Right now, it’s almost like it never happened. Life is normal, or close to it, and certainly far more normal than if we’d had to go into hiding, leave our lives behind. If anyone ever questioned what I did, approving that cable, I could always play it off as a slipup, a mistake.
No one will ever have to know the truth.
“I should have told you,” I say softly. “But I just couldn’t.”
* * *
—
I stay home the next day with Owen, and I don’t let him out of my sight all day, not even for a minute. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For my phone to ring, Unknown to flash across the screen. For someone to come to the door.
But there’s nothing. It’s quiet.
The day after that, Drew stays home with Owen while I go back to work, after I lied and said Owen spiked a temp again. I hate lying to Drew, but I can’t possibly send Owen back to All Children’s. How could I, after what they did, letting him leave with a stranger? Surely Drew would agree.
The first thing I do, again, is check the Falcon case. There’s an update from Damascus Station: A.J. met with Falcon this morning, gave him COVCOM.
The words leave me with a tight feeling in my chest. This was preventable.
But at what cost?
Today’s my last day in the office; I’m using personal leave to finish out the mandatory final two weeks. Violet wasn’t happy, but when I explained I didn’t feel comfortable leaving Owen at daycare any longer, she relented. She reassigned my accounts, all the assets I’m responsible for following. Gave most of them to Jeremy, including Falcon. I hate that the case is assigned to him, but they’d have no reason to harass him. They got what they wanted: Falcon’s a source.
I clear out my desk, turn in my badge, say my goodbyes. It all feels surreal. I thought for sure I’d be here until retirement. Never had the slightest interest in leaving. And now? Now I’m walking out on my dream career.
“Let’s stay in touch,” I tell Jeremy. It’s hardest saying goodbye to him.
“Definitely.”
“But let’s actually do it.”
He smiles. “I’ll find you on Facebook.”
We exchange an awkward hug, and then I take my cardboard file box full of personal belongings, and I walk out of the building for the last time, away from the career I love.
That evening Jeremy sends me a friend request on Facebook, just as he promised. I confirm it and browse his profile. A bunch of pictures of Max. A few videos, which are actually pretty funny. The dog bounds to the door, sliding on the wood floor and barking like crazy, when anyone rings the bell. I’ve seen it myself in person; each year Jeremy hosts a Labor Day cookout for the team. I won’t be invited again, will I?
I open up the window to send him a message, then close it. I don’t know what to say.
The next week is a whirlwind. Drew gets approved for a transfer within his firm. Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We pack up the house, get ready to leave our old life behind. I’m tense the whole time, but there’s no contact from Unknown, no blowback for resigning.
One week after my last day of work, I file the paperwork to legally change my name. I finally become Jill Smith. Anonymity no longer seems like a bad thing.
We buy a new house in Fort Lauderdale in a gated community. In Drew’s name only; I convince him the mortgage application process will be smoother that way, with me out of work.
While he’s signing the paperwork, I pick up new cellphones, with new local phone numbers, and a new smartwatch, the latest model. I stop in a Starbucks and set up new email accounts, then on to the bank to open new accounts. Drew’s confused by all the changes, asks again if something happened at work, even quips that we’re acting like we’re on the run, but I tell him he’s being ridiculous, that it’s just the perfect time for a fresh start. I call on every tactic I learned in CIA training, use every trick to convincingly lie, and I think he buys it. Frankly, I think he’s ready for a fresh start, too. Excited about it. He’s been anxious to escape Leo’s orbit for years.
I never thought I’d lie to Drew. Never thought I’d keep a huge secret from him. I feel almost overcome with guilt every time I look at him. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s our family I’m protecting with my lies. He loves Owen as much as I do; he’d want me to keep our son safe, at any cost.
I know our trail isn’t invisible, not even close. But it’s a step in the right direction.
In any case, I hope that if they ever do come looking for us, we’ll be harder to find.
It takes a week for our belongings to arrive. I arranged for storage pods, had them held in a warehouse briefly before delivery, figured it was harder to track those than a moving truck.
Again, not perfect. But better than nothing.
Everything’s in the new house now. Furniture’s in place, cardboard boxes are stacked in each room, movers are gone. In the nursery, I pull a clean fitted sheet over the crib mattress, smooth it out. Dig the diapers and wipes from a box, set them on the shelf of the changing table. In another box I find Owen’s favorite books, Goodnight Moon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the ones we read every night at bedtime, and place them on top of the bookcase. Then I look around. There’s still so much work to be done, but I feel such a sense of satisfaction, and relief. This could have turned out so very differently.
I pick up Owen and walk with Drew into the fenced backyard. There are palm trees in the corners, and a lake is just barely visible, beyond some other houses. The sun is setting, and the sky is streaked with brilliant pink. I point out an egret to Owen, in amongst the cattails on the banks of the lake. I don’t remember the last time I felt this relaxed. Certainly not since that day my life changed forever.
Once we’re back inside, Drew opens the bottle of pinot noir the previous owners left on the counter for us. He pours some into two paper cups, all that we can find. We toast with a smile. There’s a warm feeling flowing through me. I did it; I got us out of this mess.
