At all costs

by John Gilstrap

  Jake never shifted his stare from Menefee’s eyes, yet he registered precisely what everyone in the room was doing, where they were going. He sensed that things were about to come unraveled. Menefee was a fool to draw verbal battle lines. What could he possibly hope to gain by picking a fight with an armed man? When Jake spoke, he carefully selected every word. “If I were a murderer, you’d be dead now, Menefee. As it is, I haven’t even threatened you.”

  “You bring a gun into my school…”

  Jake silenced him with an abrupt movement of his left hand, making Menefee flinch. Under different circumstances, Jake might have laughed at the reaction, but not this time. He leveled his forefinger at the principal, six inches from the end of the man’s nose. “It’s time for you to shut up now,” he said. “I’ve done nothing wrong. The details are none of your business, but rest assured that, to date, I have never killed a soul.” He paused, shifting his eyes individually to each of the people standing there in the office. One by one, all but the little girl broke eye contact the instant he landed on them. “Also rest assured that I will do what ever I have to do to protect my family from harm. Is that clear, Menefee?”

  The principal’s eyes shifted from the tip of Jake’s finger to the gun on his hip and back again. He swallowed hard, then nodded.

  Jake lowered his finger slowly. “Good. Now, why don’t you take a seat over there.”

  Menefee hesitated for an instant, as though unsure what to do.

  “Please,” Jake said, motioning with his hand toward one of the three metal secretarial desks behind the counter. “And don’t touch anything, okay? Especially not the phone. Really, my business here is almost done.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Eleven minutes had passed, and Carolyn was freezing. She slid the temperature control further toward red, realizing that it just wasn’t that cold outside. Nerves, she figured. Her body temperature always plummeted when she got nervous. Her feet felt like they might blister from the hot air blasting down on them, yet she still couldn’t stop shivering.

  This was taking too long. How big a deal could it be to go inside, pick up Travis, and come back outside? Five minutes? Maybe ten? Now they were closing in on twelve, and still her men were nowhere to be found. She hated herself for not going in with him. She should have insisted. At least then, whatever happened would happen to them together. The thought of being separated from the action-good or bad-was unbearable.

  Twice she started to climb out of the van to check up on them, but both times she stopped herself. If things turned bad, they’d need her to be right where she was. Her mind projected a nightmare scenario, with Jake dragging Travis in a dead-out sprint up the hill, with cops close on their heels, only to find the van empty.

  How many times had Jake said it? The key to success is sticking to the plan.

  In her heart, though, the plan was doomed to failure. How could it possibly work? There were a million variables, with billions of combinations. This whole business with Travis and his field trip, for example. Who’d have thought? Or the drug bust that morning in the shop? Nothing was as they’d planned it. The original version of the plan didn’t even take Travis into account-he wasn’t even conceived yet.

  In the old days, Carolyn and Jake were obsessed by the plan. They worked on it every night, investing thousands of dollars into the equipment and the tools and the safe house in the mountains. God, the safe house! How long had it been since she’d even seen it? Eleven years? Twelve, maybe? Travis was just a little guy, she knew that, and even then it was a rattrap; an easy place to avoid. Balanced right on the edge of civilization, the safe house-really an old travel trailer to which Jake had assigned the lofty name Donovan’s Den-sat in the middle of a five-acre tract in the hills of West Virginia. Jake had read about it in the legal notices of the Beckley newspaper and bought it from the bank for $15,000 cash, the day before the trustee sale. According to the real estate records, the property now belonged to one Francis Wheeler, of High Point, North Carolina. Sometimes Carolyn wondered how Jake kept all of the aliases straight in his head.

  Early on, the aliases had been an obsession of his. You couldn’t have too many names. Every week or so, for more than a year, he went to the library and perused death notices from a dozen key papers. Once he had a name, he’d simply call the Division of Motor Vehicles under the guise of checking a driving record for an insurance company. With a little bullshit and a lot of bluff, he’d wrangle the driver’s Social Security number out of the clerk, and once armed with that magical nine-digit identification, the rest was easy. Using a series of post office boxes-a new one every month-they’d get new driver’s licenses. Each new application carried its own risk, of course, but if something went disastrously wrong, everything would be traceable to a defunct P.O. box, last owned by a dead man.

