Runner (29 page)

"Like in the movies."

"Not like the movies. This is real. Don't be careless. The address on that paper has been more precious to some people than anything in any bank. If anything happens to her, a door will close, and nobody will ever be able to go through again."

"I'll be careful. I promise."

"I'm going to drive you to the L.A. airport, just in case he's noticed you're gone and he's watching the San Diego airport. Fly to Buffalo, New York, tonight, and take a cab. If she's not there, wait for her."

"What if she doesn't come?"

"Then try going to Buffalo General Hospital and asking for her. There are people there who know her."

"What does she look like?"

"Tall and thin, with black hair. She wore it long when I last saw her. She has dark skin, and eyes that look as though she can see through you. They're the part that might help. They're blue—bright, clear blue, like water is supposed to look but doesn't. And that reminds me. Don't ever lie to her, not even an innocent
little lie."

As Christine thought about that night, she missed Sharon even more than before. Now that she'd had the experience that Sharon had prepared her for, she wanted to tell her about it. She wanted to thank Sharon for taking the risk of telling her she was living under a name she'd only had for ten years. Now that Christine had become Linda Welles, she knew what an extravagant gift that information was. But there was one extra question that hadn't existed for Christine before. She wanted to know why Sharon, the person in her life who always seemed to be in complete control, had ever needed the kind of help that Jane Whitefield offered.

There had been hints that night, but Christine wanted the whole story. Now it was important to Christine to know. Maybe Sharon Curtis was somebody Jane had invented because she wasn't much like the young girl whose life was in danger, and the young girl had worked and studied until she had grown into being Sharon. Christine hoped so. Sharon had a stronger sense of who she was and how that person was supposed to behave than anyone else Christine had met. Was that something Sharon started with, or something she had been able to earn? After ten years, was her identity a disguise, or was it the person she had grown to be?

Christine was up off the couch and pacing, ranging the room the way Sharon did when she was running a science lab. Without really thinking about it, Christine went to the telephone and picked it up. The loud dial tone startled her. She had half-expected the phone to be dead, because nobody had ever called her. The message from Jane about her father was the only call she'd had since she'd bought the phone, and she had missed even that one. All she had heard was the voice mail Jane had recorded.

As Christine stared at the telephone, the dial tone seemed to get even louder and more insistent. She dialed Sharon's number and waited. It was ten here in Minnesota, so it was only eight in San Diego, a perfect time to call on a weeknight, when Sharon probably hadn't gone out.

"Hello?" It was Sharon's voice, sounding a bit tired from a day of teaching, and yet, there was something else. It was something Christine had never been sensitive enough to hear before. The tone was guarded, as though some small part of Sharon was prepared for a voice from the distant past.

"Hi, Sharon. It's me, Christine."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," she said. "I found the woman you told me about, and she moved me to—"

"Don't!" she interrupted. Then she said more gently, "Don't say where."

"To a safe place. I was just going to say it was a safe place. Don't worry," said Christine. "I'm not stupid."

"You're okay, though?" Sharon asked. "You're healthy? You're getting enough to eat and everything?"

"I'm fine and the baby's fine. The doctor says everything's fine. That's one of the reasons why I called. I was sure you would be worried about me since I left, and I wanted you to know that things worked out. She set me up in a safe, dull place and told me how to get by without drawing much attention to myself. She says she'll be back in time for the baby, and then help me move again."

"I'm so glad," Sharon said. "Tell me something without saying anything specific that we'll regret. How is she? I haven't seen her in over ten years."

"She's just the way you said she was—like nobody I ever met before. To tell you the truth, while I was with her, I was a little bit afraid of her."

"Don't be. But take her seriously and do everything she says, to the letter. I'm really happy to know that you made it. You were right that I was afraid something would happen to you on the way. But—"

"A lot did happen, and if she hadn't been with me, I'd have been caught. Let me tell you—"

"Honey," said Sharon. "I'm sorry to interrupt you, but don't tell me what happened. In fact, this is a problem."

"What's a problem?"

"This call. Making phone calls to people you knew before you left. Didn't she say anything about that?"

"Well, sure. But she called me once, and I thought you'd want to know what happened to me."

"I did, and I do. But this is one of the small things that can get you into trouble. If someone is watching me, they'll now have your number and can get your location. If they've got the right equipment they're recording the call, and may be able to trace it. When you run, you have to give up some important, valuable things. One of them is talking to relatives and friends."

"You're telling me never to call you again?"

"I'm telling you not to do things she tells you are dangerous. She's taken you out of your old life and into a new one. That life will be hard to get used to, but sooner than you think, you'll be comfortable. Pretty soon you'll be too busy and preoccupied with being a mother to waste much time on anything else. I want you to know that I'll be thinking about you often, and I'll feel happy because I know you'll be happy—if not tonight, then in a few months. We'll still be just as close, even if we can't talk to each other. We're on the same side, and want the same things for each other. You've always been one of my favorite people, and that will never change. But look ahead now, not back."

"Oh, my God," said Christine, and she realized she was crying. "I'll miss you."

"And I'll miss you."

"We'd better get off now, huh?"

"Yes. If we don't talk very long it's harder for them. Good luck."

"Good luck to you."

They both hung up, and Christine lay back down on the couch. She cried for a long time, but then she awoke, still on the couch, and it was four
A.M.
For a few seconds, as she was making her way to her bed, undressing as she went, she wondered if the telephone call might have been a dream.

Christine drove past the FedEx Kinko's store a half dozen times every week on her way to buy groceries or rent movies or go to the pharmacy. She had not noticed it the first few times she passed it, but then one day she parked nearby and walked past. She saw the glass-enclosed room with its two rows of glowing computer screens. After that day, the computers lived in her memory, the nonsensical images of screen savers bouncing across their lighted screens.

