“Do you ever do it?” he asked, and she pulled away, not understanding what he was asking. His question startled her.
“What?” she asked, wishing that he would let go. It was suddenly so uncomfortable to be so close to him.
“What you did in school on that last day,” he said, smiling crookedly at her.
“What do you mean?”
He kissed her cheek again, and Mae pulled away.
“You know what I mean,” he said, “and I'm sorry that was so sudden. You had to know though, that I'd be wondering about that. I mean, that was some pretty crazy stuff that happened.”
Mae didn't say anything. The sky was darkening, and she was starting to feel cold.
“If you don't want to talk about it,” he said, “listen, I won't push it. I'm sorry.”
“I can't control it,” she said after a long pause. “At least, not all the time. Sometimes, I think I can, but it’s mostly something that just happens.”
“But it still happens?”
“Sometimes,” Mae said.
“Will you show me?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Who is this?” Paul demanded into his phone, a little too loudly, and some of the others in the cafe glanced at him, surprised at his outburst. He stood up and looked around. Paul saw an older woman at the counter staring at him, a look of unmasked terror in her eyes. The woman's older gentleman companion touched her shoulder and motioned for her to look away.
“Don't stand up, are you an idiot?” the woman on the phone said. “No wonder you got shot. If you look suspicious at all, then I'm pretty sure they're going to just skip over the part were they break your kneecaps and dump you in the white van out front.”
Paul sat down slowly, looking toward the big windows at the front of cafe. Sure enough, there was a white van parked at the curb, and a guy in a uniform was working on the front passenger tire, which appeared to be flat. A few more guys were also working on the tire, with one of them glancing over his shoulder at Paul. He sat back down at the table quickly, hoping that the man outside hadn't seen him.
“How do you know this?” Paul asked.
“There are two security cameras in the cafe. They are connected wirelessly to a computer in the back office. It's beside the point, though. If you want to make it out of that cafe, you need to listen to me.”
“But how can you see what the cameras are seeing? How did you know I'm here?”
“You do realize that I'm not the only one who knows you are there, right? I'll explain later, once you get out of there.”
Someone dropped some dishes in the kitchen, causing a loud clatter to echo through the cafe. Paul jerked his hand, knocking his own cup of coffee to the floor. The mug shattered and the coffee sprayed his pants and shoes. He closed his eyes in frustration, breathing heavily through his nose.
“What do I do?”
“They have someone in the back alley, waiting for you in case you get the jitters and decide to go out the back door.”
“Okay, so I'm trapped,” Paul said through clenched teeth. “This is great, why didn't you call when I was on my way to the trap, rather than waiting until I had no moves.”
“Alright, grumpy. Your ex wasn't kidding.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There's a hallway that leads to the back door. Take the last door on the right and it should be a small staircase leading to the upper levels of the building. Go, now.”
Paul stood and walked quickly to the hallway at the rear of the cafe. He passed the doors marked as restrooms.
“I went through some of your emails,” the woman said as he walked. “I had to be sure that you were who you said you were, that you weren't just baiting people. Don't worry, your secrets are safe with me.”
“What secrets?” Paul said, feeling angry and scared at the same time. He flung open the last door and found the narrow staircase.
“That you're kind of a jerk.”
“I'm not a jerk.”
“Your wife seems to think so, and I'm kinda siding with—”
“Ex-wife,” Paul said. He reached the top of the stairs and tried the door, but it didn't budge.
“Door's locked.”
“Well,” she said, exasperated. “Improvise. I can't do it all.”
“You want me to break down the door?”
“I don't care what you do, and to be honest, I'm beginning to regret that I even called.”
Paul had passed a small window on his way up the staircase. He returned to the window, peering out through the dirty glass. Sure enough, a runner smoking a cigarette, dressed in a loose jogging outfit, was leaning against the alley wall. Paul watched the man pull out his cell phone and hold it to his ear. Almost instantly, the man stood up and ran toward the back door of the cafe. As he ran, he pulled out a pistol from his windbreaker and screwed a silencer to the barrel.
“Holy mother of—” Paul realized he'd left the door at the bottom of the staircase wide open. Anyone walking by would look up and see him immediately. He looked again out the window and saw the runner approaching fast. He didn't have time.
“What's going on?” the woman asked.
Paul didn't answer, but darted down the stairs as fast as he could with his gimp leg and slammed the door shut. He turned the lock and started up the stairs again. The pain in his leg spiraled outward and through his body like a bursting firework.
“We might have a problem,” Paul said. “I think they just realized I flew the coop.”
“Well, that was stupid.”
“Listen, girl, you aren't here.” Paul rammed the upstairs door with his shoulder and the wood splintered with much less force than he'd anticipated. He went sprawling to the floor, landing with a thud on his bad leg. He started to scream, but bit his lip to stifle the sound. Any noise would likely draw his pursuers even faster. He got to his feet, favoring his leg, and picked up the phone from among the pieces of wood.
