Runner

by Thomas Perry

  "Yes."

  "Then make it work."

  "Jane, before I go, I want to say—"

  "From here on, no sound."

  She tied the loose end of the rope of sheets to the bed frame, tugged it tight, pushed the bed to the wall, and opened the window above it. She helped Christine climb from the bed to the windowsill, and then turn to go out on her belly. She had a pained expression on her face, which Jane hoped was only fear. Jane let her down slowly for a dozen feet, then looked over the edge at her. Christine still had her feet against the wall, and she was looking up expectantly, so Jane let her down at a steady rate, the muscles in her back and legs straining. When Christine seemed to be barely above the level of the pharmacy roof, Jane waved.

  Christine bent her knees and pushed off from the wall. When Jane could see she had swung out above the pharmacy roof, she let out most of the remaining sheet quickly, and Christine landed on her feet. She waved, then stepped out of the sling Jane had tied.

  Jane climbed to the windowsill. As she turned to rappel down, she saw a man's face appear in the little window on the door to the hallway. Someone must have seen Christine descend past the third-floor window and called security. Jane let the sheet slide through her hands, going downward as quickly as she could. She felt something tugging on the upper end. He was untying her. She was still ten feet above the roof of the pharmacy, but she pushed off the wall to swing outward. As soon as she felt her momentum slow she let go.

  A half-second later, the rope of bedsheets came free at the fourth-floor window. As Jane dropped to the pharmacy roof, the long white rope snaked down like a streamer and fell to the ground between the two buildings. Jane picked herself up. "Go."

  "Where?"

  "Over here." She pulled her to the edge of the roof. "See? That's the ladder. Grasp the two sides with both hands, then lower your feet to the first rung. Get down as fast as you can."

  Jane looked up at the window, but the man was gone. She looked at Christine and saw she was making her way down tentatively, right foot down a rung, then the left foot to the same rung, then right foot down again. Jane could see she was having a hard time keeping her left hand from letting go.

  Jane heard running feet coming along the street side of the pharmacy, then rounding the corner. Jane looked around her on the roof. All she could see near her was a small pile of five-foot two-by-fours that had been stored up here for some future improvement. She lifted one and stepped to the edge of the roof. She saw the guard running toward the back of the pharmacy where Christine was on the ladder. Jane held the piece of lumber like a spear and threw it straight down at him. The end of the two-by-four grazed the back of the man's head, hit his right shoulder blade, and knocked him to the ground, where he lay still.

  Jane went down the ladder as quickly as she could, then grasped Christine's hand and ran the other way around, between the two buildings toward the next street.

  When they emerged, they could see Jane's SUV parked on the street, but there were three men in their twenties leaning against it, smoking cigarettes and talking. Jane said, "They may be harmless. Just stay out of sight for a minute while I find out."

  Jane walked toward her vehicle with her keys in her hand. She pressed the button on the key fob, and the driver's-side door clicked to unlock. The men heard it and looked up to see Jane approaching. Two of them seemed to understand and stepped away from the car to the other side of the sidewalk, but the third, who had thick dark hair and a handsome face with big dark eyes, stayed where he was, leaning against the car, and grinned to reveal unnaturally white teeth.

  Jane didn't smile back. "Por favor," she said, and pointed to the door.

  He stopped leaning, opened the driver's door as though he were helping her in.

  Jane took a step toward it, but he quickly spun around and sat in the driver's seat. His two companions laughed. Jane reached into her jacket and produced the Beretta M92 pistol. She held it at waist level, so the man in the car was the only one who could see it. He was still smiling, but this time his mouth and his eyes didn't seem to belong in the same face. The smile was frozen. He said in English, "Just a joke."

  "Get out of my car."

  The man carefully got out of the driver's seat and stepped back across the sidewalk to join his two friends. He muttered something to them in Spanish, and they all backed away a few steps. Jane used those seconds to get into the vehicle, lock the doors, and start the engine. When she saw Christine emerge from the passageway ahead, she pulled forward and stopped in the street long enough to let her climb in.

