Thomas Perry - Runner

"When you ran away, how did they know where you went? Buffalo is a long way from San Diego."

"I don't know," said Christine. "I figured they must have found out about the plane reservation. I didn't think they could. I didn't make it on my computer. I called on Sharon's phone, and then she drove me right to the airport a couple of hours later. If they were following me, I never saw them, and I was looking."

"And what about Buffalo General? How did they know you were in a hospital?"

"I haven't had time to figure that out. I'm pretty sure I would have seen them if they were on the same plane. And I waited outside your house in Deganawida all night, and I know I would have seen them there. I was so scared that if anything had moved, I would have run. You know, when I went to the hospital, I had to show my ID and health insurance card. Maybe they called Richard's office to ask if I was covered or something."

"No. Hospitals don't call your employer. If they need to call anybody, it would be the insurance company. Since you were only there for observation, I can't imagine why they would do more than verify your coverage." Jane was silent for a moment. "Do you have a cell phone?"

"Sure. Doesn't everybody?"

"I mean with you—in your purse."

Christine reached into her purse, took out a phone, and held it up. "I haven't called anybody since I left—not even Sharon, because the bill would come to Richard's house at the end of the month."

"Did he give it to you—Richard?"

"Yes. When I was working for him, he wanted to be able to be in touch every minute. Then when we were—"

"I think the phone might be the way they keep finding you."

"Oh, my God. Of course. That's just like him. I'll bet he got me a phone with a satellite tracking program, the kind parents give their kids. All this time he's probably been tracking me on his computer."

Jane said, "I didn't say I was positive. I just think it might be."

"I'm sure. You just have to know Richard. When I worked for him he would call me at all hours and talk about something I had to do the next day, or ask me about some piece of property, just because he happened to be thinking about it, or even call to tell me to remind him of something he wanted to remember. Instead of just writing it down, he would call me. But once in a while he would say something like 'I'll bet you're on your way to the mall.'"

"And he was right?"

"Yes. It got to be a kind of joke between us. And then other times, he would call when it was really inconvenient. I would look at the phone and see it was his number and turn it off. Then he would be mad at me the next day. After he and I started dating, I stopped thinking about the phone calls. I kind of liked it. Stupid me. He was just checking up on me." She began to roll down the car window.

"Wait!" Jane said. "Don't throw it away. Just give it to me." Jane took it and put it into her purse.

The sky began to take on the purple-gray quality that indicated night was nearly over. A few miles ahead they reached the entrance to the New York State Thruway at Liverpool. Jane accepted a toll ticket and headed east. She kept going until she came to a Thruway rest stop with a franchise restaurant and a gas station, coasted off onto the approach, then parked at the far side of the lot where the big tractor-trailer rigs sat idling. She took two elastic hair bands from her purse and slipped them over her right wrist, then said, "Let's get some breakfast and use the restroom." She walked close to a big truck that had license plates for four states, none of them nearby. She didn't move her head, but scanned the immediate area. When she saw nobody looking her way, she quickly knelt under the trailer, slid Christine's cell phone on top of a big nut screwed to the steel frame, and slipped the two hair bands over the phone to keep it there. Within a few seconds she was out from under the truck and had caught up with Christine.

They stepped through the glass doors into the restaurant, and found a small table near the window overlooking the parking lot. They ordered food, and the waitress brought it quickly without much chatter or insincere smiling. Just as the waitress came back with extra coffee, Jane watched a man in blue jeans and a baseball cap cross the parking lot with long-l egged strides, climb into the tractor-trailer truck, and pull the truck ahead onto the entrance ramp to return to the Thruway. She watched him use the long entrance strip to crank his transmission up through its forward gears to bring his speed up high enough to merge the big rig into the fast traffic heading east.

Christine said, "Where do you suppose my phone is going?"

Jane shrugged. "New York, probably. Maybe Boston or Montreal."

"Do you think they'll follow it all the way?"

"Sometimes playing hide-and-seek isn't about who is faster, it's about who makes the fewest mistakes. We've got to give them a lot of chances to choose wrong."

"I guess we won't know for a while if we won."

Jane became silent, and sipped her coffee as she gazed out the window.

"What? Did I say something wrong?"

"No," said Jane. "A lot has happened to you very quickly. When I was doing this kind of work regularly, sometimes my runner would be a woman who was trying to get away from a man who lived with her. I would try to go to meet with her while she was still in her old life. I would spend time getting to know what—and who—she was afraid of. I would work out the best ways for her to slip away with a long head start. We would plan the time when nobody would be watching her. Sometimes I would arrange a distraction. Once or twice I even made sure the person she was worried about ate something that put him out of commission for a couple of days. When the runner went, she would have her new identification and a place to live in a new town. Obviously I couldn't arrange any of that for you. But maybe the worst part is that I couldn't talk to you ahead of time."

"Talk to me? What would you have said?"

"One thing I would have told you about was winning. They're dogs, we're rabbits. If the dog wins once, he gets to eat the rabbit. If the rabbit wins, all he gets is the chance to go on being a rabbit."

"Are you saying you think Richard wants to kill me?"

"I don't know what he wants. His people have missed some chances, but when we drove away from them I heard gunshots."

"I don't really understand what's going on with Richard. I don't know what he thinks he's accomplishing. He always said he loved me."

"Do you believe it was true?"

"I believe he wanted me. Maybe he wants to make me stay with him and be his girlfriend forever. I know there are men who do that—or try to, anyway."

"Yes," said Jane. "There are."

"But the six—Demming and the others—are doing things that could kill us..."

"They don't seem to have made up their minds. If the six had wanted to kill you—the five, by then—they could have fired on us as soon as they recognized you at the roadblock."

"I just don't know. Maybe Richard doesn't even know what they're doing. It's possible he just wants another chance. Maybe all he wants is to be sure he can see the baby when it's born."

Jane studied her for a few seconds. "The moment that bomb went off in the hospital, those six people were finished. Eventually the police will find them, and they'll be in jail until they're ninety if they're lucky. I don't have any proof that Richard knew about that, or that he knows about it now. Maybe if he knew, he'd be smart enough to turn them in."

"Maybe he would," said Christine. "Maybe I should try to talk to him."

"If you want to talk to Richard, I think you should. The safe way is to use a pay phone, because it won't show up on caller ID. There are three booths over there outside the ladies' room, and they're the old-fashioned kind with a door you can close."