She smiled. “How do you feel? Any better?”
“Not bad,” he said. “I heal fast. That old sawbones got the job done. The stitches itch. That’s all.”
She searched his face, knowing he was in more pain than he admitted.
“Heck of a fog outside,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. The fog, thick and cottony, shrouded the outside world. But the fog was good luck; as long as it lasted, they could keep the fires in the hearth and the cook-stove going.
Even with the two fires and the propane heaters, the big room was chilly. She knew they could not stay here long. It was not a healthy place for the twins or for Jefferson, who was still weak, no matter what he said.
Once the weather cleared, their situation would be even more hazardous. Anyone might stumble on them, snowmobilers, teenagers looking for a spot to party, a deputy making a routine check.
“Did you reach your wife?” she asked Jefferson. She corrected herself. “Your ex-wife, I mean.”
Earlier, while the twins were eating, Jefferson had taken the cellular phone into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. He’d wanted to phone Chicago.
He didn’t look happy. “I reached her.”
“Did she know about what happened at Valley Hope?”
His eyebrow lifted cynically. “She heard. The bureau told her. Said if I called, she should try to find out where I am. I told her you people left me in New Jersey. She pitches into me, gives me holy hell, tells me she doesn’t want to hear, not to drag her and the kids into it.”
His tone was derisive, but she could see the brooding hurt in his eyes.
“At least your children know you’re all right,” she offered. “You have two, right? Boys?”
“Right. Nine and seven. Only they got a step-daddy now. One with a safe job with regular hours. He’s an accountant.”
He studied the boys as they played by the fire. “She goes, ‘What you doing, getting shot up guarding somebody else’s kids? Don’t you care about your own? You don’t care about anything but your stupid job.’ ”
Jefferson’s expression grew bitter. Laura didn’t know if he was angry with his ex-wife or with himself.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I can’t blame her. She was always scared of this. She said, ‘It was bound to happen.’ She said, ‘What’d you expect?’ She said, ‘I told you so.’ ”
He shook his head sardonically. “So I say, Tine. It happened. You happy now?’ You know what? She starts crying. She is the most contrary woman I know. She goes, ‘Are you in such trouble you can’t get out? Have you finally gone and done it?’ ”
Laura bit the inside of her lip. She wanted to ask the same thing: Will we get out of this? Will we survive?
Instead she said, “Do you think Montana’s right? That we should go to Quebec? Is that still what he’s thinking of?”
He lifted his eyebrow higher, his gaze still on the boys. “Canada? Maybe. Or we could go to Portland, take a plane to the Caribbean. St. Thomas, St. John, some American possession where we don’t need passports.”
“What’s the advantage of that?” she asked.
He turned to her, gave her his lopsided smile. “For one thing, I wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb. Not many black dudes this far north. I am unique here. Besides, it’s warmer down there.”
She stared down at the tabletop and idly traced out the carved words “God is Love.”
“I don’t know how the twins would act on a plane,” she said. “They’re on edge. Trace is close to throwing a tantrum, I can tell.”
“It’s chancy. We’re recognizable,” Jefferson said. “The Colombians are looking for us. Our own people, too. And that damn paper’s coming out. But Canada? It could buy us some time, maybe. I don’t know.”
“How would we get over the border?” she asked. “We’d have to show papers. We don’t have any.”
“Montana knows how to get them,” Jefferson said.
“And once we’re there?”
“At least we’re not here.”
She rubbed her temples with her fingertips. Her head was starting to ache.
“Montana’s smart,” Jefferson said. Her gaze met his, and suddenly she realized he knew what had happened last night between her and Montana.
“He’s good,” Jefferson said. “It’ll be okay.”
“I hope so.” She turned away and stared at the flames dancing in the fireplace. She could feel Jefferson studying her. “I wish he was back,” she said.
“He’ll be back,” Jefferson said. “And we’ll take care of those boys. I promise you that.”
