Gates Circle in Buffalo, and they arrived at one forty-five p.m. When Shelby began the arc that would take them halfway around the circle, Jane said, 'Keep going north for a few blocks, then pull over wherever you can do it safely and we'll change places.'
He pulled over a few blocks farther on, and Jane took the wheel. She went around the first block, then came back south on Delaware and into the center of the city.
Shelby said, 'Where are we going'
'To a place where you'll be safe while I pick up your sister and bring her back.'
'She's my sister. I should be with you.'
'She and I have met, remember' Jane said. 'This is the best way.'
Iris said, 'But what's the point in splitting up'
'Anybody who knows where Sarah is will be waiting near her, trying to get Jim. When I was in Los Angeles, one of the men who held me there told me they knew about her and that she'd be the next one if I didn't tell where Jim was. She'll be a priority for the police, too. They always expect fugitives to turn to a relative, and most of them do. The reason we've been tearing across the country is to get to her before anyone can figure out where she is.'
'But we could all do that together.'
'If you stay here with Jim, he doesn't have to go out and be seen. You don't fit the description of the woman who helped him escape, so you make him safer. There's only one person looking for you, and he's in a hospital or a prison cell for now.'
'But you're still hurt.'
'I'm not planning to do anything strenuous.'
'But-'
'Don't bother,' Jane said. 'This is something I'll do better alone.'
Jane called from a pay phone on the way to reserve a room, then drove them to the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Buffalo as though she were a friend who had picked them up at the airport. She paused at the entrance and watched them go inside with their suitcases. As Jane had instructed her to, Iris went to the desk with a credit card of Jane's to register while Shelby disappeared into a men's room in a corner of the lobby. Jane had seen enough. She drove off.
The drive to Ithaca was exactly as she remembered it from the years when she was a student at Cornell. There was a very long stretch of the New York State Thruway, and then the exit at Waterloo, and the long drive beside Cayuga Lake to the southern tip. She stopped in a gas station in Tompkins County near Ithaca to fill the tank, then went into the ladies' room to change the bandage on her leg again. For the whole trip she had been careful to keep the dressing fresh and clean, and she had used her left foot on the pedal when she drove, so her injured right leg was improving rapidly. Jane found her way to Dryden Road just after seven in the evening.
This was farm country, but most of the property this close to the university was no longer planted, and the only domesticated animals seemed to be dogs and a few horses. She had to read the house numbers stenciled on the sides of galvanized-steel rural mailboxes at the side of the road, but the long gravel driveways led to suburban houses, a lot of them probably owned by professors at Cornell or Ithaca College.
When Jane found the address she was looking for, she got only a second or two to glance down the driveway at the house. She saw a flash of lighted windows, and that was all. She drove on for a few hundred yards before she found a place to pull over. She looked in every direction, then saw that the nearest farmhouse was old, and apparently whoever owned the land didn't live there. She backed her car into the orchard and parked it.
Jane sat in the car for a few minutes and watched the traffic while she thought. There was something that bothered her about what she had seen at the house where Sarah was staying. At the end of the driveway was the house, and beside it a two-car garage. That looked fine. The garage door was shut, and there was no telling whether Sarah's car was there or not. But there had been a lot of lights on in the house, and no blinds or curtains shut. There was something inviting about all the lights, but it didn't feel like a house where someone was trying to wait quietly. Maybe Sarah was one of those people who felt safe only if every bulb in a house was blazing, but she had not struck Jane that way.
Jane reached under the seat and picked up the pistol she had brought with her across the country. She released the magazine and made sure the fourteen rounds she remembered were still there. She clicked the magazine back in, pulled the slide to cycle the first round in, and flicked on the safety. But the gun didn't make her feel better. Something was wrong.
Jane opened the glove compartment. She found the plastic pack of razor blades she had used to scrape off the dealer's stickers on the windows. The blades were the old-fashioned kind with one sharp edge and one thick and blunt, used mostly for linoleum cutters and paint scrapers. From the drugstore bag on the floor she picked up the roll of adhesive tape she had used whenever she changed the bandage on her thigh. She took off her shoes and socks, taped one razor blade to the top of each foot, and replaced the socks and shoes.
The house was about a quarter mile back up the road, so she began to walk. The right leg was still weak, but the pain had subsided over the past few days. She kept to the shoulder of the road, but when a car came along she diverted her path into the orchards and bushes where the headlights would miss her and she wouldn't be seen in the dark. She walked back to the mailbox, but she went more slowly up the outside of the driveway, where the view was complicated by trees, then slipped across to the side of the house.
It was a single-story house with a high, pitched roof and narrow clapboards painted the dried-blood color of a barn. She looked in the first window and saw the dining room. There had been an attempt to furnish the neat little house with authentic early-nineteenth-century furniture. The dining table and chairs were bird's-eye maple, and in the part of the living room she could see were a couple of red cherrywood tables and short cabinets. There were built-in bookcases along the far wall.
For all the lights, Jane could hear no sounds inside, and saw no people. Before she went to the front door and knocked, she wanted to reassure herself that Sarah Shelby was here, and alone.
Jane walked farther between the driveway and the side of the house, and around to the kitchen window in the back. She had to go up the first step of the back porch to see in the window. There was a counter, and in the sink she could see pots and pans that Sarah must have used to prepare her dinner. She pulled herself up a little farther and peered in at the kitchen table. There were four dirty plates, four glasses, and four sets of silverware. Everything was pushed aside or piled, as though dinner was over and four people had eaten. It was too many. Who could Sarah Shelby know in Ithaca, New York.
Jane walked to the garage and looked in the side window. There were two cars inside. One would be Sarah Shelby's. Jane had an awful suspicion about whom the other might belong to. She tried to assure herself that if someone were trying to ambush Shelby when he came to meet his sister, he wouldn't leave his car in the garage. But she couldn't prove that to herself.
Jane moved to the front of the house and crouched among the shrubs. She was careful not to touch the clapboards and not to make a sound that could be heard inside. Slowly, carefully, she raised her eye to the corner of the front window.
Sarah came through the living room, but right behind her was Maloney, the man who had shot Jane in Los Angeles. Sarah was carrying some beer bottles that someone had left in the living room, and Maloney was carrying something, too. As Sarah went through the dining room into the kitchen, Jane could see she was hobbling, as though her ankles were tied with a short rope to keep her from running.
Jane moved with her along the outside of the house, then saw her in the kitchen starting to wash the dishes in the sink. Then Jane saw Maloney step in. This time Jane could see that what he was carrying was a short- barreled pump shotgun. The sight of it made Jane sick. She knew what he would do with it if he met resistance. If Sarah tried to run, or if someone tried to drag her away, Maloney could hardly miss. There wouldn't be much chance of her surviving.
Jane couldn't see a simple way to get Sarah out of the house without getting her killed. If Jane got the right angle, she could probably shoot Maloney in the head and kill him before he killed Sarah. But then Sarah would still be in the kitchen when Gorman and Wylie raced in, guns drawn.
Jane walked carefully along the side of the house, moving from window to window to determine exactly where Gorman and Wylie were. She had to make whatever move she was going to make before Sarah finished with the chores. When she was done, they would almost certainly make her more difficult to rescue-maybe with the shotgun and maybe by tying or chaining her to something immovable, with someone close enough to kill her.
