by Thomas Perry
Everything about the way they had tracked and cornered Pete Hatcher looked like at least two people. A lone woman might play the broken-car game, pop him on the spot, and walk away, but she wouldn’t put him in the trunk and expect to drive him away. There must have been at least one man waiting unseen to do the heavy lifting and solve problems. It wasn’t easy to kill an armed cop when he was looking at you.
Jane was almost certain that she had made no mistakes since she had found Hatcher in Montana. They had been on the move for a month, traveling as husband and wife. They had spent a lot of time in the car each day, then used different names in each town where they stopped to check into a motel late in the afternoon. Pete was always visible to motel clerks and guests, but always imperfectly and from a distance. Jane would stand at the counter and sign a name, and Pete would be busy with his head under the lid of the trunk pulling out the suitcases, or under the hood checking the oil. Even if the searchers stopped at the same motels later and asked the right questions, the clerks would not have been able to give them a direction. Jane and Pete had gone slowly, taking detours like tourists who had all summer.
She knew that she was just thinking of reasons to turn Pete loose and go home. Carey had sounded as though her call had depressed him, and the knowledge stung her. When she tried to repeat the conversation now, everything that she had said sounded empty and foolish, and she could do nothing to change it.
Jane stared up the road at the hotel and gave herself a reprimand. The quickest way home was to concentrate on preparing Pete Hatcher for his new life. He had already gotten accustomed to using false names, and he had begun to develop a good sense of how to make himself invisible in public places. He had listened carefully while she had explained how the tricks were done and what to do when they didn’t work.
Now she had to teach him something more subtle and difficult. The way he would defeat his enemies was to outlast them. While they were staring at computer screens or loitering late at night in airport baggage areas or sitting in cars outside hotels at check-out time studying each male who came out the door, he had to be somewhere living a normal, reasonably contented life. If he could do that for long enough, they would give up. Even the owners of a casino couldn’t keep a team of assassins on the payroll forever to search for one man. And the longer he went without showing any intention of doing them harm, the more pointless the search would seem.
Jane had watched the changes in Pete for several days, and she was satisfied with his progress. When she had picked him up in Billings, his personality had already retreated into him like a turtle’s head. Now he was slowly emerging, getting his sense of humor back, looking less like a person recovering from some illness. If she could get him to rebuild himself—not to return to the same old Pete Hatcher, but to see the man he now was as normal—then he had a chance. With a few cosmetic changes and a surrounding establishment—a job, a place to live, a car, a couple of promising friendships—he would be better off than the people who were hunting him.
The last danger that she would have to save him from was the biggest. She had to teach him not to throw away the advantages she had built for him, sink into a depression, and stop trying, or grow so paranoid that he jumped at every shadow and attracted attention. That had been her mistake in Denver. She had sent him off to isolation in a small, dark apartment and effectively severed all of his ties to other human beings. To a man like Pete, who seemed able to maintain a sense of himself only by watching the reflections in other people’s eyes, the days of solitude had been like continuous, small doses of poison. She was going to have to keep being his buddy, build up his confidence, and make him strong again.
She reached the gift shop of the hotel and found it had closed hours ago. She continued to the room, gave her familiar knock, and used her eyes, her ears, and the soles of her feet to try to sense where he was at each moment. Finally he opened the door. “Very good,” she said as she entered and locked the door. “I couldn’t have done anything but fire blind through the door, and I would have missed.”
Pete walked back to his chair and sat down. She could see he was watching something on the television that featured a lot of men flying upside down in fighter planes and shouting into radios. “Good,” he said. “That’s one for me.”
“I just walked by the pool,” said Jane. “There’s nobody in it, and the lights are off.”
“Then it’s probably a septic tank.”
“Nope. There’s a diving board. I’m going for a swim. Want to come?” She found the bathing suit she had worn in Missoula at the bottom of her suitcase. “We’ll have to be quiet.”
He glanced up from the television screen for a second, then shrugged. “Can’t. No suit.”
She reached into his suitcase, held up pairs of pants until she found a pair of jeans with a worn knee. “Are you saving these for the Levi Strauss museum?”
He seemed to consider. “I’ve heard I could get a good price for those in Tokyo. I don’t know how to get there, though, so I guess that’s out.”
“Good thinking,” she said. She put her foot on the bed and pulled her boot knife from her ankle, sliced the legs off the jeans, and tossed what was left in Pete’s lap. “I’ll change in the bathroom. Knock when you’ve got those on.”
He knocked on the door sooner than she had expected. When she came out, she carried the two big towels from the rack by the tub, holding them in front of her casually to disguise the way the suit rode up at the hip. The suit seemed to her to be less modest than she had remembered it, but maybe it was just the unfamiliar feeling of wearing one at night; there was no sun to warm the places that weren’t usually uncovered. She plucked the room key off the table. “Here. You have pockets.”