The day was too cold to let the twins stay outside for long, but Laura was desperate to keep their energy level down. She took them out after their afternoon reading lesson.
The fog had thinned slightly. The three of them played fox and geese in the pristine snow, running and chasing.
She taught them to fall over backwards in the snow and make the print of a snow angel, and they made dozens. The drifts beside the lodge were marked with the shapes of angel after angel, each the size of a child.
When the boys grew bored with angels, she began a snowman. The three of them were putting on the finishing touches, pine cone eyes, when she heard the sound of a motor approaching.
She was terrified that it might not be Montana. But where could she and the boys hide? Nowhere, really. When she saw the red van coming through the white mist, her heart started beating again.
The twins showed no interest. They were rearranging the snowman’s face. They put his nose on his forehead and his eyes on his chin.
Montana parked and got out of the van. He came to where she stood shivering as she watched the boys. She expected him to say something neutral and businesslike.
Instead he bent and kissed her mouth. His lips felt warm as sunshine to her.
“You’re freezing,” he said. “You should take this show back inside.”
“I’m trying to wear them out. It’s working the other way around. You were gone a long time. I was worried.”
“I’ve been checking out things, laying false trails,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later.”
He took hold of the lapels of her jacket, drew her close, and kissed her again. She knew she would be in his arms again tonight.
“We shouldn’t do this in front of the kids,” she breathed.
“They don’t notice,” he said.
“They notice more than you think.”
He turned to the boys, who now had the snowman’s face resembling something from a cubist painting.
“Yo, Rickie, Trace,” he said. “Hi. How are you?”
Neither answered. They were busy making the snowman’s mouth go sideways.
“Rickie—Trace,” Laura said with all the authority she could muster, “Mr. Montana said ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you?’ Answer him.”
Rickie squinted harder at the snowman. “Hello. I’m fine. How are you?”
“Fine, thanks,” Montana answered with a nod. “And you, Trace. Hello. How are you?”
“Hello,” Trace answered absently. “I’m fine. How are you?”
“I’m good,” Montana said. “Do you care if I kiss your teacher?”
“Montana,” Laura whispered in rebuke.
Rickie looked in Montana’s direction with a vague frown. “Mamas and daddies kiss,” he said. “Mamas kiss. And Laura kisses. Laura’s not a mama.”
He spoke with innocence, but his words stung. She started to draw back from Montana. “We should go inside.”
But he didn’t release her. “Men and women who like each other kiss,” he said. “It doesn’t have to have anything to do with mamas and dads. It doesn’t take skill to have a kid, just luck. What’s hard is caring for them.”
Rickie looked up at the treetops. “Kissing’s yucky,” he said flatly. “Hasten, Jason, bring the basin. Urp, slop, get the mop.”
“Urp, slop, get the mop,” Trace repeated. It was a rhyme they
’d learned in the schoolyard.
Montana gave her a one-sided smile. “The best thing about me,” he said, “is my unfailing talent for finding a romantic atmosphere.”
“Hasten, Jason, bring the basin,” Rickie chanted. “Urp, slop, get the mop.”
“So I see,” Laura said, her gaze holding his. The outside world, the cold, the snowman, the teasing boys seemed to fade to unreality.
Why is this happening? she asked herself. Is it because we’re both afraid we’re not going to get out of this? Are we starting to hold on to each other because there’s nothing left to hold on to?
He took her hand in his good one. “Come on,” he said softly. “You’re like an icicle. Let’s get the stuff out of the van and go in.”
She nodded mutely.
All afternoon and evening, the snow fell steadily. It covered the fox and goose tracks, obscured the snowman’s bizarre face, and buried the small, childish angels in the snow.
After supper, Montana watched Laura, who sat before the fireplace with the twins. They were having an impromptu lesson about recognizing emotions. She’d made a pack of flash cards that showed by turn a smiling face, a scowling one, a frightened one, dozens of different expressions.
