by Patrick Lee
For more than a minute, no one spoke. Then, by silent agreement, Holly and Marsh and Harris stood from the table. They wandered off to leave the two of them alone.
Dryden found himself focusing on taking in the moment: Rachel in his arms, her face against his shoulder. The details he would come back to for the rest of his life—he had to experience them as much as he could, this last time they would ever be real.
“You know there’s another way this could go,” Rachel whispered. There was more in her voice than the strain of tears. There was an edge there—a trace of the other Rachel.
“Yes, I know,” Dryden said.
“I could take it to these people, instead of hiding. I could hole up in D.C., a mile from the Capitol, and get into the heads of everyone who helps these companies. I wouldn’t need to kill anyone. There are lots of ways I could end their careers. Make them buy drugs and get caught. Make them say the wrong word near an open microphone. Make them tear off their clothes on a street corner and scream at the traffic. I could rip their lives to pieces without hurting a hair on their heads. If their replacements are no better, I could get rid of them, too. I could do it forever.”
“It wouldn’t be wrong, either,” Dryden said. “It’s exactly what they deserve. But it’s not what you deserve—that life.” He eased her away from his shoulder and tilted her face up to his own. The edge was in her gaze, too. The ghost of what she’d been, all those lost years. “What you deserve is a childhood,” Dryden said. “And I mean for you to have one.”
Rachel nodded, blinking as new tears formed. They seemed to clear her eyes of everything that didn’t belong there.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The plan unfolded two days later, at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. Marsh booked a small hearing room on the fifth floor, for three in the afternoon. He accompanied Dryden into the building an hour beforehand, ushering him through the security checkpoint.
“Thanks for this,” Dryden said. “You really will lose your job over it.”
“If I’m losing it for finally doing the right thing, I guess that should give me a moment of pause.”
“Thanks, all the same. I’ll owe you one. That’s not just a figure of speech, coming from me. If there’s something I can help you with, someday, get in touch.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
* * *
At 2:58 Dryden stood alone in a small hallway behind the dais of the hearing room. He listened to the murmur of the crowd in the seats; Marsh had invited more than forty people, the most powerful he could get. Among them were six senators, nine representatives, four cabinet officials, and staffers for all of them. They’d been told only that the event was a presentation related to intelligence-gathering technology, which was true in a roundabout way.
2:59.
Close enough.
Dryden stepped through the doorway into the chamber, and the buzz of voices died away. He crossed to the podium at the center of the dais and faced the crowd. Behind and above him, a projector screen showed a bright white expanse—the empty first slide of a PowerPoint presentation.
For a long moment Dryden said nothing. He kept his expression blank and stood there, letting the crowd get a good look at his face.
The expected reaction kicked in at three seconds. A woman near the front narrowed her eyes, then turned and spoke quietly to the man beside her. The man, still staring at Dryden, suddenly flinched.
By ten seconds everyone had picked up on it, either on their own or by way of being told. Everywhere in the crowd, heads swiveled, looking for the exits, or maybe an authority figure of some kind.
“You recognize me,” Dryden said.
The whisper of voices died again. All eyes settled on him.
“I’m the guy with the dirty bomb,” Dryden continued. “I’m also dead. Two good reasons I shouldn’t be standing here.”
The remote for the projector lay atop the podium. Dryden picked it up and pressed the SLIDE ADVANCE button. His own face filled the screen above him—the so-called composite image that had gone out on the airwaves back when the manhunt began.
“My name is Sam Dryden,” he said. He pressed the ADVANCE button again, and the composite was replaced by the original version of the photo. Bright colors instead of grayscale. A smile instead of a deadpan. Trish beside him, and the Embarcadero and San Francisco Bay behind him, instead of empty space.
Confusion filtered through the crowd.
“Here’s a few more, for the hell of it,” Dryden said.
He pressed the button five times in slow succession, cycling through the other snapshots that had captured that moment. Trish was blinking in one of them, Dryden in another.
“You and the rest of the world were lied to about this,” Dryden said. “In the coming weeks or months, it may happen again.”
Another press of the button. A photo of Holly and Rachel came up, taken with a disposable camera in Galveston after they’d left the café.
The next photo was a closer shot of their faces.
“Get a good look,” Dryden said. “Somewhere down the road, if CNN says there’s a woman running around with weaponized smallpox, you might see one or both of these faces in the coverage.”
