outside.
Clearly, Carolyn had worked like a dog to pack it all up. All the weapons were on board, along with assorted building materials-two-by-fours and plywood, mostly-and a couple of weeks’ worth of canned food, all stacked neatly on the shelves he’d installed and secured with bungees. On the other side of the makeshift doorway, Jake could see the back end of the Celica, all locked up and out of sight.
“You done good, honey,” he said in his teasing hillbilly accent.
She shrugged a little and shook her head. “I just don’t believe we’re doing this. How could it happen?”
He sighed. “Random bad luck,” he said. “It’s so amazing. You plan and plan, and in the end, it’s a bunch of dumb dopers who pull the rug out from under you.” As he spoke, he busied himself by lifting the big Glock-17 from the rubbermatted floor of the van, where Carolyn had left it for him, holster and all. Unzipping his jacket, he unthreaded his belt from the loops on the right-hand side of his Levi’s, then attached the holster high, so the muzzle was invisible below the waistband, the grip tucked securely under his arm. “Is the money already on board?”
Her silence drew Jake’s eyes around. She just stood there, her hands at her sides, staring off at a spot in the dark. “Honey?”
She blinked once, then only her eyes moved. “I don’t think I can do this again,” she whispered.
He flapped his jacket back over the gun and walked two steps closer, taking her shoulders in his hands. As she tried to break eye contact, he wouldn’t let her, moving his body to stay in her field of view. “Carolyn, honey, listen to me. We can’t weaken now. Do you hear? We’ve known all along that this moment might come-hell, that it probably would come-and now it has. I wish it was some other way, but it’s not. We’re out of options now.”
She closed her eyes tightly and sighed again. “Maybe we should just turn ourselves in this time. Let the courts handle it.”
The words from his wife frightened Jake at a level much deeper than anything he’d felt in the shop or in the police station or out along the road. For any of this to work, they needed to be a team-and a strong team at that. “Carolyn, look at me. Please.”
She opened her eyes. They were dry. She knew he was right.
All the same, he needed to make sure. “You know that if we’re caught, there won’t be any trial, right? This has gone too long and too far for whoever’s in charge to let that happen. If they catch us, we’re dead. It’s that simple.”
She nodded. She knew it, all right.
“Think of Travis,” he pushed, selling to the sold. “They won’t know what we told him. He won’t be safe, either.”
She thought about that one for a long time. “Maybe we should leave without him,” she said, measuring her words.
He cocked his head. “You’re not serious.”
“Maybe he’d be safer without us.”
He stared at her for a long time. “Do you really believe that?”
She didn’t know what she believed anymore. She felt adrift in a sea of emotion, and Travis was the root of all of it: fear, remorse, guilt, pity. The years since he’d been born had been their best. And now here they were, rewarding his innocence and his love with deadly lies and mortal danger. These were things he’d never understand; never forgive.
The day she brought his beautiful face into this world, she’d entered into a contract which she believed with all her heart was governed by the will of God. In return for Travis’s smile and his pranks and his love; in return for the sleepless nights of worry over unexplained fevers and colic and messy diapers; in return for unqualified, unquestioning love, the one thing she owed him more than anything else was simply to be there to hold him. In the best of times or in the worst, her job was to be always down the hall when he cried out in the night, or to be always the first on the scene with a Band-Aid for his knee, a tissue for his tears.
But he wasn’t little anymore. He put on his own Band-Aids and shrugged away from her hugs and her kisses. Maybe that made him strong enough to endure on his own.
As if to prove herself wrong, the specter of her own adolescence bloomed large in her memory. She remembered all too clearly the hurt and the doubt and the insecurity, and she remembered how sometimes a willing ear or a special dinner would have mattered every bit as much as a hug or a Band-Aid. No one had been there for her. How could she not be there for him?
The contract, she realized, went on forever-for better or for worse, until the last day of her life. In the end, then, the answer was simple.
“No,” she said at length, “I don’t believe that at all. Let’s go get him.”
Jake watched her for a moment more before he shared her smile. He brought her to him one more time and kissed her. “God, I love you.”
She slugged him lightly in the ribs. “Talk’s cheap. Just prove that you can get us out of here.”
He went to work. Even in the darkness, he seemed to know where everything was. Leaning halfway into the van, he pulled a blue gym bag out from under the left-hand row of shelves. “Here, let me see your wallet,” he said.
She took the lantern around to the front to retrieve her wallet from inside the little fashion purse and was back in no time. “Here.”
“Thanks.” He took the wallet in his right hand as he battled the bag’s zipper with his left. “Can you bring the light around a little?”
He shifted his butt to make room for her, then produced a fistful of identification and credit cards from the bag. He handed over a North Carolina driver’s license and warned, “Take everything out of your wallet and out of your pockets that has anything to do with Jake and Carolyn Brighton.”
“What do I do with them?”
“I don’t care. Leave it on the floor here. We are now Jerry and Carrie Durflinger.”
“ Durflinger? You’re kidding, right?”
His eyebrow danced. “Sorry about that,” he said, smiling. “I couldn’t find any Smiths who fit the profile.” He cleaned out his own wallet, except for the money, and dumped the contents on the floor. “Got everything?”
She took a deep breath, then shrugged. “I guess. Do the license plates match these IDs?”
Jake responded with a look. Of course they did.
They closed up the back of the van, and while he climbed into the driver’s seat, she stood by the overhead door. Even in the yellow light of the lantern, he could see his wife’s hand on her chest, her fingers crossed. He closed his eyes and offered up a silent prayer, then cheered when the engine jumped to life.
“Yes!”
Flashing a thumbs-up, Carolyn lifted the overhead door. Jake pulled out far enough to clear the back bumper, then waited while she pulled the door back down and locked it. As she climbed into the cab, she struggled with the money bag to make room for her feet.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Let’s go, then.”
As he edged the van out into traffic, he felt like he should be saying something-making some pithy remark that would somehow make all of this better. Try as he might, though, the words just weren’t there. In their place was a sense of dread. Of all the stupid decisions he’d made in his life, he sensed somehow that this was the worst; of all the adventures, this was the last.
As if to emphasize the hopelessness of their plight, he had to wait for two police cars to scream past him, sirens blaring, before he could pull out onto the road.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Irene stared at the handset for a long time after resting it back on its cradle. Never in her forty-two years on the planet had anyone ever brutalized her like that on the telephone. Not even counting the two years in college when she’d moonlighted in telephone sales.
Frankel had called initially to praise her for bringing Jake Donovan to justice after so many years. He told her
