*****
Morrison didn't waste time with pleasantries at the Diamond Belle. "Here's money," he said, shoving a wad of cash into the chest pocket of Arkin's sweaty shirt. "Almost 300 bucks. My damned ATM card will only let me withdraw $200 every 24 hours, but I already had some cash in my pocket. Here, take the card too. The pin is 1234."
"You're joking."
"Bear in mind that they might be smart enough to trace your movements by it, knowing that I'll be inclined to aid and abet. Stay off the roads, even after you get away from town. If I got a courtesy copy of the warrant faxed to me, it's a good bet it's being circulated far and wide. And you know damn well that if anyone gets hold of you, you're as good as dead because they're gonna be under orders to hand you right over to whoever just took a shot at you. Right? You got a gun?" Arkin nodded. "Okay. You're sure you don't want me to come with you?"
"Are you joking? If they think you're on the road with me, they'll just fabricate another arrest warrant and you'll be a fugitive too. You'd probably be more use to me here anyway, at least for now. I'll call if I really need you."
"Alright, fair enough. You know Skyquest Condominiums, up by Baker's Bridge?"
"Yes."
"There's a dumpster apron at the back of the parking lot there. It's enclosed by a high wood fence. If I can make sure I don't have a tail, I'll head up there this evening and drop off a backpack, camping gear, proper clothes, a stove, fuel, and as much food as I can jam into the pack. I'll double wrap it in black garbage bags and leave it behind the wood fence where nobody but you will find it. I'll try to have it there before nightfall. So if you somehow get there before me, just sit tight and stay out of sight."
Arkin gave him the name and Vancouver, B.C., telephone number for Seastar Aquaculture, just in case, and then went quiet, staring at his own feet.
"What?"
"Hannah."
Morrison put a hand on Arkin's shoulder. "Nate, I've got you covered. I'll take care of her. Best thing you can do for her right now is to get the fuck out of here until you and I can sort this thing out. And here, take my jacket. There's a pepperoni stick and a chocolate bar in the pocket. I would have brought more if I'd had time."
"You'll tell Hannah."
"Yes, yes. And I'll spend time with her every day. Every day. She'll get sick of me."
Arkin nodded. "Thank you."
For a moment, an expression flashed across Arkin's tired face that Morrison interpreted as a sign that he was seriously considering giving up.
"You'll get it done. You always do."
"You must be thinking of someone else. I'm a fraud."
"The hell are you talking about?"
"I'm the fool who failed to see the threat to Pratt." In his mind, he added that he was the guy who failed to negotiate the obvious pitfalls of his career. Who let his wife follow him into an exile he'd accepted like a coward, to career Siberia, where the sum total of what he could call his own amounted to marginal equity in an ordinary house and an unimpressive retirement account. Who failed to get his wife the best possible medical care before it was too late. Just then, it seemed to Arkin that the accomplishments of his life amounted to shit. The only truly good thing he'd ever done was marry Hannah. And now he was useless to her.
"Don't be melodramatic. It makes you sound like a douche bag."
The expression on Arkin's face had grown even more hopeless. With sudden fury, Morrison stood up and punched him, hard, in the chest, startling him out of his malaise.
"Buck up, jarhead!"
Arkin's face hardened.
"There he is. There's the stone-cold killer I've been looking for."
"It's a façade, Bill. Behind it, I'm still the boy who was terrified by the Wicked Witch of the West and her hourglass with its orange sand. The boy who wished his mother had lived to hold his hand and whisper in his ear that the flying monkeys would never come for him."
"What the ffff?" For a moment, Morrison was at a loss. He punched Arkin again, harder, and yanked him out of his chair. "On your feet, puke! You have business in the Great White North."
.
PART II
SHADOWS
TWENTY-FIVE
That night, Arkin found the stash of gear Morrison left for him behind the Skyquest Condos and made camp in the trees another two miles further upriver, barely fifteen miles north of town. Knowing it would be wisest to camp somewhere quiet, where he might be able to hear the footfall of anyone approaching, he nevertheless opted to camp close to where the Animas roared through a narrow canyon, thinking the white noise of the river would soothe him. Instead, he found himself waking up several times throughout the night, the sound of the racing waters filling him with anxiety. A constant reminder that time was running by.
