A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(43)

She smiled. “Great. You’re getting it already. Being a successful runner isn’t about pretending to be somebody. It’s about really becoming somebody. You don’t assume an identity because it hides your real identity. The new person becomes your only identity, and you live the life of that person.”

“Interesting,” he said. “But right now I’m not at that stage yet.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s do an exercise that could help in your present situation. You ought to start thinking about possible problems.”

“Like what?”

“Suppose I’ve gone back to my house in Amherst to get something. You’re still here at this hotel in Cleveland. Think about what you do if everything suddenly goes wrong. You hear and feel heavy male footsteps coming up the hallway. There’s a loud knock on the door. You know that there’s no reason why five men would come to your door unless they were after you. What are your plans? Do you plan to fight, or run? If you run, what do you have time to take with you, and where are you heading? When you get there, who will you be? The same person you’ve always been, or a new person? What’s his name?”

“I haven’t thought about any of that.”

“That’s what we’re doing now. There’s the knock. What do you do?”

“Go out the window, I guess.”

“We’re on the second floor, about thirty feet from the ground. If you jump, you’ll probably break a leg. Want to go back in time and do something first?”

“I’d like to have a rope, a nylon rope hidden close to the window, so I could just go out the window and down.”

“Good idea. Let’s think about the rope some more. How long does it take to tie a knot?”

“I could tie a slip knot ahead of time and just loop it over something solid like the bed frame, and then go.”

“Fine. Once you’re out and on the ground, what next?”

“I check to see if there are police cars near my car, or blocking the exit from the parking lot.”

“Smart. This time it’s clear. Somebody recognized you and called the police, so the police don’t even know you have a car. Did you remember to bring the key?”

“I sure hope so.”

“Let’s assume you did. You drive off. Do you have some cash? Do you have a name or anything memorized that you could say to anyone who asks who you are?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Exactly,” Jane said. “Think about all of the things you’d like to have with you if you went out that window. We can collect them. But where would you put them?”

“What do you think?” he asked.

“What we’re talking about is a bug out kit. If you were a woman, I would tell you to put together a kit in a purse that you use for nothing else. For a man, the best thing is not to have a briefcase or backpack or anything. Instead, you want to look as though you’re carrying nothing. There are sports jackets designed for travel. They’re lightweight and have five or six hidden zippered pockets to foil a pickpocket. You buy one, not too snug. In the hidden pockets you put cash, some form of identification you can use if you have to lie to someone, a duplicate car key, and whatever else would be useful. Then you hang the coat in the closet, always in the same spot, where you can reach it in the dark if you’re sleepy, distracted, or looking in the other direction. Practice finding and putting it on a hundred times or so. Keep thinking about ways to improve or update it.”

“And that’s all I take when I go?”

Jane nodded. “It’s a way. There are other ways. Some people have a second kit in another location so they just have to get out and go to it. You might even want one in another town.”

“Do you do this?”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you.”

“You told me that for years you made people disappear. There must be a lot more people after you than there are after me.”

She hesitated. “Yes. I do things like this. I was at it for years. It wasn’t very long before what I worried about wasn’t just that the police would arrest me for carrying false identification or something. There were people who would do anything to catch me alive and make me tell them where runners had gone and what their new names were. There were others who would be satisfied to just kill me on sight. Many of those people are still out there, so I’ve had to keep making arrangements and contingency plans.”

“What about your husband?”

“I make arrangements for him too.”

“I mean he’s all established, and he’s a doctor and everything. After all those years of work, would he just run off with you and live in hiding like this forever?”

Jane looked at Jimmy, feeling stung, and thought about how disastrous it would be if she allowed her anger to fill the air between them. She took a couple of deep breaths, then said, “If the danger were only to me, I wouldn’t ask him to run. I would just go, and hope we could get back in touch later. I believe in preparing for the worst, and what I consider the worst is something that would hit him, too.”

“But would he go with you, and give up the life he built?”

“That would be up to him.”

“You’re ducking my question.”