Thomas Perry - Runner

"Jo-Ge-Oh," she said. "Come on, little guys. I know you're around." The Jo-Ge-Oh were very shy, and they seldom appeared to people who weren't in danger. But they always lived in places like this, very near to the settlements where full-sized Nundawaono lived. If they had been here in the 1700s, they were still here. The intervening centuries would not strike them as an especially long time. They might even still be harboring refugees from wars before then, planning to return them here in due time.

"Here you go, little guys. I've brought you the usual presents. Here's some of the only tobacco." She took half of the tobacco shreds and placed them on several other flat rocks. The Jo-Ge-Oh were known to be addicted to tobacco, and they liked it the traditional way, raised in this part of the continent and cut with a bit of sumac bark. It was commonly referred to in the Seneca language as "the only tobacco."

She took her collection of fingernail clippings and scattered them over the rocks. "I brought you some of my fingernails. I hope they work for you." The tallest Jo-Ge-Oh were only a few inches high, and so the small scavengers and predators that lived along the Genesee could be a source of real annoyance to them. The scent of full-sized people on the clippings helped to keep the raccoons, skunks, and possums at a distance.

She placed the rest of the tobacco into another pile on another flat stone. "I hope you enjoy your presents. Thank you for Christine's life and for my life." When Senecas spoke to the supernatural beings that inhabited their country they never asked for favors or future services of any kind. They only gave thanks.

She folded the empty cigarette packs into the small paper bag and put it into her jeans pocket, then stood still for a few seconds, listening to the quiet murmur of water through the stones at the edge of the river. Then she made her way back to the long, narrow incline up the side of the gorge. When she reached the top, she climbed back over the rail, put the tobacco bag into the nearly empty trash can, and went back to the rental car. She drove to the Outer Loop and made her way onto Buffalo Road.

The New York State Thruway felt too dangerous, so she drove the last seventy miles west along the straight rural highway. The closer Jane came to her home, the more careful she became. She had not forgotten that the only time the hunters had seen Jane she had been in western and central New York.

When she arrived in Deganawida, she passed her house three times before she was satisfied that she had not been followed and that there was nobody waiting at the house for her. She turned into the driveway and closed the garage, then opened the back door of the house. At each stage she kept all of her senses alert, searching for signs that someone had been here. She checked the telephone upstairs, but there were no messages. Then she went down to the cellar. She moved the ladder and climbed up to the old heating duct, then removed the steel box and opened it. She put the remaining stack of hundred-dollar bills into the box, then restored the driver's licenses and credit cards in different names she had been carrying. The only identity she kept out was Rebecca Silverman. She hid the box and went upstairs.

In the kitchen she took the Rebecca Silverman license and credit cards, and cut them up with a pair of scissors. As she took the tiny shreds, put them into an envelope, and returned them to her purse, she felt regret at losing such a solid identity. But she knew that there was no salvaging Rebecca Silverman after an incident in an airport. Even being a victim of a crime made the name too dangerous to use again.

When she was ready to leave, she checked the windows and the locks again, adjusted the timers on the lamps to be sure the house looked occupied, and then drove out of the garage and up the street. She took the direct route to Amherst on surface streets, driving down Delaware Avenue toward Buffalo, then turning left onto Brighton Road and following the long, straight highway until it became Maple Road and passed the University at Buffalo campus. All the way she watched for cars that might be following her. She stopped at the Boulevard Mall for a few minutes and used the opportunity to disperse the bits of Rebecca Silverman in two trash cans. Twice she turned off on small residential streets to see if anyone made the same turn, then returned to the main road and went on.

Jane turned into the driveway of the McKinnon house at four-thirty, and kept going all the way up the drive around the house so the car would not be visible from the street. She studied the doors and windows of the house from outside to be sure the glass was intact and that there were no suspicious marks on the windowsills, no gouges in any doors near the locks. When she was satisfied that nobody had broken into the house, she unlocked it and went inside.

When she stepped into the kitchen, she was reminded that Carey was, in some ways, a disturbing sort of husband. He had been a bachelor through medical school and internship and residency, so he knew perfectly well how to cook for himself. His life as a surgeon had given him little tolerance for microbes, so the sink and counters were as clean as they ever were when she cleaned them. She opened the dishwasher and saw that it had already been emptied and the dishes put away. There was a kind of military precision to everything he did when she was away.

She went to the telephone mounted on the wall and called Carey's office. After one ring the receptionist answered, "Dr. Mc-Kinnon's office."

"Hi, Julie. It's Jane. Is he in?"

"Hi, Jane. He just got off a call, and he's getting ready to go back to the hospital for rounds. I'm sure I can catch him, if you'll hold."

"Sure."

A few seconds later there was a click. "Jane? Are you home?"

"Yes. I just got home a minute ago."

"Was there any trouble?"

"No trouble," she said. "None at all."

12

Jane lay in the bed in the darkened room and listened to the regular, deep breaths that indicated her husband had fallen asleep. She looked beside her at his big, familiar shape. When Carey slept, his face acquired a lineless, peaceful emptiness that made him look like a teenager. She liked to see him, but the moon had moved so it was no longer shining in the bedroom window. She looked at the glowing display of the alarm clock on Carey's nightstand. It was two-thirty A.M. already. She felt happy, but she wasn't ready to sleep yet. She got out of bed, put on her bathrobe, and walked out of the bedroom. She walked along the hallway a few yards to the spare room that faced the front of the house. This was the room she had begun two years ago to prepare as a nursery. She stood at the edge of the curtains to look out the window without being seen.

She looked out at the long, open road, now lined by large houses that had been built in the past forty years since Amherst had gone from farm country to suburb. There was nobody out there, not even a car parked where she could see it. During the winter a car left on the road was liable to be hit by a snowplow, and even now that summer had come, people stuck to the habit of putting cars away in their garages. There was nobody out there. Her house, her husband, her identity were all safe.

Brent Ketter was on her mind. Even in the old days, she had known there was no question that if she kept being a guide, then one day she was going to walk down the wrong street in some distant city, or go into the wrong building. A face would be waiting for her, and it would acquire a sudden look of recognition, and then hatred. He would be someone she hadn't been thinking about, maybe hadn't thought about in years, but he would have no trouble remembering her. He would open fire before she could move. It had almost happened last night. If Ketter had seen her anywhere but in an airport, she would be dead.