Tommie studied the ground. “I don’t want to die, Mom,” he said.
Beverly blinked. “What did you say?”
He turned toward her, his forehead wrinkled. “I said I don’t want them to die, Mom.”
“Oh,” she said, suddenly thinking about cameras and nightmares and too little sleep and not enough food, and in the rising heat of the morning, it was hard to keep all her thoughts straight. She needed to do better. She needed to make sure that Tommie felt safe.
The yellow bus, squeaking and groaning, came to a stop; the door squealed as it opened. Tommie rose and climbed into the bus without looking back, without even saying goodbye.
Cameras.
The word kept ricocheting around her mind like a pachinko ball. She needed a distraction—anything to settle her nerves—but her hands weren’t steady enough to start painting just yet. Instead, she went upstairs to Tommie’s room. Though he’d had a nightmare, she’d told her son that she would check to make sure, and that’s what good mothers did. His window was set into an alcove, making it impossible to see if anyone could even reach the roof. She examined the ceiling and lay down in Tommie’s bed. Tried to imagine where the sounds might have been, if there were any sounds, but pretending to be Tommie didn’t help.
She went outside, backing away from the house to get adequate perspective. Tommie’s room was on the side, and a single glance confirmed that the steep pitch of the roof made it even more unlikely that anyone could have been walking around up there. But one of the oak trees had a branch that stretched over part of the roof, making it essentially a squirrel highway. If there was wind, the branch might even scrape the shingles, and she tried to remember whether there’d been any wind last night.
The only thing that was certain was that no one had been on the roof; no one had whispered Tommie’s name. She’d known that already; nonetheless, she was glad she’d made herself sure of it. Just as she was now sure that there’d been cameras in the bus stations. They’d probably been required since 9/11, now that she thought about it, and Gary, she knew, had the power to access all of them.
Though her mind felt even more swimmy than it had over the last couple of days, she forced herself to think. Back inside, she took a seat at the table and rubbed her temples, pressing hard with her fingers.
Gary would no doubt demand to see footage from the local bus station for Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, and maybe even Monday morning. He would sit with his face close to the computer screen, fast-forwarding at times, watching carefully, searching. Even if he didn’t recognize her right away, he would undoubtedly recognize his son. It might take him hours or days, but she knew with certainty that Gary would eventually figure out exactly which bus they’d taken on their escape from town.
And then? Unless there were cameras on the buses—which she doubted—he would have no idea where she’d gotten off. At that point he’d probably try to speak to the drivers, but would the second driver remember where they’d disembarked? Unlikely, which meant that Gary’s next step would be to check the cameras at other bus stations along the route. And again, in time he would probably recognize Tommie. Then he’d keep repeating the process, like a wolf with his nose to the ground while hunting prey, getting closer and closer, zeroing in. He might even find a video of her at the convenience store.
But after that?
The trail would come to an end, because she and Tommie had hitched a ride with a woman in a station wagon. The woman who knew enough not to ask questions.
Could he find the woman? And the carpet salesman who smelled of Old Spice?
Doubtful.
But could there have been other cameras on the highway? Like traffic cameras? Cameras that recorded license plates?
Possibly.
Even if she assumed the absolute worst, the impossible worst—that Gary, somehow, had tracked her to this town—what then? He might check the motel, might go to the diner, might even speak with the waitress, but the trail would grow even colder after that. The waitress hadn’t known she wanted to find a place to live, and aside from the owner of the house, no one knew they were in town at all. For all Gary knew, she had caught yet another ride with someone else, heading in an entirely different direction.
Gary might be dogged and intelligent and able to leverage the power of federal and state governments to a point that would scare even the bravest ordinary citizen, but he wasn’t God.
“I am safe,” she said in her most convincing voice. “There is no way he can find me.”