said, “Don’t look at me like I’m some sort of child molester, Menefee. In case you haven’t realized it yet, this is a time for you to be very, very careful.”
Menefee shook his head and stood a little taller, as if finding a lost vein of courage. “I don’t look at you as a child molester, Brighton,” he corrected. “I look at you as a murderer, because that’s what you are.”
The ladies gasped as one. Mrs. Harris brought a hand to her chest-as though she might be having a heart attack-and shot Menefee a surprised, angry scowl. All of them edged away from their boss, reminding Jake of that scene in every cowboy flick where the street clears before the big gun battle.
Jake never shifted his stare from Menefee’s eyes, yet he registered precisely what everyone in the room was doing, where they were going. He sensed that things were about to come unraveled. Menefee was a fool to draw verbal battle lines. What could he possibly hope to gain by picking a fight with an armed man? When Jake spoke, he carefully selected every word. “If I were a murderer, you’d be dead now, Menefee. As it is, I haven’t even threatened you.”
“You bring a gun into my school…”
Jake silenced him with an abrupt movement of his left hand, making Menefee flinch. Under different circumstances, Jake might have laughed at the reaction, but not this time. He leveled his forefinger at the principal, six inches from the end of the man’s nose. “It’s time for you to shut up now,” he said. “I’ve done nothing wrong. The details are none of your business, but rest assured that, to date, I have never killed a soul.” He paused, shifting his eyes individually to each of the people standing there in the office. One by one, all but the little girl broke eye contact the instant he landed on them. “Also rest assured that I will do what ever I have to do to protect my family from harm. Is that clear, Menefee?”
The principal’s eyes shifted from the tip of Jake’s finger to the gun on his hip and back again. He swallowed hard, then nodded.
Jake lowered his finger slowly. “Good. Now, why don’t you take a seat over there.”
Menefee hesitated for an instant, as though unsure what to do.
“Please,” Jake said, motioning with his hand toward one of the three metal secretarial desks behind the counter. “And don’t touch anything, okay? Especially not the phone. Really, my business here is almost done.”
CHAPTER NINE
Eleven minutes had passed, and Carolyn was freezing. She slid the temperature control further toward red, realizing that it just wasn’t that cold outside. Nerves, she figured. Her body temperature always plummeted when she got nervous. Her feet felt like they might blister from the hot air blasting down on them, yet she still couldn’t stop shivering.
This was taking too long. How big a deal could it be to go inside, pick up Travis, and come back outside? Five minutes? Maybe ten? Now they were closing in on twelve, and still her men were nowhere to be found. She hated herself for not going in with him. She should have insisted. At least then, whatever happened would happen to them together. The thought of being separated from the action-good or bad-was unbearable.
Twice she started to climb out of the van to check up on them, but both times she stopped herself. If things turned bad, they’d need her to be right where she was. Her mind projected a nightmare scenario, with Jake dragging Travis in a dead-out sprint up the hill, with cops close on their heels, only to find the van empty.
How many times had Jake said it? The key to success is sticking to the plan.
In her heart, though, the plan was doomed to failure. How could it possibly work? There were a million variables, with billions of combinations. This whole business with Travis and his field trip, for example. Who’d have thought? Or the drug bust that morning in the shop? Nothing was as they’d planned it. The original version of the plan didn’t even take Travis into account-he wasn’t even conceived yet.
In the old days, Carolyn and Jake were obsessed by the plan. They worked on it every night, investing thousands of dollars into the equipment and the tools and the safe house in the mountains. God, the safe house! How long had it been since she’d even seen it? Eleven years? Twelve, maybe? Travis was just a little guy, she knew that, and even then it was a rattrap; an easy place to avoid. Balanced right on the edge of civilization, the safe house-really an old travel trailer to which Jake had assigned the lofty name Donovan’s Den-sat in the middle of a five-acre tract in the hills of West Virginia. Jake had read about it in the legal notices of the Beckley newspaper and bought it from the bank for $15,000 cash, the day before the trustee sale. According to the real estate records, the property now belonged to one Francis Wheeler, of High Point, North Carolina. Sometimes Carolyn wondered how Jake kept all of the aliases straight in his head.
Early on, the aliases had been an obsession of his. You couldn’t have too many names. Every week or so, for more than a year, he went to the library and perused death notices from a dozen key papers. Once he had a name, he’d simply call the Division of Motor Vehicles under the guise of checking a driving record for an insurance company. With a little bullshit and a lot of bluff, he’d wrangle the driver’s Social Security number out of the clerk, and once armed with that magical nine-digit identification, the rest was easy. Using a series of post office boxes-a new one every month-they’d get new driver’s licenses. Each new application carried its own risk, of course, but if something went disastrously wrong, everything would be traceable to a defunct P.O. box, last owned by a dead man.
The Brighton persona had lasted much longer than it was ever supposed to. Credit Travis for that. Once the baby was born, the business of changing names became infinitely more difficult. And by the time he was old enough to talk, name changes were out of the question. How would they have explained it? Some secrets, they agreed, should never be shared with a little boy. So they became the Brighton family for good, switching back to the name on Travis’s birth certificate.
The rest was just a matter of being careful. By obeying all laws, paying their taxes on time, and in all other ways just blending in with their surroundings, they’d been able to pull it off. In retrospect, Carolyn saw now that they’d become far too comfortable. They’d let their guard down.
Now it was all caving in on them, and she wasn’t at all sure that she was up to it anymore. She was thirty-six now, Jake thirty-eight. They were too old to be pulling up stakes and starting over. And what of Travis? What were they going to tell him? How was it, she wondered, that the only issues they’d never discussed thoroughly-the only ones not a full part of the plan-were those that directly involved their son? It was as though they were afraid to open that particular door, for fear of what they might find lurking behind it.
How could Travis ever forgive them for their lies? How could he not hate them when he found out? This was no run-of-the-mill Santa Claus lie, after all. Their son’s entire life was built on a collapsing foundation of sand. Every record ever made of the boy showed his name as Travis Brighton, whose mother was Carolyn Davies Mallone, and whose father was Jacob Aubrey Brighton. Yet those people-the ones who had been born with those names and lived with those Social Security numbers-were both dead; killed in separate automobile accidents back in 1982.
What did it mean for Travis, she wondered, that his parents, as he knew them, didn’t even exist? Would he have to change his name if they were caught? Could they afford not to change his name even if they weren’t caught? Thousands of questions flooded her mind as she sat there shivering in the warm car, trying to make sense of it all. In a rush of dreadful pessimism, she realized with absolute clarity that they had no idea what the hell they were doing. The secret to survival was not the plan, after all; but rather the ability to adapt to random slaps and shoves that life handed you as you went along, trying your best to do your best. Planning was merely a way to bide your time and rationalize that somehow you’d be able to solve your problems.
She shivered again and found herself thinking about that bottle of Jack Black nestled in her duffel bag. That’ll warm me up. Her mouth watered at the thought of white-hot brown liquid coursing its way down her throat…
No! she commanded herself, so forcefully that she wondered if she’d said it aloud. This is not the time.
She didn’t even see the cop car until it had passed her, moving quickly down the street toward the school.
Oh God, please, no.
Her heart hammered behind her breastbone as the blue-on-white cruiser approached the driveway, then slowed for an instant as it swung the turn.
“Shit!” She said it aloud this time and climbed over the center console to slide behind the steering wheel. “Oh, God. Come on, guys,” she moaned through clenched teeth, scanning her obstructed view for some sign of her