Her clothes were old ones from the closet of Marco’s long-dead wife. Her gray sweater had a hole in the elbow; her purple bell-bottom slacks looked like they were left over from the days of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Her auburn hair hung loose and glinted in the glow from the fire.
Two or three times Montana had seen Trace reach out and tentatively stroke her hair. He remembered she’d said that was how he sometimes showed affection.
Did they love her? He supposed they did, in their way. They trusted her, which was just as important. He had to trust her himself, and she him.
He wasn’t used to trusting; he hadn’t been for a long time. As for loving her, he didn’t intend to. An affair was different. They were in this trap together. They would take what human comforts they could find.
She held Rickie’s face so that he had to look at her. “Show ‘happy,’ ” she told him. “Show Laura a big smile.”
Rickie grimaced, a caricature of a smile, but a smile nonetheless. “Good!” she said.
“Now, Trace?” She touched the other boy’s face, turned it to hers. “Trace, show Laura ‘happy.’ Show a big smile—there!”
Both boys now gave her a distorted version of a smile, but hers was real. “Rickie and Trace smile and make Laura happy, too. See?”
Rickie’s forced grin faded. He tapped at his cheeks and looked at his watch. “Half hour, Laura,” he said, almost sternly. “Over.”
“Half hour,” she said, giving his chin the gentlest of caresses. “Rickie’s right. Play for half an hour now.”
She gave Trace, too, a light, affectionate touch, then rose from the floor. “Play for half an hour,” she repeated to them.
She came to the kitchen area, made herself a cup of instant coffee, then joined Montana who sat at the old trestle table. Jefferson sat across from him, scowling at one of the newspapers Montana had brought from Manchester.
“Well?” she said, “What do we do next?”
She said it with remarkable calm, Montana thought.
Jefferson shook his head at the Boston Globe. “Man, we don’t exist,” he said. “Not in the New York papers, not Boston, not New Hampshire.”
“Any more on Valley Hope?” Montana asked. So far the only coverage had been limited to one short Associated Press release. It consisted of a terse paragraph that ended, “Authorities refused to speculate or comment.”
“Not a word,” Jefferson said, laying the paper aside with the others stacked on the table. “Somebody—Conlee—whoever—is sitting tight on this story. That’s good.”
“It is good, isn’t it?” Laura asked. “Maybe nobody’s after us yet.” A look of hope crossed her face.
Montana was pessimistic. “It’s a matter of time. Whoever was after us is already looking. I’d put money on it. And the feds are looking, too. And what the feds know, the Colombians know.”
He watched her expression of hope die. She made no answer.
Jefferson said, “There could be more than one leak involved. Probably is. Could be human, could be electronic. Bugs, surveillance, who knows?”
“Yeah,” Montana said. “Sure.”
Laura was disbelieving. “Surveillance? You mean the task force itself could be bugged?”
“Task force, FBI, DEA, name it,” Montana said.
“But how?” she asked. “You’re the people who do the bugging. How can you be bugged yourselves?”
Montana felt an unpleasant surge of cynicism. “Anything we do unto others, they do unto us. There are bugs almost impossible to detect.”
She still looked dubious, but Jefferson backed him up.
“They got a microcircuit a thousandth of an inch thick,” he said. “Gets its power from radio waves in the air. You can have a transmitter so small, you can slit the edge of a playing card and slip it inside.”
“Bugs like that cost megabucks,” Montana said. “But the Cartel’s got megabucks.”
“There are these passive electronic devices that work in the microwave spectrum,” Jefferson said. “Harder to find than a square egg.”
“And the Colombians have more money than a lot of governments.”
“We’re not talking thousands of dollars here,” Jefferson told her. “We’re not talking millions. We’re talking billions. The Cartel’s got billions of dollars.”
Laura looked slightly sick. “Do you bug them back? I mean to that extent?”
“Not us,” Montana said. “The CIA gets the sophisticated stuff. We play with the Tinkertoys like pen registers and wiretaps.”
