“I don’t think anyone knows that Reece is dead. They probably haven’t even found his body yet. Mikhail can’t know already.”
“He will not wait to tempt fate. If there is a threat, he will run.” Ana reached into her bag and pulled out a cell phone. She hit two buttons and laid it on the coffee table in front of her. It rang twice before someone on the other end answered.
“Caviar Gentlemen’s Club. Dawby speaking.”
In the background, AC/DC blasted out “You Shook Me All Night Long.”
“Dawby, this is Ana. I need to speak to Mikhail. It’s important.”
“For fuck’s sake, Ana. What the hell’s going on? You ’bout got me fired.”
“I’m sorry, Dawby, but—”
“You come in here with a gun and then some cop pulls you out? Mikhail’s pissed. He got all up in my shit and threatened to fire me. What the hell was I supposed to do? Fight a cop?”
“Dawby, is Mikhail there?”
“No. He and Reece had a powwow upstairs for a few minutes. Then Reece ran out of here like his ass was on fire. A little while later, Mikhail tells me he’s gone for the rest of the week, maybe longer. Says I’m in charge of things. I mean, what the fuck. One minute he’s firing me and the next, I’m the boss. What’s going on?”
Ana hung up the phone.
“Where’s he going?” I asked.
“North. He has a cabin in the Superior National Forest, just on this side of the Canadian border. He has friends who live in a cabin ten miles into Canada. When things get too dangerous, he crosses the border until it is safe to return. He will need to walk across the border, so he’ll wait until morning. Then he will leave the United States. If he makes it across, we will never see him again—not after what happened to Reece.”
“You know where his cabin is?”
“I know where it is.”
I ran to retrieve an old atlas from the coat closet.
“I cannot show you where Mikhail’s cabin is—not on a map. I only know what it looks like from the road. I have to go with you. It’s on the Gunflint Trail. That’s the only road name I remember.”
“Well, that narrows it down to about sixty miles.”
“I will know it when I see it. You must take me with you.”
“Just until you show me where his cabin is. Then I’m dropping you at a resort. Is that agreed?”
“That is agreed.”
I went into my bedroom to grab some winter clothes: gloves, boots, a coat, and a pair of thin gray ski pants, more for fashion than function. I also grabbed some sweaters that I thought might fit Ana. We’d be going through the heaviest band of snow, eight inches or more, and the possibility of sliding into a ditch was all too real.
My unmarked squad car, a Dodge Charger, didn’t stand much of a chance in eight inches of snow, so we piled our supplies into Jenni’s Durango. I rarely drove the Durango and hadn’t started it for almost a year, so I had grave doubts that it would even turn over. I held my breath as I turned the key. It gave a short moan but then caught and started up.
Before pulling out of the garage, I went over my checklist of supplies: my gun, bottled water, winter clothes. I had a snow emergency kit in the car and a near-full tank of gas. What was I forgetting? A plan? That didn’t seem to matter. Time mattered.
As I pulled the car out of the garage, a thought struck me, and I stopped the Durango, the back bumper sticking halfway into the alley.
“Let me see your phone,” I said, pulling my own phone out of my pocket.
“Why?”
“Give it to me.” I held the side button down on my phone until it gave the option to shut it down, which I did.
Ana hesitated but then gave me her phone. I turned on the dome light so I could see to pop the back of her phone off. I pulled the battery out, put it in my shirt pocket, and tossed the dead phone back to her. She wasn’t expecting the toss and it hit the back of her wrist and fell between the seat and center console.
“Why did you do that?” she asked as she slid her fingers into the crack to retrieve her phone.
“Cell phones talk to towers. Towers leave a trail. No phone calls. No evidence. We never left the city.”
“I would have shut it off.”
“I’ll feel better if I can hold onto the battery.”
She pulled her hand up but she did not have her phone. Instead, something shiny dangled from her fingers. A bracelet—Jenni’s bracelet with the engraved charms of her mother and aunt and grandmother.
“What the hell?” I grabbed it away from Ana, holding it under the light to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. How did that bracelet get between the seat and console? Why wasn’t it in the sewing box upstairs? I didn’t understand.
Then I saw it—a charm brighter, more polished than the others. I counted. Where there had been six charms, there were now seven. The newest held no name, its golden surface unscratched, untarnished, waiting for a name to be engraved upon it.
Jenni knew she was pregnant.
Everything grew hot. My eyes filled with tears. All that I knew for certain was that I had to get out of the car. I pulled the handle and half fell out of the driver’s seat, the bracelet twined around my fingers.
I ran toward the mouth of the alley where the glow from a streetlight flickered through the static of falling snow. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see past the blur of tears in my eyes. The very air around me pulsed with an off-pitch ringing that I was pretty sure was only in my head.
At the base of the streetlight, I fell to one knee, holding the bracelet to my lips, a ball-peen hammer pounding in my ears. She was going to use the bracelet to tell me about the baby, wear it to dinner or maybe have it on her wrist when she curled up in my arms at night. I would have noticed the tinkling of the charms and asked why she was wearing it. She would have smiled and said nothing until the light came on in my thick head. That’s how she would have done it.
Tears fell hard down my cheeks. My lungs heaved and stammered as I tried to catch my breath. I put one hand on the light pole to steady myself.
In that last second before the impact, in that moment when Jenni understood that a speeding car would rob her of her life, she knew about the baby. Her pain was shared. Her fear was shared. Her death would be shared. Her last thoughts would not have been for herself; they would have been for her child, a universe of love and hope and regret folding into her womb, cradling a baby no bigger than a single jelly bean.
Slowly, my grief began to harden inside my chest. The man who killed Jenni was fleeing north, hoping to never be seen again by the likes of me. With that I found a new hunger, a passion strong enough to unseat my memories of Jenni. I had prey to pursue and a commitment to keep.