The next morning, he got up with the sun and resumed his journey, finding the grade of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad by midmorning. That made the going easier. He walked the rails, taking to the trees only when he heard one of the old black steam trains rolling up or down the line, which at this time of year was only a concern until he passed to the north of Cascade Station.
Over the next two days, he followed the rails past Molas and Coal Bank passes, and finally up into the old mining town of Silverton, elevation 9,318 feet. There, he slipped into a touristy restaurant and pretended he'd left a cellphone there the previous day. Without a hint of suspicion, the hostess, in Old West period dress, pulled out a black Samsung and asked if it was his. Minutes later, as he was walking down Greene Street, oblivious to the risk, he tried to call Hannah's room. She didn't answer. Perhaps she was away somewhere being tested or treated. He couldn't allow himself to worry.
He left Silverton not via the main highway, U.S. 550, but by a dirt road that led deep into the mountains, where rutted Jeep trails of the Alpine Loop zigzagged their way north and west, through the high peaks of the San Juan Range, passing the mining ghost towns of Howardsville, Middleton, Eureka, and Animas Forks. Each of the ghost towns had been lively settlements in their day. But now, a scant century later, the best preserved of them was little more than a hodgepodge of collapsed wooden buildings and abandoned, rusted mining equipment. Soon enough, Arkin thought, the relentless cycle of sun, rain, wind, and snow would erase all traces of the ghost towns and the lives that had been lived in them.
At his next campsite, several miles north of Animas Forks, Arkin faced a strangely discomforting discovery. There, in a deep, shadowed mountain valley littered with the disintegrating debris of long-failed gold and silver mines, he realized he was camped beside the very origin of the Animas River. The Animas—the beautiful, interminably flowing river that, even in a man as proudly rational and skeptical as Arkin, had, on very rare occasion, inspired a pause to wonder, for a fleeting moment, whether it was possible that there was perhaps something more to the universe than atoms, molecules, and cold, empty space. Whether there could perhaps, just maybe, be some sort of beyond. Yet here was where the river began. And though he didn't expect otherwise, he was nevertheless disappointed to see that it did not spring forth from any sacred or magical source. The unpleasant truth was that, fed by insignificant trickles of melt water, it started from a lowly gravel bed strewn with discarded beer cans, spent shotgun shells, and broken bottles. Nothing more than a polluted ditch.
*****
By his fourth day on the run, Arkin had rejoined Highway 550 and was at last descending from the high San Juans, down toward the town of Ouray. He was having great difficulty staying out of sight on a mile-long stretch of road that had been chiseled out of a sheer cliff face. On his right, a cliff climbed straight up a mountainside, while on his left it dropped hundreds of feet to the headwaters of the Uncompahgre River. He played the disinterested hitch hiker, praying that nobody who was looking for him would happen by. The silver lining to traveling exposed and in the open on this stretch of road was that as he neared Ouray, he found a long, flat strip of scrap aluminum in the gravel on the shoulder of the roadside. He tu
cked it into his pack, figuring he might be able to fashion it into a makeshift lockout tool that he could use, if necessary, to break into cars.
Once Arkin passed through Ouray, the country opened up again, and he was able to speed up his pace. He took a midday breather in a stand of pines 200 yards from the highway and tried to call Hannah's room again on the cellphone he'd grabbed in Silverton. Again, there was no answer. He made another quick call to check his office voicemail, mindful of the fact that he didn't have a charger to re-energize the battery once it ran out of juice. There were two messages. One from the phone company attorney saying that he hadn't received the subpoena, and could Agent Pratt maybe double-check that it had been addressed properly. The other was from Morrison, though he didn't identify himself and had called from an unrecognized number. Probably some random payphone or borrowed cell. Solid tradecraft. His message would have sounded irrelevant to any uninvited listeners. He said his name was Clark, and that he was trying to reach Devin about the canisters advertised on Craigslist.com. But Arkin understood. As the message played on, he recognized a word code giving him the Vancouver street address for Seastar Aquaculture. Morrison's message raised his spirits. He'd felt so alone the past several days. So desperate to get back to Hannah. Now, at least, he knew there was someone out there trying to help him. And he was sure Morrison would have mentioned if there were anything wrong with Hannah. Still, it troubled him that he couldn't get hold of her. He tried not to dwell on it, redirecting his focus to the fact that he was nearly halfway to the rail yards of Grand Junction.
