The Survivor (30 page)

The words flying. There was no time to discuss this and even less to decide. Jason was shuffling toward them, his hands still out as if catching rain.

“Mom,
please,
” Cielle said.

“Oh, for the love of Christ.” Janie cranked down her window. “Get in.”

The waterworks shut off immediately, and Jason hopped in, tossing his bag and guitar into the back. Grimacing, Nate took off, eyes rotating from wing mirror to rearview. Five blocks away. Ten. On the freeway now, exits sailing past.

He almost dared to breathe normally.

“So what went down back there?” Jason asked, one hand covering his eye. Silence. He glanced around. “O-
kay.
” He leaned forward, taking in Nate’s face. “You’re all bloody.”

Nate’s mouth was sour, laced with the bitterness of spent adrenaline. “Yes, Jason. I’m all bloody.”

“Dude, you can call me Jay already. Jason sounds like you’re all
angry.
” He blinked a few times, awaiting a response that Nate withheld. “Where we going anyway?”

“We,”
Nate said. “Great.” A big green freeway sign flew by overhead. He squeezed the steering wheel, the nerves of his fingers giving off a worrisome tingle. On the lam with a deteriorating medical condition. Hardly ideal. “We can’t use credit cards. Can’t make reservations. Can’t book flights. So just this second, Jason? I don’t know.”

“Huh.” Jason chewed his lip. He turned to Cielle. “Gimme your phone.”

She passed him her iPhone, and he clicked around. Nate watched in the mirror, irritated. Janie kept her thin arms crossed, doing her best to stop them from shaking. Cielle cried silently, tears slipping down her cheeks. The trauma catching up to them.

The gentle iPhone tapping continued, and finally Nate said, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Facebook, dude.”

“Do you really think this is the best time for—”

“I’m looking up my friends in the Los Angeles network. Well, it used to be a network, but now it’s listed as ‘current city.’ Lame.”

“Quiet would be good right now, Jason,” Nate said.

“Like this dude. Status update: ‘Can’t wait for two weeks in Maui.’ Then it links to his Twitter account for the real-time skinny. See? Cool. Here’s his latest tweet: ‘Rocking it with the Ps at the Grand Wailea.’ Ps stands for ‘parents.’”

“Yes. I figured.”

“Then there’s the location-map icon with the tweet. Here. Yup. Dude’s in Maui all right.”

“Fascinating, Jason. We just squeezed out of that house with our lives, and now you’re—”

“And I’ll scroll back a few tweets to find an old one. Like this. ‘Dear Funky Smell in my sock drawer. Please go away.’” He brayed a quick laugh. “Now I’ll click
this
location-map icon. And here.” He shoved the phone at Nate.

“What?”

“It’s a house in Silver Lake,” Jason said. “With no one home for the next nine days.”

Nate took the iPhone, glanced down at the screen. A neat little map. Janie looked across at the device, too, and then they looked at each other, and her eyes reshaped themselves with a touch of amusement, though they were still wet.

Cielle wiped her tears, leaned over, and kissed Jason on the cheek. He leaned back, crossing his arms, gangsta style. “
Boo-
yah!”

Janie, deadpan, her eyes still glassy: “He was kinda growing on me till the
boo-
yah.”

“I hope they have a hot tub,” Jason mused.

“I thought you said this was your friend,” Nate said.

“Don’t you know anything?” Jason snickered. “No one’s really friends on the Internet.”

*   *   *

They drove east in silence, Janie reading the electronic map and issuing directions in a flat, almost lifeless voice. Jason took Cielle’s hand, giving her knuckles a quick kiss, and Nate was surprised to feel not disapproval but a tremor of appreciation. His daughter had endured an edge-of-hell scare, and Shithead at least knew to offer a bit of comfort. Drinking in the silence, they tended their private worries, the thrum of the tires carrying them into the unknown.

Nate exited at Silver Lake. Home to hipsters, slackers, aspiring artists, indie musicians, and other redundancies, the hilly, tree-intensive neighborhood sits east of Hollywood and north of downtown. Nate navigated through a gauntlet of cafés, boutiques, coffee shops, Pilates studios, gay bookstores, and martini clubs, each crowded with a full rainbow of patrons. They drove past the famous flight of stairs where Laurel and Hardy had lugged that player piano up and ridden it down a time or twelve, and then they were winding up toward the reservoir and the address marked on Cielle’s iPhone by a virtual guitar pick.

