Then they were in Wyoming, then Nebraska, then Utah, then finally Illinois.
Over the twenty-eight remaining hours it took to drive to the outskirts of Chicago, Jane spent almost every waking moment telling Nick how much she loved him.
She was a yo-yo. She was Patricia Hearst. She had drunk the Kool-Aid. She was taking orders from her neighbor’s dog.
Jane did not care if she was in a cult or if Nick was Donald DeFreeze. Actually, she no longer cared about the plan. Her part was over, anyway. The other cell members were on the frontlines now. Of course, she still felt outraged by the atrocities committed by her father and older brother. She mourned Laura and Robert Juneau’s loss. She felt bad for what had happened to Quarter and Alexandra Maplecroft in the shed. But Jane did not really have to believe in what they were doing or why.
All she had to do was believe in Nick.
“Turn left up here,” Paula said. She was kneeling behind the driver’s seat. She put her hand on Jane’s shoulder, which was alarming because Paula never touched except to hurt. “Look for a driveway on the right. It’s kind of hidden in the trees.”
Jane saw the driveway a few yards later. She put on the turn signal even though the van was the only vehicle for miles.
Paula punched Jane’s arm. “Dumb bitch.”
Jane listened to her disappear into the back of the van. Paula’s mood had lifted because Nick’s mood had lifted. The same had happened with Andrew. The effect was magical. The moment they had seen Nick’s easy grin, any feelings of worry or doubt had vanished.
Jane had made that happen.
“Jinx?” Andrew stirred in the passenger’s seat as the tires bumped onto the gravel driveway.
“We’re here.” Jane let out a slow sigh of relief as they cleared the stand of trees. The farm was just as she had pictured it from Andrew’s coded letters. Cows grazed in the pasture. A huge, red barn loomed over a quaint, one-story house that was painted a matching color. Daisies were planted in the yard. There was a small patch of grass and a white picket fence. This was the sort of happy place you could raise a child.
Jane rested her hand on her stomach.
“Okay?” Andrew asked.
She looked at her brother. The sleep had done him no good. Improbably, he looked worse than before. “Should I be worried?”
“Absolutely not.” His smile was unconvincing. He told her, “We’ll be able to rest here. To be safe.”
“I know,” Jane said, but she would not feel safe until Nick returned from New York.
The front tire hit a rut in the gravel drive. Jane winced as tree limbs lashed the side of the van. She almost said a prayer of thanks when she finally parked beside two cars in front of the barn.
“Hello, Chicago!” Nick called as he slid open the side door. He jumped to the ground. He stretched his arms and arched his back, his face looking up at the sky. “My God, it’s good to be out of that tin box.”
“No shit.” Paula groaned as she tried to stretch. She was only a few years older than Nick, but rage had curled her body in on itself.
Jane sighed again as her feet touched solid ground. The air was sharp, the temperature considerably lower than what they had left in California. She rubbed her arms to warm them as she looked out at the horizon. The sun hung heavy over the treetops. She guessed it was around four o’clock in the afternoon. She didn’t know what day it was, where they were exactly, or what was going to happen next, but she was so relieved to be out of the van that she could’ve cried.
“Stay here.” Paula stomped toward the house. Her boots kicked up a cloud of dust. She had taken off her fingerless gloves, wiped the black charcoal from under her eyes. The back of her hair corkscrewed into a cowlick. The hem of her shift was filthy. Like the rest of them, she had slashes of blood on her clothes.
Jane looked past her to the farmhouse. She wasn’t going to think about the blood anymore. She was either with Nick or she wasn’t.
All or none; the Queller way.
The front door opened. A small woman stood with a shawl wrapped around her narrow shoulders. Beside her, a tall man with long hair and an elaborate, handlebar mustache held a shotgun in his hands. He saw Paula, but did not lower the gun until she placed a penny in the palm of the woman’s open hand.
This was Nick’s idea. Penny, nickel, quarter, dime—each representing a cell, each cell using the coins as a way of indicating to each other that it was safe to talk. Nick delighted in the play on their name, the Army of the Changing World. He’d made them all dress in black, even down to their underwear, and stand in a line like soldiers as he placed a coin in each of their hands to designate their code names.
The jackass didn’t know the word ‘symbiotic,’ so he made up the word ‘symbionese.’
Jane gritted her teeth as she banished Danberry’s words from her mind.
She had made her choice.
“I don’t know about you, troops, but I’m starving.” Nick looped his arm around Andrew’s shoulders. “Andy, what about you? Is it feed a cold and starve a fever, or the other way around?”
“I think it’s give them both whisky and sleep in a real bed.” Andrew trudged toward the house, Nick beside him. They were both noticeably exhausted, but Nick’s energy was carrying them through, just as it always did.
Jane did not follow them toward the house. She wanted to stretch her legs and look at the farm. The thought of a moment alone in the silence appealed to her. She had grown up in the city. The Hillsborough house was too close to the airport to be called the country. While other girls Jane’s age learned horseback riding and attended Girl Scout retreats, she was sitting in front of her piano for five and six hours at a time, trying to sharpen the fine motor movements of her fingers.
Her hand, as always, found its way to her stomach.
Would her daughter play the piano?
Jane wondered how she was so certain that the child was a girl. She wanted to name her something wonderful, not plain Jane or silly Jinx or the cartoony Janey that Nick sometimes called her. She wanted to give the girl all of her strengths and none of her weaknesses. To make sure that she did not pass on that sleeping ball of fear to her precious child.
She stopped at the wooden fence. Two white horses were grazing in the field. She smiled as they nuzzled each other.
Andrew and Jane would be here for at least a week, maybe more. When Nick got back from New York, they would lie low for another week before crossing into Canada. Switzerland was their dream, but what would it feel like to raise her baby on a farm like this one? To walk her to the end of the driveway and wait for the school bus? Hide Easter eggs in bales of hay? Take the horses out into the field and lay a picnic—Jane, her baby, and Nick.
Next time, Nick told her the last time. We’ll keep it next time.
“Hello.” The thin woman with the shawl called to Jane. She was making her way past the barn. “I’m sorry to bother you. They’re asking for you. Tucker can move the van into the barn. Spinner and Wyman are already inside.”
Jane gave a solemn nod. The lieutenants in each cell had all been assigned code names from past Secretaries of the United States Treasury. When Nick had first told Jane the idea, she had struggled not to laugh. Now, she could see that the cloak and dagger had been for a reason. The identities of the Stanford cell had died with Quarter.
“Oh,” the woman had stopped in her tracks, her mouth rounded in surprise.
Jane was just as shocked to see the familiar face. They had never met before, but she knew Clara Bellamy from magazines and newspapers and posters outside the State Theater at Lincoln Center. She was a prima ballerina, one of Balanchine’s last shining stars, until a debilitating knee injury had forced her into retirement.
“Well now.” Clara resumed walking toward Jane with a grin on her face. “You must be Dollar Bill.”