  As Jane pulled away, the uniformed security guard from the clinic arrived on foot, having run along the street instead of between buildings. His face was a mask of rage. He pulled his pistol out of its holster and appeared to take aim at Jane's back window, but then he seemed to recall that this was a very busy street even at this hour, with plenty of tall buildings to stop the bullet if he missed, pedestrians for witnesses, and probably policemen and soldiers listening for gunfire. Before Jane lost sight of the guard, a new white pickup truck arrived, and he climbed into it.

  Jane made a quick turn and then another, then drove down Boulevard Agua Caliente toward the bullfight ring, the racetrack, and the golf course, and away from the medical zone.

  "You're going away from the border," Christine said. "San Ysidro is back that way."

  "They're going to try to catch us," Jane said. "Most people cross at San Ysidro, don't they?"

  "Yeah. It's the busiest border crossing in the world."

  "Then it's where they'll think we're going. I'm going to try to cross at Otay Mesa."

  "Okay, but I'm not sure if it's open at this hour."

  "I drove almost to the crossing today while I was waiting for it to get dark. There are signs in English on the way. It closes for trucks at ten o'clock, but the passenger lanes are open twenty-four hours."

  Christine was gripping the dashboard with both hands, staring ahead. Jane could see she was shivering.

  "Believe me," said Jane. "I saw the signs."

  "I'm just so scared," said Christine. "They're going to follow us."

  "I'm sure they'll try. Do you remember what I taught you about firing a gun?"

  "I think I do."

  Jane took the Beretta out of her belt and held it so Christine could take it. "This one is different. See the little switch near your thumb?"

  "This one?"

  "Yes. It's the safety catch. If you slide it this way, the gun will be ready to fire. If you don't, it won't. It has fourteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. You just keep pulling the trigger over and over until nothing happens. The brass casings eject to the right, and they come out hot."

  Christine looked over her shoulder at the road. "I don't see the security guard."

  "It's a precaution. When you're running you take every precaution before you think it might be necessary. We prepare for every threat we can imagine, remember? By the time there's a reason to prepare, it's too late. If they come up behind us, they'll try to run us off the road. Or they'll try to shoot me, because I'm the driver."

  "What do I do about that?"

  "If they pull up behind us, we'll do the same thing they're doing. I drive, you fire at them. You aim for the driver. But what you want to do is keep firing at the windshield. Any hit will make them lose their enthusiasm."

  Christine sat in the passenger seat resting the gun on her thigh and looking down at it.

  Jane looked at her for a second. "If you have any doubt that you can do it, let me know now."

  Christine shook her head. "No. No doubt."

  Jane drove on. As they swung north again toward the Otay Mesa crossing, Jane saw the signs she remembered from the afternoon that said GARITA DE OTAY, and then the English one she had been looking for. It said the crossing was open twenty-four hours.

  As Jane slowed to be sure the arrow was pointing in the direction she was going, she heard a sudden roar of an engine. She began to turn
her head to see, but the movement was cut short. There was a ferocious jolt, a deafening noise, a giant hammerblow of steel on steel. The air bag exploded into her face, punching her backward into the headrest. An instant later there was the sound of glass and bits of metal bouncing on the pavement.

  The car spun sideways, and as it rocked to a stop, Jane pulled her knife out of her pocket and punctured the air bag to get it out of her way. She stabbed Christine's air bag, too, and as it deflated she looked around her. Her SUV had been hit broadside by a white pickup truck, but Christine was still upright. "Are you hurt?"

  "I don't think so."

  Jane put her foot on the brake, shifted into neutral and then reverse, then stepped on the gas pedal and began to pull back. She could see that in the pickup truck that had hit her were two men wearing the same kind of security guard uniforms as the one at the hospital.