The architecture varied, Spanish bungalows interspersed with sleek Neutra knockoffs and a few actual Neutras. They reached the house, a modern structure of glass and concrete, and Jason let out a whistle. Leaving the Jeep up the street, they zombie-shuffled back toward the front yard, bruised and bloody and hollowed out, dead on their feet. Circling like predators, they assessed the doors, windows, and gates for vulnerabilities.

In the side yard, Nate found an unlatched window letting into the laundry room and jiggled the pane up. No alarm. The smells of detergent and fabric softener wafted through the gap, a reminder of normal lives lived normally. Turning to call to the others, he found his voice missing. The circumstances had dawned, reality riding in on the household scents, rattling him into speechlessness. He swallowed hard, dried blood crackling at his hairline, and tried again.

Chapter 40

The sun broke the horizon, sending a plane of yellow through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Light crept across the great-room floor, claiming the Oriental rug, the paisley-shaped coffee table, Shithead Jason sleeping in a swirl of blankets, finally reaching the base of the couch, Nate’s bare toes, shins, knees. At last he was squinting into the glare rather than watching it stalk him. After a fitful few hours of sleep, he’d awakened as if jolted by a live wire, and sat silent watch as Jason snored at his feet and his wife and daughter slumbered in the bedroom up the hall. He’d left the house only once, creeping outside to swap the Jeep’s license plates with those from the Range Rover parked in the garage.

Now Jason stirred and rose, rubbing his black eye, his hair practically on end. Yawning, he regarded the furnishings. “Who knew MonkeyBiz12 came from serious dosh?”

Nate elected to interpret the question as rhetorical. He closed his eyes, breathed, tested his muscles. Left hand weak. Right hand tingly but functional. He raised his left foot and rotated it, as if stretching his ankle. It seemed to be back online, another morning semirecovery. Padding across the kitchen, he set down the Beretta on the counter, found a glass of water, and swallowed his pills. Antibiotics for the mostly healed stab wound in his shoulder. Riluzole to slow the ALS symptoms. Fat lot of good the latter were doing of late—not so much as a charitable placebo bump. If his condition worsened, it would be too risky for him to break cover and go to a doctor. He was over the crest already, the brake lines snipped; there wasn’t much he could do now but buckle up.

Cielle and Janie shuffled down the hall, hungover from stress. The four of them regarded one another, at a collective loss. Casper’s nails clacked against the floorboards next, a slight unevenness to the cadence as he favored one paw. Nate regarded him with empathy. Like father, like son. Given the fight in Cielle’s room, he considered what he owed this animal. Crouching, he scratched the dog’s underbelly, a hind leg springing into instinctive motion.

Janie spoke first. “Let’s get everyone cleaned up.”

They located towels and rotated through various showers, reconvening in the living room. With a nurse’s frank touch, Janie tended to the various injuries. A flashlight check of Jason’s eye for a corneal abrasion, then Advil for the swelling. Butterfly stitches from the Jeep’s first-aid kit for the gash at Nate’s hairline. She leaned over him, close, forehead furrowed with concentration, front teeth dimpling her puffy lower lip. The pinch of her fingers. Her soft breaths across his face. Those light freckles, stamping the bridge of her unimprovable nose.

Finally she leaned back. “That should do you till you run into the next Ukrainian.” Despite the joke he could see the dread in her eyes, hiding just beneath the surface.

“What now?” Jason asked, sounding an inappropriate note of adventuresomeness.

“I’m
starving,
” Cielle said.

Jason hugged her from the side. “You still freaked out?” he asked. “From last night?”

“If we get scared, the terrorists win,” Cielle said. She was joking in a Fox News sort of way, but also not. Nate couldn’t help but note the quaver in her voice.

“I checked the fridge already,” Janie said. “The cabinets. Looks like they cleared out most of the food before they left on vacation. Someone should go on a grocery run.”

“
I
will,” Jason said. Before Nate could protest, he held up his hand. “C’mon, man, no one’s looking for me, really. At least as much. Plus, I can go stealth. I took tae kwon do.” He put more into the pronunciation than seemed necessary.

“Yeah,” Cielle said. “A
yellow
belt.”

“With a green stripe!”

