Thomas Perry - Shadow Woman

Linda lay back on the bed and tried to coax from her imagination ways to make Carey interested in her. There was a special kind of titillation in the images she conjured, because even as she planned, she could feel Earl thinking about her on the bed with Carey and getting that strange combination of jealousy and arousal that was most exciting to her. Linda knew what her punishment was going to be, because she was going to submit herself for it.

She was going to make the big, wet tears come, and make her voice go small and helpless, and say, “Then he did this, and this, and this.” And Earl, because he was Earl, would make her do again everything she described for him. She could already hear his voice, through clenched teeth, whispering, “Like this? Was it like this?” And she would be beside herself with excitement, because with Earl it wasn’t like being with a man. It was like being possessed by a demon—part guilty, shameful sensation, but mostly fearing and sharing all of that power. A necessary part of her fantasy was that Earl would begin her punishment only after he had killed Carey. She liked to imagine that he would do it with a knife.

25

As the sign for Hungry Horse drifted past her window, Jane said, “Keep your eyes open for a sporting goods store. If we don’t find what we need here, go on to Coram. If you see a military surplus store or one of those places for survival psychos, don’t pass it by.”

They both saw the store at the same time, and it seemed to be a little of each. The sign was big and crude, but the merchandise in the window included skis and toboggans. “Park off the street,” she said. Pete found a space behind the building between two delivery trucks and they entered.

Jane picked out two of everything—compasses, canteens, sleeping bags, waterproof matches, flashlights. Pete hovered beside her to take the merchandise she selected, a worried look on his face. She whispered, “You wanted another option. Without this stuff we don’t have one.”

She carefully picked out their clothes: rainproof ponchos, olive-drab woolen pants with belted ankles, pullover sweaters, hiking boots, wool socks, long underwear, M-65 field jackets, gloves, and watch caps. Next she found a pair of ten-power binoculars, polarized sunglasses and Swiss Army knives for each of them, packets of dried food, a cook pot, and, finally, two backpacks to carry it all in.

Then Jane joined Pete at the counter, where he stood beside the pile of purchases he had built. As an afterthought, Jane picked up a small foam fire extinguisher, added it to the pile, and paid the clerk in cash.

When they had loaded all of the bags into the car, Jane began to sort out her purchases and pack the two backpacks while Pete drove. “There will be some kind of ranger station or visitor center at West Glacier. Stop there too, but put the car between two tour buses or behind a building or somewhere.”

“Pretty authentic disguises,” said Pete. Behind the thin sound of hope in his voice there was dread.

“I’m afraid they’re not disguises,” she said.

“They’re not?”

She looked at him unapologetically. “Not exactly. It’s something I stumbled on by looking at the map. We’re brought up to see the world as a lot of roads. It’s like a grid, with dots for the towns at the intersections and nothing between the roads at all. These people will keep chasing us if we stay on the lines. We have to stop now and then at one of those dots at the intersections, and they’ll catch up. So we’ll see the map differently for a couple of days.”

“We’re going camping? What does that get us?”

“I’m not sure yet, so I’m not making promises. I think they’re using commercial computer databases to track us; the lists of people who buy handguns, cars, or rent hotel rooms. I’ve never used the same names or credit cards two days in a row, and that’s always worked before. But it’s not working now. I made some phone calls, but they were from pay phones. They don’t transmit the numbers of pay phones for caller ID to pick up, so nobody can be intercepting the signal and finding us that way. Even if they managed to find out where I live and tapped my home phone, I never said where I was calling from. Our phone bill comes at the end of the month, so they’re not reading it. I don’t have any idea what these people are doing, or how. And that scares me.”

“Isn’t it possible that they just followed us?”

“Maybe. Maybe they out-thought me—figured what I would do, then drove along the right road and showed your picture to hotel desk clerks and waitresses. But it’s not a great method if what you plan to do after you find the person is kill him. It’s also possible that they’re tracking this car electronically.”

“How do we find out—search it?”

“Dump it.”

“Where do we get another car out here?”

She gave her sad little smile again. “We don’t. I’d love to get a new one and drive until the tread is off the tires. But we tried that, and a shooter turned up. I’d love to put on a blond wig and step onto an airplane to anywhere. But unless we know for sure how they’re tracking us, we can’t do anything that puts us in a predetermined airport at a prearranged time. The safest tactic I can think of is to do the opposite: go where there are no people to see us, no schedules, and no records for anybody to break into. It’s not a great idea, but it’s an idea. We’ve got to keep moving.”

“Keep moving where?”

She sighed. “I think we have no choice but to dump everything we had when we walked into that restaurant this morning, and cross the border.”

“Canada?”

“If they’re using computer data files, it’s possible crossing a national border will make it harder. A lot of businesses are national—not international. If their car gets searched at the border, there will be guns in it. There might be other advantages, but there are no disadvantages that I know of.”

As the road wound up into the mountains, Pete seemed to be concentrating on his driving. “Shouldn’t we leave this car someplace to mislead them?”

“I don’t want to confuse them,” she said. “I want them stuck.”

“How do we manage that?”

“It’s September thirteenth. In two days they’ll close this road for the winter. If the chasers don’t get this far by then, they’ll have to go back. If, after that, they find out we left the car inside the park, they have the same choices we had: go on to the Chief Mountain Highway, drive to the border, and get stopped, because the customs station closes on the fifteenth too; go east to the next road that crosses at the Piegan-Conway crossing; or go all the way back along this road to Whitefish and drive up Route 93. Either way, we’ll be in the space in-between, at least thirty miles from them with no road to get to us.”

“And then?”

“And then we walk out of the woods in Canada and pay somebody to drive us far enough away to catch a bus. I’m not getting on any more planes until I know they haven’t tapped the reservation system.”

They drove into the park at West Glacier, bought a trail map at the ranger station, then joined the long single-file line of cars on Going-to-the-Sun Road. The progress was slow because the road was a Depression-era two-lane pavement with high, rocky cliffs on the right and Lake McDonald on the left. Drivers ahead of them pulled over whenever there was a turnout to take pictures and stare at the icy, glass-clear lake and the surrounding forests.

Pete said happily, “It looks as though we won’t be needing that winter gear we bought. The weather’s beautiful.”

She turned in her seat to look at him. “I guess I should have asked you this before. Have you ever spent time in the woods?”