She had been shocked last night when Carter Brenkshaw recognized her as Laura Shane, famous writer. She did not think of herself as a celebrity; she was only a storyteller, a weaver of tales, who worked with a loom of language, making a special fabric from words. She had done only one book tour for an early novel, had loathed that dreary trek, and had not repeated the experience. She was not a regular guest on television talkshows. She had never endorsed a product in a TV commercial, had never gone public in support of a politician, and had in general attempted to avoid being part of the media circus. She observed the tradition of having a dust jacket photograph on her books because it seemed harmless, and by the age of thirty-three she could admit without severe embarrassment that she was an unusually striking woman, but she never imagined, as the police put it, that her face was widely known.
Now she was dismayed not only because her loss of anonymity made her easier quarry for the police but because she knew that becoming a celebrity in modern America was tantamount to a loss of one’s self-critical faculties and a severe decline of artistic power. A few managed to be both public figures and worthwhile writers, but most seemed to be corrupted by the media attention. Laura dreaded that trap almost as much as she dreaded being picked up by
the police.
Suddenly, with some surprise, she realized that if she could worry about becoming a celebrity and losing her artistic center, she must still believe in a safe future in which she would write more books. At times during the night, she had vowed to fight to the death, to struggle to a bloody end to protect her son, but throughout she had felt that their situation was virtually hopeless, their enemy too powerful and unreachable to be destroyed. Now something had changed her, had brought her around to a dim, guarded optimism.
Maybe it had been the dream.
Chris returned with a large package of pecan-cinnamon rolls, three one-pint containers of orange juice, and the other items. They ate the rolls and drank the juice, and nothing had ever tasted better.
When she finished her own breakfast, Laura got in the back seat and tried to wake her guardian. He could not be roused.
She gave the third carton of orange juice to Chris and said, Keep it for him. He’ll probably wake up soon.”
“If he can’t drink, he can’t take his penicillin,” Chris said.
“He doesn’t need to take any for a few hours yet. Dr. Brenkshaw owe him a pretty potent shot last night; it’s still working.”
But Laura was worried. If he did not regain consciousness, they might never learn the true nature of the dangerous maze in which they were now lost—and might never find a way out of it. “What next?” Chris asked.
“We’ll find a service station, use the rest rooms, then stop at a op and buy ammunition for the Uzi and the revolver. After . we start looking for a motel, just the right kind of motel, a where we can hide out.”
When they settled in somewhere, they would be at least fifty miles from Dr. Brenkshaw’s place, where their enemies had last found them. But did distance matter to men who measured their journeys strictly in days and years rather than miles?
Parts of Santa Ana, neighborhoods on the south side of Anaheim, and adjoining areas offered the greatest number of motels of the type she was seeking. She did not want a modern, gleaming Red Lion Inn or Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge with color television sets, deep-pile carpet, and a heated swimming pool because reputable establishments required valid ID and a major credit card, and she dared not risk leaving a paper trail that would bring either the police or the assassins down on her. Instead she was seeking a motel that was no longer clean enough or in good enough repair to attract tourists, a seedy place where they were sappy to get the business, eager to take cash, and reluctant to ask questions that would drive away guests.