Thomas Perry - Runner

"Sacrifice? You're saying I have to sacrifice people? The few relatives I have left?"

"Yes. And your friends, and your enemies. For quite a few runners I've taken out, the enemies are the hardest ones to give up. But if you go with me, there's no revenge—not even in small ways. No matter how wonderful you make your new life, no matter what you accomplish, you can never go back and show the people you hated. You can never say to your father's ex-wife, 'You treated me horribly, but now take a look at me. I've beaten you.'"

"Okay. I guess I can understand that. You think that if I do, she just might find a way to get me found or something. But honestly, I know who I can trust, and exactly how far. My aunt Mary and my cousins in Pittsburgh are just the best people. They wouldn't tell anyone where I was, and they certainly don't know anybody who knows Richard Beale."

"You're not getting this. It's not that they'd do anything to hurt you. It's about hurting them. If we succeed completely in losing the people who are chasing you, the next thing they'll do is start working the most promising ways of picking up your trail again. If Richard Beale knows who your favorite relatives are, his people will find them and see if you're there. For a time they'll watch the house. They'll probably examine the mail every day for a letter that might be from you. Maybe they'll plant microphones inside, tap the phone. If they believe that your aunt knows where you are, then your aunt will get a visit."

"You're trying to scare me again."

"Yes," said Jane. "I am."

"I know I'm a lot of trouble, but I'll try to be less. I know I'm not good at any of this, but I'm trying to learn as fast as I can. Scaring the shit out of me is just mean."

"I'm sorry it seems that way. But the last thing you want to do is put the people you care about in the position of being the only ones who can tell a man like Richard Beale where you are."

Christine sat in silence for a long time, staring out the car window across the fields at the trees gliding by as Jane drove hard toward the south. When Jane looked at her again she was expecting to see tears, but Christine was dry-eyed and motionless.

"It's your father who's bothering you, isn't it?"

She nodded. "He's going to be in jail for about six more years. If he doesn't hear from me, I don't know what he'll think, what he'll feel. Nothing good."

"As soon as you're settled in a safe place, I'll go and see him. If I can't get in I'll write a letter to him that will tell him what he needs to know, but won't reveal anything else. I'll mail it someplace far from your city and far from my city. Then he'll feel glad that you're not in danger anymore."

"Thanks. I'm not even sure how I feel about trying to see him anymore. I want him to know that I love him. But it's not just me anymore. I've got to do what I can to get my baby born."

"I'm sure he'll understand that, and he'll agree that you're making the right decision."

"He's got no choice. This is the only grandchild he's going to have."

Jane didn't remind her that the two half siblings she had left with her former stepmother might have children. Christine could hardly have forgotten them. Jane supposed that Christine had already banished them from her mind the day she walked out of the house at the age of sixteen. She said, "For now, the best thing to do is stop thinking about the past, and turn your attention to the decisions you have to make next."

"What do I have left to decide?"

"We have a direction, but we still need a destination. Do you know where you'd like to live?"

"I guess Pittsburgh is out. And San Diego certainly is. I don't know. Someplace where it's not cold in the winter. I can do heat, but I hate snow and ice. I don't know how to dress, or drive, or even walk without falling."

"Maybe Florida, then, or the Atlantic coast as far up as South Carolina. Or the southern part of Texas, Arizona, or Nevada."

"I'll have to think about it. I've never been to any of those places so I don't really know. They all sound okay to me."

"Let's try another way, then. You're going to want to find a job of some kind. Is there anything new you'd like to try?"

"Even if there were, I don't have the experience or the education for anything but what I was doing for Richard."

"What was that?"

"I was Richard's secretary. I was supposed to help with what he was doing."

"Fine. He was selling real estate, right?"

"It wasn't just sales. We did property management, and built some new housing. We did some land speculation, too, buying, holding for a while, and reselling. And we found underpriced houses, remodeled and flipped them."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"I like to work. What I was doing was okay. I think if I had my choice I'd like to be a teacher. But I never went to college."

"You're going to be twenty-one years old, according to your ID. You've got plenty of time to get a degree part-time after the baby is born."

"I can't get into a college. I'll be living under a false name with no high school diploma, transcripts, letters of recommendation, or anything."

"I can help you with all that. I'll have some college transcripts cooked up to make you look as though you should be admitted as a transfer student."

"What is this, magic?"

"No. It's lying. I know where I can get transcripts made. It's a four-year college that existed for about fifty years in Tennessee, then went out of business in the late eighties. A man I know took over the name, changed the mailing address of the registrar's office to a P.O. box in the same city, and has everything forwarded. If someone calls or writes for verification of a degree or something, he's the one who answers. For a small fee he supplies anything that's needed. He's still at it. I looked online recently and saw that Hillcliff College has a Web page."

"How can I possibly get away with that?"

"Any manufactured identity can be penetrated, but most aren't. All you have to do is behave in a way that makes everyone around you want you to succeed. You work hard, you're nice to people. The secret is to be the sort of person nobody wants to harm. Another part of that is to go slowly. You claim to be a twenty-one-year-old girl who wants to be a student. Claim to be what you so obviously are, and nothing more."

"That's it?"

"It's the start. You don't set off any suspicions, so nobody double-checks what you say. Then, day by day, you get to know people in a natural way—people in classes, at jobs, in your neighborhood. You're just a nice girl with a cute little baby, who's trying to qualify as a teacher. Your story doesn't threaten anybody, and it's not the kind of thing that confidence women make up. They're always the daughters of billionaires, or runaway rock stars that nobody ever heard of because they're from Brazil."

"I'm pregnant and I'm not married."

"Is that a big deal to you?"

"Yes. It makes me feel like people think I'm a slut."

"It's been a long time since anybody actually thought that way—at least a generation. But if it makes you uncomfortable, let's fix that, too."

"Fix it?"

"You're in the process of getting a divorce. That way, you can wear a wedding ring during the rest of your pregnancy. You won't feel as though anybody thinks of you as an unwed mother. Later, when you're ready to date, you take the ring off, and the divorce is final. If you tell people the divorce story during those months, they'll not only believe it, but later on they'll be under the impression that they saw it happen."

"You've done all of this before?"

"Many times."

"And it works?"

"It always has." Jane checked the mirrors again, then nudged her speed up a little. Her manner had conveyed a confidence she didn't feel. It had been more than five years since she had taught a person to run. Since then a thousand obstacles must have been invented to keep people from changing identities, and she knew about only a few of them. Right now, the things she was doing to make Christine safe might be killing them both.