“Kids, en
ough.
” Janie peeled a few bills from her wallet. “Be careful. To the store and home, Bruce Lee. Don’t stop anywhere.”

“Except Nicky D’s,” Jason said.

“What’s Nicky D’s?” she asked wearily.

“What’s Nicky D’s?”
Jason clutched for air. “Only the best pizza
ever.
”

It struck Nate that Jason had the emotional maturity of Charles. Or vice versa. One frozen in time. The other painfully present. “I don’t know about this,” Nate said. “I think I should go.”

“With your head all Frankensteined up?” Jason said.

“He’s right, Dad,” Cielle said. “You should stay here.”

“Chillax, man. It’ll be cool.” Jason started for the door, then turned. “I’m a strict vegetarian,” he declared.

Janie now, through a tight smile: “Of course you are.”

“I’m just saying, I hope that’s cool. With the pizza, I mean.”

“Anything’s fine, Jason.”

“Jay,”
he pleaded. Then: “Can Cielle come with me?”

“No,”
Nate and Janie said at the same time.

“Okay, okay.” With a cheery shrug, he headed for the front door. “And by the way, Mrs. Overbay. Bruce Lee practiced Jeet Kune Do, not—”

“Back door, Jason,” Janie said.

He reversed course and headed out. Cielle thumped herself down on the couch, and a moment later a reality show blinked to life, strident women dripping with jewels and makeup, debating over Beverly Hills sushi restaurants. She called the dog over and hugged him, her savior, twirling his ears and baby-talking to him. His eyes closed in languid pleasure as he basked in her affection. He looked ridiculous, a dragon getting a pedicure.

Janie walked across to the wall of glass and stared out at the reservoir. Nate came up quietly beside her. With the midday heat wavering through, warming them, they watched the scene below, a painting come to life. The sun slanted down on the water, turning it to a sheet of hammered copper. Cyclists circled the path around the perimeter, blurring by beneath them. Couples strolled and held hands. Dogs strained on leashes. Life in motion, everyone oblivious to the troubles of the three people on the near side of the glass—the depleted, tentative family doing their private best. Knowing that the world continued on with its quotidian pleasures and challenges was an unexpected comfort.

Nate sensed a burn in his left hand, as if he were clenching it, but when he looked down, it was hanging loose. He considered the traitorous muscle beneath the skin.

“I wish I could call my parents,” Janie said softly. “My friends. But Shevchenko’s men found out about the flight, didn’t they? We don’t know what or who’s being monitored. So we’re just here. In a bubble. Cut off from the world.”

He couldn’t think of what to say, so he said nothing.

“I’ll withdraw more money,” she said. “Stop at different ATMs in no particular pattern, hit the daily max. All that
Law & Order
stuff.”

Below her words he could make out the faintest suggestion of her extinguished lisp, one of those imperfections that seemed to catch and distill the light of her.

She placed a hand on the pane, as if testing the heat. “We’re safe here. For the moment. Then what?”

“I’ll touch base with Abara,” he said, “see if he can give us a time frame for his answer about Witness Security.”

“And if he
can’t
get us into the program?”

“Then you and Cielle should hit the road,” Nate said.

“I won’t leave,” Janie said. “I feel safer with you. She does, too.”

“Then let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Her throat jerked in a strained swallow. Then she was back in control. He risked a direct glance across at her. The sun turned her irises translucent, a postcard shade of blue, and he forced his gaze back to the reservoir before she could read his expression.

Behind them, from the TV:
“Bitch, you wouldn’t know good hamachi if it bit you in the—”

“Call Abara,” she said.

He moved to open his cell phone, both arms giving off a dull ache, as if sore from lifting weights. He added the new symptom to his mental list and did his best to move on. There was no time for foreboding just now.

His fingers clawed weakly around the edge of the clamshell phone, finally prying it open, and he turned it on with a jab of his thumb. A voice mail waited from his boss. He knew that something was amiss when she used her title in the salutation.

“Nate, Sergeant Jen Brown here. It’s been brought to our attention that you were detained as a person of interest in an ongoing terrorism investigation and that there are charges pending. Needless to say, you are suspended until the matter resolves. I need you to come in, clean out your desk, submit final paperwork on the last few notifications you served, and sign some papers from Legal.”

The last one being, of course, the real reason she wanted him there.