A few weeks after she had spoken to Sharon she happened to be in the pharmacy waiting for her prescription prenatal vitamins. She shopped for things she didn't really need, like makeup and a new hairbrush, but she was thinking about the computers again. She missed the Internet. She had liked to start her day by going online. She would check the San Diego weather and traffic, read her e-mail, find out which movies had been released, soothe herself with some dumb celebrity gossip, and, if she had time and nobody was looking, read her horoscope.

When she had everything at the counter she paid in cash and went out the front entrance and walked along the sidewalk staring
in the windows of the stores. She had often window-shopped when she had still lived in San Diego, but now she looked in windows for other reasons. She was fascinated with her own reflection in the big plate-glass surfaces. Since she had been in Minneapolis she had begun to look really, unambiguously pregnant, and if she stayed a few feet away from the glass she could see herself from head to foot from the side, walking along.

The reflections also gave her a way to keep her face turned away from the people driving along the street or walking nearby and still see them. Today as she walked she thought about the computers again. Sharon Curtis had been really critical of her for calling her on the telephone, but a few weeks had passed, and nothing had happened. If somebody had been able to trace calls to Sharon or had a list of phone numbers for people who had called her, then Steve Demming and his friends would have been here long ago. And the Internet was even safer. It was almost completely anonymous.

She walked into the FedEx Kinko's store, past the rows of copying machines, and up to the counter. There was a boy there about her own age, and his name tag said he was Mark, a "coworker," which she guessed was probably about as low in the hierarchy as he could get. She said, "I'd like to use a computer. How do I do that? Do you rent them by the minute or something?"

Soon she was in a quiet, private corner staring at a screen, just as she had been doing since she was a little girl. It made her happy to feel the click of the mouse and hear the clatter of keys again as she typed in her screen name and password. She waited for her mailbox to open, then drew in a breath. There were 287 new messages for her. She glanced at the hour and minute on the lower-right side of her screen. This was going to take some time. Christine went down the list deleting the notifications of sales, the ads, the offers for things
she might have wanted a few months ago. Then she began to count the ones that had been sent from Richard's e-mail address.

There were two or three for each day since she'd left San Diego, and they all had subjects like "I miss you," or "Please write," or "Where did you go?" They all seemed to be different, and most of them had attachments.

Christine considered whether it was wise to open any e-mails from Richard. If he had been standing in front of her, she would never have listened to anything he wanted to say to her. But there was something safe and familiar about e-mail. He couldn't reach out and grab her through the screen. If she read his e-mails, he wouldn't know where she was. All he could ever know was that they had been received by a server at some building that belonged to the Internet provider's company, and that could be anywhere in the world.

Her hand shook a little as she clicked on the first of the e-mails from Richard. The screen said, "Do you know who sent you this e-mail?" Then there was the usual lengthy warning that began, "You are about to display an e-mail containing a picture or file attachment. If you don't know who sent you this e-mail..." At the bottom it said, "Do you wish to view this e-mail? Yes/No." She chose
Yes
and watched the blue line fill up the download box.

There was a picture of Richard, and when he moved she gave a little gasp. It was a video. He was standing in his office at work, in front of his computer. He must have plugged in a Webcam. He said, "Hi, Chris. It's me all right. I know this isn't something you would think I'd do. I just figured that maybe if you could see me face-to-face again and hear my voice whenever you wanted, you might remember how happy we were when we were together. I know things must have gotten too intense for you, and you just have to get away
for a while. I can understand that, and I don't blame you. But while you're away, I hope you know that I'll be thinking about you every day and every night." She moved the cursor to the red box in the upper-right corner and clicked the white X to close the e-mail. Then she opened the next one.

This time he had put the Webcam on the computer in the bedroom at home, and he was sitting at the desk in one of the T-shirts she had bought him to sleep in a month before she left. It was the blue one, and she tried to remember whether she had ever told him that was the color that looked best on him. Part of her hoped that she had, and he had been listening to her and remembered, then chose it to please her. But why did she hope that? She detested him.

He said, "Hi, Chris. I hope it's you who's watching this, but of course I have no way of knowing. I'm sorry if that sounds kind of gloomy. I'm just tired and depressed tonight, I guess. Since you've been gone I've tried to keep myself busy working as much as I can." He gave a sad smile. "Because of that I've been making a hell of a lot of money, but that's not much of a consolation, because I don't have anybody to spend it on. The time when it really gets to me is always at night like this. I suppose it's partly because I'm tired at the end of these frantic, crazy days. Night is the first time when I can't keep moving and talking to people and staying occupied. I'm alone here in the empty house, and I can't avoid thinking about you and about every stupid thing I ever did or said in front of you. I keep going over and over everything and telling myself what I should have done instead." He stared at the camera with the dark, injured gaze he had often used on her. "I apologize, Chris. No excuses. I'm sorry for all of it. I'm not sure what day it was when you decided I couldn't be salvaged, but I know you must have been thinking about leaving for a long time before you did. I just wish that during that period
when you were planning and arranging to leave, I had said or done something good that made you change your mind. Well, I've probably said more than you want to hear already. I love you, and I still will tomorrow. Close your eyes." It was what he used to say just before they went to sleep when they were together and he wasn't angry at her. He reached toward the camera and the video ended.

She looked at her reflection in the dark screen, and she could see her puffy, sad face with tears glistening on her cheeks. She told herself it was just the familiarity that she was missing so badly. That was all. She was alone in a strange city where the trees looked big and leafy and threw shadows that made everything seem dark. The houses were tall and close together and old, and the streets were too narrow. The people looked and sounded different, and the air always seemed thick with moisture so it was almost hard to breathe. Anything that was familiar seemed inviting to her now.