Runaway

by Anne Laughlin

  “Listen, in case you two don’t realize it yet, Global Chartered Security is a top-drawer firm. It’s not like our provincial, pea brain of a company can be trusted to have checked out our people properly.”

  “What a pain in the ass,” Peet said. She picked up a pen as she looked the form over.

  “What happens if we don’t do it?” Jan asked.

  “That they were very clear on. I just heard it from Engstrom herself. If you don’t comply with the background check, or the background check turns up something hinky, you’re out. She says it’s about their insurance coverage.”

  Vivian looked at Jan and patted her cheek. “Don’t be so worried. They probably won’t turn up that drug ring you run on your off time. Have fun, girls.”

  She sashayed away.

  This was bad news. By the time Jan started as a security guard at Titan when she was twenty years old, she’d gathered enough documents and references supporting her identity as Jan Roberts that she could easily pass the scrutiny of Titan’s background check on her. But that was almost twenty years ago. And GCS would certainly have a more rigorous routine check, powered by the Internet and their own vast resources. They would discover that as far as Jan Roberts goes, there was no there there.

  Peet was calmly filling out her form. She didn’t have anything to worry about. She was a straight-laced wife and mother, albeit a big, dykey one. She was a former homicide detective with ribbons on her dress uniform. She was generous of spirit because she had plenty to give. Jan felt mean and desperate; the tenuous hold she had on bringing Catherine into her life, bringing something in that could glue her together and make her a vessel and not so much of a sieve; that would all slide away as soon as she filled out the damn form and the drill started spinning down into her past. She felt like a house of cards with someone’s finger about to give a little push.

  She got up and moved to the other side of the office. Maybe if she just saw Catherine’s face she’d know what to do, though her choices were limited. She could submit the form and endure an agonizing wait. Would they be able to tell that the birth certificate she had for “Jan Roberts” was one she bought from some guy in LA? It was in her file, slipped in by Junior Begala after the most cursory of glances, she was sure. Would they bother to check anything prior to age sixteen? Would they see a red flag when she couldn’t list a single relative, an emergency contact, anyone at all who could confirm she was who she said she was? She didn’t really know how vulnerable she was to exposure. It had all worked for so long without mishap.

  She’d long ago checked the national databases to see if there was anything there related to a girl named Grace Anderson, her given name, one that she now barely remembered. There was no investigation into the shooting of her father that she could find, and she would have been surprised if there had been. If her father had been killed by her shot, the others in the camp might have buried him, but she doubted they would have sought justice. And if he were wounded, he wouldn’t have wanted the police contacted—either to report that his daughter was missing or that she’d shot him.

  Her other option was to tell Catherine all about it. It was a thought so large and unexpected it was like a boulder dropping right in front of her. Or a bridge? Maybe it was an unexpected bridge, one that would take her somewhere she’d never been—into someone’s confidence. No other person had inspired the thought in her. Catherine did.

  Jan saw Vivian back at her desk, near the conference room that Catherine had appropriated as her office. The room was empty.

  “Have you seen Catherine?”

  Vivian slowly turned from her computer and looked up at Jan.

  “Hoping for another make out session, are we?”

  Jan decided to pretend she didn’t know what Vivian was talking about. She couldn’t take the teasing just now.

  “I need to talk to her about something.”

  “Uh huh. Well, you’re in luck. She left about half an hour ago to go back to her hotel. Perhaps you’d care to join her there?”

  “Did she say if she’d be back?”

  Vivian smiled in that way that said a person both pitied and wanted to comfort you, which wasn’t in the least comforting. “Is she not keeping you up-to-date on her whereabouts, sugar? That’s rough. I’d be careful with her if I were you.”

  “Why do you say that?” Jan took the bait. She wanted to know.

  “She runs at a different speed than you, I think. Maybe not in your wheelhouse.”

  Jan didn’t feel insulted. She thought it was probably true. “Just tell me what you know about when she’ll be back.”