He took the key and she approached him in a way that forced him to go out the door first and start across the lawn to the pool. She dropped the towels, then walked down the steps into the warm water at the shallow end of the pool. She ducked down and swam the length of the pool under water. The pool was so dark that when she reached the end, she nearly crashed into him. Her fingertips brushed flesh, and she came up to find his face a few inches from hers. “Sorry,” she whispered, then sank, pushed off the wall and glided away again in the silent darkness of the water.
While her momentum was slowing, she felt a shiver of embarrassment. There was no reason for being so squeamish about touching his belly. She was the best friend he had right now, and she had not done it on purpose. She gave a kick and rose to the surface, looking around for him. He was invisible, under the glassy surface somewhere.
With a sudden start she felt his big arm hook around her waist and lift her in the water. She was held against his big body in a feeling that was at once smothering and too pleasantly familiar. She gave a little cry, and he spun her around to face him.
She could see the white teeth in his smile, and the whites of his eyes, much too close. She leaned away, but that brought her pelvis into contact with his, so she jerked back. The white teeth disappeared and she felt the brush of his shaven upper lip and the touch of the soft lips. “Time out,” she said, too loudly. She put her hands on his chest, and she was aware of the hard, hairy torso as she pushed him away.
She could see the silhouette of his head and shoulders, but his face was in shadow. “I made a mistake,” she said quietly. “I never told you I was married.”
She could see him tilt to sink backward into the water like a man blown over by a sudden wind. He rose to the surface floating on his back, took a couple of shallow breaths, and bobbed to his feet again. “I’m the one who made a mistake,” he said. “I apologize. Please, forget it ever happened. I didn’t know, and … I guess that’s just me. I meant no harm.”
Jane found herself in a depth where her toes brushed the bottom, so she stood on them. “Look, don’t overdo it,” she said. “It’s reassuring to an old bat like me. It’s just that—well, you know—I’m taken.”
She swam the rest of the way to the shallow end and s
at on the bottom step with the water up to her neck. From here the light of a fixture on the wall of the hotel reflected on the surface and she could see him swimming. He was not very graceful, but he was strong, each armstroke pulling him a few feet. She knew he was trying to work out a way to face her after making a pass and being turned down flat. It occurred to her that it was probably a new experience for him.
Jane wished she had never thought of swimming at this hour. The night was unseasonably warm, and she had wanted to get him involved in something that was careless and fun. Now she was afraid he was going to withdraw again. But there was something worse going on, and it was something that she had not prepared herself to defeat. She had almost let it slip out while she was saying no, detected it crowding up behind the other words and put her face into the water to keep it from coming out. It was, “I’m not offended. I don’t have anything against sex.”
If she weren’t married, if this had all happened years ago, she might very well have let Pete Hatcher’s hand stay around her waist, might have stayed in the water and waited with great interest for it to move where it pleased. And even worse, if she had not considered the marriage vow unconditional and permanent, Pete was exactly the sort of man she might have chosen to disregard it with, and this was exactly the sort of time and place when it could have happened. The incredibly clear, warm night air with the strange brightness of the stars, the feeling of floating weightless in the dark water might have made it seem to be an exception.
Pete disappeared again and surfaced at her feet. He was smiling tentatively, the water gleaming on his smooth, hard shoulders. “I think we’d better clear the air,” he said.
She nodded. “Good idea.”
“I’ll never put you in a position where you have to feel uncomfortable again.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I won’t do that either. What you did wasn’t exactly assault, you know. It was a question. The answer is no, that’s all.”
“You don’t wear a ring, you never mentioned a husband. Maybe because we spent so much time alone, I’ve been holding you under a magnifying glass. I interpreted a lot of things wrong—movements, words, everything. I like you. You’re not like anybody I’ve ever met, and—”
“Relax,” said Jane. “I like you too. I’ve said that before, and maybe I shouldn’t have, or I said it wrong. We’ll still be just as close. Maybe closer, because of this. But I’m your sister, not … not anybody else. Have we said enough?”
“Hi.” The quiet female voice came from the shadow beside the hotel doorway. Jane spun her head and saw the shape of a woman. Jane’s muscles tensed, and she let herself slip lower into the water, but the balls of her feet found traction on the rough surface of the pool steps.
“Hi,” said Pete. Jane’s jaw tightened. If this was the woman who had tried to kill him in Denver, he had just helped her locate him in the dark water.
“Hello,” said Jane. Maybe two voices would complicate her directional fix on Pete. She studied the silhouette as it took its first step toward her. The towel was wrapped around the waist like a skirt, but there could easily be a gun tucked in back. Then she saw a second silhouette step from the entrance, and for a half second she was sure. She took in a breath to prepare to move, but the two shapes stepped into the dim swatch of light from the lamp at the same time.
She could tell from their bodies that neither was a young girl—not seventeen or eighteen. The curve of hip and thigh and breast were too pronounced. She could see their faces now, and they were both mildly attractive, but to determine age she needed to see them in bright light, where the texture of the skin would show mileage. The thinner one with red hair stuck her toe in the water near Jane’s face. “Oh, good. It’s really warm,” she said. She whisked the towel off and tossed it on the deck. Jane was satisfied that this one was not armed. The green two-piece bathing suit would not have hidden a razor blade.
