“Let’s say I call it. What happens then?”
Shore shrugged. “Marshals will swoop down, and you and your family will be whisked away to safety again.”
“What... to start over? New names and...?”
Shore’s nod was somber. “Yes, Michael. You may have to relocate several times. We hope that won’t be the case, and we haven’t broached the subject with your family... But it may happen.”
“Christ.”
“But know this: we’ve never lost a witness or a family member in WITSEC. Never.” The awful smile formed. “We wouldn’t be in business long if we did.”
Michael was shaking his head, a sick feeling in his belly. “I’d feel better if you were using FBI, not these damn marshals.”
Marshal Don Hughes was not in the room with them; he was in the bedroom next door, but did not sit in on the conversations between Shore and Michael.
The WITSEC director’s face dropped in disappointment; he almost looked wounded. “Michael, they’re good people!”
“Harry — you and I both know that these marshals are the bottom of the Justice Department barrel. Just because you’re sending us to Arizona, don’t go thinking this is my first time at the rodeo.”
“Our marshals have—”
“No standards for employment — they’re former city cops or sheriff department deputies with enough political clout to land themselves a federal plum... Am I lying, Harry? Or exaggerating?”
Shore’s normal shit-eating grin was nowhere to be seen. “No. No, Michael, you’re not. But I handpick these men, from what’s available.”
“From what’s available.”
“I go over their records, thoroughly. We have the best of—”
“A bad crop? Harry, just know this: if you can’t protect my family, I will.”
Shore leaned forward. “I can protect them, Michael. I can protect you and them.”
“Okay, then.” He smiled just a little and locked eyes with the fed. “I’ll do my end of the deal. You better do yours.”
Breathing deep, Shore reared back. “You know, Michael... with all we’re doing for you? I don’t think threats are called for.”
“With all I’m doing for you, Harry? I do.”
So only a little over two weeks after their midnight exodus from Crystal Bay, the Michael Smith family walked into a living room set up remarkably like their previous one had been. Even the layout of the house was similar, right down to a patio off the kitchen with a pool.
Anna had taken time out between bitch sessions to take her father by the arm and, in a little-girl voice, say, “Daddy, it’s weird — it’s so weird. I feel like a ghost, haunting my own house.”
He slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Annie, it is odd — no getting around that. But maybe it’ll help us, you know... get back in the swing.”
She said nothing, but hugged him and went off to her room — one of the few moments with Anna in this house that he would treasure.
Michael knew how hard it was for her — missing the last two months of her senior year, taken away from her friends, her boyfriend, no Sound of Music, no prom that she would have been queen of. For a girl her age, could anything be worse?
She wouldn’t even be valedictorian of her class. The transcripts from St. Paul that would eventually go to the University of Arizona would have a 3.7, so Anna would have a strong academic record without attracting the attention such an honor would bring. Strangest of all, she wouldn’t really finish high school — it was too late in the year to transfer to anywhere in Tucson, so WITSEC would cook up a diploma for the girl from Minnesota, saying she’d graduated early in anticipation of the Arizona move.
All of this served to put Anna in limbo, not to mention a deep sulky funk.
In addition to homesickness for her boyfriend and the life she’d had to run out on, Anna was annoyed that she was a “prisoner in her own home.”
She had made this clear to Michael when he took her for an afternoon drive in the Lincoln around the university campus, an oasis of learning in a residential section between Speedway and East Sixth. Wearing a yellow tube top and cut-off jeans, her long dark hair in a braided ponytail, Anna would fit in fine with the kids on this endless acreage — she already had a dark Indian tan, and they’d only been here a week.
As father and daughter wound through immaculately landscaped drives, rambling red-brick buildings nestling among sunshine-dappled trees and shrubs, he extolled the virtues of the school, with its great programs in the arts; she’d have every opportunity here to pursue her music and acting...
“I feel like goddamn Gilligan,” Anna said suddenly, slumped against the rider’s side window.
“Who?”
“Gilligan! Stranded on his island with the Skipper and a bunch of other idiots?... Daddy, here I am eighteen, and you’re driving me around like I’m a little kid.”
“Honey, you know I intend to buy you your own car, in the fall, when you start college...”
The dark eyes flared. “If I behave myself, you mean!”
“I didn’t make any conditions... That’s the auditorium over there — largest in the Southwest. You’ll be on that stage, before you know it.”
“I’d rather be on the first stage out of this hick town.”
“Annie...”
She cast an outrageously arch expression his way. “And why, pray tell, will I need a car?”
“Well, Annie... because Tucson sprawls all over the place. You’ll have to be able to get around.”
“If I was living in one of the dorms, I could get by without a car. But you don’t want me living in a dorm, do you, Daddy? Like any other real college student! You want me at home... under your thumb.”
He pulled over in front of a three-story red-brick building, the library, leaving the car and its air-conditioning going. He looked at her hard and yet lovingly, though her gaze flicked from him to this and to that, her half-smirk digging a dimple in one pretty cheek.
“I’m not trying to smother you, sweetheart. You know this is no game — we’re in danger, all of us. I have to make sure we’re safe.”
“Will we ever be safe?”
Not really, he thought, but he said, “I think so. But let’s just... settle in, okay? And make a new life for ourselves?”
She grunted something that wasn’t exactly a laugh. “What, I’m supposed to make a new life for myself in my bedroom? You make me leave everything behind but you won’t let me replace it with anything!”
“It’s early, Annie... Day at a time, okay?”
“Easy for you — you’ve got a job, a really real new life! I’m just at home with Mom, who these days has about as much interest in life as one of these cactuses or cacti or whatever the fuck!”
He sighed. “Your mother will adjust.”
“You really think so? She’s just this, this zombie Donna Reed, anymore.”
“She’ll adjust. And so will you. You’re already making friends, right?”
“Yes, and if it wasn’t for Cindy living across the street, I’d be insane by now!”
“And I haven’t stopped you from going out with Cindy and her friends, right?”
She swallowed and granted him a look that acknowledged him as a human being. “No. I appreciate that. I do. And it’s fun out here, sort of.”
“You liked the horseback riding, right? You said that riding trail was really beautiful...”