'Oh my God,' Christine whispered. 'You want me to say that I'll do the same for you, don't you?' Her expression was a mask of uncertainty and discomfort.
'No,' said Jane. 'I don't want you to say that. If you did I wouldn't believe you, and I would be disappointed in you for saying something that can't possibly be true. I only want you to begin thinking seriously about what you would do. No normal person walks around having made a plan for every bad thing that can ever happen. But if I ask you in four months, or six months, I'll expect that you've thought about it. For most people this kind of secret doesn't exist. For you, as of tonight, it does.'
'What if I think about it and realize that I simply can't do that?'
'Then I want you to tell me, and we'll both know it, and we'll have to prepare in some other way to keep our families safe, no matter what happens to us.'
The girl didn't know yet. Jane reminded herself that they never knew in the beginning. The reason that decent human beings could go on from day to day was that they didn't darken their lives with thoughts of catastrophe. They didn't even think about dying in the normal ways. This girl was scared, alone and pregnant. It was too much to expect her to be able to keep her mind on anything but that.
Jane would not consider telling her what keeping secrets really meant. In her purse each time she went out, even for the past five years, she carried a pretty cut-glass bottle. The liquid inside looked like perfume, but it was not perfume. It was the extract of the roots of the water hemlock, a plant that grew wild in most of the marshy places of New York State. It was the traditional Seneca means of suicide. To say that she was willing to die without having at hand the means of fulfilling the promise would have made it a lie.
The suburban highway became a country road and the only lights for a mile or two at a time came from the sparse line of headlights behind her, changing as the road left the lake plain and began to meet hills and curves. There were farms now, and old trees with dark, leafy canopies growing close to the road in some places. A few of them had signs advertising stands that would sell fresh corn when the sun came up tomorrow. She was driving east, the direction of New York City. New York was a good place for a person to lose herself, and for that reason it was also a good place to make a pursuer think she was going.
Christine's voice was nervous, fearful. 'Why do you keep looking back like that? Is somebody chasing us?'
'I'm looking because it's the smart thing to do. I guess this can be your first real lesson in staying safe. You take as many precautions as you can—not as many as you think you need, as many as you can. The ones that you take early are the most important, because if you lose the chasers right away, they don't even know which direction you went. Later, if and when they find out that much, they have to come after you slowly. Every intersection they pass could be the one where you turned. Every hotel or motel could be the one where you stopped to spend a night. They have to be tentative and cautious, and it buys you time.'
'But what are you looking for?'
'I don't let myself expect something specific,' said Jane. 'I look at what's there and evaluate it. I might see a car that's coming up on us fast. This time if there are lots of heads visible, I would be worried that it might be the people after us. Or I might see that the road behind us is empty and decide it's a good time for us to make a turn —go down the next road and head in another direction when nobody can see us do it. I'm looking for danger and opportunity.'
'It's scary. It's not the way I think. I can't wait until this is over.'
Jane glanced at her smooth young face, the forehead compressed in unaccustomed wrinkles and the mouth pouting. Jane decided to skip this natural opportunity to tell her the next lesson, the next warning. It would never be over. It would go on until either she was dead or the chasers were, and at this moment the odds were better for them.
Jane said, 'There won't be any more stops for a while, so if you want to sleep, you can.'
'I'm really not very sleepy right now. I slept most of the afternoon because I had been up the night before. Then, when I saw Steve Demming walking past the door of my room, it was like an electric shock. From then on I haven't been able to calm down.'
'Steve Demming. That's the name of the man with the flowers in the hallway? Tell me about Steve Demming.'
'He's one of the six, and he seems to do most of the talking, sort of like the foreman of a crew, not like an employer. None of them seems to be a boss or anything. I saw him at the office now and then. Until I was promoted to being Richard's assistant I didn't know who Demming was, and then when I happened to learn, what I learned wasn't even true. I was supposed to cut him a check, and the notation on the stub was that the money was for electrical contracting. Another time I did the same thing, and the check was to one of the others—one of the women—for interior decorating. Every few months, one or another of the six might come by, and maybe they would get a check, or maybe not.'
'What about the other five? Do you know their names, too?'
'Yes. Over time, I started to pay attention and remember. The two women are Sybil Landreau and Claudia Marshall. The four men are Steve Demming, Ronnie Sebrot—he's the one you hurt in the parking lot—Pete Tilton, Carl McGinnis.'
Jane's telephone rang, and the sudden noise made Christine jump. Then she lifted Jane's purse from the floor and held it while Jane snatched the phone and looked at the number on the display. 'This I've got to take.' She pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road, got out, and walked to the front of the car before she answered it. 'Hi. You got my message?'
'Yes. But I don't understand.'
'I'm sorry, Carey. I know I promised, and I really meant it. But something happened.' As she spoke she watched the pavement light up as the first of the cars that had been behind her on the road came closer and then whisked past, and a wake of warm night air hit her in a puff.
'I'm grateful for the five years when nothing happened. What's going on?'
'A young girl came to me because somebody I helped a long time ago told her I was worth a try. She ran away from her former boss, and he hired a team of six people to find her and drag her back. They seem to have set off the bomb just so she'd be evacuated from the hospital building, and—' Jane stopped herself.
'And?'
'She's alone, and she's pregnant.'
'How pregnant?'
'I haven't asked yet, and she hasn't said, but I would guess five to six months. She's terrified, and I've been taking it slow, just asking what I need to know right now. It was just one of those times when you're only given two choices. I could try to get her out of there, or I could walk away and let those people drag her into a car and disappear.'
'Okay. You've gotten her out of there. Now what?'
'You know.'
'You're going with her?'
'I'll get her to a safe place and get her settled, and I'll come home. It should just take a few weeks.'
'A few weeks?' he said. 'Jane, you can't just disappear the way you used to. What am I supposed to tell people?'
'I'll have to trust you to think of something convincing. I got hurt, or I went to stay with a relative to get over the shock—any-thing. Whatever you make up, tell me later and I'll play along.'
He sighed in frustration. 'So this is the last call for a while, isn't it?'
'Yes. You know how it works.'
'I remember.'
'I hope you're not mad or hurt or something.'
'I'm not happy about it, but what can I do?'
'Nothing.'
'That's what I thought.'
Jane saw the pavement ahead of her brightening again as the next car approached. It reminded her that while she was standing here with the car turned off she and Christine were vulnerable, and they would attract attention. 'Carey, I've got to go. Please understand.'
'Be safe.'