  The Brighton persona had lasted much longer than it was ever supposed to. Credit Travis for that. Once the baby was born, the business of changing names became infinitely more difficult. And by the time he was old enough to talk, name changes were out of the question. How would they have explained it? Some secrets, they agreed, should never be shared with a little boy. So they became the Brighton family for good, switching back to the name on Travis’s birth certificate.

  The rest was just a matter of being careful. By obeying all laws, paying their taxes on time, and in all other ways just blending in with their surroundings, they’d been able to pull it off. In retrospect, Carolyn saw now that they’d become far too comfortable. They’d let their guard down.

  Now it was all caving in on them, and she wasn’t at all sure that she was up to it anymore. She was thirty-six now, Jake thirty-eight. They were too old to be pulling up stakes and starting over. And what of Travis? What were they going to tell him? How was it, she wondered, that the only issues they’d never discussed thoroughly-the only ones not a full part of the plan-were those that directly involved their son? It was as though they were afraid to open that particular door, for fear of what they might find lurking behind it.

  How could Travis ever forgive them for their lies? How could he not hate them when he found out? This was no run-of-the-mill Santa Claus lie, after all. Their son’s entire life was built on a collapsing foundation of sand. Every record ever made of the boy showed his name as Travis Brighton, whose mother was Carolyn Davies Mallone, and whose father was Jacob Aubrey Brighton. Yet those people-the ones who had been born with those names and lived with those Social Security numbers-were both dead; killed in separate automobile accidents back in 1982.

  What did it mean for Travis, she wondered, that his parents, as he knew them, didn’t even exist? Would he have to change his name if they were caught? Could they afford not to change his name even if they weren’t caught? Thousands of questions flooded her mind as she sat there shivering in the warm car, trying to make sense of it all. In a rush of dreadful pessimism, she realized with absolute clarity that they had no idea what the hell they were doing. The secret to survival was not the plan, after all; but rather the ability to adapt to random slaps and shoves that life handed you as you went along, trying your best to do your best. Planning was merely a way to bide your time and rationalize that somehow you’d be able to solve your problems.

  She shivered again and found herself thinking about that bottle of Jack Black nestled in her duffel bag. That’ll warm me up. Her mouth watered at the thought of white-hot brown liquid coursing its way down her throat…

  No! she commanded herself, so forcefully that she wondered if she’d said it aloud. This is not the time.

  She didn’t even see the cop car until it had passed her, moving quickly down the street toward the school.

  Oh God, please, no.

  Her heart hammered behind her breastbone as the blue-on-white cruiser approached the driveway, then slowed for an instant as it swung the turn.

  “Shit!” She said it aloud this time and climbed over the center console to slide behind the steering wheel. “Oh, God. Come on, guys,”
she moaned through clenched teeth, scanning her obstructed view for some sign of her family. They were nowhere to be seen. “Dammit.”

  Reaching down between her knees with her left hand, Carolyn pulled the lever she found and clumsily adjusted her seat behind the wheel. Her first try was too close, then the second slid back too far. Two or three oscillations later, the seat was about right. She stepped on the brake, reached for the gearshift lever with her right hand, then stopped.

  Somehow the shiny little. 380 from the bank had materialized in her palm.

  “Two days in a row,” Travis grumbled as he shrugged into his jacket and stuffed his books into his backpack. He slammed his locker shut. “This is getting to be a regular friggin’ habit.” This time he didn’t even know what he’d done, yet obviously it was expulsion time. Why else would he have to bring all his books?

  Should have kissed Menefee’s fat ass when I saw him in the hall this morning, he thought. Well, no great loss. He hated this school, anyway.

  How the hell was he going to break this news to his dad? Yes indeedy, there was going to be some serious shouting in Farm Meadows tonight. He wondered absently if his mom would hold him while his dad screamed him to death, or if Dad would just handle the dirty deed on his own.

