“I guess I’ll get this over with,” he said aloud to the empty room.
He called Zach and told him their plans had changed and he wasn’t exactly sure when he would be back. Zach reluctantly agreed to cover for him, but Adam could tell he was not pleased. He told Zach that he would make every effort to be back within a week, but he couldn’t make any promises. He resisted the urge to blurt out the entire crazy story and ask Zach to come to his rescue. He knew that was not really an option, but he thought it nonetheless. Zach wouldn’t believe it anyway. He would think Adam had gone mad.
When was this nightmare going to end?
When Adam got off the phone, he found himself pacing the room, replaying the events in his mind. He looked at his phone every five minutes. When an hour had gone by and he hadn’t heard from Maddie, he grew more panicked. Where the hell was she?
He resisted the urge to call her and tried to think positive thoughts.
But even as he tried to force himself to think positively, he found himself doubting she would return.
After another half hour had passed, Adam couldn’t resist any longer. As he picked up his phone to call Maddie a text came in: ‘I’m back.’
He stopped pacing, closed his eyes, and let out a sigh of relief. A few moments later he heard a single knock on the door.
“Who is it?”
“Butterfly.”
He quickly unlatched all of the locks and let her in. She held several shopping bags. Adam grabbed a few to help her in. He caught a whiff of French fries and fast food. He realized that he was starving.
As Maddie walked past him she said, “You should have left the swing latch on and made sure it was me before you opened the door all the way.”
No greeting. She was all business. Adam wondered if she was being a tad bit too paranoid, but as she had said, she had been doing this a long time. She was accustomed to this way of life. He was only beginning to understand the full ramifications.
Maddie unpacked several wigs of various hair colors, various styles of hats and sunglasses, a couple of fake mustaches and beards, and bottled water and snacks. She handed him a bag of fast food and a soda then sat down to eat hers. Famished, they quickly devoured their food in silence.
Finally, the stress and exhaustion overcame Maddie and she lay down on the bed. Within moments her eyes were closed and she appeared to be asleep. Adam lay down on the other side of the bed and tried to sleep too. But, exhausted as he was, sleep eluded him. He dozed off a time or two. And when he did, he kept dreaming of a car flipping over and over, the crushed driver, and a bullet whizzing straight toward his head. He kept seeing the look on Paul’s face when the bullet struck him between the eyes. He saw Paul’s body slumping to the ground and blood pouring out of the wound in his head. He saw Maddie crying over Paul’s dead body. And then he saw twelve people seated around a table in a meeting room. They were discussing Adam’s fate. Each time he woke up, his heart was pounding and he was drenched in sweat.
Chapter 44
The next morning Maddie woke Adam before sunrise. All she said was, “Adam, get ready. We’ve got to leave as soon as possible if we want to get all the way to Albuquerque by 10:00 a.m.”
The tension between them was palpable. He hated it. He robotically went through his morning routine of showering, brushing his teeth, and getting dressed as quickly as possible, all the while wondering what the morning’s events had in store for them.
As he was getting dressed, she handed him a blond wig with a matching beard and a fedora. She had donned a red, shoulder-length wig with bangs and heavy makeup. To Adam, she was one of those women who could be beautiful with any look. Still, he preferred her natural blond hair and understated makeup.
He tipped the fedora to her and said, “Mornin’ Red,” in an attempt to lighten the mood.
She smiled a half smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She was tense. He hated seeing her that way. They quickly packed up their belongings and checked out. When they got to the parking lot, Maddie headed toward a car he didn’t recognize. He stopped walking and scanned the parking lot, realizing that he didn’t see the rental car anywhere.
“New wheels?”
The car near Maddie chirped as she clicked the remote.
“It’s just a precaution. We can’t be too careful at this point.”
“This doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy.”
She didn’t respond but, instead, looked at him sadly and opened the trunk. They stowed their things and hit the road.
Maddie remained mostly silent on the ride to Albuquerque. So Adam used the time to replay the previous day’s events in his mind and to think about the way he wanted the meeting to go. Would his act of self-defense inadvertently open the door for the peacekeepers to take a stand? To his knowledge, he was the first person to defend himself from the KTP in a way that resulted in the deaths of two of their members. The end result was the classic bully effect. The KTP bully had backed down—at least temporarily. As long as the peaceful ones refused to fight, the KTP would continue attacking them. When Adam took down Paul with RTP, the two remaining KTP ceased their attack. Jeremy had even offered to meet and discuss a possible truce between the KTP and