  “She didn’t say. She just blasted out of here and told me to reach her on her cell with anything important. I can tell you where she’s staying if you’d like.”

  “That’s okay. I already know.”

  “Good girl,” Vivian said as she turned to her computer. “Just be careful. And don’t forget that form I dropped off.”

  *

  Jan left her car with the Ritz valet and took the two elevators up to Catherine’s room. The contrast with the Pinehurst Inn wasn’t lost on her, nor the realization that the Pinehurst fit her much better than the Ritz, and the opposite was true for Catherine.

  She knocked on the door to Catherine’s room.

  “Who is it?” Catherine’s voice came through the thick wood door.

  “It’s Jan.”

  “I’m afraid this isn’t a good time. May I call you?”

  Jan’s heart started to sink. Something wasn’t right. She heard another muffled voice in the room, and before she could decide whether to stay or flee, the door was thrown open. Standing before her in a white Ritz bathrobe was Ellen. Jan recognized her from the photos she’d studied online, but she was more beautiful in person. Catherine stood behind her, taking Ellen’s arm and tugging her away from the door.

  “Is this the new woman?” Ellen asked. She didn’t seem angry as much as contemptuous. Jan stood frozen in place as Catherine stepped closer to her. “Ellen, please. This is someone from my office. Jan, I’m very sorry. I’ll have to get back to you later.”

  “Don’t be silly, sweetheart. Let’s let Jan in and you two can take care of your business matter.” She pulled Jan in by the arm. She felt she was being pulled into a drama she wanted no part of. She lifted her arm away from Ellen and stepped back.

  “Oh, sorry,” Ellen said. “I haven’t properly introduced myself, since Catherine is apparently not going to do the honors. I’m Ellen, Catherine’s wife. Maybe you didn’t know she was married?”

  Jan turned and left, striding down the long hallway as fast as she could without breaking into a trot, but not fast enough to escape the sound of Ellen’s laughter. A mad sort of laughter, as if catching Catherine with another woman was a form of triumph rather than a source of sadness or anger. Then she heard the door slam shut.

  *

  It was only October, but already the white holiday lights were hung up and down Michigan Avenue, sparkling now as Jan drove through the rush hour traffic. The days were short. But not as short, Jan thought, as the time she seemed to be allowed to be happy. Half a day here, perhaps an overnight there. It was stripped away almost as soon as she realized how good she felt. She was being dunked in and out of happiness. She was pissed off.

  Jan realized she might be a little unrealistic about how long it took to end a long-term relationship, a marriage, given her complete lack of experience at either having one or getting out of one. But the way Catherine seemed to be nearly cowering in the room behind Ellen made Jan lose heart. She felt betrayed and utterly confused. When her phone rang she checked to make sure it wasn’t Catherine before taking the call.

  “It’s Natalie Towne,” the voice said. It took a moment for Jan to remember the high school teacher. The very helpful, quite good-looking high school teacher. “I’m sorry if I’m catching you at a bad time.”

  “Not a bad time at all. What can I do for you?”

  “I don’t know if y
ou’re at liberty to say, but I was hoping you could tell me if you’ve found Maddy. We haven’t heard a word at the school.”

  Jan drove down the ramp that took her onto Lake Shore Drive and sped north with the traffic.

  “It’s nice that you called. And I wish I could tell you that we have found Maddy, but we haven’t.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that. Her parents must be frantic.”

  Jan bit her tongue. It never paid to disparage her clients, but it was sometimes very tempting.

  “I think we have some leads to go on. We’re heading out to Idaho tomorrow morning to try to track her down.”

  “Idaho?”

  “It turns out the term paper she wrote for your class was practically a road map. We just missed her in Michigan and have reason to believe she and others are heading to Idaho.”

  Natalie was quiet for a moment. “That’s astounding. I mean, I didn’t think she was really going to do anything about this living free from society thing she wrote about. She’s only sixteen.”

