by Ted Kosmatka
“Just like us,” Paul whispered. He rested his face against the cool glass.
* * *
They got off the train in Ogden Dunes. The station was a narrow parking lot that looked out across the road at a long white picket fence bordering a newer upscale housing development. A short walk to a nearby Marathon gas station produced the phone number for a local cab company. The cab dropped them at the nearest hotel, a Days Inn, where Paul paid in cash.
They showered together, and Paul picked glass from her hair. Afterward they made love on the sheets, and for a while Paul could lose himself in that. He could pretend none of the rest of it was happening.
Paul got dressed and scouted the neighborhood. He bought chicken dinners from the local Denny’s and brought them back to the hotel. A strange déjà vu overcame him as he returned. It was the second time he’d been holed up, hiding. Waiting out the worst of it. The last time hadn’t ended so well. There was nothing like running for your life to put things in perspective.
Lying in bed the next morning, coming out of an anxiety dream, he ran through their choices in his mind.
She must have guessed his thoughts, because she said, “We should go to the police.”
“What?” He hadn’t known she was awake yet.
“The cops. We could go to the cops and tell them what we know.”
“What do we know?”
“Your coworker is dead. We know that. And we know we’re being hunted.”
He nodded. He wondered if Charles’s body had been found yet. He wondered about the computer guy, if he was still alive. Most of all, he wondered how Axiom planned to cover up what had happened. They weren’t stupid. Some plan must be in place. But the plan, whatever it was, had included Paul being dead. So maybe there was a chance.
“And then what?” Paul asked. “After we go to the police.”
“And then what, what?” Lilli responded.
“We go down, we make our report at a police station. And then what? We go home while they investigate? We live our regular lives?”
“Why not?”
“Because they’ll kill us.”
“Then there’s witness protection.”
“Something tells me it wouldn’t be as simple as that.”
“What other choice do we have?”
The complete and utter hopelessness of the situation came crashing down on him.
At that moment, his phone rang, the sound coming from his pants on the floor. It startled him; he’d completely forgotten about it. He slipped out of bed and fished it from his pocket. He looked at the display: a number he didn’t recognize. He considered answering but let it go to voice mail. Twenty seconds later, the phone chirped, letting him know a message had been saved to his box.
He logged into voice mail.
“You have one new message. First message.”
The voice that spoke next was familiar. Deep and gravelly, with a faint Australian accent.
“We need to talk, Paul. I know what’s happening to you, and I can help. You can trust me. I’m here in the U.S.; we need to meet, alone.”
Paul listened to the message three times.
* * *
He switched the phone off and flipped it onto the other bed. He pulled his shirt on and told Lilli he was going to go snag them breakfast. It was only a short walk, so he kept walking, going where his feet took him, exploring the local restaurant scene. Scouting locations again. He gave himself a few minutes to think. By eight o’clock, he’d given up on that. He knew he’d meet Gavin. What else could he do?
He’d trusted Gavin once. Maybe he could trust him still.
Paul walked back to the motel, a bag of doughnuts in hand.
He dialed the number.
“Hello.” It was Gavin’s voice.
“There’s a town outside Chicago called Portage,” Paul said. “Can you be here by tomorrow?”
“Consider me on the next flight.”
“Write this down.”
There was a pause. Then: “Go ahead.”
“A restaurant called the Lure, not far from the South Shore train line in Portage, Indiana.”
“All right.”
“Tomorrow night around six?”
“I’ll be there. Paul—”
Paul hit End and turned his phone off.
36
The Lure was busy with the Wednesday dinner rush. Waitresses glided past, arms full of drinks. Paul knew this kind of place. During the day, it would tend toward business lunches. In the evening, it would be more of a mixed crowd—part bring-a-date-to-dinner, part college hangout, part family diner. Usually, Paul liked restaurants like this one for their burger specials. Tonight he liked it for this: it was crowded, which meant it provided a lot of witnesses.
He got a table in the corner. A booth of dark brown wood under a moose head. It felt good to be back in a real restaurant with a real menu you could hold in your hand, instead of picking combo meals from an overhead display. He hadn’t been at a sit-down restaurant since before Flores. It felt like it had happened in a different life.
The waitress came by and Paul ordered a Corona. A beer would help calm his nerves. She returned with his drink a few minutes later.
“You ready to order?”
Paul tried to imagine eating, but his stomach was tied in knots. “Cheeseburger,” he said out of force of habit.
“We’ll fix you right up,” she said.
Paul sipped his drink and eyed the front door. A few minutes later, at six on the nose, Gavin walked in.
He stood near the entrance, scanning the room. For a moment, Paul sat perfectly still, hidden among the crowd. Gavin looked thinner. Older somehow, as if the intervening months had aged him as many years. Paul waved his arm.
Gavin caught the motion and crossed the room.
“Paul,” Gavin said. He extended his hand. Paul shook it.
