The Innocent

by David Baldacci

  There was nothing on Wind. They might not have found her yet. But the bus blowing up had already attracted attention. However, there were few details. Robie obviously knew more than any of the reporters out there trying to find out what had happened. According to the news accounts thus far, the authorities were not ruling out a mechanical cause for the explosion.

  And that’s where it might remain, thought Robie, unless they could find evidence to the contrary. Blowing up an old bus in the middle of the night and killing a few dozen people didn’t seem like it would be high on a jihadist’s bucket list.

  His handler had not tried to contact him again. Robie was not surprised by this. They wouldn’t have expected him to answer in any event. He was safe here for now. Tomorrow? Who knew? He glanced in the direction of the stairs. He was on the run, and he was not alone. Alone he might have a chance. But now?

  Now he had Julie. She was fourteen, maybe. She didn’t trust him or anyone else. And she was running from something too.

  His mind and body tired, Robie could think of nothing else to do right now. So he did what made sense. He went upstairs to the bedroom across the hall from hers, locked the door behind him, laid the .38 on his chest, and closed his eyes.

  Sleep was important right now. He wasn’t sure when he would get another chance to do it.

  CHAPTER

  20

  THE WINDOW OPENED and the tied-together sheets snaked down the side of the house. Julie looped the other end around the footboard of the bed and tugged on it to make sure it was secure. She slipped through the window, clambered quietly down the improvised rope, touched the ground, and darted off into the darkness.

  She didn’t know exactly where she was, but she had been following the truck’s route while pretending to be asleep. She figured she could get to the main road and then follow that to a store or gas station where she could make a call to a cab company to come and pick her up. She checked her stash of cash and her credit card. She was good to go.

  The darkness didn’t frighten her. Sometimes the city during the day was far scarier. But she crept along silently, because as good as Will had seemed, she knew someone could still have followed them. She mapped out her plan in her head and decided that it was as good as she was going to come up with under the circumstances.

  She knew her parents were dead. She wanted to lie down on the ground, curl up, and never stop crying. She would never see her mother again. She would never hear her father’s laugh. Then their killer had come after her. And then he’d been blown up in that bus.

  But she couldn’t curl up and cry. She had to keep moving. The last thing her parents would have wanted was for her to die too.

  She was going to survive. For them. And she was going to find out why someone had killed them. Even if the killer was now dead. She needed to know the truth.

  The road was not much farther. She picked up her pace.

  She had no time to react.

  It just happened.

  The voice said, “You know, I was going to make breakfast for you.”

  She gasped, turned, and gazed at Robie, who was sitting on a tree stump staring at her. He got up. “Was it something I said?”

  She glanced back at the house. She was far enough away that all she could make out was a sense of powered light through the tangle of trees and brush.

  “I changed my mind,” she said. “I’m heading on.”

  “Where?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “You sure about this?”

  “Completely sure.”

  “Okay. You need any money?”

  “No.”

  “Want another canister of pepper spray?”

  “You have some?”

  He pulled one from his pocket and tossed it to her.

  Julie caught it.

  Robie said, “That one is actually more potent than the one you have. It has a paralytic built in. It’ll lay down any assailant for at least thirty minutes.”

  She put it in her backpack. “Thanks.”

  He pointed to his left. “There’s a shortcut through there to the road. Just stick to the path. Get to the road, turn left. There’s a gas station half a mile up. They have a pay phone, maybe the last one in America.”

  He turned to go back to the house.

  “So that’s it? You just let me walk?”

  He turned back. “Like you said, it’s not my business. It’s your decision. And, frankly, I’ve got my own problems. Good luck.”

  He started off again.

  Julie did not move.

  “What were you going to make for breakfast?”

  He stopped but didn’t look at her. “Eggs, bacon, grits, toast, and coffee. But I have tea too. They say coffee stunts a kid’s growth. But then like you said, you’re not a kid.”

  “Scrambled eggs?”

  “Any way you like. But I do an exceptional over-hard.”

  “I can leave in the morning.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “That’s my plan.”

  “Okay.”

  “Nothing personal,” she said.

  “Nothing personal,” he replied.

  They walked back to the house, Julie trailing three feet behind Robie.

  “I was pretty quiet getting out of the house. How did you know?”

  “I do this for a living.”

  “Do what?”

  “Survive.”

  Me too, thought Julie.

  CHAPTER

  21

  THREE HOURS LATER Robie lifted his head off the pillow. He showered, dressed, and headed to the stairs. He heard gentle snores coming from the guest bedroom. He thought about knocking but decided to just let her sleep.

  He glided down the steps and into the kitchen. He kept the alarm on. He would not turn it off until he left the safe house. In addition to the house alarm, he had perimeter alerts spread around the property. One of those had been triggered by Julie’s escape. It had been easy for him to take a shortcut through the woods and intercept her.

  Part of him was glad she had decided to come back. Part of him wasn’t looking forward to the added responsibility.

  But more of him was glad that she had returned.

  Was it guilt over letting a little kid die right in front of me? Am I making amends this way, by saving Julie from whatever and whoever is after her?

  A while later he heard a door open and feet padding across the hall. Later, the toilet flushed and the water in the sink started running. It kept going for a while. She was probably doing a “sink bath” to clean up.

  When she came downstairs twenty minutes later, the meal prep was far advanced.

  “Coffee or tea?” he asked.

  “Coffee, black,” she answered.