In the crowd, Dryden began to see the second reaction he’d expected. The split. In almost every set of eyes there was only confusion, but in a few he saw other things: concern, tension, calculation. The eyes of people who weren’t confused at all. As Dryden watched, those people traded looks with one another. Two or three of them took out cell phones.
Not much time left now.
“I don’t expect most of you to believe the next thing I’m going to tell you,” Dryden said. “I wouldn’t believe it, in your place. But if this woman or this girl become the subject of a manhunt next month, or next year, you’ll have to wonder, won’t you? You might even sit down with a friend from The New York Times and have a long chat about it.”
He saw the calls begin to connect. Men cupped their hands over their phones and spoke urgently.
How long did he have? Two minutes? One?
Well, that would do. He’d rehearsed the bullet points with a stopwatch. He had the spiel down to thirty-five seconds—time enough to rattle off names and places and locations, and repeat them so that no one would forget.
He got all the way through it twice before the Capitol Police stormed the room.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Sam Dryden’s house in El Sedero stood empty for more than seven weeks. The lawn grew out of control. The entry floor beneath the mail slot piled up with flyers and credit card offers and bills. Neighbors knocked on the doors and tried to see in through the windows, but all the shades were drawn. In seven weeks, no relatives showed up to see about him. No friends.
* * *
It was foggy the night he came back. He stepped out of the taxicab with nothing in his hands, and walked up the concrete path to his front door. The key was behind the cedar shake next to the light, where he’d left it.
As soon as he stepped inside, the smell hit him. Flies buzzed in a cloud above the kitchen wastebasket, and all the drain traps had evaporated, letting in air from the sewer.
Dryden tied off the trash bag and hauled it out, ran the taps, and then opened every window in the place. Moist night air pressed through the house, scented with evergreens and sea salt.
In the master bath he disrobed and studied himself in the mirror. He’d lost ten or fifteen pounds, and there were faint red marks where the shock paddles had touched his skin. He stared at the beard he’d grown, ragged and unkempt beneath the hollows of his eyes, then opened the vanity drawer where he kept his razors and shaving cream.
An hour later, showered and dressed in clean clothes, he walked the rooms of his home. The smell of decay was gone, but he kept the windows open. He tried to remember the last time he’d opened any of them, in all the years he’d lived here, but couldn’t recall a single time. How often had he even bothered to pull up the
shades?
When he finally closed all the sashes again, the house’s silence surprised him. Had it always been like this? So dead that every metal tick of the air ducts stood out?
He went to his bedroom and stretched out on the sheets. Exhausted as he was, it took forever for sleep to find him.
* * *
He stood on the wet sand margin of the beach, watching the sunset. The day had been hazy, and the sun was deep red by the time it touched the horizon.
Behind him was the boardwalk, and up and down the shore, campfires burned. There was a dog barking, a couple hundred yards up the beach. Little kids were throwing a Frisbee for it to catch.
“Hey.”
A woman’s voice. Dryden turned. She was standing there, twenty feet away, next to the fire he’d started a few minutes before.
Her name was Riley. She worked at an art gallery in town. Dryden had met her there three months ago, a few days after he’d come home and shaved his beard.
He crossed the sand to her, and she sank into him; they stood that way a long time, arms around each other, listening to the firewood popping and the kids laughing and the dog barking. He wasn’t sure how it was shaking out with the two of them, but he liked being with her. She seemed to like being around him, too. For now, that was enough.
They sat on a blanket and watched the twilight melt away. As the first stars showed through, Dryden’s neighbors from two houses down came onto the beach with their nine-year-old son. Dryden waved them over, and the five of them sat talking as the night darkened and cooled beyond the halo of the fire.
* * *
It was a quarter to four in the morning. Dryden lay awake, Riley breathing softly against him. He slipped her arm off of his chest, eased out from under the covers, and stood.
In the den off the kitchen he found a notepad. He sat down at the desk with it, opened the tray drawer, and looked for something to write with, but all he could find was a Sharpie. He popped off the cap and began to print in rough-scrawled penmanship. The words bled dark into the paper.
Hi Sam. Don’t say anything out loud. There are laser microphones aimed at your windows most of the time, but there’s nothing hidden inside the house. No bugs. No cameras.
By the time he’d finished writing it, his pulse was slamming in his ears.
You shouldn’t be anywhere near me, he thought. You should be halfway around the world.
He put the marker to the page again.
I’ve been that far away, most of these months. I will be again, soon. I had to check on you, though. I had to find out if the people watching you had any other plans in mind. I had to know if you were in danger. But I think you were right—they’re just watching you in case I show up. Sooner or later I think they’ll even give up on that. They seem bored with it.