Gavin sat.
The older man was silent for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts for what he was about to say.
Paul sipped his drink.
“I work for the people who are looking for you,” Gavin said. “I want to be clear about that right from the beginning.”
Paul nodded, accepting this. It had always been a possibility. The fact that Gavin had told him was a good sign.
“How bad is it?” Paul asked. He wasn’t even sure what he meant by that. It just felt like a true question.
“This?” Gavin asked, spreading his hands as if to encompass the entire situation that hung between them. “It’s the end of the world.”
Paul nodded again. Because of course it was. “Well, you don’t sugarcoat things, do you,” he said.
“All out of sugar,” Gavin continued. “This is going to go badly.”
“For me?”
“For both of us.”
“Did they send you here to talk to me?” The important question.
“Yes.”
“You should know that I don’t have the DNA or bone samples on me. They’re someplace safe. If something happens to me, you’ll never find them.”
“I’m not here for that. I’m just here to talk to you. To reason with you.”
“What do they plan to do?”
“That’s up to you.”
“I get to decide? Okay, then I vote they leave me alone.”
“Well, it’s not that simple.”
“It never is. What do they want from me?”
“Cooperation,” Gavin said. “Just cooperation.”
“What kind?”
“You know too much about things nobody is supposed to know about. That makes you a liability. People like Martial don’t like liabilities.”
“Martial?”
“The owner of Axiom.”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“You wouldn’t have.”
“You work for him?”
“We all do. You included. Half of certain universities. Various politicians. Though the politicians might think it’s the other w
ay around.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re not supposed to. Who do you think owns Westing?”
“What? Axiom?”
“Through an umbrella corporation. How do you think I got your employer to cooperate so easily to release you to go to Flores?”
“If you work for him, and you’re here, then this is a trap.” Paul studied Gavin’s face for a reaction.
“What I said on the phone was real. I can help you.”
It wasn’t a denial, exactly. “How?”
“By bringing you in.”
Paul laughed. “You must be joking.”
“No.”
“In where, exactly?”
“In in. Inside. Into the fold. The things you’ve seen are nothing compared to what’s on the other side of the pay wall. Things beyond your wildest dreams. Things not exactly ethical. Things that can’t be risked.”
“You sound like a true believer.”
“No,” Gavin said. “Never confuse me with that.”
“Then what are you?”
“The Inquisition created many a convert, make no mistake.”
“And if I say no?”
“You can’t say no.”
“That’s not much of an offer then.”
“It’s the best you’ll get from the old man. I had to argue your case to make it happen. This could have gone the other way. You have no idea how lucky you are.”
“It did go the other way. You know about Charles?”
“I’ve never heard that name. I don’t know anything about him. Regardless of what’s happened, there’s still a chance to take this in another direction. For you, at least.”
At that moment, the food came. It seemed obscene to eat. Paul’s stomach was clenched into a tight ball. He pushed his fries around the plate but couldn’t bring himself to take a bite. Gavin pulled out his wallet and put a fifty on the table.
“Not hungry?”
“No.”
“Come on then,” Gavin said, tapping the cash on the table. “There’s someone you have to meet.”
Paul followed him out the door.
* * *
Gavin drove them to a river. A place behind chain-link gates. They’d ridden in silence, Paul’s apprehension growing as they left the main road. Dusk had stripped away the colors, rendering everything in charcoal—the trees, the winding asphalt path, the rusting metal railing. The place might have been a boat launch once, but now it was just a crumbling concrete ramp, overgrown with weeds. Even the river seemed used up and old. A dark flow of brown water maybe thirty feet wide, winding its way inexorably toward Lake Michigan, still some miles distant. Gavin pulled the car to the side of the ramp and stepped out.
A woman stood facing out at the water.
Paul and Gavin approached, and the woman turned around.
“Hello, Paul.” It was Margaret.
Paul was careful to control his emotions. He didn’t let his face change.
“Margaret,” he said. “So you made it out of Flores after all.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” She smiled. Her hair was tied back tightly. Dark business suit. She looked like a different person.
Paul looked her in the face and said the only word he had to say to her: “James.”
Her smile faltered for the slightest millisecond before rising up again. “It wasn’t an easy choice I made, Paul.”
“When you left the hotel room, where did you go?”
“To the people in charge.”
“Why?”
“It was the smart thing to do.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?”
“It’s just a simple fact.”
“So you made the decision for all of us.”
“Somebody had to. And don’t get high and mighty with me. You didn’t even know who we were working for.”
“But you knew, didn’t you?”
“Of course I knew.” She laughed. “You misjudge me, Paul. You think I’m an archaeology student who became an Axiom asset? You’ve got it backward.”
“They killed him, you know. James.”
“He killed himself by staying.”
“Didn’t look like suicide to me. I was there.”
“It was unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?”
“It’s what happens when you fight the system. You lose.”