  Jan was nearing Belmont, where she’d turn off to go to her place. Or to a bar.

  “This may seem out of the blue,” Natalie said, “but could you meet for a drink by any chance?”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m at home. I live in Lakeview. You live in the city, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, in Lakeview.”

  “Can you meet me at The Closet?” Natalie said.

  The Closet was one of the oldest gay bars in the city. This put a whole new light on meeting Natalie for a drink.

  “I can be there in a few minutes.”

  Jan hung up and got off the Drive at Belmont and then north on Broadway, back into the heart of Boystown. All roads lead to Boystown, it seemed. And everyone was gay. She hadn’t really picked up a vibe from Natalie, had only thought she was pretty when she first met her, and a welcome distraction when she called a few minutes before. And now she was poised to be a pretty big distraction, which was just what she needed. She resolved to put Catherine out of her mind and concentrated on finding parking within hiking distance of The Closet.

  The bar was half full when Jan entered. She settled onto a barstool at the end farthest from the door, away from a noisy group of young lesbians who were acting like it was two in the morning rather than six in the evening. Jan never acted like it was two in the morning, even when it was, even when she’d been their age. She was sober even when she was drunk, serious even when she joked. She thought she must be a complete drag to be around.

  She saw Natalie enter and look around the bar for Jan. When Natalie spotted her she began to make her way back, stopped a couple times along the way by people—men and women—who wanted to say hello to her. She was not a drag to be around, it seemed. And she looked great—layers of clothes in fall colors, the kind of assemblage of disparate pieces that some women put together so brilliantly, and seemingly effortlessly. They knew how to tie scarves twelve different ways, all of which looked like they’d been flung carelessly around the neck and fallen into an arrangement that perfectly complimented the look and feel of what they wore. It was all well beyond Jan how any of this was possible. Catherine was the same way.

  “I’m so glad you could meet me,” Natalie said. She climbed onto the stool next to Jan, deposited her bag at her feet, and shrugged out of her jacket. “I didn’t think you’d say yes.”

  “Why is that?” Jan asked.

  The bartender came by and Natalie insisted on buying Jan a drink. She ordered beer. Natalie ordered Scotch. “Long day,” she said. She looked at Jan. “I guess I thought you might be all business and not willing to strike up anything beyond that.”

  “Is that why you called? To see if I was all business?”

  “Mostly it was because I wanted to find out about Maddy. I called her parents, but they never got back to me.”

  “You had a much better idea of what’s been going on with Maddy than her parents probably ever have. It looks like she’s hooked up with some folks in Michigan who are either in or at least involved with militia groups there.”

  “As I said, I find that remarkable and really scary. I’ve been looking into these groups more since we last talked. They can be extremely radical.”

  “None of it makes much sense to me,” Jan said. “I have a hard time buying that it was the politics of these groups that lured her in.”

  Natalie shrugged. “If you think it through, it’s not that illogical. Say Maddy gets an intensely romantic vision of what it would be like to live away from the society she knows and feels trapped in. She’s read some Ayn Rand, maybe even Thoreau or Emerson. Her head is filled with the notion that if you have control over your environment, you can control your happiness. Even solitude in the right environment will produce a rich life. None of this is unusual for kids her age.”

  “Right. And running away from home isn’t unusual either.”

  “But it can have disastrous consequences, especially for a girl. But Maddy, thanks to the Internet, finds someone, or a group of people, that she must have connected with in a way that made her fantasy about a new life seem like a possibility. At her age, she’s not very capable of seeing all the pitfalls or dangers of whatever plan they came up with. Everything seems not only completely possible, but righteous as well.”

  Jan drank her beer and tried to remember any feeling of righteousness when she ran away from home at sixteen. Desperation, maybe. Paralyzing fear, certainly. Still, she understood Maddy’s desire to leave and wondered if returning her to her home was doing the girl any favors.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow for Idaho to find her,” Jan said. “But it’s a big state.”