  The man in the driver's seat interpreted Jane's maneuver and pulled forward to ram the side door of her vehicle, trying to stay with it and push it over. Jane reached for the pistol in her jacket pocket, but Christine's gun hand came up more quickly and fired four rounds into the truck's windshield. They could still hear the truck's engine as Jane's SUV roared backward to escape it, the front of the pickup scraping along the side of her vehicle as she cleared it. Then the unguided truck kept going, drifting ahead across the road and into an empty lot.

  "Oh, my God," Christine whispered.

  Jane threw the transmission into drive and headed south, away from the border. When she reached a junction with Route 10 she took it. The road looked, at least late at night, like a California freeway.

  After a minute or two Christine said, "Could you see if that guy was dead?"

  "The driver? Not sure," said Jane. "I hope so. He's not behind us, and that's all I care about right now."

  "I just feel ... weird. I didn't think about it. I just did it." She looked at Jane in the light of the dashboard. "You would have shot at them, right?"

  "That's what I was going to do, but you were faster. Once I saw you still had the gun, I knew that what I ought to be doing was driving." Jane let the silence go for a time, then said, "You sure you didn't get hurt in the crash?"

  "The air bag shook me up, but the seat belt went across my good shoulder, not the broken clavicle. I guess I was lucky the gun didn't fly into my face."

  "You've been to Mexico a lot?"

  "I grew up thirty-five miles from here."

  "Have any ideas about how we can get across the border?"

  "We could drive east, out of Baja, and try to get across the border somewhere else."

  "East where?"

  "I don't know. Calexico. Maybe Nogales, and cross into Arizona. Or even keep going and cross into Texas."

  "We can't drive this car that distance. It's got too much damage. I haven't seen the outside of it yet, but I think it would attract attention at a border crossing." She looked at Christine. Beyond Christine was the black, endless Pacific. The moon hung above it, casting a silvery reflection on its surface.

  "What are you looking at?"

  "I'm thinking." Jane moved her eyes back to the road.

  "Good, because we're going to hit Ensenada in a little while, and that's as far as we're supposed to go without stopping for a tourist card."

  "I know," Jane said. "Let me ask you something else. There are a lot of cruise ships that stop in Ensenada, right?"

  "Sure," said Christine. "All the time."

  "The ships are huge, right?"

  "Yeah. Thousands of rooms."

  "They can't all be full, can they?"

  Christine's eyes widened as she shook her head.

  An hour later Jane pulled the SUV to a stop in the parking lot of a large supermercado near the harbor. She took her small suitcase with her clothes and the packet containing the false identification that Stewart had sent her and the cash she had brought. She took a rag from the back of the SUV and wiped the steering wheel, door handles, windows, trunk, and hood for fingerprints. Then she unscrewed the license plates and took them with her.

  Jane and Christine walked to the beach. Jane kept watch while Christine slept on the sand for a couple of hours, until the air around them seemed to be lightening. Then the two women changed into clean jeans and blouses from Jane's suitcase and threw Christine's stolen scrubs into a trash can. Jane disassembled both of her pistols, removing the magazine, the slide, barrel, recoil spring, guide rod, slide catch, frame.

  They walked to the harbor before dawn. As Jane went, she found places to put the pieces of the two weapons—the springs in a trash can, one slide in a storm sewer. The guide rods, slide catches, sears, and triggers went into a row of Dumpsters. She saved the most identifiable parts, the frames and magazines, until they reached the docks, then dropped them in deep water.

  When it was fully light they made their way to the zone of resort hotels and went into what looked like the best one to order breakfast. When they had spent the early morning in a leisurely meal, Jane went to the concierge desk. She found a man there who seemed to be in charge and said, "Good morning. Do you speak English?"

  "Yes, ma'am," the man said.

  "I need to find a travel agent. Can you help me?"

  "Certainly," he said. He reached under his counter and produced a glossy brochure, opened it to reveal a map of Ensenada. He used his pen to circle a rectangle that represented the hotel, then circled a spot one block south and four blocks east. He said, "We recommend Tours Riviera to our guests." He scribbled the name Tours Riviera. "Some of us have used their services ourselves."