“He was our friend. You worked side by side with him for months. How do you sleep at night?”
“I sleep just fine.”
“I can’t believe I fucked you.”
This time her smile grew. She pulled out a gun and pointed it at Paul’s face. “Careful now. That’s no way to talk to a lady.”
Paul looked around at the trees and the empty river, and he realized this had all been planned. The isolated location. Margaret and her gun. The whole thing had been a trap after all.
“Margaret,” Gavin said. He spoke softly, almost in a whisper. During the course of the conversation, Gavin had stepped away from Paul, so that he was standing off to the side.
When Paul glanced over, he saw that Gavin had a gun, a small silver pistol, pointed directly at Margaret’s head.
Margaret didn’t move. “What are you doing?” Her voice was flat and emotionless.
“It’s not supposed to happen like this,” Gavin said.
“This is the way it happens,” Margaret said. “You’re not going to shoot me.”
“We’re supposed to give him a choice.”
“You’re right. What do you choose, Paul?”
“With a gun to my head?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I still can’t believe I fucked you.”
“Wrong answer. Sorry, Paul.”
Her finger began to flex on the trigger, and two shots rang out. She slumped to the ground, dead. A pool of blood spread out from her body while Gavin’s gun smoked in the dim light.
“Fuck,” Gavin said.
* * *
Gavin kicked her body into the river, and they watched it drift away, bobbing in the current. They climbed back up the ramp to the car and drove off. Paul guided Gavin to the hotel where Lillivati waited. There was no reason not to.
Gavin shifted into park and turned the car off. The yellow sign from the Days Inn shone through the windshield. They sat for a moment in the semidarkness, neither of them moving.
“Why’d you do that?” Paul asked.
“It had to be done. She would have killed you.”
“Why stop her?”
“It was the right thing to do.”
Behind them, semi trucks rolled by on the highway. The car windows vibrated with the rattle of their air brakes.
Eventually, softly, Gavin spoke again: “I knew your father. I should have told you.”
Paul turned to look at him but his face was hidden in the shadows. “It was a long time ago,” Gavin continued. “Just after you were born, in fact.”
“How did you know him?”
“We worked on related projects. We were colleagues, of a sort. We were friends.”
“Friends.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t remember you from the funeral.”
“No, by then your father had gone his own way. I hadn’t seen him for years by that point, though I heard about what happened. He deserved better than that.”
“Is that why you brought me on the dig to Flores?”
Gavin nodded. “I wish to hell I hadn’t.”
“Me, too.”
Gavin climbed out of the car.
Paul led him up to the motel room.
Lilli opened the door.
“This is Gavin,” Paul said. “He’s here to help us.”
Gavin shook her hand.
She looked at Paul. “How do you know we can trust him?”
Gavin looked at her but said nothing.
They stepped inside the motel room.
“We know,” Paul said.
37
Paul
had lost the rain.
They drove south for days, sticking to side roads whenever they could, winding their way through small towns and mountain passes. They bit off their days in three-hundred-mile increments, crashing at cheap hotels for the night, paying in cash. They ate in diners and truck stops. They passed white clapboard chapels and parking-lot-ensconced megachurches—the biggest of which rivaled shopping malls in size and football stadiums in attendance. Billboards for the churches occasionally flanked the highways on both sides. One sign in particular jumped out at Paul, horrifying in its simplicity: a jet-black background on which three words were written in letters ten feet high: HELL IS REAL.
As if there were any doubt.
Gavin talked as Paul drove. Lilli slept in the back while Gavin’s rental car ate up the miles.
Gavin had a plan. He doled it out in small chunks, a nightmare that kept getting worse.
“You think that will work?”
“I think it can work.”
Paul nodded. That was good enough. It was better than hopelessness.
Lillivati made a noise in the backseat, nursing her own nightmares as the car rolled on through the darkness.
On the fourth day, in the mountains, it began to rain. The rain came down hard, a midsummer monsoon, and the windshield wipers struggled to keep up.
Paul leaned forward, trying to see through the pouring rain. The water came down in buckets. Here and there, cars pulled to the side of the road or parked beneath overpasses. The mountain passes were narrow, and there wasn’t much room for error. Paul hadn’t seen rain like this since Flores.
Eventually, he gave in to the storm and took the next exit.
“Time for gas,” he said, though the tank was still half full. “Maybe grab some coffee.” He got no complaints.
He pulled into the station, climbed out, and started pumping gas. The overhead canopy kept him dry. Thirty-one dollars later the nozzle clicked.
He checked his wallet for cash—always cash—then eyed the rain for a moment, hesitating. It was cold in the mountain passes, and between him and the gas station door were a dozen yards of downpour. He turned his collar up against the chill, then sprinted across the wet pavement—and that’s when he noticed it.
He stopped. Halfway across.
The rain fell all around him, drenching him immediately.