We’re safe. We’re free.
One day I’ll tell Drew everything. They’ll never know, and surely he’ll agree that I made the right decision for our family.
Owen starts fussing, and Drew picks him up. “Hey, did you find his elephant?”
The favorite stuffed toy, the one that was inadvertently packed away, sorely missed. “Totally forgot. Let me go back and look.”
I head down the hall to Owen’s room and scan the labels on the boxes, wondering which one might hold the toy, when something in the crib catches my eye.
A piece of paper, folded, lies in the center of the mattress.
I know it wasn’t there before.
I walk closer, filled with trepidation, with fear, but it’s almost like I’m being pulled by some invisible force, like I have to see what it is.
I pick it up, my hand trembling, and open it.
Block letters, black marker.
YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE.
FOUR YEARS LATER
CHAPTER FIVE
I never breathed a word. Four years, and not one single word.
Once I found that note, any thoughts of coming clean to Drew went right out the window. It wasn’t worth the risk. All they asked of me was to keep quiet. Keep quiet, and Owen would be safe. Why would I risk telling anyone?
Besides, Drew was happy. Content. What would it do to him to let him know someone’s watching us, listening to us, threatening us? I hated living that way. I didn’t want to put him through it.
Those first months were rough. We’d left everything behind. Our home, all our friends. And for what?
We had run, but they were right: we couldn’t hide. They found us before the boxes were even unpacked. They made their way into our house, into Owen’s bedroom. There was no way to escape.
So there was only one option: stay quiet.
Gradually, I stopped thinking as much about the phones, the smart TVs, the watches. Stopped being so intimately aware that someone might be listening to anything we said, might be watching. I had to, or I’d have gone crazy. This was the new reality, and as much as I hated it, I knew I couldn’t change it. It was the price I had to pay for keeping my son safe.
We settled into life in Florida, and I settled into a life I never envisioned. I couldn’t bring myself to send Owen back to a daycare center, not after what had happened. So I fell into the role of stay-at-home mom. Not something I ever wanted, ever thought in a million years I’d do.
Owen grew, and when he was about a year and a half, we had another child, a little girl. Mia. It happened naturally, much to our shock. We were making ends meet, but I don’t know how we’d have afforded more rounds of IVF. I don’t know if we’d have tried, either. As delighted as I was with the news, I was equal parts terrified. They’d already come after one of my children, threatened to come back. If they did ever come back, now it would be for two.
Life got more expensive with Mia, and I ended up taking a part-time job teaching at a private language institute downtown. Not something I sought out. But it was the only thing I found that provided the income we needed with a schedule that worked for our family: two evenings a week and all day on Sundays. Drew made sure to be home early on Mondays and Wednesdays, and we crammed all our family outings into our Saturdays. It was what we needed.
I teach Mandarin and Turkish to small classes of students, mostly ambitious young professionals, a few restless seniors. It was tough at first: I had left the career I loved to stand in front of a whiteboard and explain verb conjugation and fix pronunciation errors. But it grew on me, fast. Soon I actually started to look forward to work. It was nice to feel like I was doing something valuable again. That I was helping to prepare these young people for a lifetime of adventure, of possibilities—the kind of life I once had.
I miss my career. My old life, before they entered it. But I’ve come to realize the pain is dulled if I don’t think about it. So I try not to. I stay away from the news, anything about international affairs or intelligence. I’ve taken up painting, and I throw myself into it. Watercolors, mostly. I find that when I’m focused on how light hits a subject, or the way two colors blend together, it’s all that fills my mind.
Most of all, I try not to think about Falcon. He still creeps back into my thoughts occasionally, and every time he does, I feel overcome with guilt. I tell myself that if I weren’t so conscientious, if I were more like Brent, I might have missed whatever it was they didn’t want me to discover, anyway. And that it wasn’t just me. It wasn’t a single point of failure. It was on A.J., and the Chief of Station, and COPS, and even the Director of Operations.
But none of that assuages my guilt. Guilt is the price to pay for what I did.
Four years, and I never heard another word from them. Never saw any indication they were paying attention to us. Surely they’d moved on. And so I tried to do the same. I tried to stop looking over my shoulder, stop being on the lookout for someone watching us, following us. Tried to make new friends, even though in the back of my mind I knew we might have to leave them. Tried to feel safe again.
But I never, ever forgot about them.
* * *
—
It’s noon on Friday, which means it’s grocery time.
I’ve picked Owen up from morning preschool and we’re at the Publix a few blocks from home. The kids are sitting side by side in one of the carts shaped like a race car, complete with two steering wheels.
Mia’s convinced, as always, that she’s driving the cart, and is taking her responsibility incredibly seriously. She’s leaning forward, jiggling the wheel intensely. Owen’s leaning back, head down. He has a book on his lap, one with hidden pictures.
The two kids couldn’t be more different. He’s as serious as she is spunky, as reserved as she is exuberant. He loves to read; she loves to climb. They even look different: his hair is still blond, albeit darker than when he was a baby, and straight. Hers is dark, full of wild curls.