  “Do you know the area?” Natalie looked relaxed. She was being conversational.

  “I’ve been there.”

  Natalie waited for more, but there was none. Jan finished her beer.

  “Let me get you another,” Natalie said.

  “No, thanks. I should go.” Jan started to get up from her stool and Natalie placed her hand on Jan’s arm.

  “Please. One more. We only got to the business part.”

  Natalie was looking intently in her eyes. Jan didn’t think she was mistaking what Natalie intended. She felt her phone vibrate in her pocket and wondered if it was Catherine calling. Catherine, who was in her hotel room with her half-dressed lover.

  “Okay. But these are on me. And let’s make it a Scotch this time. I’ve had a long day too.”

  Natalie smiled and took her hand off Jan’s arm, but kept it close by.

  “How long will you be in Idaho?” she asked.

  “I have no idea. Why?”

  “I have tickets for a concert next weekend and thought you might enjoy it. If you’re around, of course.”

  “What’s the concert?” Jan was buying time. Did she want to go on a date? The phone in her pocket vibrated again. She thought of Catherine, of their night together and how that felt, how incredible it felt. She reached in her pocket and pulled the phone out.

  “Excuse me, I have to take this,” she said, standing up and moving a few feet away to the jukebox. She picked up the call but didn’t say hello.

  “Will you ever forgive me?” Catherine asked. “What a horrible thing to subject you to. I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t think I’m in a position to be granting forgiveness,” Jan said. “I’m the other woman, remember?”

  “This is so vastly more complicated than we can address on the phone. Please just promise me that you won’t do anything, go anywhere, until we talk.”

  “I’m going to Idaho in the morning.”

  “And I’ll be on the plane with you. I have to run, love. Don’t give up on me.”

  Catherine rang off. Jan looked from the phone to the bar and knew what she had to do. She drank down her Scotch and told Natalie she wasn’t much for concerts, and then excused herself. She was a fool for Catherine, but she’d never been a fool for anyone before. Even the uncertainty about where they w
ere headed felt better than anything she’d ever experienced. She had to see it through.

  Chapter Nine

  After thirty-six hours of driving, with stops to eat, buy gas, change two flat tires, and re-build one carburetor, David Conlon led his small band of travelers up a long, winding dirt road to their new Idaho home. They were up in the narrow part of the state where it looks like someone squeezed out the borders from a tube of toothpaste with Washington on one side and Montana on the other.

  David was grinning madly. “Home sweet home,” he said, though it was the first time he was seeing the property. The entire purchase had been done remotely. The keys were in an envelope in the roadside mailbox, with a note from the realtor saying she hoped the keys worked, but no one had used them in years. Maddy began to see why as they drove a full two miles before reaching the ranch clearing. She and Kristi stared wide-eyed out the window as their new home came into view.

  The first thing Maddy noticed were the two plank-sided cabins set at cockeyed angles, pointing toward each other. They were weather-stained and rickety looking, but she expected worse. The photos on the Internet made them look smaller than they actually were. But the house they would live in was harder to spot. It was built underground, its entrance a small door nearly hidden in the side of a mound of weed-covered earth. It made a hobbit’s home look like high-rise living.

  David pulled up between the two cabins and hopped out. Maddy and Kristi emerged from the back of the van. Diane was just waking up from another nap. Ed, Warren, and Tommy pulled up a few minutes later in the pickup. Maddy stretched and thought she’d never been so glad to be anywhere in her life. As the rest of the group found the entrance to the underground house and went in, she wandered around the cleared homestead. It sat on a ridge high enough to see miles in all directions, with blankets of forest interrupted by creeks, some pasture and farm land, and in the distance, the county road. This was the “defensible ridge” the real estate brochure had described, presumably to entice those who saw great value in holding the high ground in case of invasion.