“Still there?” Paul said.
“There should be another hallway leading away from the staircase.” She said, and Paul could hear someone shouting in the cafe below. He saw the hallway and walked towards it as fast as he could go. His leg hurt, and the memory of Officer Morales in the hospital thudded in his chest.
“There is another staircase, going up. Take it.”
Paul rounded the corner, saw the stairs and began to climb.
“Can you tell me who you are at least.”
“I'm ...” She hesitated, and he strained to hear what she was saying above his own heavy breathing and rampaging heartbeat.
“I can't tell you who I am,” she said finally. “I know that you might have a hard time believing this, but I'm a friend. That should be enough for now.”
Paul reach the stop of the staircase, and it opened to another walkway.
“This is like a maze.”
“A lot of the older buildings are like that in Chicago, built really fast and with little regard to planning,” she said.
“You know a lot about buildings in Chicago?”
“No, not really. Okay, you're going to take the third door on the left. In the second bedroom, you'll see a large window. Outside is a fire escape ladder. Take it to the roof, and hurry. They're coming up the stairs now.”
“How do you know?”
“I'm tracking their phones, just like I'm tracking yours.”
“That's crazy.” Paul could barely speak through his hyperventilating. He found the window, which was already open, and he climbed out to the fire escape. “I don't believe you can track them.”
“What's crazy is that people willingly allow their locations to be tracked by any number of mobile software companies. When you get to the roof, you'll have to cross over to the next building. There should be a catwalk between the two buildings for access to the air conditioning units. Take it.”
Paul climbed the ladder, his mind racing to comprehend just what was happening. He tried to put in all the pieces, to make sense of
the events of the last few moments. It seemed like only seconds before, he was arguing with Dennis about ...
In the heat of the moment, he hadn't thought about the connection. Paul came to the end of the ladder, and had to wriggle himself over the parapet wall. He fell the two feet to the roof and landed on his back. For several seconds he lay there, unable to move. Overhead, the morning sun cut through the steel-blue winter sky, shedding light but not much warmth.
“You have to move, Paul.”
“Okay.” He rolled to his belly and then pushed to his feet. Paul heard voices from down below. They were coming fast. Much too fast.
Paul spotted the catwalk and moved quickly toward it.
“Can you please tell me what's going on, and why these people are after me. I guess it was probably you on my computer last night?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Listen, get to the catwalk and cross to the other building. There is an access hatch in the northwest corner of the other building. If you can get to the hatch before the others get to the roof, you might make it.”
“How do you know this?”
“The blueprints are in public access databases. You just need to know where to look.”
When Paul saw the rusted metal that was the catwalk, his heart sank. Only one of the bars seemed to extend the entire way between the two buildings, the other parts of the catwalk having rusted away to nothing.
“Problem,” Paul said. “Catwalk is no good. Rusted through.”
“You don't have another choice. Either you pull out your spidey moves and jump the alley, or you chance the catwalk. And here's an unsolicited tip. You wouldn't make the jump, even if your leg wasn't screwed up.”
“Well thank you for the obvious,” Paul shot back.
He took a deep breath and stepped out onto a part of the catwalk. It broke away instantly, and Paul fell, catching the one good bar under his arm. He winced and put the phone in his mouth so he could climb hand over hand to the other building. The bar groaned under his weight and he forced himself not to look down, and not to count the flights of stairs he'd climbed to get to the roof.
Five or six stories high? he wondered, but couldn't think about it. Sweat made his fingers sweaty and slippery, and he could feel the rust and grime on his hands as he shimmied across the alley.
I should have stopped and talked to them, he thought. They wouldn't have tried anything in the cafe, in broad daylight, in front of the customers and the people on the street. And now, he was going to fall and splatter a dirty alley.
The muscles in his hands ached as he moved, burning with the effort to reach the other building. His breathing was quick and sweat streamed down his face, cold in the winter morning air. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he reached the brick face of the other building and climbed over the parapet wall. He took the phone from his mouth and wiped the glass screen of his spit and sweat. It took a moment to catch his breath and to steady his hands.
“Still there?” he asked.
“Yep. They are at the fire escape ladder, you don't have much time.”
Paul spotted the metal hatch in the roof. He walked quickly over to it and flung it open on a dark, narrow chute. The ladder, at least, had not rusted through and seemed intact.
PING! The metal hatch was suddenly ripped from his hands, a bullet hole appearing in the metal. Bullets peppered the area around where Paul stood, sending the tiny pebbles that blanketed the roof flying. He looked over his shoulder and saw two men running toward him, including the guy in the jogging suit, their pistols out and aimed at him and jerking with each shot. Another man was just clearing the parapet wall, a large rifle slung on his back.
How had he gotten that gun through the cafe without anyone noticing? Paul wondered as he looked down the chute. He couldn't see the bottom, and for all he knew, the chute went all the way to the ground floor.
