The Innocent

Chapter





19


ROBIE MADE ONE STOP, at an all-night convenience store to get some groceries. A half hour after that the truck lights flickered across the face of the small farmhouse. Robie pulled the truck to a stop and looked across at Julie.

Her eyes were closed. She appeared to be sleeping, but after seeing her defend herself against the attacker on the bus, Robie was taking nothing for granted. He didn’t want to get blasted with pepper spray so he didn’t reach out to jostle her. He simply said quietly, “We’re here.”

Her eyes instantly opened. She didn’t yawn, stretch, or rub her face, as most people would have. She was just awake.

Robie was impressed. Because that was exactly how he woke up too.

“What is this place?” she asked, looking around.

They had driven down a gravel road. Woods starting to turn color bracketed the gravel. The drive ended at the front of the white clapboard house. Painted black front door, two front windows, a small porch. In the back a barn rose high above the apex of the house.

“Safe,” he said. “Or as safe as possible under the circumstances.”

She stared at the barn. “Was this like a farm or something?”

“Or something. Long time ago. Woods have reclaimed the fields.”

This was Robie’s fail-safe. His employer provided other safe houses for Robie and people like him. But this place was his alone. Ownership under a shell company. No way to trace back to him.

“Where are we?”

“Southwest of D.C., in Virginia. Technical term would be the boonies.”

“Do you own it?”

Robie put the truck back in drive and headed for the barn. He stopped, got out, unlocked the barn doors, and drove the truck inside. He got out again, grabbed the sack of groceries, and said, “Come on.”

Julie followed him to the house. There was an alarm system. The beeping sound stopped when Robie put in the code. He was careful to not let her see the numbers he punched in.

He closed and locked the door.

She looked around, still clutching her backpack.

“Where do I go?”

He pointed up the straight set of stairs on one side of the small entrance hall. “Spare bedroom, second door on the right. Bathroom across the hall. You hungry?”

“I’d rather sleep.”

“Okay.” He lifted his gaze to the stairs in a prompting manner.

“Good night,” said Robie.

“Good night.”

“And make sure you don’t shoot yourself with the pepper spray. It really stings the skin.”

She looked down at her hand where the small canister was hidden.

“How did you know?”

“I saw you had it pointed at me the whole drive over. Don’t blame you. Get some sleep.”

She set off. He watched her trudge up the stairs. He heard the bedroom door open and close and then the lock engage.

Smart girl.

Robie went into the kitchen, put the groceries away, and sat down at the round table across from the sink. He set the .38 throwaway on the table and took out his cell phone. No GPS chip was in there. Company policy, because a chip could work both ways. But he had screwed up on the pinhole.

And they must have suspected he wouldn’t fire on the woman tonight. They had the tracker on him in case he gave them the slip.

A setup from the get-go. Nice. Now he needed to figure out why.

He clicked some buttons on his phone and looked at the photos he’d taken at the dead woman’s apartment.

Her driver’s license stated that her name was Jane Wind, age thirty-five. Her unsmiling photo looked back at Robie. He knew she would be lying on the D.C. medical examiner’s metal exam table shortly, her face not just unsmiling but badly disfigured by the rifle round. Her child would be autopsied too. Having taken the brunt of the round’s kinetic energy, the boy would no longer really have a face.

Robie looked at the photos of her passport pages. He enlarged the screen so he could make out the ports of entry. There were several European countries on there, including Germany. Those were usual. But then Robie saw Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait. Those were not so usual.

He next looked at her government ID card.

Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense.

Robie stared at the screen.

I’m screwed. I’m totally screwed.

He used his phone to access the Internet and scrolled through news sites looking for any information on Wind’s death or the bus exploding. There was nothing on Wind. They might not have found her yet. But the bus blowing up had already attracted attention. However, there were few details. Robie obviously knew more than any of the reporters out there trying to find out what had happened. According to the news accounts thus far, the authorities were not ruling out a mechanical cause for the explosion.

And that’s where it might remain, thought Robie, unless they could find evidence to the contrary. Blowing up an old bus in the middle of the night and killing a few dozen people didn’t seem like it would be high on a jihadist’s bucket list.

His handler had not tried to contact him again. Robie was not surprised by this. They wouldn’t have expected him to answer in any event. He was safe here for now. Tomorrow? Who knew? He glanced in the direction of the stairs. He was on the run, and he was not alone. Alone he might have a chance. But now?

Now he had Julie. She was fourteen, maybe. She didn’t trust him or anyone else. And she was running from something too.

His mind and body tired, Robie could think of nothing else to do right now. So he did what made sense. He went upstairs to the bedroom across the hall from hers, locked the door behind him, laid the .38 on his chest, and closed his eyes.

Sleep was important right now. He wasn’t sure when he would get another chance to do it.