You Can't Catch Me(30)

“It’s not our job to save her victims.”

“Our job? No. But our responsibility? I kind of think it is.”

A couple and their dog appear on the path. The dog is small and energetic, bounding happily on its leash.

I look at Jessie. She’s watching the dog, a bit fearful.

“I’m going to do this with or without you,” I say. “And I’m not going to stop until I find her, I can promise you that. But I’d rather have your help.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re in this together. You, me, the Jessica in Philly. We’re connected.”

“You sound like Shakespeare. The Saint Crispin’s Day speech. You know it?”

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . .”

“For he today that sheds his blood with me . . .”

“Shall be my brother,” we say together. “Be he ne’er so vile.”

The couple passes us, giving us a look like you might expect if you came upon two women randomly reciting Shakespeare in the woods.

I hold out my hand. “We in this together?”

She still looks unsure, but she reaches out her hand just the same.





Chapter 12

Waiting Room

Jessie agrees to drive us to Philly in her car, though I offer to rent a vehicle. Taking her car is better on the cash flow. Like a good Liam disciple, I have some money stashed away for emergencies that wasn’t in the account Jessica Two got to, but it’s not going to last forever.

I have a few minutes to look around Jessie’s place while she packs. There isn’t much personal about it. No family photographs. No photographs at all. The cupboards contain only the essentials, not even a complete set of plates. I have this feeling that if I look in her closet, I’d find three or four outfits and that would be it. As if she were living her life ready to pack up at any moment, nothing she’d regret to leave behind.

But have I been living my life any differently? Would someone who went through my room think I was there for the long haul? A whole benefit of living with jerky Josh and his former frat buddies is that it’s temporary and doesn’t require any investment or ties. I could pack up in an hour and owe them nothing.

“You checking up on me?” Jessie asks, startling me as I close the kitchen-cupboard door.

I glance over my shoulder, keeping my voice calm. “What? Oh no, I was looking for a glass for some water.”

“One cupboard over.”

“Thanks.” I go through the motions of getting a glass out, filling it from the tap, and drinking it down. I can sense Jessie’s eyes on me as I do so. I turn around. She hasn’t moved. There’s a small bag at her feet, and she’s scraped her hair back into a ponytail, revealing a distinctive widow’s peak.

“Should we bring some snacks?” I ask, trying to breach the tension.

She takes a beat. “Snacks?”

“You know, for the drive. It’s a long one. And I left my snack bag in Liam’s car, unfortunately.”

“About five hours and forty-nine minutes, according to Google, if we observe speed limits and take the toll roads,” she says, frowning as she speaks. I can tell that she’s questioning the choice she made at the gorge. I shouldn’t have let my curiosity loose. Whatever trust I’d built up on our walk has been drained away, like the water I just chugged down.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” I say.

“What’s that?”

“Looking around a bit. My curiosity got the better of me. When you work with Liam for too long, it kind of becomes part of your DNA.”

“Suspicion?”

“More like the need for information. Get all the information.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a Liamism. That’s what The Twists call these sayings he has.”

“That a musical group?”

“What? Oh, ha. No. There’s . . .” I should shut up. How can I explain us? “I mentioned before that Liam saved me from a bad situation? Well, I’m not the only one. There’s about a half dozen of us, and that’s what we call ourselves, after Oliver Twist. But he’s not like that Fagin guy. It’s an ironic name. Liam’s scrupulously honest.”

“That right?”

“Trust me.”

“Hmm.”

I put the glass down on the counter. “Hey, I know we just met, and you have no reason to believe anything I’m saying, but I’m trying to do something good here, I promise.”

“Don’t do that,” she says.

“What?”

“Forget it. Are we going or what?”

“You still want to?”

“I never wanted to, but I said I would, so let’s go and get this over with.”

We don’t get snacks. And we don’t talk much in the car either. Jessie hands me a map and tells me to navigate because she doesn’t believe in GPS, so I spend my time figuring out the map and give her updates now and then on our progress.

Familiar names flash by on the road as we retrace the drive Liam and I did the day before all the way back to Albany. We stay on I-87 rather than switching to the 95, and then we’re out of my known universe, driving by places I never paid any attention to on the map that was on the wall in the Gathering Place. My eyes used to be drawn to farther-away places—London, Paris, Budapest. I’ve never been to any of them. Instead, I ended up five hours away in New York. The trip I took to Mexico a few weeks ago was the first time I’d ever left the country, my newly minted passport still fresh, the pages stiff.