There were a lot of things I could have said to try and help her through it, to try to make her feel better, but I didn't say any of them. I just took her in my arms and I held her, and she let me do it.
I certainly didn't tell her that what she'd told me didn't change anything I'd said.
Had the positions been reversed, I would have done exactly the same thing.
Including cutting strips off a man to make him scream.
CHAPTER
We were on I-84 heading east by ten the next morning, Alena driving the Subaru Outback she'd bought off a used-car lot the previous evening. The Outback was five years old, dark green, ran fine, and smelled faintly of cat's urine, which explained why she'd gotten it for a steal. She'd bought it on the same ID we'd used to get from Portland to Whitefish, the same ID we used to settle up before checking out of the Grove. Before leaving Boise, we'd destroyed each of our sets. For the trip cross-country, we'd use the St. Louis ones that Sargenti had provided. Once in Wilmington, we'd switch to the Canadian, since that had been the name Sargenti had used for the reservations we'd requested.
Aside from the smell, the drive went just fine, and we didn't push it, because neither of us saw an immediate need to. We were driving cross-country on a long shot, and neither of us had much hope that it would play out. Driving gave us both time to think, to try to come up with a better plan. I'm sure that's what Alena did, at least; mostly, I tried to sleep and convince my body to speed along in its recovery. It was late afternoon when we reached Lynch, Wyoming, and that seemed a fine time to call it a day. There was a Best Western not far from the Interstate, called the Outlaw Inn, and that was too good to pass up, so we pulled into the lot and parked. It was typical Best Western, long and two-storied. A minimall was across the street, replete with dry cleaner, video rental, and convenience store. It was cold, the air dry and sharp, and a crust of ice had filmed over everything, including the snow.
I was getting very tired of snow.
We pulled our bags from the car, anxious to get fresh air in our lungs and more importantly, our nostrils, then picked our way carefully across the lot to the office. The bags weren't holding much-Alena's laptop, the new clothes she'd bought for us after acquiring the car, toiletries, vitamins, and the spare IDs. Each of us had a gun, taken from the bodies we'd left outside the cabin in Montana. The contractors had all carried extra clips, so between us we had somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty rounds if we encountered anything that required that much dissuasion.
The office had a cowboy motif going, from the wood carving of a bucking bronco to the laminated lariat that hung on the wall beside the front desk. There was a coffeemaker with complimentary coffee, stained with the dregs it had spilled over the years, and a couch that wasn't leather but wanted to be. Behind the counter was a display of travel-sized amenities-aspirin, toothpaste, shampoo, everything you might need if you'd forgotten to pack before meeting your mistress. A television hung nearby on the wall, burbling news softly, but instead of aiming out so the guests could enjoy it, it had been turned the other way, to service the management.
The management, such as we could see, consisted of an over-weight man who could have been anywhere from early twenties to late thirties. He watched us come through the door with an absolute lack of interest, perhaps even the hope that we would change our minds at the last minute and maybe try to find another place to rest our heads. His interest perked up a bit when we actually made it inside and he saw Alena, but then diminished when he realized that, yes, I was probably sleeping with her.
We took a room on the second floor, settled our things and ourselves, and then talked about what we would do for dinner.
"Wyoming," I said. "Beef."
"There must be another choice."
"You want to try the fish they're serving in Lynch, be my guest," I said. "I'm thinking there's got to be someplace with a salad bar."
"Salad bars are worse." She looked honestly horrified. "They're breeding grounds for bacteria and disease."
I looked at the clock by the bed, digital and frail. If it was to be believed, it wasn't yet five. "I'll see if I can find a grocery store," I told her, and headed back down to the office.
The same man was behind the counter when I came in, speaking on the phone, but as soon as he saw me he cut off whatever it was he was saying and hung up. He hung up hard, the handset clattering into the base.
"There a grocery store nearby?" I asked.
"There's the Get N Go," he said, then pointed past me, out the windows and to the lot across the street. "That's nearby."
I followed the direction of his finger, nodded, then looked back at him.
"Yes," I agreed. "It is, though it's not really what I had in mind. I was hoping for something with a wider selection."
"There's Boschetto's, down Elk a ways. Imported stuff, if you like that kind of thing."
I wasn't sure what he meant by that, but it seemed that he meant something.
"And there's a Smith's, out on Foothill, but you probably don't want to go that far," he added.
"Thanks," I said, and walked out of the office, making sure to clear his line of sight through the windows. I looked up at the sky, the darkening gray, and began counting off slowly in my head.
When I reached thirty, I turned and went back into the office.
This time, the handset was back in its cradle before I was through the door.
"What time's checkout again?" I asked.
"Eleven," he said. "It's eleven."
"Right, thanks," I said, and left the office a last time, climbing the stairs back up to our room. I knocked on the door before using my key to enter, found that Alena had moved the furniture around, and was now in the corner by the closet, doing yoga.
"I think we've got a problem," I told her.
She was in an abdominal stretch, her back arched and her head on the floor, her feet folded back beneath her buttocks, looking at me upside down. "What kind of problem?"
"I'm not sure yet," I said. There was a remote control for the television on the bed stand, and I picked it up, switching on the set that was bolted to the bureau at the foot of the bed. It came on with genuine reluctance. I began searching for a cable news channel.
Alena exhaled, then flipped out of her position, to her feet, and I thought that was maybe just maybe showing off for my benefit. I found a twenty-four-hour news channel as she came to my side.
"What happened?" she asked.
I started to answer, then stopped myself, staring at the television. On the screen was footage of the cabin in Montana or, at least, what the cabin in Montana looked like when graced with daylight. There were police and state troopers and men wearing parkas that had letters like "DHS" and "FBI" stenciled on their backs. There were crime-scene people taking photographs, and more people moving body bags.
Then the picture cut to a talking head behind his desk, and he said the words, "terrorist cell" and then, on the screen, appeared two pictures, side by side.
The same two pictures Bowles had shown me in his Interpol file four nights before, the file photos of Alena and myself.
"…considered armed and extremely dangerous," the talking head was saying. "It is unknown, at this time, if they still have any quantity of ricin in their possession…"
"Oh," said Alena softly. "That kind of trouble."
CHAPTER
There were sirens, and they were most definitely headed our way.
Alena and I looked at each other, thinking the same things. Running was out of the question; every cop, sheriff's deputy, and reserve officer in a hundred square miles was currently converging on our position. Getting onto the open road would lead to a high-speed pursuit, and that was a game we would lose. Once on the Interstate, there was only one direction we could go, and that was whatever direction we started in. Too easy to drop spikes on the asphalt, to roadblock us, to force us to a stop. Factor in the weather, that with night falling the roads would be that much more treacherous, and it just wasn't an option. If we were going to die, I didn't want it to be because we'd lost control of our car on a patch of black ice.