He powered the phone down and resumed his trek north, hoping to make Montrose by nightfall. But then, ten minutes later, something happened that caught him off-guard. As he was climbing a small and thinly forested hill, he heard a crunch of gravel, and turned around to see a plain maroon Impala pulling off Highway 550 back down at the base of the hill, very close to where he'd stopped to check his voicemail. He dropped to the ground, crawled behind the biggest tree trunk he could find, and peeked around it to get a better look. The car had dark tinted windows. He was too far away to see whether or not it had any special antenna or license plate. Regardless, he had a very bad feeling. Could these people have the means to triangulate his cellphone signal—from a phone he'd only recently acquired and had only used to call Hannah's hospital room and his office voicemail system? Were they so hot on his trail that they could have a vehicle on his ass barely 10 minutes after he'd powered down his phone? And if so, was it the assassination conspirators or just conventional law enforcement tasked with looking for an officially wanted man?
As to who it was sitting in the Impala, it hardly mattered. What did matter was determining whether his cellphone was already compromised.
Arkin sat tight behind his tree, concerned that the occupants of the Impala could be scanning the hillside with heaven only knew what sort of optical equipment—anything from simple binoculars to infrared scopes. When the car finally drove off after sitting and idling for ten minutes, he doubled his pace as he hoofed it up toward the small town of Ridgeway.
Hours later, on a tree-lined street in a small neighborhood, he climbed to the top of a white three-board fence, turned the cellphone back on, and set it in the rain gutter of a tiny yellow house that appeared to be unoccupied. Then he jogged up a grassy knoll to a small, old, red-brick school overlooking the neighborhood. School was out, it being a Sunday. But Arkin tried the first door he came to. To his relief, it opened. He stepped inside, finding himself in a small but high-ceilinged assembly hall. It smelled of chalk dust and old varnished wood, and bright sunlight poured in through its tall windows. A worn but lovingly polished old Schimmel medium grand piano sat in the center of the floor.
He sat down at the piano and stared at the keys. He hadn't played since he graduated boarding school and moved to Annapolis. Though many who'd heard him play insisted he had a gift, it was something he'd always hated. Something that had been a constant magnet for criticism from his perfection-demanding father. Something his father had forced upon him. As he sat, he remembered playing his favorite piece for his father. It was the sadly beautiful Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C major, from Johann Sebastian Bach's Well-tempered Clavier Book 1. He'd been practicing it for weeks, night and day, hoping beyond hope to please his father. And he'd nailed it, every subtlety of every note of every single arpeggiated chord. He'd played perfectly. Yet all his father had said was that any trained ear could tell that his performance was still amateurish.
Arkin slumped forward on the bench, the weight of the memory pressing down on his shoulders. Adrenaline drained out of him in the quiet of the assembly hall. At the same time, fatigue seemed suddenly to take hold. The heavy awareness that a long and uncertain journey awaited him. That he was being hunted, and that his hunters would never give up. That there was little chance he'd be able to clear his name and return to Hannah's side. He yearned to go to sleep right there against the piano, the soft sunlight warming his back. But he had to go on. Somehow, he had to find the strength of body and mind to continue forward. There was no other direction for him to go.
