Brian Freeman - Thief River Falls

“You mean Purdue? He doesn’t like me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He thinks you know more than you’re telling me. That you know who he is.” She tried to read the expression on her friend’s face, but Laurel was inscrutable. “I mean, that’s wrong, isn’t it? You don’t know anything about Purdue, do you? About why people are hunting for him?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, good,” Lisa replied.

“If you want to get away from here, you need to figure out where you’re going,” Laurel said.

“I told you it doesn’t matter where I go. Somewhere else, where we’ll be safe, where I can find people I can trust.”

“I can think of one place,” Laurel said.

“Where?”

Her friend pursed her lips, as if debating whether to say anything more. “Fargo.”

“Why there?”

“I’ve known something for a long time, Lisa. I haven’t told you before now, but I know where Noah is. I’ve known all along.”

“ Noah? You’ve talked to him?”

“Not in some time. But I know he’s in Fargo. That’s not even three hours away by car, Laurel. If you need to get away from here, if you need to find someone you can trust, why not your brother?”

“Because I can’t trust him,” Lisa snapped. “Noah made that very clear. I can’t rely on him to be there when I need him.”

“Maybe it’s time to try.”

“And have him run away from me again? No, thanks.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

Lisa stared through the window at the fields stretching behind Laurel’s house. From where she was, she could see the red Cessna on the grassy runway. She made a decision. “I need a favor.”

“What is it?”

“I need Curtis,” Lisa said. “I need his help. I want him to fly me to Minneapolis.”

“Why there?”

“It’s far away. It’s a city. This is a small town, Laurel. Everybody knows everybody else around here. Not in Minneapolis. Purdue and I can disappear, blend in. I can go talk to Will at the FBI, and they can figure out who the boy is and why he’s in trouble.”

Laurel took a long time to answer. “Don’t you think it would be easier to stay here with me?”

“If I do that, they’ll find me. You know that. How long will it be before they show up here? People know we’re friends. And I’m not going to put you and Curtis at risk, too.”

Laurel got out of the chair. Her lips were pursed, and this time, she was the one who paced. “I’ll talk to Curtis,” she said. “But if he agrees, I also have one condition.”

“What is it?”

Laurel stopped in front of the sofa and held out her hand, palm upward. “No gun.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know how I feel about guns, Lisa. I don’t want you or anyone else getting hurt. Give me your gun. Otherwise, that plane isn’t going anywhere.”

Lisa debated with herself. She didn’t like the idea of being unarmed and defenseless. Part of her wanted to say no, to walk away, but if she did that, she was truly on her own.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Whatever you say. No gun.”

She reached into her jacket pocket and handed the Ruger to Laurel.

Lisa made sure her safety belt was buckled, and then she twisted around to check on Purdue in the back seat of the four-seater Cessna. The boy looked ready to head off on a grand adventure. His wavy blond hair flopped in front of his big eyes, which took in everything about the plane and its instruments. She gave him a thumbs-up, and he returned the gesture with an excited grin. He didn’t look scared at all. He had faith that she would protect him from whatever was out there, that she would find a way to fix everything. She wasn’t so sure. She studied the wet, grassy runway ahead of her, and the charcoal sky looming to the southeast, and she hoped that the boy’s faith in her wasn’t misplaced.

She waited for Curtis, who stood in the field with Laurel fifty yards away. From their demeanor, it was obvious that they were arguing. Laurel did most of the talking, and Curtis shook his head in firm opposition to whatever she was saying. He planted his feet in the ground and braced his hands on his hips. Lisa wished she could hear what they were saying. She knew they were both smart, stubborn people, and she’d seen them bump heads in the past, but this looked worse than usual.

Before she could climb out of the plane and talk to them, the fight ended. Laurel took both of Curtis’s hands, kissed him, and whispered something in his ear. Curtis shrugged her off and headed for the plane without looking back at his wife. Lisa wasn’t sure which of them had won, but if history was any indication, she thought that Curtis had finally surrendered to whatever Laurel wanted.

Curtis performed his final safety checks on the plane’s exterior. Then he got into the pilot’s seat without acknowledging his passengers. He ran through his cockpit checks, not saying a word to Lisa as he did, and he squinted at the clouds.

“Everything okay?” she asked him finally.

“Fine.” His voice was clipped, but that wasn’t unusual. Curtis never used two words when one was enough.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

But Lisa was worried anyway. She was certain they’d been arguing about her. And Purdue.

“Thank you for doing this,” she said.

“I do what I’m told,” he replied, which did nothing to ease Lisa’s concerns.

He put on a headset and started the engine. A second headset hung on a hook in front of her, but she left it where it was. She welcomed the white noise, no matter how loud. In front of her, the propeller accelerated, making fluttery half moons in front of the windshield. Lisa felt the plane rock and heard the whine of the motor grow louder as they inched forward. The ground beneath them was uneven, and she could feel every bump. Spray rose from pools of standing water as they plowed through it. The plane hardly seemed to move at all, even as they went faster, but in no time, the nose tilted up and the Cessna floated off the ground, as if it couldn’t wait to fly. The wings waggled, and the plane dipped. They took a few seconds to steady.

Lisa looked back through the window, watching Laurel grow smaller. They could see each other, but her friend didn’t wave. She wasn’t the sentimental type. Even so, she could see Laurel following them as Curtis increased altitude and then bent into a turn that took them back over the house. Lisa leaned with the plane. The sharp angle always made her feel untethered, as if she would spill through the door and fall. She wondered if it made Purdue afraid, but when she looked over her shoulder, she saw the boy staring out the window, mesmerized by the flat earth stretching out below them.

As they climbed higher, the ground became a checkerboard of roads and farm fields, occasionally interrupted by an uneven plot of woodland. There weren’t many lakes in this part of the land of ten thousand lakes. Curtis was using Highway 59 as a guidepost to lead them southeast, and she recognized the familiar landmarks, the places she knew. She could see the thin black line of a freight train on the railroad tracks, heading toward Canada. A cluster of roads met like threads leading into the nucleus of a cell, which was the town of Karlstad. The houses and streets below them came and went, and the emptiness of the earth took over again.

It was a rocky flight, the worst she’d ever been on with Curtis. The clouds were a low shroud, so low she felt as if she could raise her hand and skim her fingers through them. As they flew, rain began to spit across the windshield. The unsettled air threw the plane around like a drunk dancer, lifting her off the seat with each rise and fall. The unexpected jolts made her want to scream, but she held it in, biting her tongue so hard she was sure it would bleed.