  As he turned the corner from G-Hall into the administrative wing, he searched his brain for what he might have done wrong today. Surely, they wouldn’t expel him for letting Eric Lampier’s brother stomp the shit out of him after school. Then again, maybe they would. If he had to tell the story about his eye one more time to one more stone-faced teacher, he was going to barf. Mrs. Benoli, the guidance counselor, must have asked him a dozen times whether his mother or father had hit him. Almost seemed like she wanted him to say one of them had.

  He didn’t, of course. He said he couldn’t remember the last time his dad had hit him. Not exactly the truth, but a spanking for biting Tommy Mution in kindergarten hardly equated to the kind of abuse the old crone was fishing for.

  Travis nearly dumped in his drawers as he swung the last corner and saw his old man waiting for him in the office. Yep, some serious shit was going down.

  “Hi, Dad,” he said sheepishly as he pushed open the door to the office. “Hi, Mr. Menefee.” Ordinarily, Travis wasn’t much of a suckup, but right now it didn’t seem like a bad idea.

  “Hi, Trav,” Jake said, forcing a smile. Something was going on in there-Travis could almost taste the tension in the air. “Have you got your stuff?”

  Travis shrugged. “Yeah. Where are we going?”

  Jake put his arm around his son’s shoulder but continued to look at Menefee. “On a little trip,” he said.

  “Don’t get him involved, Brighton,” Menefee urged again, daring to rise from his chair. Travis recognized the threat in his voice.

  “Stay out of it, Menefee,” Jake warned. He brought his finger to bear one more time.

  Travis watched the exchange like a tennis match, moving his head from one man to the other. Mrs. Harris looked like she might cry. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Is Mom okay?”

  Jake glanced quickly down at his son. “She’s fine,” he said, way short of sounding convincing. “Menefee, you do what’s good for you, hear? Just stay out of this.”

  “You won’t get twenty miles,” Menefee persisted.

  “That’s enough out of you now,” Jake repeated, backing out the door. Then, to Travis, “Come on, son, let’s go.”

  Travis looked terribly ill at ease. “What’s he talking about, we won’t get twenty miles?”

  Jake hurried the boy along. “Let’s just get going.”

  Once free of the office, Travis followed his dad’s lead and walked quickly but cautiously toward the main entrance, just as a police car slid into the spot reserved for buses. “Whoa!” Travis exclaimed. “They’re in a hurry.”

  Jake whirled to face the main doors, in time to see the blue and white cruiser slide into place. “Shit!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Jake grabbed the boy by his denim jacket and made a hard left, heading down A-Hall toward the door at the other end. “C’mon, Trav, quickly now.” He drew the Glock.

  “Holy shit, Dad! What are-”

  “Hush,” Jake snapped, pulling harder on the jacket.

  Instinctively, Travis wriggled out of Jake’s grasp. “What’s the gun for?”

  “Move!”

  The desperate tone and frantic look were new to Travis. He’d never seen his father so distraught. Whatever was happening, it was far more serious than anything that had ever happened to them before. Terrified, he found himself running down the hallway, distantly aware of the fact that running was against the rules.

  His dad had a gun! And he looked ready to use it. He looked anxious to use it. What the hell is going on?

  As they charged together down the glossy, linoleum-tiled hallway, Travis had to take two strides for every one of Jake’s. They reached the end and exploded out into the sunlight, taking a hard left and sprinting toward the hill which led to the street.

  “Are we running from the police?” Travis gasped as he struggled alongside Jake to climb the grassy slope.

  If only you knew, Jake thought. “I’ll explain in the car.”

  Jake scaled the steep slope with long strides, his feet slipping on the damp grass. He fell hard, face-first, but lost only a second or two before he was back scrambling up the hill. Two steps forward, one step back.

  Travis slowed after two falls, but Jake grabbed a fistful of his backpack and yanked hard. “Run, goddammit!” he hissed.

  As they cleared the top of the hill, Jake nearly cheered when he saw the van, still running, still where he left it, still on an empty street.