“Owen,” Mia chides, looking over at him. It comes out sounding like Oh-ie. “Pay attention.”
I suppress a smile. She might be a year and a half younger, but you’d never know it, the way they interact.
He lifts one hand to the wheel, never taking his eyes off the book. “I just found the toothbrush, Mommy.”
“You have to drive, Owen,” she says, and she jiggles the wheel extra hard to prove her point.
“It’s okay, Mia,” I say gently. “You can drive, and Owen can do his hidden pictures.”
“But there are two wheels,” she says. She turns and shoots me a look that’s like a flash of what life will be like when she’s a teenager.
“Let’s take a right here,” I tell her, suppressing a smile, and she spins back around, yanks the wheel hard to the left. I turn right and head for the baby carrots.
“Found the comb, Mommy,” Owen says.
“Owen, drive,” Mia says, exasperated.
I reach for a bag of carrots and check the date. Ten days; that’ll do. I place the bag in the cart—
There’s a woman, staring at us. She’s behind the table of tomatoes.
I’m used to people watching us when we’re at the grocery store. Older folks, mostly. Inevitably they smile, make some remark about how it goes so fast, and I should enjoy these moments.
But this woman, she’s not smiling. She’s just watching.
She’s younger than me, late twenties maybe, or early thirties. Statuesque, with short black hair worn natural and full, and a distinctive air of confidence, like she knows exactly how striking she is.
I smile, but her face doesn’t change. Instead, she looks down, puts a carton of cherry tomatoes in her basket, and turns away.
I stare after her.
“Mommy!”
I realize Mia’s standing in her seat, body twisted toward me, trying to get my attention. “Sit down, please, honey.”
“Can we get pears?” Her tone makes it clear she’s asked more than once. I didn’t hear a word.
“Mommy, I can’t find the teddy bear,” Owen says.
“Pears. Sure,” I murmur, watching the woman walk off.
“Mommy, the teddy bear,” Owen says.
“The pears,” Mia says.
The woman’s out of sight now.
“I asked first,” Owen says.
“No, I did.”
“I hear you both,” I say, refocusing, starting to walk. “I’m heading toward the pears. And Owen—” I give the book a quick glance, “look for the teddy bear down in the corner, near the comb.”
She’s quiet; he’s quiet. I reach for a bag of pears, then look in the direction the woman disappeared. I’m completely unsettled.
By the time we head for checkout, the cart is loaded. Milk, eggs, bread, the other usual staples, the impulse buys the kids want. Owen’s finished his hidden-pictures book, Mia’s resting her head on the side of the cart, ready for naptime. Everything’s normal.
That woman—it was probably nothing. Or maybe she wasn’t even staring at us. It was my imagination, ghosts of the past haunting my thoughts, creeping back in when I least expect it.
We’re safe here.
I pay for the groceries, head outside to the parking lot. Mia’s fast asleep now, and even Owen’s yawning. I get to the car, lift Mia in first, then Owen, buckle them into their car seats. Then it’s on to the groceries. I load everything into the trunk, push the empty cart into the corral just beside the car, open the driver’s-side door and slide in—
I go still.
There’s a white sedan idling alone in the next row over, flanked on either side by a half dozen empty spaces, facing us.
There’s a woman in the driver’s seat, her head tur
ned toward us. She’s wearing dark shades now, but I recognize her. Same one from the produce aisle.
Fear returns with a vengeance. It wasn’t paranoia before.
This woman’s watching us.
They’re back, aren’t they?
CHAPTER SIX
Confront her.
It’s my first instinct. She’s got to be one of them, those people who took Owen, who’ve made me spend years looking over my shoulder, feeling watched. And I’ve never had the opportunity to confront them, to tell them to leave us alone, to assure them I haven’t said a word, and never will.
But that instinct, it’s wrong. A remnant from a previous life. Maybe it would have worked if it were just me. But it’s not just me. Owen and Mia are in the backseat. Am I really going to stop and get out of my car and talk to this person who’s a threat to us while my kids are in the backseat? Of course not.
I pull my eyes away from the woman and look in the rearview mirror. Mia, fast asleep, head tilted to the side, a peaceful expression on her face. And Owen, awake, but with heavy eyelids. He smiles at me through the mirror, that sweet, shy smile of his.
I start the ignition and look over at the white sedan. Still idling there, the woman still facing our direction. I wait, my own car idling, and debate. I could leave the lot in either direction: left, toward that car, or right, away.
I choose left.
I pull out of the space and drive slowly past the sedan. Florida plates; I commit the string of letters and numbers to memory.
The woman turns her head as we drive by, watches us go.
The car doesn’t follow—I watch it in the rearview mirror—but still I run a surveillance detection route on the way home. Skills I learned on the Farm, haven’t used in a decade. A winding path, with stops. Gas, first; I top off the tank, and by the time I pull away, Owen’s asleep. Starbucks drive-through next, for a tall drip I don’t want. The whole time, I’m eyeing the mirrors, committing every car around me to memory, making sure I don’t catch sight of that white sedan again, making sure no one else is tailing me. The last thing I want to do is lead them home.
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