With his eyes shut, he let his fingertips probe the smooth, cool surfaces of the keys. Almost involuntarily, his left index finger hit Middle "C," and the note filled the room with clear, beautiful sound. He hit it again, his eyes still closed, listening to the way the sound hung and then slowly faded from the room. The rest of his fingers slid up onto the keys, and nearly 20 years out of practice, they began to play Bach's Prelude and Fugue No 1. He played almost perfectly, from memory and with little focus or effort, as his mind wandered back to a vision of Hannah's frightened face, looking to him for support and comfort, as he promised her he would "be right back." It could have been the last time he would ever see her. As his fingers picked out the 10th measure—to Arkin, the most gloriously melancholic part of the song—he opened his wet-blurred eyes, willing them to dry before any tears could fall. And he kept playing, not pausing until he heard the distant wail of approaching sirens. Then he paused just long enough to establish that several police cars were en route to the small neighborhood at the bottom of the knoll. He finished the piece, lingering as the final note slowly echoed and died in the auditorium, then strode to the windows and watched the scene unfold as uniformed patrolmen swarmed around the little house where he'd hidden the phone. Poorly trained patrolmen at that, Arkin thought, given that they'd blown any chance of tactical surprise by rolling in with their sirens screaming. Maybe Ridgeway PD. Maybe Ouray County Sheriff's deputies. Whatever the case, just locals. That was a good thing. But just as Arkin was feeling lucky, the unmarked maroon Impala pulled up alongside the first house. Nobody got out. They just waited. And they, Arkin was sure, were not locals. Shit.
*****
His extreme caution slowed him. But at a roadside gas station, he was able to stow away in the debris-filled bed of a northbound pickup truck that took him all the way from Eldredge to Delta. And by the middle of his seventh day on the run, Arkin reached the outskirts of Grand Junction, where he bought two bags of beef jerky, whole wheat tortillas, and two liters of water from a corner market. Desperate to get in touch with Hannah, he tried his lost cellphone trick again, telling the clerk he thought he'd left it there the prior week. The clerk said he was sorry, but that he hadn't found any cellphones. Just someone's leather appointment book with an attached silver pen.
Arkin considered using Morrison's ATM card to draw more food money, but thought better of it. If his pursuers had the resources to identify and track cellphones, then it was a good bet they'd already be watching Morrison's bank account. It wasn't worth the risk. For the same reasons, he decided his own ID and bankcards held nothing but danger for him, so he pocketed his remaining cash and dumped his wallet in the first garbage can he came to, shoving it down into the refuse where it wouldn't be seen by a casual passersby. He'd just have to get by on the money Morrison had given him.
He made his way north, through woods, fields, and small pocket n
eighborhoods, toward Grand Junction proper—his route roughly paralleling U.S. Highway 50. Along the way, to his surprise, he spotted a functioning payphone at the edge of a weedy, cracked asphalt parking lot of a dusty, long-defunct car wash. He stared at it for a moment, pondering the risk of trying to contact Hannah—the same risk that had just caused him to dump his wallet—yet yearning, aching to hear his wife's voice. He entered the phone booth, closing the bi-fold door behind him. It was warm inside, the air smelling of dust, metal, and sun-baked plastic. The breeze howled in the booth as it slipped through small unseen gaps in the ceiling. As he stood still, weighing the risk, the old black handset tempted him to the point of psychological agony. Looking up to watch two cars pass—people driving by oblivious, going about their business on what for them was a perfectly normal day—he was struck by an odd feeling of detachment from the world around him. He had the sensation he was being carried along in a tiny whirlwind. Outside of it, the routines of other people's lives went on.
He called the hospital collect, concocting a story about it concerning a potential medical emergency, and requiring that he remind someone of an allergy to certain medication. The hospital operator bought it, and attempted to connect him to Hannah's room. He held the handset against his ear as the line rang and rang. The breeze raised a small dust cloud in the parking lot—a swirl of bleached, powdery earth, dried bits of grass, and a crumpled green gum wrapper. Standing there in the old phone booth, watching the swirling dust cloud, listening to the repeated ringing, and thinking of how far he was from home, he felt all the more isolated. Eventually, a man answered. Another patient. He had no idea who Hannah was and knew nothing of her whereabouts. So Arkin called the main hospital number once again to ask if she'd been moved. But this time the operator stood firm, explaining that she couldn't share such information over the phone but would pass his message on. Next, he tried Morrison. He got voicemail. He hung up and stood in the booth for a moment, leaning his forehead against the top of the cradled handset, crestfallen, knowing that from here on he'd probably have to refrain from trying to contact Hannah or Morrison, since any call might reveal his intended route and destination, making him easier to capture and possibly warning or scaring off his quarry. In fact, he figured it was safe to assume police would be on their way to the phone booth in minutes. He set off once again, feeling more alone than ever.
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