  Back on flat ground, Travis continued to run, but Jake yanked him to a stop. “No, walk now. And get in the van.”

  “Whose car is this?”

  “It’s ours. Now get inside.” Jake quick-walked his son to the rear double doors and pulled them open.

  “Where do I sit?” It was a cargo van, for crying out loud! No chairs, no windows, just two lines of parallel shelving running down each side in the back. All the way to the front, Travis could see his mom behind the wheel, looking even more terrified than his dad.

  “Just pick a spot and get in,” Jake told him, pulling him forward by his arm.

  Again, Travis wriggled free. “No,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.” None of this was right. These people weren’t his parents. They looked the same, but these were not his parents. He felt as if he were living some science fiction movie, where alien invaders take the form of other people. Fear gripped his insides, and he refused to move. Not until someone told him what the hell was going on.

  “Travis, there’s no time for this. Now get in.”

  “You’re scaring me!” Travis shouted, loud enough to draw attention if anyone was listening.

  “Get in the goddamn van!” Jake grabbed his son in a bear hug.

  “Put me down!”

  Carolyn was ready to panic, her eyes never moving from the spot at the head of the street where the cops would rematerialize any minute. “Oh, God, Travis,” she pleaded. “Don’t yell!”

  In a flash, Jake realized the futility of the struggle, and he let the boy go. “Listen to me, Travis,” he explained urgently. “I know this scares you, and that none of it makes sense, but you have got to get into the van, and we have got to get moving. The police think we’ve done something that we’ve never done, and they are just a block away from us right now.”

  “Jake, hurry!” Carolyn was coming unglued.

  He ignored her. “I promise I’ll explain it all as soon as we’re down the road a bit. But right now you’ve just got to trust me. If you don’t get in the van right now, your mom and I will be killed. It’s that simple.”

  Travis’s mind reeled. Whatever happened to detention slips and lectures from Mr. Menefee? Those were problems he could comprehend. Whatever happened to just getting the shit kicked out of y
ou by Terry Lampier?

  “Please, Travis!” his mom begged. She was frantic.

  This was wrong. He should just run away-toward the cops, not away from them. His brain screamed these things at him, even as he climbed inside the van and allowed himself to be swallowed up in darkness as the doors closed.

  “Oh, honey, please hurry,” Carolyn begged as Jake opened the passenger-side door. She pulled away from the curb the instant her husband’s butt landed heavily in the seat. After completing a sweeping U-turn that brought the front wheels of the van over the top of the curb across the street, she aimed the van toward the Confederate Trail and on toward safety.

  “Watch your speed,” Jake warned. “Shoot for two miles over the limit.”

  “Somebody tell me what’s going on!” Travis insisted.

  In the side-view mirror, Carolyn saw a cop car turn the corner at the top of the hill. “Shit,” she spat. “Here they come.”

  Jake whirled in his seat and saw the flashing blue lights in the distance. “Damn.” He struggled out of his seat and crouched behind Carolyn’s headrest to get a look at what she saw in the mirror. “Okay, listen to me,” he said quickly. “We can bluff our way out of this.”

  “How?” Panic had turned Carolyn’s voice reedy.

  “By being friendly,” Jake soothed. “Listen, they’re not looking for a van, they’re looking for a Subaru or a Celica. They’re not looking for you, they’re looking for me.”

  “They’re looking for both of us.”

  Jake shrugged, noting the edge of competitiveness in her voice. “Well, both of us weren’t in the school just now. Hey, it’s the best hunch I’ve got. Who knows? Maybe they won’t even pull us over.”

  Crouched low, Jake duck-walked back to his son, who looked absolutely terrified. “God, Dad, what’s happening?”

  Jake looked at Travis for a long moment, wracking his brain for a simple answer. “We’re escaping,” he said simply. “And as frightening and unfair as it might seem, you’re a part of it.” If Travis appreciated the candor, his face didn’t show it. Jake reached up to one of the shelves and pulled down two green wool Army blankets. “Here,” he said. “Get under this, and don’t make a sound.”