Shadow Woman

25

As the sign for Hungry Horse drifted past her window, Jane said, “Keep your eyes open for a sporting goods store. If we don’t find what we need here, go on to Coram. If you see a military surplus store or one of those places for survival psychos, don’t pass it by.”

They both saw the store at the same time, and it seemed to be a little of each. The sign was big and crude, but the merchandise in the window included skis and toboggans. “Park off the street,” she said. Pete found a space behind the building between two delivery trucks and they entered.

Jane picked out two of everything—compasses, canteens, sleeping bags, waterproof matches, flashlights. Pete hovered beside her to take the merchandise she selected, a worried look on his face. She whispered, “You wanted another option. Without this stuff we don’t have one.”

She carefully picked out their clothes: rainproof ponchos, olive-drab woolen pants with belted ankles, pullover sweaters, hiking boots, wool socks, long underwear, M-65 field jackets, gloves, and watch caps. Next she found a pair of ten-power binoculars, polarized sunglasses and Swiss Army knives for each of them, packets of dried food, a cook pot, and, finally, two backpacks to carry it all in.

Then Jane joined Pete at the counter, where he stood beside the pile of purchases he had built. As an afterthought, Jane picked up a small foam fire extinguisher, added it to the pile, and paid the clerk in cash.

When they had loaded all of the bags into the car, Jane began to sort out her purchases and pack the two backpacks while Pete drove. “There will be some kind of ranger station or visitor center at West Glacier. Stop there too, but put the car between two tour buses or behind a building or somewhere.”

“Pretty authentic disguises,” said Pete. Behind the thin sound of hope in his voice there was dread.

“I’m afraid they’re not disguises,” she said.

“They’re not?”

She looked at him unapologetically. “Not exactly. It’s something I stumbled on by looking at the map. We’re brought up to see the world as a lot of roads. It’s like a grid, with dots for the towns at the intersections and nothing between the roads at all. These people will keep chasing us if we stay on the lines. We have to stop now and then at one of those dots at the intersections, and they’ll catch up. So we’ll see the map differently for a couple of days.”

“We’re going camping? What does that get us?”

“I’m not sure yet, so I’m not making promises. I think they’re using commercial computer databases to track us; the lists of people who buy handguns, cars, or rent hotel rooms. I’ve never used the same names or credit cards two days in a row, and that’s always worked before. But it’s not working now. I made some phone calls, but they were from pay phones. They don’t transmit the numbers of pay phones for caller ID to pick up, so nobody can be intercepting the signal and finding us that way. Even if they managed to find out where I live and tapped my home phone, I never said where I was calling from. Our phone bill comes at the end of the month, so they’re not reading it. I don’t have any idea what these people are doing, or how. And that scares me.”

“Isn’t it possible that they just followed us?”

“Maybe. Maybe they out-thought me—figured what I would do, then drove along the right road and showed your picture to hotel desk clerks and waitresses. But it’s not a great method if what you plan to do after you find the person is kill him. It’s also possible that they’re tracking this car electronically.”

“How do we find out—search it?”

“Dump it.”

“Where do we get another car out here?”

She gave her sad little smile again. “We don’t. I’d love to get a new one and drive until the tread is off the tires. But we tried that, and a shooter turned up. I’d love to put on a blond wig and step onto an airplane to anywhere. But unless we know for sure how they’re tracking us, we can’t do anything that puts us in a predetermined airport at a prearranged time. The safest tactic I can think of is to do the opposite: go where there are no people to see us, no schedules, and no records for anybody to break into. It’s not a great idea, but it’s an idea. We’ve got to keep moving.”

“Keep moving where?”

She sighed. “I think we have no choice but to dump everything we had when we walked into that restaurant this morning, and cross the border.”

“Canada?”

“If they’re using computer data files, it’s possible crossing a national border will make it harder. A lot of businesses are national—not international. If their car gets searched at the border, there will be guns in it. There might be other advantages, but there are no disadvantages that I know of.”

As the road wound up into the mountains, Pete seemed to be concentrating on his driving. “Shouldn’t we leave this car someplace to mislead them?”

“I don’t want to confuse them,” she said. “I want them stuck.”

“How do we manage that?”

“It’s September thirteenth. In two days they’ll close this road for the winter. If the chasers don’t get this far by then, they’ll have to go back. If, after that, they find out we left the car inside the park, they have the same choices we had: go on to the Chief Mountain Highway, drive to the border, and get stopped, because the customs station closes on the fifteenth too; go east to the next road that crosses at the Piegan-Conway crossing; or go all the way back along this road to Whitefish and drive up Route 93. Either way, we’ll be in the space in-between, at least thirty miles from them with no road to get to us.”

“And then?”

“And then we walk out of the woods in Canada and pay somebody to drive us far enough away to catch a bus. I’m not getting on any more planes until I know they haven’t tapped the reservation system.”

They drove into the park at West Glacier, bought a trail map at the ranger station, then joined the long single-file line of cars on Going-to-the-Sun Road. The progress was slow because the road was a Depression-era two-lane pavement with high, rocky cliffs on the right and Lake McDonald on the left. Drivers ahead of them pulled over whenever there was a turnout to take pictures and stare at the icy, glass-clear lake and the surrounding forests.

Pete said happily, “It looks as though we won’t be needing that winter gear we bought. The weather’s beautiful.”

She turned in her seat to look at him. “I guess I should have asked you this before. Have you ever spent time in the woods?”

He pursed his lips. “Let’s see. By woods you don’t mean a bunch of trees next to the fairway, do you? I mean, this is a park, right?”