  Jane said, "I should mention that I don't speak Spanish."

  "That isn't a problem, Señorita. Most of their customers are American."

  "Thank you very much," Jane said. She handed him a twenty-dollar bill, mainly because of her relief that he had not demanded to know if she was a guest of the hotel.

  He pocketed the money. "Thank you, Señorita."

  Jane and Christine left for the travel agency at ten, and found the office open. The young woman who took charge of them at the door said her name was Estrella.

  Jane said, "The reason we've come is that we'd like to change our travel plans. This is a last-minute idea, so tell me if it's not possible."

  "Certainly."

  "There are cruise ships stopping in Ensenada all the time, aren't there?"

  "Oh, yes, especially at this time of year. There are Baja cruises, three-day, four-day, and five-day cruises that start in San Diego, Los Angeles, or Long Beach that stop at Catalina Island, Ensenada, Cabo San Lucas, and go back. There are fifteen-day cruises to Hawaii that stop here. Let me see what's in port now." She typed something into her computer and read off the screen. "The Carnival Paradise, Royal Caribbean Monarch of the Seas, Diamond Princess, Holland America Zaandam."

  "Are there ever any empty cabins when they reach Ensenada?"

  "I would say there always are."

  "Would it be possible for you to book us a cabin on one of them to go to one of the California ports?"

  "I think so, but it might be an expensive way to get home. They usually sail from here around five or six o'clock in the evening and arrive in their American port at around six the next morning. So you won't see much."

  "That's just fine," said Jane. She looked as remorseful as she felt. "It's a last-minute plan. We came down here by car with two men we didn't know as well as we thought we did. We're going home early."

  Estrella looked at them sympathetically. "Say no more. You have your passports?"

  "Yes." Jane reached into the side pocket of her suitcase and produced the ones she had received from Stewart Shattuck.

  Estrella lifted her telephone, spoke rapidly in Spanish, and in a few minutes, the arrangements were made. "The price is prorated," she said. "It's a three-day cruise, and you will owe one-third."

  "We'll take it," said Jane. She looked at her watch. "I wonder if it would be okay for us to go aboard the ship right away and get settled. I think we'
d like to explore the ship a little before we sail."

  "I think that sounds like a good idea," said Christine.

  "Yes," Jane said. "I feel as though we've done everything here that we want to."

  36

  Ruby Beale was not a fearful or superstitious woman, but she had a bad feeling tonight, and it wasn't new. She had been feeling it, more or less, since she had looked down from the walkway in the great room of the big house and seen the woman staring in the window at her. There was a feeling that the curse had not yet worked all the way through her family and exhausted itself.

  A minute after she had seen the woman Ruby had begun to resent the people around her, and the feeling had grown. She had seen something that other people had not seen, and they had not had the sense to realize what it was. Ruby had known. Anybody with any sense would have known. The black-haired woman in the all-black clothes could not have been easier to interpret if she had been a skeleton wearing a hooded robe.

  The woman had been staring inside, choosing her way in. Ruby had sensed that she already knew a hundred ways in, as water would have, or air. It wasn't a question of Ruby being lucky and seeing her in time to stop her. It was more like being the one who saw something big and irresistible and destructive while it was still forming—like wind and waves beginning to churn, far out at sea.

  Later that night she had thought to herself, Well, this would be the kind of thing that would happen, wouldn't it? Anybody in the world understood that if you did bad, cruel things to people, then some time the hatred you caused would take a form and come after you. Anybody would know, except her stupid son, Richard, who could feel nothing of the rhythms and balances of the world. Revenge was just a restoration of the natural balance. That was why people called it getting even.

  They had heard her warn them about that woman, but none of them had believed it or even understood. In their hearts they thought Ruby was just an eccentric, spoiled rich woman, old before her time and scared witless by a five-second exposure to their world, the real world where people used guns to take things. They hadn't known her well enough to have the index to her mind. Even her husband, Andy, and her son, Richard, who both had good reason to know her, had not taken her seriously.