and looked to the front of the van to see Diane stretching her arms like a cat and rolling her head from side to side. She quickly put the last file back and shoved the box back in place. She lay down and pretended to sleep, listening to David and Diane laugh and Kristi mumble something as she dreamed. She felt anxious. What if David was getting himself involved with one of those hardcore militia groups? Didn’t that make them all involved? She didn’t know if she was more worried about what that might mean for them or whether David was leaving her out of something, leaving her outside looking in. What if this new family was as disappointing as the old?

  *

  Jan got back to the office in Chicago by late Monday afternoon. It had been impossible to leave Catherine as she lay asleep in her bed, impossible to nudge her awake when she could watch her instead. And when she did wake, it was impossible to resist when Catherine pulled her close and wrapped her legs around her. It was nearly noon when they got in their separate cars for the drive back.

  Jan found Peet at her desk, finishing up a call.

  “It’s about time you rolled in,” Peet said. Her forehead was pinched and her lips stretched thin, and Jan thought it made her nearly unrecognizable. She threw her bag onto her desk and took a seat, taking her time before turning to face Peet.

  “You’re pissed off?” she asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, exactly. We made some good progress up there. I think we have a few things to go on to find Maddy.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. Don’t dick around with me.”

  “Peet, I’m sorry that our new boss threw her weight around and came up to Michigan instead of you. It’s not like Michigan is a prize travel assignment, you know. I don’t even know why she did it.”

  Peet remained silent. It was the kind of silence that said a lot.

  “And it turns out she knows what she’s doing. Did you know she’s a former MI6 agent?”

  “How did that come up?” Peet asked. “Pillow talk?”

  Now it was Jan’s turn to stare. She wondered if Peet had psychic powers. Or maybe Vivian had already spread the story about the conference room kiss.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s only one reason the new owner of this company would risk pissing off their new employees by elbowing her way onto a routine assignment. She’s either after you or you’re already an item. Though even for you that seems like remarkably fast work.”

  Jan glared at Peet before she stood and went into the break room. She wanted a cigarette, and she hadn’t had one in ten years. She felt transparent. Both Peet and Catherine seemed to be able to tell her what she was thinking and doing before she quite realized it herself. Certainly before she was ready to share with them what they already found so obvious.

  She started a new pot of coffee and was staring at it as Peet came in the room.

  “Jan, you’ve got to level with me here. I’m not interested in being mad at you, but I won’t be played by you and the new boss. Just tell me what’s going on.”

  “No one’s playing you.” Jan poured her coffee before the pot finished brewing, juggling her mug and pot and spilling all over. Peet kept her arms crossed over her substantial chest, the furrow marks still in place on her forehead. She finished wiping up the spill and doctoring her coffee before she turned to Peet.

  “Maybe there is something between Catherine and me. Is that a problem?”

  Peet’s expression dissolved into a smile. “Really? I was just guessing, to tell you the truth. Tell me everything.”

  “You mean that doesn’t upset you?”

  “I don’t like being lied to. That upsets me. But you sleeping with the boss? Probably not a smart move, but I’m sure you’ve made worse.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Peet sat at the table and motioned for Jan to sit. Jan sat with great reluctance. But she owed Peet. More than that, she needed Peet.

  “How did this start?” Peet asked.

  Jan shifted in her chair. “I’m not going to kiss and tell.”

  “So you’ve kissed? What else?”

  Jan laughed. “I’m taking the fifth.”

  Peet looked serious again. “Honestly, this isn’t a good thing, you know. Are you in love with her? She lives in London, for God’s sake. What do you even know about her?”

  She wasn’t about to tell Peet that in London, Catherine had a lover who still thought everything was fine. Jan knew Peet well enough to know she’d not approve of Catherine sleeping with Jan when she was already in a relationship. In truth, it wasn’t high on Jan’s list of things she liked about Catherine.

  “Peet, please. Let me figure this all out on my own, okay? I’m a big girl.”

  Peet snorted.

  “And I’m sorry that she treated you badly on the Michigan thing. Let’s just say she felt some
urgency to find me and that’s the best thing she could come up with.”

  “Did you get any work done up there? Or were you just dealing with Catherine’s sense of urgency?”

  “We worked plenty, and she knows what she’s doing. She took a guy down in the woods like he was a scarecrow.”

  Jan filled Peet in on what they’d discovered during their trip. They returned to their desks and Jan pulled out a folder with the papers rescued from David Conlon’s trash.

  “We need to finish going through these to see if there’s anything we missed last night. I sped through them, but I did pick up some listing sheets for property in Idaho. One of these may be the place they’re headed to.”

  “Why don’t we call an agent out there and see what’s closed recently?”

  “I’ll do that. I need you to contact the Harringtons and let them know what’s happening. We’re going to need to go to Idaho.”

  “Who is ‘we’? Would that be you and me, or you and Catherine?”

  Jan paused. “How much does it matter to you?”

  “As long as I know I have a job here, I’m willing to do what the boss says. I just want to be dealt with straight up.”

  “Understood. We’ll leave it to her then.”

  Peet looked pensive. “But don’t trust her completely with everything, Jan. Like your heart, for instance. You’ve only known her a couple days.”

  Vivian sashayed up to their desks and handed them each a piece of paper.

  “What’s this?” Peet asked.

  “As part of the new regime’s assumption of power,” Vivian said, “we’re all required to undergo a new background check. You have to fill that out and get it back to me by tomorrow.”

  Jan stared at the questionnaire in front of her. “What the fuck? Why don’t they just look at all our files?”

  “I have a background check from not that long ago,” Peet said. “Why do they need new ones?”