“And that guard, the one who told you about the sister-in-law’s visit.”
“He failed too.”
She turned away from the ocean. Stephano was a beefy man with jet-black hair cut into Prince Valiant bangs, making him resemble an aging rocker who was trying a little too hard to hang on to his youth. Stephano’s suit was custom-made but still fit his square frame like a cardboard box.
“I don’t understand,” Gertrude said. “How could he have escaped?”
“Does it matter?”
“Perhaps not.”
“It’s not as though he’s a threat.”
She smiled.
“What? You think he is?”
She knew the odds of David Burroughs causing any lasting damage were miniscule, but you don’t reach what her husband used to nauseatingly call the Payne Pinnacle without adding the other P: Paranoia.
But she also knew the way the world worked. You simply never know. You believe you are safe. You are certain that you considered every angle, thought about every possibility. But you didn’t. Not ever. The world doesn’t work that way.
No one gets it right all the time.
“Mrs. Payne?”
“We need to be prepared, Stephano.”
Chapter
23
I hurry-walk the streets of Manhattan.
I don’t want to be conspicuous by running, but I also want to put distance between myself and that apartment on Twelfth Street. I head north. I pass the Fourteenth Street subway station and then the Twenty-Third Street one, resisting the urge to head down because if there is some kind of manhunt or dragnet, they’ll probably cover all nearby subway stations.
Or not.
The truth is, I have no idea.
I have a destination, of course.
Revere, Massachusetts. My hometown.
The man who blackmailed Hilde Winslow? The one with the forelock? That’s where he lives.
I know him.
I assume the FBI will have someone watching my father’s house, but then again, the police can’t be everywhere all at once. We get used to that viewpoint from television and movies, where every bad guy is quickly brought to justice by unlimited surveillance or a fingerprint or a DNA sample.
I also don’t know what Hilde Winslow may have told the cops. She seemed to genuinely sympathize with my plight, and she had helped me escape. But it’s hard to say for certain. It could have been an act. It could have been that she feared what would happen if the police broke in and I was near her. I don’t know.
But I really don’t have a choice. I have to risk going up to Revere.
When I arrive in Times Square half an hour later, I realize how in over my head I am. I had thought about crowded places like these—the people, the noise, the bright lights, the big screens, the neon signs—but I am ill-prepared for what I’m experiencing right now. I stop. There is too much stimulation. The swirl and onslaught of hums, of hues, of smells, of faces—of life—it all sends me reeling. I’m like a man who has spent five years in a dark room and now someone is shining a flashlight into my eyes. My head spins to the point where I have to lean against a wall or fall down.
The adrenaline that had kept me going isn’t so much ebbing away as turning into smoke and vanishing into the night air. Exhaustion overtakes me. It’s late. The trains and buses to the Boston area are done for the night. I need to be smart about this. I know what I need to do when I’m back in Revere, and I will need full command of my faculties to pull it off. In short, I need to sleep.
There are a lot of subway stops near here—too many for the cops to cover—but in the end I choose to walk. The shaved head should still throw them—Hilde Winslow only saw me with the ditched baseball cap—but I also wear a surgical mask. Not many people are wearing them anymore, so I worry I may stick out with it. But it’s also a great disguise. Should I keep it on? Hard call. So is deciding where to go to sleep. I think about walking north to Central Park. There are plenty of places to hide and make shelter, but again, would that be a place the police might cover? I check my burner phone. Only Rachel, who bought it for me, knows the number. I wait for her to contact me, but she hasn’t yet. I’m not sure what that means, if anything. She probably still feels watched.
I make a plan. I keep the mask on, and I head up to Central Park. I take the path into the lush Ramble, the park’s nature preserve, near Seventy-Ninth Street. The trees are thicker up here. I find a spot as deep and secluded as I can find. I lay out branches everywhere near me and hope like hell that if someone approaches me, I’ll be able to hear and react. I lay down and listen to the babbling stream mixed in with the city sounds. Then I close my eyes and fall into a mercifully dreamless sleep.
At rush hour, when I know Penn Station will be packed, I board an Amtrak to Boston. I have the cleanly shaven head. I wear a mask. Sometime during the ride it hits me that I’ve now been free for twenty-four hours. I am on edge the whole time, but when I go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror, I realize that there is nearly zero chance anyone will recognize me. I don’t know how risky taking this train is, but really, what choice do I have?
When I’m an hour outside of Boston, my burner phone finally rings. I don’t recognize the incoming number. I hit the answer button, but I don’t say anything. I hold the phone to my ear and wait.
“Alpaca,” Rachel says.
Relief washes over me. We came up with seven code words to start every conversation. If she doesn’t open with the code word, it means that it is not safe and someone is forcing her to make the call or listening in. If she reuses a password—if on the next call she says “Alpaca”—I’ll again know someone, somehow, is listening in and trying to fool me.
“All okay?” I ask.
I don’t have a return password or code. I didn’t see a need. There is a fine line between careful and ridiculous.
“As well as we could expect.”
“The cops questioned you?”
“The FBI, yes.”
“They figured out where I was headed,” I say.
“The FBI?”
“Yes. They almost caught me at Hilde’s.”
“I didn’t say anything, I swear.”
“I know.”
“So how?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But you got away?”
“For now.”
“Were you able to question her?”
She means Hilde Winslow, of course. I tell her yes and fill her in on some of what I learned. I tell her that Hilde admitted lying on the stand, but I leave out the gambling debt and the connection to Revere. If somehow someone is listening in—man, all of this can make you so damn paranoid—it’s better not to give them the slightest hint of my destination.
“I’m getting as much cash together as I can. I’m going to figure a way to lose any tail that the FBI has on me, just like we talked about.”
“How long will that take?”
“An hour, maybe two. Pin-drop me your location when you get where you’re going. I’ll come to you.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s one other thing,” Rachel says when I finish.
I wait.
“Cheryl visited me last night.”
I can feel the tightness in my chest. “How did that go?”