5. They were watching us—and not being obvious about it. We’d been on the lookout since Iowa City, often on deserted back roads, and hadn’t seen anything.
6. It seemed likely they could track me from a distance. Maybe a tracer implanted when I had surgery in Germany.
7. They were serious enough to kill a federal agent. They used a rifle like mine, possibly. Setup or coincidence? An unrelated murder? Sure, there are snipers everywhere.
But it all pointed back to the big question: Why me? There were probably a hundred thousand people who could shoot a rifle as well as I can. A small fraction of them would probably shoot a stranger just for the thrill, or for the hell of it, let alone for a roll of G-notes. (Thriller writers sometimes assumed there were people on the government payroll who would do this sort of thing, but I always doubted they could keep it secret. A civil servant whose morals allowed him to murder on assignment could also be bought by a tell-all journalist.)
When Kit got up she read over the list. “Number 6, the implant. I guess we’ll find out about that. If they show up now, they must be physically tracking you.”
I thought for a second, and agreed. “In a city, even New Orleans, we’d be on security cameras enough for them to follow us by face recognition software. They caught those spies that way in Chicago.” It had been fodder for a lot of Big Brother Is Watching You editorializing. The Ramirez couple had even had cosmetic surgery, but it didn’t fool the software. They should’ve left the city instead.
Florida would be safe from that. Their courts had followed North Dakota’s lead, and declared the ubiquitous camera network an unreasonable invasion of privacy.
“But New Orleans is still bothering me,” I said. “Suppose that is why the cops picked me up—computer sorting of routine security images. That’s not the real mystery—I mean, hell, we were on the run. Using false identities, working for cash. They might have picked me up on general principles.”
She nodded. “And so?”
“So the real mystery is not why they picked me up, but why they let me go! The cops talked to someone back at the station, on the car radio, and immediately pulled over and uncuffed me and let me go. What did someone, headquarters, say to them?”
“Maybe that what they were doing was illegal. They can’t just grab someone off the street.”
“Yeah, but they can, if you’re a criminal. They definitely were sent to pick me up, or us. I didn’t think fast enough. I should’ve asked to see a warrant or something.”
“They’d just invoke Homeland Security.”
“But how could they? Homeland Security didn’t know where we were! I hadn’t talked to the DHS woman for two minutes before the god-damned cops showed up!” Though maybe two minutes would be enough, if we were on the right list.
She got up and split the remaining coffee between us. “Maybe it was somebody else in the DHS. They’re not just one woman with a phone up in Illinois.”
“Yeah, and it may not have been Homeland Security business at all. Maybe the guy who sold me the gun ratted on me.”
“Yeah,” she said, glowering theatrically. “Ya shoulda plugged the sumbitch.”
“Next time, Muggsy.” We both laughed.
4.
We dozed till noon and then picked up a cheap cell at a convenience store next to the motel, just to make two calls. Didn’t want our families to worry enough to call the authorities—all we needed was state troopers from Iowa to Mississippi sharing their databases, looking for us as missing persons.
From researching my first novel I knew how to engage a proxy cell host, to make it look like we were calling from New Orleans. It wouldn’t fool a government agency—or the Enemy, presumably—but it would cover our tracks on the domestic front.
Dad wasn’t home, so I left a message saying Kit and I were leaving the New Orleans heat on a road trip up to New England. Kit’s father answered and she improvised a little, saying that we’d probably visit an uncle up in Maine, verifying his address. Didn’t know when we’d get there; she’d be in touch.
I checked my e-mail one last time and there was a note from my agent saying hey, no big rush, but Duquest wants to know how the monster story is coming along.
“Let’s get into Mississippi,” I said. “Find a place in the middle of nowhere and stay for at least a day. I’ll write up another little chapter.”
“And maybe print it out?” she said.
“Yeah, if we find a place.” I was getting nervous, too, not having a paper copy. I did e-mail the manuscript to myself every couple of days, but the dime store computer’s word-processing program was Neolithic and had a small mind of its own. I eased the thing shut and for about the thousandth time regretted not spending a few bucks more, for a machine that could talk to a thumb drive or something.
I’d mailed a paper copy home when we first got to New Orleans, but I was at least thirty pages past that now, and had made changes in the earlier chapters as well.
“Should you call the Underwood woman or somebody?”
I wasn’t sure. “Maybe not. Let’s see what happens if we don’t make it easy for them. But maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
I opened the phone and contemplated it. “We’ve got nine thousand some dollars. Enough to go maybe nine months?”
“I think so,” she said, “living simply, under the grid. With no emergencies.”
“Still not enough. Let me call my agent, see if she can wire us another ten grand or so.”
She was with another client, but called back in a couple of minutes. I told her I was in a real jam, a legal problem I was advised not to tell anybody about.
“Ten grand?” she said. “Jack, if I had ten thousand dollars to spare it would go to the rent on this god-damn place. I’m way overextended.”
“It’s really serious.”
“Life or death?”
“I think it could get there.”
“Want me to try your movie guy, Ronald Duquest? He’s got millions, and I can pretend he owes me a favor.” I said sure.
Hooray for Hollywood. Duquest told her he’d consider it an additional advance against the movie rights—pretty generous, considering that ten grand was all he’d actually paid anyhow. He took a penny away for some IRS thing, and deposited $9,999.99 in my PayPal account.
I couldn’t exactly shake the computer until the cash came out, but it would stay there until we needed it. Once in Key West, I could use nested firewall proxies and retrieve at least 80 percent of it without leaving any trail.
Outside the motel room I gleefully stomped the cheap phone and bundled its mortal remains with our trash and tossed it in the parking lot dumpster. Pure paranoia. There was no way the Enemy could have put a tap on a random phone from a convenience store—but could our benevolent government? Every phone in every cheesy little store? Could the Enemy know everything the government did?
I could worry about it or I could get a new phone next week.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hunter slept for twenty hours and awoke around midnight, pale lunar light filtering through drapes. The warm trailer still had a stale smell of roasting meat. Sharp sweat tang.
He had a painful small erection, which he couldn’t see over the mound of his belly. He pulled on it until it emptied, and lay thinking, calculating.
There was enough meat in the freezer for about ten days of his normal diet. Two weeks if he stretched it, but he knew if he got too hungry he might do careless things.
The woman’s purse held enough money for months of food, five or six sides of beef. The idea of nonhuman meat turned his stomach now, but when he was hungry enough he would eat anything. Anything animal. The closest he could come to a vegetarian diet would be eating vegetarians.