“But,” Laura protested, “your offices have to be the most secure in the country. How can anybody put a bug there?”
“You have enough money, you can buy almost anything,” said Montana. “Or anybody.”
“Exactly,” Jefferson said.
Laura looked from man to man in dismay. “You mean they really could know an agency’s every move? Even before it’s made? That’s how they might have known about Valley Hope?”
“Right,” Montana said.
Montana saw Laura’s gaze go again to the twins as they played by the fire. She said, “Then how long will we have to keep this up? Running away? Hiding? Will things ever be normal again?”
Montana said, “I don’t know.”
She swallowed, hard. “I mean, theoretically, it might be forever. Right?”
“Theoretically,” he said. “And theoretically, it might be safe to go back tomorrow.”
Jefferson said, “Let’s not worry about forevers. Let’s worry about this week.”
Montana nodded. “We can’t stay here. We’ve got to move on.” He looked at Jefferson. “You feel up to traveling again? Tomorrow or maybe the next day?”
“No problem,” Jefferson said, but Montana could see he was still in pain. That was unfortunate, but Montana couldn’t afford pity.
“When the weather breaks, we go,” Montana said. “As long as the snow or fog stays, we’re safer here than on the road.”
Jefferson nodded.
Laura’s voice sounded tight, anxious. “Where do we go?”
“We’ve got options,” Montana said. “I say we take the riskiest. It’s the one they won’t expect.”
“What’s the riskiest?” Laura asked.
“Canada,” Montana said. “It takes a lot of trouble. We’ve got to establish new ID’s, get paper. So we’ll find a place to sit tight. That’s Phase One. Getting to Canada is Phase Two. I know a guy there. He’ll help. His name’s Florent Porrier.”
Laura’s face grew more troubled. “What’s Phase Three?”
He didn’t intend to tell her Phase Three yet, because she wasn’t going to like it. “We’ll worry about that when we get to Canada,” he said.
He gave Jefferson a quick, conspiratoria
l look that said, Back me up. She doesn’t need to know any more.
The big man came through for him. Laura’s hand rested on the table, and Jefferson covered it with his own. “In the meantime,” Jefferson said, “we do the three musketeers thing. One for all. And all for one.”
Montana put his good hand on Jefferson’s. “Good enough,” he said.
Laura swallowed again and gazed, first at Jefferson’s face, then Montana’s.
The twins had stolen up to the table. Rickie started to riffle through the papers, looking for sports scores. He must have heard the last part of their conversation.
“Good enough,” he said in a singsong voice. The words seemed to fascinate him, for he repeated them.
“Good enough, good enough, good enough,” he chanted, and Trace joined him.
“Good enough, good enough,” they sang.
But Laura didn’t look as if such vows were good enough at all. She looked uneasy.
I’m hiding the truth from you, Montana thought. It’s what I’ve got to do.
TEN
At bedtime, the lodge was cold, and the twins clamored that they wanted to go home. They cried, and Trace kicked over the box on which the Bugs Bunny lamp sat.
“Want the room at school,” he said between sobs. “Want bed at school! Room at school! Room! Bed!”
Trace set off Rickie, who cried harder still and started sobbing, “Mama! Get Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama …”
His words tore at Laura’s heart, because he only called for his mother when he was baffled and frustrated to the point of terror.
Montana appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Can I help?”
“You can try,” she said, above the boy’s screams.
She held Trace tightly and talked to him, trying to calm him. At first he fought her, but at last, exhausted, he submitted to her embrace.
Still crying, he lay his face against her shoulder. His arms went around her neck in an awkward embrace, and his warm fingers fluttered against her skin, stroking her hair.
“Trace is on vacation now,” she told him. “Soon we’ll go in the van again. Trace will like that. Trace can see new places on the map, and highways, big ones and little ones. And we’ll get more pennies—and maybe nickels and quarters, too.”
See How They Run Page 15