Bullets exploded around him. Another quick look at his pursuers, and he saw the third man kneeling, the rifle now held snuggly against his shoulder and aiming. The rifle shot was not silenced, the sound like a short burst of thunder. The bullet missed by inches, smashing into the metal hatch and tearing it from its hinges. Paul's heart leapt into his throat as he jumped down the hatchway, grasping for the ladder as he fell. He caught a rung, but his grip slipped with his downward momentum and Paul fell into the darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They will never stop hunting you.
Her mom's voice was a clear warning in her head, the mantra she'd repeated for their years on the run. It seemed that whatever she did, however hard she tried to push it away, the mantra her mother would always repeat never left her mind.
It was true, yes. Mae had always been the prey, and the hunters would never stop. But she was finally feeling something other than fear, or the stone-like panic in her stomach, that they were always watching, and would close in at any moment.
Mae stared in the mirror, framed with dark wood covered with intricate carvings and hung above the bureau of drawers. She ran the brush through her silky blonde hair, which was getting longer. Noticeably longer, even since her time in Chicago. Her skin looked better too, more fresh and firm, and the bags beneath her eyes had all but gone. She smiled, and the gentle curve of her lips brought a feeling that had been absent for many years, but one that she'd been feeling more and more these last few weeks.
The telephone on the table next to her bed rang, and she hesitated before answering it, looking in the mirror one last time. She had always had a nice face and pretty hair, she'd known that since she was a little girl, but for so many years she'd looked haggard and beat down. It was nice to look different now, and she felt different too. More confident and aware of other people. Before, she'd been so focused on running and survival that she'd never taken time to think about anyone besides her mom and herself. There was no one else that mattered.
Because they are hunting you.
She turned away from the mirror and crossed over the thickly woven carpet to the bedside table. She lifted the receiver and brought it to her ear, feeling a sense of giddy anticipation as she did this. That was a feeling she hadn't felt for a long time either, and she enjoyed it very much.
“Hello?”
“Hey you!” Ryan said. He sounded excited to talk to her, always excited to talk to her, and Mae nearly melted inside.
After seeing Adam the day before, she'd been confused about her feelings. She and Adam went back a long time. They had a history together. They knew each other, and after what Mae had shown him yesterday, they shared more than history. Adam was her first love, the first boy she'd lain awake at night thinking of, and the first for which she'd counted the minutes and seconds until she would be able to see him again. When Adam had suddenly popped back into her life, they seemed to fall right back into sync, so that it felt like nothing had changed.
But, with Ryan, she was making a new history. If Adam was her first love, then Ryan might be her second. The conflicting feelings had kept her awake for hours the night before until she'd finally given up on sleep and gone to the library to read by the dwindling fire. In the early hours of the morning, she returned to her room and had fallen asleep, thoughts of both men in her head.
She was happy to hear Ryan's voice. The last few days had been one of the first periods of extended time in the weeks following their first meeting, that they'd gone without seeing each other, and Mae was surprised to find that she actually missed him and longed for his return. He wouldn't tell her where he was going, or why, only said that his job required him to head south for a day or two. When she pressed it further, he became distant and that cool look in his eyes had returned for a moment. She dropped it, and decided that if Ryan eventually wanted to tell her, then he would.
After all, they'd only known each other for a few weeks. Now that he was back, that longing feeling that she'd felt when he was away hit her again with full force, like a forceful tug in her stomach, and she wanted nothing more than to see him. It was p
athetic, she knew, and the more she thought about it, the more she felt like a school girl who swooned the first time a boy flirted with her.
Kind of like that kiss on top of the mountain with Adam, she thought, and smiled.
No, this was something different. This was dangerous, not only for Mae, but for Ryan. The way she felt about him opened her up to a level of vulnerability that she'd never experienced before.
Mae had not yet given him any indication of her feelings, but she sensed that he knew anyway. She couldn't help feeling the way she did, and it was much more than those early flutterings of butterfly wings that she'd felt when she first met him. So much had changed since then, and like seeing the physical changes in the mirror, she was constantly surprised at how she had changed inside as well. For the first time in many years, she looked forward to what the future might hold. Mae no longer feared for what, or who, tomorrow might bring. Several weeks had passed since she'd looked over her shoulder, expecting to see a figure in the shadows or someone just stepping from view. The nightmares had stopped coming so regularly, rearing their ugly heads just once or twice a week, rather than every single night, as they had before.
They will never stop ...
All was well, except that her mom's constant warnings were played over and over again in her head. For so long, they'd run away from those people in the shadows, the hunters who would never stop until they'd found their prey. Mae and her mother had never been in one location for longer than a few weeks, except in Chicago, where her mother had been trying to communicate with a local reporter who'd seen through the lies about the disaster in Miami. They'd been planning each detail for the exchange of information, and even after all the planning, the hunters had arrived and botched it all. They moved, because sooner or later, the hunters did catch up, and Mae knew that what her mother had always said was true. They would never stop, and anyone she got close to was bound to get hurt. Or worse.
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