Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(31)
He found himself thinking about this milestone at odd moments, the fact that the years had accumulated to this particular number. It was disturbing, but he also found it encouraging.
He felt it was another signal of some kind, this time from deep inside his strange and meticulous mind. That the time might be nearing to end this current life and begin a different life.
Although what that life might be and how he would progress to it, he had no idea.
He had no intention of dying in federal prison or at the hands of some city cop.
He did like the idea of gardening. Perhaps growing tomatoes. For reasons unclear to him, he thought he might enjoy that.
As he walked through the side yard to the circular driveway and the pool maintenance van he’d borrowed for the occasion, he thought about the kinds of tomatoes he might grow. And maybe other edible plants. There was no need to limit himself.
But first, he would clean up the salesman’s mess.
He didn’t think that would be much of a challenge.
13
PETER
The first time Peter saw the black Explorer was not long after they left the little town of Bantam, coming up behind them fast on the winding local two-lane.
“Get down now,” he said. June folded herself into the footwell and pulled her jacket over her head. The driver passed them without looking. He must have been going ninety.
“Maybe I should get into the back,” June said when the Explorer had disappeared around a corner.
“Sure,” said Peter. “Get some sleep if you can.”
She reclined the seats, pulled her sleeping bag over her, and tugged a baseball hat down over her face. Before long he could hear her snoring.
A half hour later he saw another Explorer, or maybe the same one, coming toward him at a much slower pace. This time Peter could see the driver.
He was a clean-shaven white guy wearing a blue dress shirt and a black baseball hat, and he looked at Peter as the cars approached each other. It was just for a few seconds, and the man wore sunglasses, but somehow Peter could feel his eyes, evaluating. Peter also thought he might have seen the white spiral wire of a comms earpiece coming up the side of the man’s neck. But it happened so quickly that he couldn’t be sure.
Peter was glad that June was asleep. He didn’t want her to worry.
He also liked that she wasn’t visible to oncoming traffic. To any casual observers, Peter was just a guy in a minivan, maybe a dad going to pick up his kids.
Not some kind of maniac who’d killed two men and set their SUV on fire. He wasn’t counting the two who’d died in the accident. That was on them.
Just a guy, he’d told June. A guy who’d come home from eight years at war. But changed.
His plan, if he could call it that, was to drive north as far as possible without attracting attention. Every mile and intersection crossed added to the complexity of the search. The mountains limited the number of major roads in that part of California, so putting distance between them and their last known location was the best way to stay missing. The miles rolling away beneath the tires were a kind of comfort. Eventually they’d end up in Seattle, where June had an apartment. She’d told Peter it was a sublet, not in her name, not even the utilities. She thought they’d be safe there.
Despite the Explorer sightings, the farther Peter drove from the last point of real contact, the less he worried about being hunted. There were too many possible pathways, too many alternate routes for the bad guys to monitor all the possibilities. There were a zillion surveillance cameras out there, but most of them weren’t linked into a single system, and most of them were too low-res for search software. So unless the bad guys had the manpower to track down all those surveillance systems and the trained eyes to manually search all that crappy footage—in other words, unless they really were from the government—they weren’t going to find Peter and June until they did something to attract attention.
But he didn’t want to take the most direct route, either, so he crossed 101 and stuck to local roads for a while, eventually making his way to Highway 36 winding through Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The clouds were low and thick, and rain fell in gauzy curtains. A river was visible on his left for long stretches, silver and white and fast with runoff from the winter snowpack. Mountain slopes rose on both sides, punctuated by small cascades and rockfalls and the occasional small landholding tucked deep into the woods like a discount hermitage. When he crested the pass, he could see the Pacific Range lying on the land like the body of a sleeping dragon wearing evergreen trees for scales.
His leg was still sore when he got out of the car to pump gas at Weaverville. The white static didn’t flare in the minivan with its wide windshield and panoramic views, but it rose up hard when he limped into the mini-mart to pay. He didn’t know if it was the fluorescent lights or the plastic windowless interior or maybe just the caustic smell of burnt coffee, but his shoulders clamped up immediately. In the time it took him to grab a few bags of trail mix, a case of bottled water, and a good road atlas, he was sweating hard and beginning to hyperventilate. The wide-eyed attendant stepped back from the counter as if Peter were a meth monkey looking to rob the place.
Peter held up Al’s money, noting the slight tremor in his hand as he sorted through the bills, then pushed through the door to the open air, where he could begin to catch his breath.