  “It’s over there, help yourself. Cups in the cabinet by the fridge, top shelf.”

  He checked the grits and then opened the carton of eggs. “Overhard, light or scrambled, or hard-boiled?”

  “Who does hard-boiled eggs anymore?”

  “Me.”

  “Scrambled.”

  He swished the eggs in a bowl and glanced up at the small TV sitting on top of the fridge. He said, “Check it out.”

  Julie pushed her damp hair back over her ears and glanced up as she sipped her coffee. She had changed clothes. It was still partially dark outside. But in the light of the kitchen she looked younger and scrawnier than she had last night.

  At least she wasn’t holding the pepper spray anymore. Both hands were cupped around her coffee mug. Her face was scrubbed clean but Robie could see her red, swollen eyes. She’d been crying.

  “You have any cigarettes?” she asked, glancing away from his scrutiny.

  “You’re too young,” he replied.

  “Too young for what? To die?”

  “I get the irony, but I don’t have any cigarettes.”

  “Did you used to smoke?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “You just seemed the type.”

 
“What type is that?”

  “The ‘do things my way’ type.”

  The sound on the TV was turned down low, but the scene on the screen that came on was self-explanatory. The still smoking bus, burned to a shell of metal. All flammable objects had pretty much disappeared: seats, tires, bodies.

  Both Robie and Julie stared at it.

  The bus had had a full tank of gas, Robie knew, for the trip up to New York. It had burned like an inferno. No, it was an inferno. There would be thirty-plus blackened corpses in that ride. Or at least parts of them.

  Their crematorium.

  The medical examiner would have his hands full with this one.

  “Can you turn up the sound?” Julie asked.

  Robie grabbed the remote and inched up the volume.

  The TV newscaster, a grim-looking man, stared into the camera and said, “The bus had just departed for New York City. The explosion happened at approximately one-thirty last night. There are no survivors. The FBI is not ruling out a terrorist attack, though it doesn’t seem clear at this point why the bus would have been targeted.”

  “How do you think it happened?” Julie asked.

  Robie glanced at her. “Let’s eat first.”

  The next fifteen minutes were spent chewing, swallowing, and drinking.

  “Good eggs,” Julie proclaimed. She pushed her plate back, refilled her coffee cup, and sat back down. She stared at his nearly empty plate and then up at him.

  “Can we talk about it now?”

  Robie crisscrossed his knife and fork over his plate and sat back.

  “Guy who was after you might have set it off.”

  “What, like a suicide bomber?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Wouldn’t you have seen a bomb on him?”

  “Probably. Most bomb packs are pretty prominent. Dynamite sticks lined together, wiring, battery, switches, and the detonator. But I tied him up, so it would have been impossible for him to set anything off.”

  “So it couldn’t have been him.”

  “Not necessarily. You wouldn’t need a lot of juice to blow up a bus. It could have been concealed on him. Some C-4 or Semtex and the full tank of gas will take care of the rest. Some explosive vapor in the tank plus a steady supply of fuel for the fire. And it could have been set off remotely. In fact, if that’s what happened, a remote had to be used, since the guy was tied up. About half the suicide bombers in the Middle East never pull the trigger themselves. They’re just sent out with the bombs and their handlers detonate from a safe distance away.”

  “I guess the handlers have the easy job, then.”

  Robie thought back to his own handler, a safe distance away calling the shots—literally.

  “I wouldn’t disagree with that.”

  “So if the guy wasn’t the source of the explosion?”

  “Then something else hit that bus.”

  “Like what?”

  “Incendiary round into the gas tank is one possibility. Ignites the vapor, and boom. Then the gas-fed fire does the rest.”

  “Did you hear a shot? I didn’t.”

  “No, but it could’ve been so close to the explosion that we might not have.”

  “And why would they blow up the bus?”

  “How do you think the guy found you on the bus?”

  “He came on fast and last,” she said, adopting an analytical tone as she gazed at him.

  Robie appreciated that tone. He used it often. “So he either just got the assignment at the last minute and was playing catch-up. Or more likely they lost you but then reacquired you.” He paused. “Which do you think it is?”

  “No idea.”

  “I’m sure you have some idea. Even a guess.”

  “How about the guy in the alley with the rifle?”

  “He was after me.”

  “Yeah, that I know. You had the tracking device. But why was he after you?”

  “Not something I can talk about. Like I said before.”

  “Then that’s my answer too,” Julie shot back. “So what now?”

  “I can drive you to the gas station. You can call for a cab. Get another bus to New York. Or maybe the train?”

  “Train tickets have names on them.”

  “Yours would just say Julie.”

  “And yours would just say Will,” she replied. “But that’s not exactly enough, is it?”

  “No.”

  They sat staring at each other.

  “Where are your parents?” Robie asked.

  “Who says I have any?”

  “Everybody has parents. It’s sort of a requirement.”

  “I meant parents that were living.”

  “So yours are dead?”

  She looked away, fiddled with the handle of her mug. “This arrangement is probably not going to work out.”

  “Do we go to the police?”

  “Will that work for your situation?”

  “I meant for you.”

  “No, it really wouldn’t.”

  “If you tell me what’s going on, I can maybe help you.”

  “You’ve already helped me, and I appreciate that. But I’m not sure what else you can do, realistically.”

  “Why were you going to New York?”

  “Because it isn’t here. Why were you going?”

  “It was convenient.”