Figures materialized from the shadows outside. A flashlight played on him through the glass. Another light showed papers with a picture in somebody’s hand, being scrutinized. Finally, the door was opened, and a voice directed, “Come with us, please.” Cade got out and found himself between two muffled figures wearing hats. Another was visible on the far side of the car. Cade and the two with him began walking the way Marie had gone, over uneven gravelly ground. When they had covered twenty yards or so, the car started behind them, and its headlights came on. Cade looked back to see it begin moving, turning back toward the roadway. “It’s okay. You won’t be needing it again,” the same voice told him. For a chilling moment Cade wondered how he was supposed to take that. Getting too imaginative, he told himself.
A pickup was waiting along with the car that they had followed, he saw as they got closer. Marie was standing with two more figures. “Okay, it looks as if there’s a place where we can stay for a few days at least,” she told him. “This isn’t the best time to hold a conference. It’s been a rough day. We can talk more about options in the morning.”
A big man with a bearded face and pulled-down baseball cap ushered them into the pickup and then got in on the other side. As he started up, the car with the three others departed back in the direction of town. They pulled back onto the road, continuing in silence in the same direction as before for a couple of miles, and then turned off onto a dirt track climbing uphill through trees. It led to a camper trailer standing in the corner of a field behind what looked like a farmstead outlined dimly in the darkness. “There’s linen inside and some grub. Just help yourselves,” the big man said as he dropped them off. “You’ve got a phone that connects to the house. It would be best if you didn’t show yourselves there, at least for a while. . . . Oh, and you can call me John.”
The camper had seen better days, but the power and the plumbing worked. From the clothes in the closets and other signs of occupation, it seemed the place had been vacated for Cade and Marie’s benefit. They made themselves a salad and cooked a couple of pork chops. Were it not for the day’s events, this might have been a little like old times. The news on TV described a “terrorist hideout” in Chattanooga, which security forces had surrounded following a tipoff; they’d been met by gunfire. Five terrorists had been killed in the ensuing assault, and two had escaped. There was no mention of any incident at a motel. Cade’s and Marie’s pictures were shown as the two escapees, described as armed and dangerous.
By that time they were both too exhausted to talk more. Cade took a fold-down bunk in the camper’s living and dining area. Marie used the bedroom, farther back. As Cade lay thinking back over the day, it occurred to Cade that the photograph of him that they had shown on the TV was one that had been taken around six months previously. How had the authorities gotten it? The only thing he could think of was that it must have come from Julia.
CHAPTER TWENTY
BY DAYLIGHT, THE FARM revealed itself to be in a dilapidated condition, with little to mark it as a going concern. The fields, for the most part, had been left fallow, and rusting machinery stood among the outbuildings. A few scrawny looking cattle were penned in a muddy patch on the far side of the house.
John called on the phone to ask how things were. Marie took the call, said they were comfortable, and thanked him again for helping out. Right now, they needed a little time to make plans. She listened for a short while longer and then hung up.
“The police are all over the area and still stopping traffic,” she told Cade. “They’re showing our pictures everywhere.” She shook her head. “It was stupid for both of us to have gone into the coffee shop like that. We shouldn’t have been seen together. Let’s hope there weren’t any wrong people there with sharp eyes and good memories.” It wasn’t something that could be changed now. Cade put on the coffeepot, popped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, and turned back to the eggs he was about to scramble. Marie set dishes and cutlery on the table, poured two glasses of orange juice, and slid into the narrow bench seat behind.