I’m the one who called Duncan. I’m the one who directed him over the bridge into New Jersey, then down that side street. Yes, it’s safe to assume we were being tracked from the beginning. If the cops hadn’t approached us then, they would have approached us at some point-and if not the cops, then maybe one of those businessmen with the briefcases filled with lethal syringes.
Finally the silence drives me mad. It’s only been, what, ten or twenty minutes, but it feels like an hour.
“Where are we going?”
Eli doesn’t answer. He glances at me in the rearview mirror, only I realize a second later he’s looking past me, out through the rear window.
Impulsively I follow his gaze. There are a few cars back there, but nothing that gives me a chill. Certainly no sedans with stone-cold killers bent on tracking us down and killing us.
Turning back, I ask, “Well?”
Still he doesn’t answer. I can see Ashley looking at him, no doubt wondering the very same thing.
“I have to take a shit.”
This time Eli does look at me in the mirror. “Are you serious?”
Remembering then that I’m in the presence of a lady, I quickly backpedal. “Well, no. And apologies for sounding like a broken record, but where are we going? What’s going on?”
Eli stares at me for another moment in the mirror. It’s only for a moment, so it’s hard to tell what’s behind the stare-disappointment, boredom, indifference-but then he flicks it away and shakes his head.
“We’ll be there soon.”
“Where?”
But my father says nothing and just keeps driving.
• • •
We end up taking the Tappan Zee Bridge back into New York. Eli still doesn’t speak, but I can immediately sense a shift in his mood. His whole body goes tense. His fingers, already tight around the steering wheel, tighten even more. I’m not a specialist in subterfuge like he apparently is, but the meaning is clear enough.
So far it seems we haven’t been followed. True, we’ve mostly stayed on secondary roads, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t cameras everywhere. It’s strange-for most of your life you know cameras are ubiquitous (the mall, the bank, the grocery store, even major intersections) and you don’t give more than a passing thought to their existence. Then, when you understand bad people are using those cameras to track your every movement, you become more conscious to the fact that those cameras are everywhere. And they’re even more plentiful at a bridge like the Tappan Zee.
Traffic isn’t too bad at this time of night. Mostly everyone is using the E-Z Pass lanes anyway. A few others, like us, wait for the cash lanes.
“Give me the hat.”
Eli doesn’t look at me but holds up his hand, extended toward the backseat.
Dumbly, I touch my head, confirming the fact I’m not wearing a hat. “What hat?”
“The hat on the floor.”
Ah, there it is-a New York Giants baseball cap. I hand it to him and he fastens it on his head and pulls the car ahead as the line progresses. Soon we reach the tollbooth.
We get lucky. The employee manning the booth is a younger guy, about my age, who looks like he doesn’t give a shit. He’s probably worked for a couple of hours straight and just wants to go home. Or maybe he just started his shift and can’t wait for it to end. Either way, he barely even glances at us when he takes Eli’s money.
So yeah, we’re lucky in that respect. But that doesn’t mean the people hunting us aren’t watching us right now from the cameras situated around the tollbooths. That doesn’t mean they’re not already waiting on the other side of the bridge. That doesn’t mean-and here my thinking goes complete Hollywood-they don’t have an Apache helicopter waiting under the bridge to rise up as we reach the middle and blast us into a million little pieces.
Eli moves us forward. He keeps the hat on his head. He doesn’t speak. None of us do.
I lean back and stare out my window at the moon rising behind the clouds.
• • •
About five miles after the bridge, Eli turns off at a truck stop. He drives to the far corner where a few cars are parked. He stops the car beside an old Buick. Without a word or even a glance our way, he cuts the ignition and opens his door and steps out.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “I guess that means we should get out, too?”
Ashley doesn’t answer me either. Seriously, it’s like I’m not even here. She opens her door and steps out. Not to be outdone, I open my own door and step out, too.
The night has certainly helped the temperature drop. Ashley crosses her arms and hugs her elbows. Eli is already at the back of the car, popping the trunk.
There are two black duffel bags in the trunk. He has one open, rummaging through it. Finally he pulls out a gold-plated lighter, very similar to the one the faux-businessman used to start the fire back at the Basement.
“You smoke?”
I shake my head.
He considers this for a moment, then hands me the lighter. “Do me a favor and just hold on to this for now.”
“Why?”
“It’s my lucky lighter. I want you to have it.”
It’s such a strange request, I’m not sure what to say. I can’t remember the last time my father gave me anything.
As I slip the lighter in my pocket, Eli moves toward the Buick beside us. He looks casually around the parking lot, then ducks down and reaches underneath the rear fender. A few seconds later he springs back up with a key, which he uses to pop the Buick’s trunk.
“Can you bring those over here?”
I heft first one bag, then the other, both of them weighing maybe fifty pounds each. “What do you got in these?”
“Supplies.”
“Like what?”
“Guns. Ammunition. Explosives.”
I pause halfway to the Buick, the two bags all at once feeling like they weigh twenty times more. “You’re kidding, right?”
He doesn’t answer. His face doesn’t betray a thing.
I glance back at Ashley, who’s watching us intently, then take a few slow, hesitant steps toward the Buick and hand one of the duffel bags to Eli.
He sets it in the trunk, carefully, then takes the second bag and does the same.
He pulls a license plate from the corner of the trunk, along with a screwdriver. After doing another one of his causal visual sweeps of the parking lot-empty cars, empty pickup trucks, empty tractor-trailers-he bends down and starts unscrewing the current New Hampshire plate and replaces it with one from Connecticut.
When he finishes and sets the screwdriver and old plate in the trunk, I say, “You really came prepared.”
He shuts the trunk and turns to me, his eyes dark and hooded. “I should hope so. I’ve been planning for this day for the last thirty years.”
thirty-three
They kept driving north. They took the parkway up toward Albany, then headed east into the Green Mountain National Forest.
Ashley rode shotgun again, Melissa’s father driving, Melissa’s brother in the backseat. None of them spoke. At first John tried asking again what was going on, and again Eli refused to say more than a few words. Finally he promised he would soon explain everything.
“When?” John asked.
“After we pick her up,” Eli said. Then, more to himself than to John or Ashley: “Assuming she managed to get away.”
He, of course, did not specify who “she” was, though at this point Ashley didn’t expect him to. She had become numb to the entire thing. Like she was no longer living inside her body. Everything that was happening-all the events of the day and all that was happening now-she saw from outside of her body, outside of the car, like her spirit or soul or whatever it was that contained her true essence had slipped through her skin and was just hanging out beyond her window. It was there, somehow impervious to the strong wind as the Buick sped forward at sixty miles per hour, just hanging out there and watching her as she sat quietly in the passenger seat, watching the excess of businesses and houses start to fade away into more and more trees as they entered the forest.