The second one took off her towel and knelt to touch the water with her fingers. “You’re right. It’s perfect. Just like a bath.” She was wearing a suit that Jane guessed had probably come from the same store, but on this one it looked even more obvious, almost indecent. She was shorter and blond, with big white breasts that seemed painfully confined by the top, and when she stood to dive in, Jane saw the lower part of the suit as a blue line bisecting a heart-shaped flash of white buttocks.
The blond one surfaced near Pete. “I hope you don’t mind our coming in with you. We saw you from our room, and it just looked so good …”
“Not at all,” said Pete. “We’re glad to have you. This way we don’t have to wonder if we’re crazy, because you are too.”
“I’m Pam,” she said. Jane could hear something in the woman’s voice. Then she decided it just sounded tense because she was treading water and in the effort her throat muscles had tightened. “And this is Carol.”
Jane tried to analyze her unpleasant feeling. It was the way bodyguards must feel when their charges decided to go into a crowd. The bodyguard’s adrenaline flowed, her muscles contracted for action, and then the threat turned into a mere distraction.
Pete said, “I’m Jim Holstra. This is … Mary. She’s my sister.” Jane’s distracted thoughts suddenly crystalized. He was using her own words.
“Oh, really?” said Carol. She half-turned toward Jane and smiled faintly. “You two must get along pretty well, to travel together.”
Jane had no direction of escape from this conversation. Was he doing what she thought he was doing? The distraction had blossomed into an annoyance. “Yes,” she said.
Her mind was prickling with irritation. They were gently closing doors on her. She reminded herself that whoever they were, they weren’t killers. They were making it obvious that they were intrigued by Pete. If anyone asked later if they’d seen him, they could hardly forget, but what could they say? She couldn’t take them seriously as a threat to Pete’s safety. She could not think of a reason why they seemed so threatening to her.
The one with the red hair glided out into the deep water and bent at the hips. Her bottom broke the surface and then her feet, and she disappeared in the direction of Pete and the blonde. Jane had to fight some inner resistance to bring the names back. The blonde was Pam; the redhead Carol. In a few seconds Carol emerged again, beside Pete. For a minute the three held on to the tile in the deep, shadowy end of the pool. She couldn’t hear what they said. Then Pete floated out into the center.
Jane saw the copper head slip very close to the yellow head, cup a hand, and whisper something. The blonde gave a little squeal, and they started whispering again, then giggled like two unappealing children in a conspiracy. Then they began to swim slowly on either side of Pete. She stared at the two of them, and found herself thinking, Wait until he gets them under the light.
She was horrified at her thought. She was acting as though she were jealous. For the first time she was glad he had offered himself so she had gotten the opportunity to turn him down and acquit herself of that charge. Why was she suddenly feeling angry? The anger didn’t seem entirely real. It occurred to her that it might be her mind’s way of protecting her from something else, and she could even identify what that something was. It was regret at the loss of something that never could have been, something that would have been beautiful, but was now being transformed into something tawdry. Why did she call it tawdry?
She moved to the top of the steps and she realized that she had been unconsciously moving away, to escape the place where this was happening. She shivered when the air touched her skin. She stopped. If she left, went back to the room, these two almost certainly weren’t going to try to kill Pete Hatcher. But if she weren’t present to control the situation, they might ask him questions he was not prepared to answer, or even attract attention that would get him killed.
She felt the urge to hear what they were saying. She slipped back into the water and drifted toward them. Suddenly there was splashing. Pete was out of the pool walking toward the hotel room. He opened
the door and disappeared. Jane looked after him in confusion.
The two women suddenly appeared on both sides of her, heading for the steps. “Your brother is really something.” Pam laughed. Jane altered it: little turned-up nose, pink all over—Spam.
“Yes,” said Jane. “He’s a lot of fun.” She loathed them.
“Aren’t you coming?” asked the other one, turning to the side to wring out the long copper hair. She seemed hopeful.
“Coming where?”
“To our place, for a drink.”
“Your place?” asked Jane. She let her feet touch and began to walk along between them.
“Yeah,” said Spam. “We’ve got a little suite, and we’ve got supplies.”
Jane’s head began to ache, but she hid her distaste at the idea. It was after one in the morning. If these two got tipsy and festive, they could be loud enough to get Pete arrested. Then there would be fingerprints, public records for the killers to find. “Sure,” said Jane. “We’ll stop by for one drink.”
She saw the look that passed between Carol and Pam. They were not pleased.
Jane was still twenty feet from the door of the hotel room when it opened and Pete stepped out wearing a dry pair of jeans and a T-shirt, carrying some glasses. He walked to a room two doors from theirs and waited while Carol unlocked it. She considered calling to him, but it would have to be loud if she wanted him to hear it. She tried to catch his eye, but he was looking down, as though he were staring at the lock.
The two women were busy pretending they didn’t know he was looking at them, and they seemed to enjoy the task, giving little shimmy-shivers they could blame on the cold, then tiptoeing into the room ahead of him.