Desperate Measures

“I don’t need to be reminded. It would have saved a lot of people a lot of trouble.”

Jill squirmed from the back into the passenger seat. “You just proved my point. I think the only reason you’ve managed to get this far is you had somebody cheering for you. I’ve never met anybody more lonely. Why would you want to keep going if you didn’t have anything to live for, anybody to care?”

Pittman felt as if ice had been placed on his chest. Unable to speak, he drove through the shadows of Boston Common, reaching Columbus Avenue, using the reverse of the route Jill had taken.

“The reason I decided to stay with you,” Jill said, “is that I didn’t want to be apart from you.”

Pittman had trouble speaking. “You sure did a lot of thinking in a couple of seconds.”

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” Jill said. “I want to see how we get along when life gets normal.”

“If,” Pittman said. “If it ever does get normal. If we can ever get through this.”

“This is a new feeling for me,” Jill said. “It kind of snuck up on me. When you introduced me as your wife…”

“What?”

“I liked it.”

Pittman was so amazed that he couldn’t react for a moment. He reached over, touching her hand.

A car horn blared behind him as he steered from traffic and stopped at the curb. His throat feeling tighter, he studied Jill, her beguiling oval face, her long corn-silk hair, her sapphire eyes glinting from the reflection of passing headlights.

He leaned close and gently kissed her, the softness of her lips making him tingle. When she put her arms around his neck, he felt ripples of sensation. The kiss went on and on. She parted her lips. He tasted her.

He felt a swirling sensation and slowly leaned back, pleasantly out of breath, studying her more intensely. “I didn’t think I’d ever feel this way again.”

“You’ve got a lot of good feelings to catch up on,” Jill said.

Pittman kissed her again, this time with a hunger that startled him.

Shaking, he had to stop. “My heart’s beating so fast….”

“I know,” Jill said. “I feel light-headed.”

Another car horn blared, passing them. Pittman turned to look out his side window. Where he’d stopped was in a no parking zone. “The last thing we need is a traffic ticket.”

He pulled from the curb.

Immediately he noticed a police car at the corner of the next street. He tried to keep his speed constant, to peer straight ahead. It seemed to take him forever to pass the cruiser. In his rearview mirror, he saw the police car move forward-not in his direction, but along the continuation of the side street.

He loosened his tight grip on the steering wheel. His brow felt clammy. He was more afraid than usual.

5

“Where are we going?”

Pittman shook his head, squinting at the painful glare of headlights on the crowded Massachusetts Turnpike. For several minutes, he’d been pensively quiet, trying to adjust-as he assumed Jill was-to the powerful change in their relationship. “We’re heading out of Boston. But where we’re going, I have no idea. I don’t know what to do next. We’ve learned a lot. But we really haven’t learned anything. I can’t believe that Millgate’s people would want to kill us because we’d found out what happened to him in prep school.”

“Suppose he wasn’t molested.”

“The circumstantial evidence indicates-”

“No, what I mean is, suppose he’d been willing,” Jill said. “Maybe Millgate’s people believe that the old man’s reputation would have been ruined if-”

“You think that’s what his people were afraid of?”

“Well, he confessed something to you about Grollier, and they killed him for it. Then you had to be stopped. And me because they have to believe you’ve told me what you know.”

“Killed him to protect his reputation? I just can’t… There’s something more,” Pittman said. “I don’t think we’ve learned the whole truth yet. Maybe the other grand counselors are trying to protect their reputations. They don’t want anyone to know what happened to them at Grollier.”

“But what exactly? And how do we prove it?” Jill asked. She rubbed her forehead. “I can’t think anymore. If I don’t get something to eat…”

Glancing ahead, she pointed to the right toward a truck stop off the turnpike, sodium arc lamps glaring in the darkness.

“My stomach’s rumbling, too.” Pittman followed an exit ramp into the bright, eerie yellow light of the gas station/restaurant, where he parked several slots away from a row of eighteen-wheel rigs.

After they got out of the car and joined each other in front, Pittman hugged her.

“What are we going to do?” She pressed the side of her face against his shoulder. “Where do we go for answers?”

“We’re just tired.” Pittman stroked her hair, then kissed her. “Once we get something to eat and some rest…”

Hand in hand, they walked toward the brightly lit entrance to the restaurant. Other cars were pulling in. Wary, Pittman watched a van stop ahead of them. The driver had his window down. The van’s radio was blaring, an announcer reading the news.

“I guess I’m needlessly jumpy. Everybody looks suspicious to me,” Pittman said. He made sure that he was between Jill and the van when they came abreast of the driver’s door. The beefy man behind the steering wheel was talking loudly to someone else, but the radio was even louder than his gruff tone.

Pittman turned toward the van. “My God.”

“What’s the matter?”

“The news. The radio in that van. Didn’t you hear it?”

“No.”

“Anthony Lloyd. One of the grand counselors. He’s dead.”

6

Dismayed, Pittman ran with Jill back to the Duster. Inside, he turned on the radio and switched stations, cursing impatiently at call-in shows and country-western programs. “There must be a news station somewhere.”

He turned on the car’s engine, afraid he would weaken the battery while he switched stations. Ten minutes later, an on-the-half-hour news report came on.

“Anthony Lloyd, onetime ambassador to the United Nations, the former USSR, and Britain, past secretary of state as well as past secretary of defense, died this evening at his home near Washington,” a solemn-voiced male reporter said. “One of a legendary group of five diplomats whose careers spanned global events from the Second World War to the present, Lloyd was frequently described-along with his associates-as a grand counselor. To quote the reaction of Harold Fisk, current secretary of state, ‘Anthony Lloyd had an immeasurable influence on American foreign policy for the past fifty years. His wisdom will be sorely missed.’ While the cause of death has not yet been determined, it is rumored that Lloyd-aged eighty-died from a stroke, the result of strain brought on by the recent apparent murder of his colleague, Jonathan Millgate, another of the grand counselors. Authorities are still looking for Matthew Pittman, the former reporter allegedly responsible for Millgate’s death.”

The news report changed to other topics, and Pittman shut off the radio. In silence, he continued to stare at