Panic

16

Evan needed a car. Fast. Dezz could come after him at any moment, thundering down and running him off the road, smearing him into jelly. A sign down the road indicated he was two miles from Bandera.

He drove into town, stopping only to tuck the emptied gun into the duffel so he wasn’t flashing around weaponry. Lots of shops, a barbecue restaurant, signs for festivals happening every month. He peeled off the main road and wondered how he would go about stealing a car.

It was a strange decision. He wasn’t part of the normal world anymore; he had stepped over into a shadow land where he had no map, no compass, no North Star to guide him. He had seen his face on the national news, seen himself discussed as a victim of crime. He had run over Gabriel and kept driving. He had seen Gabriel shot twice but was not heading to the police. He had escaped from the man who might have killed his mother.

The rule book of his life was in the gutter.

He drove until the houses were smaller, the edges of the lawns less precise.

Small towns. Unlocked doors, keys in cars. Right? He hoped. He parked the Ducati, pocketed the keys, slung his dusty duffel over his shoulder. A slow rain began, the sky rumbled. Most of the homes had driveways with carports instead of garages. Good. That made spotting a target car easier, and he wondered if this was how thieves approached their work. The rain chased everyone inside. He prayed no one watched him as he ambled from driveway to driveway, peering into cars, testing the doors. Everything was locked. So much for small-town trust.

He was on his eighth driveway, soaked now, approaching a pickup when the front door opened and a tough, thick-necked guy stepped out onto the home’s small porch.

‘Help you, mister?’ he called. In a tone not exactly a threat, but not saying, Hi, come and drink a beer with me. ‘What you doing?’

The lie came to Evan’s mouth so easily it astonished him. ‘Flyers.’ He pointed at the duffel bag. ‘Supposed to leave flyers on windshields, but it’s too wet. So I was gonna stick ’em in the driver’s seats.’

‘Flyers for what?’ The giant stepped forward, giving Evan a doubting eye: his shaggy hair, the earring, the now filthy bowling shirt, begrimed with wet dirt and Gabriel’s blood.

‘New church in town,’ Evan said. ‘The Holy Blood of Our Lord Fellowship. Have you been saved? We give more redemption for the dollar. We use rattlesnakes in our services and-’

The giant said, ‘Thanks, I’m good,’ stepped back inside, and closed the door.

Evan headed down the street. Fast now, running in the rain. The giant either bought it or he didn’t and was calling the cops.

Two more doors down, a Holy Grail gleamed in the rain: an unlocked truck. It was a Ford F-150, red, an interior clean except for a Styrofoam coffee cup in the holder, a cell phone wedged in the seat divider, and a Teletubby doll, worn-out with affection. The lights were off in the house: the mailbox read EVANS. An omen, a kiss of good luck. He tore out a piece of paper from his notebook and wrote, Really sorry about taking the truck, the Ducati parked down the street is yours to keep, I’ll call and tell you where I’ve left your truck. He put the note and the Teletubby doll and the Ducati keys on the porch in plain sight, got in, started the truck, backed up. He thought the phone might be useful before the angry owner deactivated its service.

No one came out of the house.

He drove out of Bandera at modest speed, checking the gas gauge. Almost full. God had finally given him a break he hadn’t had to fight for.

Now you’re a real criminal. What would his mom say?

She’d say, Go get the bastards who killed me.

No. Revenge didn’t matter – saving his father did. Florida, Gabriel had claimed, was the rendezvous point for Evan’s dad. His father might already be there, if he wasn’t being held by Dezz Jargo’s group. Evan would drive to San Antonio – it was almost noon now – and head east. He cranked on the radio as he hit the highway. Willie Nelson implored Whiskey River to take his mind. The storm blossomed into full fury, and he pointed the truck southeast. He knew the signs would guide him into the sprawl of San Antonio. Then he could take Interstate 10 in a straight shot to Houston and beyond, across the Louisiana flatlands and bayous. Across the toes of Mississippi and Alabama and into the westward finger of Florida.

Then he could find his father. In a big, crowded state, where he had no idea where to start looking. But he couldn’t stay still.

He thought about the files. The files were the crux, the negotiating point, the key to rescuing his father. If Dezz Jargo and company believed he possessed another copy of the files and would eventually exchange them for his dad, then the files shielded his father. Kill his father, and Evan had no reason to keep the files secret.

People had lied to him before, with the cameras rolling, trying to make themselves look good. Or look smart. The best liars skirted the truth, stayed close enough to it. Maybe there were pebbles of truth in Dezz’s and Gabriel’s claims. The truth might lie between their tongues.

His whole body hurt, his whole body said enough. Concentrate on the road. Don’t think about Mom, about Carrie. Just drive. Every mile gets you closer. That’s what his dad had said on the long family drives. They never had other family to visit; these were always trips to the Grand Canyon, to New Orleans where his parents had lived when he was born, to Santa Fe, to Disney World once when he was fifteen, too cool for Disney but actually dying from excitement. Whenever he’d ask the inevitable childish question of how much farther, Dad would say, ‘Every mile gets you closer.’

That’s no answer, Evan would complain, and his father would just repeat the answer: ‘Every mile gets you closer.’ Smiling at Evan in the rearview mirror.

Finally Mom would say, just enjoy the journey. She’d lean back from the passenger seat, squeeze his hand, which embarrassed him as a teenager but now seemed like heaven’s touch made real. Typical motherly, zippy optimism. He missed her as he would an arm suddenly gone.

Your father does special work for the government, Dezz had said. Even if Dezz was a liar, this had a ring of truth, given the events of the past two days. The concept was hazy, foggy. He did not know what a spy looked like, but he didn’t picture James Bond. He pictured a man with the sallow, sad face of a Lee Harvey Oswald, a custom-made silencer in his pocket from a Swiss craftsman, a trench coat easily rinsed of blood and gore, an emptiness in the eyes to show the soul had withered from living under constant stress and fear of discovery. His father read Graham Greene and John Grisham, loved baseball, hated fishing, wrote computer code, and worshiped his family. Evan had never known a lack of love.

So did your dad tell you he loved you, go get on a plane, and then go steal secrets or kill people? Did blood money pay your way through college, put food in your belly, fund chewing gum and comic books and every other treasure of childhood?

The miles of Texas unfurled, long and rainy. ‘Every mile gets you closer,’ he said under his shallow breath. Again and again, a mantra to keep away the pain and to harden his heart.

He would find out the truth. He would find his father. And he would make the people who had killed his mother pay with everything they held dear.