The Old Man(75)

Derrick’s eyes widened. He went to his knees in the cold, salt slush, and ice. “Please!” he said. “Please don’t do this to me. I’ll do anything, give you anything if you’ll just let me live.”

Beside him, Kyle began to vomit. Some of the liquid splashed in front of Derrick. He put his head in his hands and began to sob.

Hank nodded to Marcia and she climbed into the front passenger seat and closed the door. Hank said, “Get up. Start walking this way, into the woods.”

“Please,” said Derrick. “Don’t.”

“Go!” Hank shouted. The two men stood up and began to walk into the woods. As they went on, they seemed to go slightly faster, moving a bit more quickly than when they began. Once they had put a few trees between them and Hank, they seemed to hope they could get far enough so Hank couldn’t see them and fire the shot. In a moment Hank heard what sounded like running.

Hank got into the driver’s seat beside Marcia, eased the vehicle into the traffic, and drove down Route 38. “Take the batteries out of the phones. Wait five miles before you throw the pieces of the phones away.”





25


Hank hid their skis, poles, and boots beneath a layer of trash in a dumpster behind a supermarket in San Bernardino. In the flat country, even after 3:00 a.m. the temperature was forty-four degrees and the wind was calm. The radio in the-stolen SUV said it had been seventy degrees during daylight. They kept their ski jackets, caps, and gloves because they both still felt chilled from the long hours in the snow.

Hank found the train station on Third Street and then stopped at a nearby apartment complex. He and Marcia cleaned their prints from the SUV and left it in an empty parking space behind one of the big buildings, put on their backpacks, and walked back to the station. He bought them two tickets for the 4:06 a.m. Metrolink train to Union Station in Los Angeles.

This early in the morning there were only a few dozen people waiting, but that was enough to keep them from standing out. A few of the passengers were wearing suits and ties or other business attire, but the rest were dressed-in synthetic quilted jackets like theirs and casual pants. At least half wore backpacks, probably containing their work clothes.

They arrived at Union Station just after 5:30 a.m. It was still barely light, but the station was already busy. It was full of people coming into the center of the city, leaving it on the red, purple, and gold subway lines, or preparing to take long-distance Amtrak trains or Metrolink trains to other cities.

Hank went to a ticket counter and took a printed Amtrak schedule, and then went to sit with Marcia.

“You seem to have a plan,” she said.

“I have the beginnings of one.”

He looked around them to be sure nobody was near enough to overhear them. “We’ve reached a point where we have to be somebody new.”

“All right,” she said. “How does it work this time?”

“There’s a northbound train leaving at ten ten.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” said Marcia. “We are in a train station, after all.”

“I’m going to see if I can get us a sleeping compartment. There might not be any at the last minute, but we’ll see.” He went to the counter and came back with tickets. “Got it. We’ve got a sleeper all the way to Seattle.”

“Great. Sleep would be nice.”

“And the train will give us time to talk and prepare for what comes next.”

At 10:11 a.m. they were on the Coast Starlight in a private sleeper compartment pulling out of Union Station. They were still exhausted, so by the time the new passengers had boarded after the first stop in Burbank and the train moved out again, they had both fallen asleep.

It wasn’t until afternoon that Marcia woke up. She whispered, “Are you awake?”

“Now I am,” Hank said.

She said, “Now that we’re alone, I want to thank you aloud, and not just inside my skull. The past thirty-six hours have shown me what a big difference there is between saying I wanted to go with you and actually trying to do what you do. Thank you for keeping me alive.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And you said this morning that we have to be somebody else from now on. I’ve been wondering about that.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’m sure you know the Dixons are through. The intelligence people have the car that’s registered to Henry Dixon, and the credit cards and checks we used are all in the names of Henry or Marcia Dixon. But I put another complete set of identification documents in the bugout kits.”

“The Canadians.”

“Yes. Alan and Marie Spencer,” he said.

“Is that why we’re going north?” she said.

“One reason. On the way, there are a lot of little stops, and three big ones. We stop in San Francisco tonight, and then get another train to Portland, and a third to Seattle. For the next couple of days, we’ve got to stay as close to invisible as we can. Being on the train will help.”

“I understand,” she said.

“There’s something else to think about during the trip from here to Seattle. They know we’re traveling together, but you can still get out of this. You haven’t broken any laws yet—at least that they can prove. I might still be forcing you to go with me. When we get to Seattle you can step off the train and go back to being Zoe McDonald, while I go on to Canada. Once we’re separated, there won’t be any point in chasing you anymore.”