Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

She blinked. He hadn’t used her title. After a pause, she said, “This’s all so fucked up.” She controlled her soft crying.

He waited.

She nodded. “Journeyman Marion was going to be my trainer but Master Eli took over. In the sessions he was great. He listened and listened and helped me find my Pluses. I told him when I was a kid I went to an art museum once and it was the coolest thing ever. He said I was an artist in a former life, so I should meditate on art, and I did and I felt so good.

“Then he told me to come to the Study Room. Everybody was like, Wow, that’s a big deal. Anyway, he said it was for special studies but you can guess what it was really about. I didn’t care. I’m not really into that anyway, not with anybody, not after some stuff that happened to me at home. So it wasn’t a big deal to me and it made him happy. He said he loved me. He said I was different, that me and him knew each other in the past. I was so happy.

“And then...” She choked and cried quietly. Shaw rose, found a towel and handed it to her. Angrily she wiped her face. “I was talking to Apprentice Rose, and he told her the same thing. And Apprentice Joan. And there were a lot of the others too. That was okay. Sort of. As long as he spent time with me. As long as he loved me.

“But today... he dragged me in here and said I was a lying slut. I lied about my age. I’d risked the whole Foundation. He said he’d been wrong: that I wasn’t special. That I was stupid and deserved to die in a crack house.” She sobbed into the towel for a moment. “He said if I ever said anything, Journeyman Hugh and some of the AUs would kill me. I had to stay here until they arranged for me to leave. And I couldn’t talk to anybody.”

“Abby, you remember John?”

“Yeah, he got sick and left.”

“No. Eli and Hugh killed him.”

“What?” She gasped.

“He was a threat to them. He was going to expose them.”

No need to suggest that Abby herself was the reason.

“Oh God.”

Shaw leaned close. “Listen, I’m not here for the training. I’m like a policeman. I’m investigating Eli. I think he wants to hurt you too.”

“I told him I wouldn’t say anything.”

“He doesn’t care. You know Walter and Sally? At our table the other night?”

“The old couple. Yeah. They’re nice. She’s sick, right?”

“I’m getting them out today. In a half hour. I want you to go with them.”

“Go back home?” she muttered sourly. “Right.”

“Let’s get you out safe first and then worry about that. They’ve agreed to let you stay with them for a while. Walter can contact some of your relatives.”

She sighed, turning the towel over and over in her ruddy, damaged hands.

“I kept sitting here, thinking Master Eli was just upset. He’ll change his mind about me. He didn’t mean what he said. The times we were together, he was so happy. I made him happy and that made me feel good.”

“Abby, we have to go now.”

“Okay but the guy at the door. The creepy one.”

Shaw asked, “You ever climbed out a window before?”

Earning him a small curve of smile, which said, Are you kidding me?

Getting into the luggage building was about as easy as Shaw had originally figured.

Since it was midweek and no new applicants were arriving or graduates leaving, the facility was closed. He was also helped by the absence of AUs. They’d be huddling with Eli and Hugh.

Maybe working out an endgame.

Jim Jones convinced over nine hundred followers in his Peoples Temple to murder hundreds of children and then kill themselves with poisoned fruit punch...

On the rear windows was a standard latch. The place-setting knife easily did the trick. There was no alarm.

Inside were no lockers but large, uncovered compartments for the baggage. From the claim checks, Shaw easily found Walter’s and Sally’s suitcases — four of them. They’d packed for three weeks, never knowing they wouldn’t need a single item. He found Abby’s backpack too. He rummaged through each and took changes of clothing and shoes for all three. These articles he put into a laundry bag he’d brought from his dorm room. He added the older couple’s wallet, purse and cash. Abby had a wallet too, one that she’d connect to a belt loop on a long chain. She had little money, though inside was a prepaid credit card that her “asshole of a stepfather” had grudgingly given her.

Shaw found his own suitcase and removed a couple of hundred cash for her. He also took his own wallet, which he stuffed into his waistband, irritated once again at the absence of pockets, which, he decided, had to be one of the greatest inventions of all time.

He put the bags back exactly where they had been.

One disappointment: Shaw could not get their cell phones. Against the wall was a large container with a big lock on it. Shaw recognized the contraption immediately. The sides were of thick metal-oxide-coated glass. On the floor nearby were strands of pink fiberglass insulation, which, he knew, would be packed inside, around the Companions’ phones. Glass was one of the most efficient ways to block cell phone traffic. He was sure all the phones had been shut off and, if possible, the batteries removed. Newer phones would have built-in batteries that couldn’t be removed, which meant the units remained semi-powered even when they were off. This box would prevent any incoming and outgoing transmissions altogether.

He slipped out of the building and relatched the window. In ten minutes he was at the bench overlooking the mountainous panorama.

Shaw gazed around. No Inner Circles or AUs. They were still, he was sure, formulating plans with Eli and Hugh on responding to the homicide detectives’ visit and the re-upped investigation.

“This way.”

With the laundry bag over his shoulder, Shaw led them north along the high bluff until they were some distance from the camp. He stopped. “Let’s change here.” He distributed the clothing and other things he’d taken from the luggage building.

Sally’s eyes lit up magically when her husband put her engagement and wedding rings on her finger. “My,” she said. “I thought I’d lost them. I was afraid to tell you, dear.”

Walter kissed her cheek.

Shaw handed Abby her clothes, her wallet and his own cash. She blinked, frowning at the two hundred dollars.

“Take it,” Shaw said.

“Like...”

“Take it.”

Her eyes said thank you.

Walter led Sally off behind a thick growth of holly to change.

Abby simply turned her back to Shaw and stripped; he looked away.

The couple returned. Walter was in a brown and yellow shirt and dark trousers, Sally a navy-blue blouse and dark skirt. Fortunately she’d brought flats.

Abby was in black jeans and a Drake sweatshirt.

He passed around the laundry bag and they placed their uniforms, amulets and slippers inside. Shaw buried it under a pile of sticks, leaves and pine needles.

“Let’s go. This way.”

The day was hot, the sun yellow as yolk, and insects hummed and strafed. Shaw found some wild lavender and marigold. He broke off stems and petals and passed them out. “Crush it and rub it on your skin. Especially ankles and elbows. That’s what they go for, the mosquitos.”

The four of them did so.

“Ain’t we a dandy-smelling crew?” Sally said, drawing smiles. She then gazed about her, eyes curious. Was she aware of the peril, or did she simply think her husband and some friends, whom she didn’t recognize, were spending a pleasant afternoon in the woods behind their Midwestern house?

The uneventful hike was as easy as Shaw had anticipated. They passed through the rusty chain link and over the three-foot-wide path between a rocky rise and the cliff’s edge. Funny how you have no worry about falling off a sidewalk even narrower than this but introduce a deadly void on one side and you walk just a bit more breathlessly.