Thomas Perry - Runner

But Christine wasn't safe. If she'd detected danger and had to flee the apartment, she would have called Jane or found another way to let her know. She had been gone for at least three weeks, and maybe more, which meant she'd had plenty of time to send a letter. Her car was gone, and she could have driven to Amherst or De-ganawida in two days and started over. But she had done nothing.

If Christine had planned even ten minutes in advance to leave voluntarily there was no reason to leave her toothbrush, her good clothes, or any of the rest of her belongings. She had not run from here, either. If enemies had been at her door, she would have had to leave through a window, and she couldn't have relocked it. The apartment was still neat, with nothing out of place, so she had not been dragged out, resisting.

Suddenly, Jane knew exactly what must have happened. The four chasers had come to Minneapolis—how they had found Christine was unknowable for now—and made their way to her apartment complex. They had watched the building, and after a time, had seen Christine's car emerge from the underground garage and come out the driveway. She had driven somewhere by herself, probably at night. She had not been hiding long enough to pick up the knack some runners had of acquiring friends and allies quickly, so she had been alone. When Christine arrived at her destination—the parking lot of a supermarket or a shopping mall—conditions had been right.

In her mind's eye, Jane watched. The four saw Christine take a few steps from the gray Passat, then drove in quickly and stopped between her and her car. The two men held something over her mouth so she couldn't scream and dragged her into the car with them, while one of the women wrenched her purse away. The driver, probably the other woman, threw the car into gear and drove off. The woman with Christine's purse searched it, found the car keys, and drove the gray Passat off after the others. If it hadn't happened almost exactly that way, Christine would have had time to reach into her purse for the gun, the gray car would still be wherever she had left it, or someone would have had a chance to see and help her. The whole abduction would have taken no more than ten seconds, and probably closer to five.

Jane wished that she could get on an airplane and not have to drive the vast distance ahead, but putting herself in airports and planes would leave her at the other end unarmed and visible, and this time she couldn't afford either of those things. Jane stayed on the road for several hours at a time, trying to keep moving. She stopped only when she had to, and then only long enough to use the rest-room, top off the tank, and buy food she could eat in the car.

As she moved west, the distances she could see began to extend ahead for miles, and the driving became a simple question of staying between two white lines and preventing her speed from increasing enough on the long, straight stretches to attract the attention of the police. In the late afternoon, when the sun sank low enough ahead of her to get in her eyes, she pulled over at a rest stop and slept two hours, until the sun was beneath the horizon and she could again drive into the darkness.

26

Jane drove across the border from Nevada into California at three A.M., her headlights making the phosphorescent markers on the black highway gleam. The slopes and curves in the darkness of the high desert made her feel as though she were above the world, swooping and climbing and banking. She kept the car above the speed limit, because the passing of time was making her anxious.

As she had driven across the country for the past three days she had felt a growing sense of impatience that was becoming unbearable. Coming into California made it seem that she was at the end of the trip, but she still had a long drive ahead of her. She would reach the heavily populated areas near the coast in the morning rush hour, so she tried to beat the other cars, pushing her speed higher.

At six A.M. when she smelled the ocean and then saw it at Dana Point, she knew she was nearly finished. If she drove much longer, she would be in danger of falling asleep. She made it as far as Capistrano, saw signs for motels, coasted off the freeway, and checked into the first one that didn't look as though it was part of some criminal enterprise. She brought her small suitcase inside, locked everything she could lock, took her gun out of her purse, checked the load and the safety, and put it under the pillow beside her where she could reach it instantly.

As she lay there drifting into sleep, old stories that her grandfather—her hocsote —had told her began to present themselves in her memory. In the stories there were people who lived alone, away from the longhouses and the communal fields. They built small shelters near isolated trails and pretended to offer hospitality to strangers who passed by. Sometimes the host would be a solitary man, sometimes a group of sisters, or just one lone woman who used her beauty to lure men to her house. But always, somewhere in the forest nearby, there would be a pile of victims' bones.

In the stories, a traveler would be out in the forest searching for a lost friend or a missing relative. While the lonely host was something much worse than he seemed to be, the searcher was much better, and he would find a way to outwit the man-eater. Eventually, Jane's grandfather always got to the part when the traveler saved himself and killed the evil one, then stood over the pile of victims' bones. Her grandfather would give an abrupt jump and yell, "Get up, quick! The tree is falling on you!" The bones would instantly reunite, and the revitalized victims would run in all directions to get out of the way.

Jane felt a moment of amusement as she remembered, and then an onrush of sadness. If only that could happen. She would begin her resurrections with her grandfather, partly because he had been forced to stay dead the longest, and partly because he had taught her the trick when she was a child. And then he could teach her other old tricks, so she could bring back her father, with his sharp black eyes that sometimes seemed shiny and wild like a crow's, and her mother, all milky white and fragrant, with sky blue eyes like Jane's. She and Hocsote would bring them back together, in one instant.

She fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. When she awoke her muscles felt half-paralyzed from long immobility and it was the middle of the afternoon. She had paid for two days in the motel because she had known she would not be out by noon. She got up slowly, but after she'd had a shower and dressed she felt strong and fresh.

The first thing she did was take out her cell phone and call Sharon Curtis's number. She had called at least once a day since leaving Minnesota, but had never reached her. One of the rules she had taught Sharon to follow in situations like this was never to leave a message for a runner, because there was no way to ensure that the right person would be the one who heard it. Apparently the warning had stuck, because Sharon had not left Jane a way to leave a message. Once again there was no answer. It was summer, and Sharon was a teacher, so maybe she had left town for the vacation. She hoped the reason was that Sharon was having something nice happen in her life. This year Sharon must be thirty-one. She had always been pretty, with her blond hair and thin figure, and by now, she probably had a boyfriend. Even if she moved in with somebody, Sharon would be the sort of woman who kept a second, secret place where she could keep a bag packed with a little money and the papers to document the second false identity Jane had bought her years ago.

Jane had always told her runners to beware of vacations. Airports, resort hotels, and restaurants were places where people were recognized. But Sharon was a special case. There were only two men who wanted to harm her. She had known both of them so well that she could probably predict their movements accurately enough to stay out of their way.