me.”
She opened the trunk and went through the suitcases one last time. She put Pete’s pistol in his pack and the ammunition in hers to even the weight, then split his money between the two packs, closed them tight, and dropped the two suitcases into the Dumpster and covered them with garbage.
Jane used her Swiss Army knife to unscrew the Montana license plates and replace them with Colorado plates from a nearby car. She got into the car again and parked it as far from the road as possible, then handed Pete his pack, bedroll, and canteen. Finally she sprayed the inside of the car with the fire extinguisher and tossed it on the floor in the back seat, left the keys in the ignition, and walked away.
“What was that for?” asked Pete.
“The spray is just carbon dioxide. It’ll be gone in a little while, but so will the fingerprints. If somebody traces the plates, they’ll have a problem because the car’s not registered in Colorado. It might buy us some time to make them trace it in other states.”
“Why did you leave the keys?”
“Out of a million visitors, we can hope for one car thief. They must take vacations too.” She handed him her canteen. “I’m entitled to one last phone call. Go fill these up with water from the tap over there while I make it.”
She went to the telephone at the far end of the row, put in a quarter, dialed the private line on Carey’s desk in his office, waited for the operator to tell her how many more she needed, and put those in too. Change made noise in pockets, and there would be no more collect calls for her. She couldn’t be entirely sure that the shooters weren’t using the telephone company’s billing system to trace her.
“Hello.”
“I love you,” she said.
“What?”
She laughed. “I said, I love you. At least I hope it’s you, or I just made a fool of myself for a perfect stranger.”
“No,” he said. “Not perfect. Do you have time to talk?”
She looked around to see if anyone was near. “Not much, but probably more than you do.”
“Good for you,” he said. “Having fun?”
“Not much,” she began. Then she stopped herself. Could she tell him that a few hours ago she had watched a rifle bullet churn its way through a man’s head because he looked like Pete Hatcher? Not if she wasn’t also going to tell him it was over. “We’re not out of the woods yet. Literally. I won’t be able to call for a few days. We’re traveling on foot, and there won’t be any phones.”
She could hear him breathing on the other end, then: “Why on foot?”
“It’s safer. I’ll tell you all about it in excruciating detail when I get home.”
“That’s what I was wondering,” he said. “Can you tell me when you’re coming home?”
“We’ve got to go about twenty miles, but that’s measuring it straight. I figure two or three days to get up there, and then two weeks more to finish this for good. Then I’ll be home.”
“Why do you need two weeks?”
She sighed. “Because I never, ever want to do this again. If I do it right, it’s over.”
She waited a long time for his answer. Finally, he said, “I understand,” as though he didn’t. “Just promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Before you get on the plane, give me a call. I want to pick you up at the airport.”
“I can probably find a phone before then.”
“I know, but that’s something else. Promise?”
“Sure,” she said. She had spent her adult life inventing lies, and she could tell when somebody was hiding something. If Carey wanted to arrange a surprise for her, it was worth playing dumb to keep from ruining it. “I promise.”
“Good. Do you need anything? Money or something?”
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’d better get going. I love you.”
“Me too.”
“Bye.”
They both hung up. As she walked away from the telephone, she fervently sent a wish across the mountains. Let the surprise be flowers and champagne. Don’t surprise me by having the upstairs bathroom remodeled. Then she felt guilty and unworthy. The man she loved and wanted to spend her life with was planning a surprise. Whatever it was, she resolved to smile and throw her arms around his neck and kiss him as though all future happiness depended on it. She was not foolish enough to think that it didn’t.
Jane walked out of the park building and found Pete Hatcher on the steps with their two full canteens. She cinched hers onto her pack and did the same for Hatcher.
“I thought you were supposed to wear them on your belt.”
“Soldiers have to put up with two quarts of water whacking their butts, but I don’t,” she said. “Unlike them, we can stop and take off our packs when we want without getting shot.”
“I hope,” he said.
She walked across the lot and waited at the edge of the road. “Did you feel the change yet?”
“What change?”
“We just stepped across the Continental Divide. If you spill your canteen now, it goes into the Mississippi instead of the Pacific.”
“I’ll try to be careful to preserve the levees.”
There was a break in the traffic and they hurried across the road. Pete stopped beside a wooden sign that had nothing on it but HIGHLINE TRAIL and an arrow pointing north. “Just how long is this trail?”
She began to walk on the soft, irregular ground, under hemlocks and cedars. It forced Pete to take the first step off the pavement, then hurry to catch up with her, and then they were walking along and the decision was over. “How long?”
“Long.”
“What does ‘long’ mean to a woman like you in miles?”
“On the map it looks like twenty as the crow flies, and maybe thirty if you take it in sections, point to point. The map isn’t big enough to take into account all the meandering, which is what trails through wilderness do. And it’s two-dimensional, so I can’t tell just how hard the climbing will be. It could be fifty miles and seem like three times that.”
“Do you mind if I keep asking questions?”
“Nobody can hear us, and the trail is shorter if you talk.”
“What if they find the car?”
“Then they have to make a guess. If they think we changed cars, then they’ll drive fast away from here to try to catch up and see the new one. If they think we abandoned it and walked off into the mountains, they have to guess which trail we took. If we went north toward Canada, there are a dozen branches ahead that come out pretty far from each other. But most likely they’ll think we left the car so it would look as though we headed north for Canada, but turned south or east or west instead. Those trails all reach roads at some point.”
“What if they don’t fool themselves, know we headed for Canada, and pick the right trail?”
“Then they have other choices. They have to guess where we’ll surface when we get to Canada, drive up there, and wait, or come up the trail after us.”
“That’s the one I don’t like: some guy with a gun coming out here after us.”
“Even if they do, they still have choices. We’re carrying about what a cautious person would take on a day trip. A smart person would know there was the possibility of not making it back by dark and having to spend one night out there. Anybody who follows could choose to travel lighter than that for speed, or they could carry tents and heavy clothes and a week’s food and water. If they travel lighter than we are, they could easily have to turn around and give up. If they load themselves down with lots of gear, they’ll have a very hard time catching up with us.”
“Especially with all those guns.”
She laughed. “I wasn’t going to mention those.” She looked at him for a moment as they walked along. He