You can never risk meeting me in person, Dryden thought. Even if you think it’s safe. I’d give anything to see you, but you can’t take the chance.
I know, promise.
Are you and Holly safe?
Yes. That’s the other part of why I’m here—to tell you we’re okay. We’re more than okay. It’s warm where we live. Holly works as a doctor for the local people, and we’re both learning the language. There are so many kids my age. My life has never been like this before. Never this happy.
Dryden stared at the words on the pad. They warmed him every bit as much as the fire on the beach had. Their meaning sank deep into his skin.
You seem happier, too, Sam. I haven’t been watching you for long, but I can tell. I’m glad you met someone. Are you going to take my advice? Are you going to be somebody’s father again?
He laughed under his breath. Slow down, he thought. She and I have toothbrushes at each other’s places. That’s all the further along we are.
He drew a smiley face on the page, and next to it he wrote,
I know, I know, none of my business.
For the longest time he found he couldn’t form a thought in reply. His mind was simply full of feelings, a whole storm of them. The reality of the moment suddenly hit him: Rachel was here. She was right here, within a mile of where he was sitting. They could sprint to each other in a matter of minutes—
Except they couldn’t. Ever.
His eyes stung. He blinked and pushed the feeling away; Rachel could probably pick up on it.
He found himself writing again.
I miss you too, Sam. I keep waiting for it to not hurt so much, but part of me doesn’t want the pain to go away, because it’s ours. It’s only ours, yours and mine, and I don’t want to lose it. If that makes any sense.
It makes perfect sense, Dryden thought.
The Sharpie was still for a few seconds. Then:
There’s something I need to tell you about.
What?
Have you ever heard people say to each other, it wasn’t an accident we met?
Yes.
You and me, it wasn’t an accident.
Dryden waited for more.
All the things I can do, that I didn’t know about when my memory was gone—deep down, I could still do them without knowing it.
The roadblock in Fresno, Dryden thought. The cop who let us go.
Yes. But there was another time I did it.
Seconds passed. Dryden imagined Rachel, somewhere out there, working out what she wanted to say.
Then he started writing.
The two months they had me in that little room, here in El Sedero, I had a game I’d play in my head. I did it whenever I got scared or felt too alone. The game was, I’d imagine I could feel other people, far away outside the building. A whole town full of them. I told myself I could feel their emotions—little kids were like puppies, old people were like deep water without any waves. But there was one person in town I liked focusing on more than all the rest. Someone who seemed strong. Someone hard, like the soldiers who watched over me in that place, but not cold like them. Everything about that person seemed good, and at the worst times, that’s who I kept my mind on, to make myself feel less afraid. I never knew if I was making it all up or not.
Another pause.
So many times, I thought about trying to get away from that place. I even knew where I’d run if I did it. I’d seen the boardwalk in the soldiers’ thoughts, all the time. But the idea of it was scary, being alone out in the dark, being chased. So I had this fantasy, almost every night. I imagined myself running away, and I pictured that spot where one boardwalk meets the other. In my fantasy, that person in town, the one who made me feel safe, would be waiting for me when I got there.
Dryden smiled, in spite of the pain.
The night jogs.
Compulsions that came on like fits.
Drawing him out to the boardwalk at all hours of the night. Out to the junction, to stand for minutes on end, for reasons he could never quite place.
All at once he was sure Rachel was smiling, too. Even laughing. Through tears.
Sorry about all that.
“I’m not sorry,” Dryden whispered in the silence.
I know.
ALSO BY PATRICK LEE
The Breach
Ghost Country
Deep Sky
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PATRICK LEE is the author of three previous bestselling novels: The Breach, Ghost Country, and Deep Sky. He lives in Michigan.
Visit the author on his Web site at www.patrickleefiction.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/PatrickLeeFiction.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
RUNNER Copyright © 2014 by Patrick Lee. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover designed by James Iocabelli
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Lee, Patrick, 1976—
/> Runner / Patrick Lee.—First edition.
p. cm
ISBN 978-1-250-03073-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-03075-7 (e-book)
1. Retired military personnel—Fiction. 2. Special forces (Military science)—Fiction. 3. Girls—Fiction. 4. Prisoners—Fiction. 5. Escapes—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.E2265R86 2014
813'.6—dc23
2013032586
e-ISBN 9781250030757
First Edition: February 2014