Andy left. Her face was on fire as she crossed the road. He was watching her leave again the same way he had watched her leave outside of the hospital. “Idiot, idiot, idiot,” Andy whispered, then, “What the fuck? What the fuck?”
She felt disgusted with herself as she climbed the stairs to the motel. Mike’s truck was pulling onto the road. He was looking up at her as she walked across the balcony. Andy wished for a bazooka to blow him away. Or a gun to kill herself with. She had never hooked up with a stranger. Not even in college. What the hell was wrong with her? Why was she making such stupid decisions? She was a criminal on the run. No one could be trusted. So what if Mike had an Alabama driver’s license? Laura had one from Ontario, for fucksakes. She had a fake car. Mike could have a fake truck. The sign with the grasshopper was magnetized, not permanently stuck on. The bartender could’ve been friendly with Mike because bartenders are always friendly with their customers.
Andy jammed the key in the lock and threw open the door to her room. She was so upset that she barely noted the suitcase and sleeping bag were where she’d left them.
She sat on the bed, head in her hands, and tried not to burst into tears.
Had Mike played her? For what purpose? Was he some freak who was interested in Andy because he saw her on the diner video? He’d sure as hell spent a lot of time figuring out what had happened between Laura and Jonah Helsinger. At least what he thought had happened. He probably had a conspiracy blog. He probably listened to those crazy shows on the radio.
But he had called her beautiful. And he was right about being excited. Unless somehow between opening the front door of the bar and walking to his truck he’d shoved a can of Coke down his pants.
“Christ!”
That stupid keychain.
Andy stood up. She had to pace. She had to go through every single fucking stupid thing she had done. Kissed him too deeply? Too much saliva? Not enough tongue? Maybe her breasts were too small. Or, God, no—
She smelled her bra, which carried the scent of the disgusting hotel soap.
Did guys care about that kind of thing?
Andy covered her eyes with her hands. She sank back to the bed.
The memory of her fingers stroking that stupid keychain in his pocket made her cheeks radiate with heat. He had probably been insulted. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to take advantage of someone who was so painfully inept. What kind of idiot thought a rabbit’s foot keychain was a man’s penis?
But what kind of grown-ass man kept a giant rabbit’s foot in his pocket?
That guy.
What the hell did that even mean—that guy?
Andy dropped her hands from her face.
She felt her mouth gape open.
The truck.
Not Mike’s grasshopper truck or the dead man’s truck, but the beat-up old Chevy she had seen parked in the Hazeltons’ driveway early this morning.
This morning—
After Andy had killed a man. After she had run down the beach looking for the dead man’s Ford because Laura had told her to.
There had been two trucks parked in the Hazeltons’ driveway, not one.
The windows had been rolled down. Andy had looked inside the cab. She had considered stealing the old Chevy instead of taking the Ford. It would’ve been easy, because the key was in the ignition. She had seen it clearly in the pre-dawn light.
It was attached to a rabbit’s foot keychain, just like the one that Mike Knepper had taken out of his pocket and looped around his fingers.
July 31, 1986
FIVE DAYS AFTER THE OSLO SHOOTING
9
Jane Queller woke in a cold sweat. She had been crying in her sleep again. Her nose was raw. Her body ached. She started shaking uncontrollably. Panic made her heart shiver inside of her chest. In the semi-darkness, she thought she was back in Berlin, then in the Oslo hotel room, then she realized that she was in her childhood bedroom inside the Presidio Heights house. Pink wallpaper. Satin pink duvet and pillows. More pink in the rug, on the couch, the desk chair. Posters and stuffed animals and dolls.
Her mother had decorated the room because Jane did not have time to do it herself. From the age of six, almost every waking moment of Jane’s life had been spent in front of the piano. Tinkering. Practicing. Playing. Learning. Performing. Touring. Judging. Failing. Recovering. Coaxing. Succeeding. Mastering.
In the early days, Martin would stand behind Jane while she played, his eyes following the notes, his hands on her shoulders, gently pressing when she made a mistake. Pechenikov had requested Martin abandon his post as a condition of taking on Jane as a student, but the tension of Martin’s presence had shadowed her career. Her life. Her triumphs. Her failures. Whether she was in Tokyo or Sydney or New York, or even during her three months of isolation in Berlin, Jane could always feel an invisible Martin hovering behind her.
Jane shivered again. She glanced behind her, as if Martin might be there. She sat up and pressed her back against the headboard. She pulled the sheets around her.
What had they done?
Nick would argue that they hadn’t done anything. Laura Juneau was the one who’d pulled the trigger. The woman had been visibly at peace with the decision. She could’ve walked away at any time. That she had murdered Martin, then herself, was an act of bravery, and also an act that she had committed alone.
But for the first time in the six years that Jane had known Nicholas Harp, she found herself incapable of believing him.
They had all put Laura on that stage with Martin—Jane, Andrew, Nick, the other cells in the other cities. By Nick’s design, they were each a cog in a decentralized machine. A mysterious man on the inside had helped Chicago infiltrate the company that produced the red dye packs that were supposed to be inside the brown paper bag. New York had worked with the document forger in Toronto. San Francisco had paid for airline tickets, hotel rooms, taxi rides and meals. Like Martin’s shadow behind Jane, they had all stood invisible behind Laura Juneau as she pulled the revolver from her purse and twice squeezed the trigger.
Was this crazy?
Were they all insane?
Every morning for the last eighteen months Jane had found herself waking up with doubt on her mind. Her emotions would violently swing like the clapper inside a bell. One moment, she would think that they were acting like lunatics—running drills, practicing escapes and learning how to use weapons. Wasn’t that ridiculous? Why did Jane have to learn hand-to-hand combat? Why did she need to memorize safe house locations and understand diagrams of false panels and secret compartments? They were just a handful of people, all of them under the age of thirty, believing that they had the wherewithal, the power, to pull off extraordinary acts of opposition.
Wasn’t that the very definition of delusional?
But then the next moment, Nick would start speaking and Jane would be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything they were doing made perfect sense.
Jane put her head in her hands.
She had helped a woman murder her own father. She had planned for his death. She had known it was going to happen and said nothing.
Oslo had taken away the ridiculousness. The skepticism. Everything was real now. All of it was happening.
Jane was losing her mind.
“There you are.” Nick came into the room with a mug in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He was wearing his boxer shorts and nothing else. “Drink all of this.”
Jane took the mug. Hot tea and bourbon. The last time she’d had a drink was with Laura Juneau in the bar. Jane’s heart had been pounding then as it pounded now. Laura had called Jane a chameleon. And she had been right. The woman had no idea that Jane was part of the group. They had talked like strangers, then intimates, then Laura was gone.