A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(46)

She started the car and backed out of the space, then headed toward the exit from the parking lot. “If they’re going to take us, it will be in the next few seconds, before we hit the street.” She drove at a moderate, unhurried speed to the exit, signaled, looked both ways, and pulled out into the traffic on the highway. She matched her speed to the other cars, and eased the Malibu into the stream of cars in the left lane. For a few seconds, she kept glancing at the side mirrors for any sign that they were being followed. Then she turned to Jimmy. “How’s your mom?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “Somebody traced the call?”

“I’m not absolutely positive what happened,” she said. “I would have liked a chance to get a better look at what the men I saw in the lobby were doing, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to stick around. They looked like plainclothes police officers of some kind. I saw the guns but not the badges, so I can’t swear to that. They were with the desk clerk looking at the guest list on his computer. What I’m hoping is that they’ll go through it all, not figure out that you were staying in a room registered in a woman’s name, and move on to the next hotel. When you called your mother you were in the hotel?”

“Yes,” he said. “Jane, I’m really sorry. I thought that if I was using a throwaway phone, nobody could trace it to me.”

“That’s right,” she said. “But if they were monitoring your mother’s calls, they would know she got a call from a number that was pinging off a particular tower outside Cleveland. That’s what they wait for.”

“I can’t believe I was too stupid to think of that,” said Jimmy. “I’m ashamed of myself for putting you in danger along with me.”

“I don’t want to go on and on about this,” Jane said. “But you’ve got to listen to whatever I tell you and take it seriously. I’m willing to take some of the blame for this, because I didn’t explain why we can’t call home, just told you not to. And if we’re in trouble, then the person who will suffer most for it isn’t me.”

“I’m so sorry. I just thought—”

She interrupted. “It was a mistake. But this is a special situation, where we can’t make mistakes. None. I know my way, and you don’t, so pay attention—all the time.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Jane drove on in silence, checking the side mirrors frequently in case she’d missed something earlier. There were still no cars staying too long back there, but she knew she had to take more precautions to be sure. “Take the battery out of your phone and toss it out the window. Then the phone.”

Jimmy took the battery out, dropped it on the road, and then the cell phone.

When she reached a small plaza she pulled over and said, “You drive for a while.” When they had changed places, she said, “Go up there to the right and get on the eastbound ramp for the interstate.”

Jimmy put the car in gear and drove. As Jimmy pulled onto the interstate ramp, Jane leaned back in her seat and let her muscles relax.

Jimmy had been watching her. “What’s the plan?”

She said, “If anybody was tracking your phone’s GPS, they’ll go where the last pings were going.”

“Is that why we’re going east?”

“Partly.”

“What are the other reasons?”

“One is that we’ve already come west, so if someone is following at a distance, or has just decided to, he’ll assume we’re still going in the same direction, because that’s what people do. I’ve also found over the years that people who run away tend to favor places to the south and west, where it’s warm, a little bit exotic, and living isn’t hard work. Hardly anybody wants to go where it’s cold in the winter. Right now I’m taking every choice that makes finding us less likely, even if it’s only a tiny bit less likely. Advantages add up.”

“That sounds smart.”

Jane sat in silence. She decided that her inability to get through to him must have been caused by the lifelong relationship between them. When they were children they had been equals. Or maybe the advantage had been a bit on Jimmy’s side. They had been comfortable playing together, partly because she was a girl who didn’t like sitting still. She was physical and energetic, and that helped Jimmy accept her. She liked to run and climb and explore. Jimmy was handsome, strong, and athletic, and Jane—if she remembered it right—had been tall and bony and unattractive. The first time anyone had said she was beautiful was in college, and she’d thought they were being sarcastic.

Now, over twenty years later, Jimmy was about the same, but Jane was different. He seemed to be having trouble accepting the fact that she knew so much that he didn’t. If he wasn’t going to take what she said seriously, they were both in trouble.

If he had been a stranger, a person who needed her help and came to her to ask for it, she would have spoken harshly when he’d ignored her orders. She might even have picked up her backpack, said, “This is as far as I go. You’re on your own,” and left. She would never be able to do that to Jimmy, but that wasn’t the problem. Maybe the problem was that he knew it. She looked at Jimmy. “Just keep driving east. When you get tired, wake me up and I’ll take over.” She leaned back, closed her eyes, and waited for the gentle rocking and the quiet hiss of the tires on the road to put her to sleep.