“I’m glad I didn’t ask. Here it’s seventy and sunny. The altitude is three thousand feet and it’s three o’clock in the afternoon. In an hour or so, we’ll be at seven thousand feet. The temperature drops about five degrees for each thousand feet. It could be fifty up there now. Sunset tonight is about six twenty. That’s when it sinks majestically below the horizon if you’re on the ocean, not if you have a mountain or two to the west of you to cast a shadow. It’s also windy on mountains. So that fifty could already feel like thirty.”

He frowned. “Thirty degrees? And you’re sure today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic?”

She stared at him for a second, then laughed. “You’ve lost your mind.”

“You know what?”

“What?”

“No matter what happens to me after this, it won’t be anywhere near as interesting.”

“I wouldn’t give up yet.”

“I know that sounds idiotic,” he admitted. “I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of days now, and I kept wondering if I’d bumped my head. Then I was thinking that if I told you, I would just convince you that I was too stupid to be scared. But I’m scared all the time, and it still feels true. If they find me and kill me, it will just be a sharp pain, and then nothing. If they don’t, I’ll try my best to live a quiet life. But right now, every second is full of possibilities, full of things I never thought about or looked at before. I’ve never wanted to stay alive so much in my life.”

Jane had not sensed that trouble was coming, and here it was again. It was not that she would be tempted to have a fling with Pete Hatcher. This was the fling, and she was having it. She felt the same exhilaration he did. This time the hunters were the best she had ever faced, and Pete Hatcher was her last client, and after this great flaming burst of clarity she was either going to die or let her life settle down to a steady unchanging glow like a pilot light. From then on, when evil came, it would come in some equivocal form—spite or pride or jealousy—sidling up to her and leaving her nothing clear and direct that she could do to fight it. This was the guide’s last trip.

Jane studied the road ahead and saw the Loop coming. It was the only hairpin turn on the highway, eight miles out of the way to follow the course of the McDonald River and eight miles back under Mount Cannon. “Pretty soon we’ll be there,” she said. “If you’re not willing to do this, tell me now.”

“I already told you,” he said. “I want to live.”

He drove the long curve, then climbed again, higher into the mountains. When he pulled into the big parking lot at the Logan Pass visitor center and stopped, Jane said, “Pull over by the garbage Dumpsters and wait for me.”

She opened the trunk and went through the suitcases one last time. She put Pete’s pistol in his pack and the ammunition in hers to even the weight, then split his money between the two packs, closed them tight, and dropped the two suitcases into the Dumpster and covered them with garbage.

Jane used her Swiss Army knife to unscrew the Montana license plates and replace them with Colorado plates from a nearby car. She got into the car again and parked it as far from the road as possible, then handed Pete his pack, bedroll, and canteen. Finally she sprayed the inside of the car with the fire extinguisher and tossed it on the floor in the back seat, left the keys in the ignition, and walked away.

“What was that for?” asked Pete.

“The spray is just carbon dioxide. It’ll be gone in a little while, but so will the fingerprints. If somebody traces the plates, they’ll have a problem because the car’s not registered in Colorado. It might buy us some time to make them trace it in other states.”

“Why did you leave the keys?”

“Out of a million visitors, we can hope for one car thief. They must take vacations too.” She handed him her canteen. “I’m entitled to one last phone call. Go fill these up with water from the tap over there while I make it.”

She went to the telephone at the far end of the row, put in a quarter, dialed the private line on Carey’s desk in his office, waited for the operator to tell her how many more she needed, and put those in too. Change made noise in pockets, and there would be no more collect calls for her. She couldn’t be entirely sure that the shooters weren’t using the telephone company’s billing system to trace her.

“Hello.”

“I love you,” she said.

“What?”

She laughed. “I said, I love you. At least I hope it’s you, or I just made a fool of myself for a perfect stranger.”

“No,” he said. “Not perfect. Do you have time to talk?”

She looked around to see if anyone was near. “Not much, but probably more than you do.”

“Good for you,” he said. “Having fun?”

“Not much,” she began. Then she stopped herself. Could she tell him that a few hours ago she had watched a rifle bullet churn its way through a man’s head because he looked like Pete Hatcher? Not if she wasn’t also going to tell him it was over. “We’re not out of the woods yet. Literally. I won’t be able to call for a few days. We’re traveling on foot, and there won’t be any phones.”

She could hear him breathing on the other end, then: “Why on foot?”

“It’s safer. I’ll tell you all about it in excruciating detail when I get home.”

“That’s what I was wondering,” he said. “Can you tell me when you’re coming home?”

“We’ve got to go about twenty miles, but that’s measuring it straight. I figure two or three days to get up there, and then two weeks more to finish this for good. Then I’ll be home.”

“Why do you need two weeks?”

She sighed. “Because I never, ever want to do this again. If I do it right, it’s over.”

She waited a long time for his answer. Finally, he said, “I understand,” as though he didn’t. “Just promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Before you get on the plane, give me a call. I want to pick you up at the airport.”

“I can probably find a phone before then.”

“I know, but that’s something else. Promise?”

“Sure,” she said. She had spent her adult life inventing lies, and she could tell when somebody was hiding something. If Carey wanted to arrange a surprise for her, it was worth playing dumb to keep from ruining it. “I promise.”

“Good. Do you need anything? Money or something?”

“No, thanks,” she said. “I’d better get going. I love you.”

“Me too.”

“Bye.”

They both hung up. As she walked away from the telephone, she fervently sent a wish across the mountains. Let the surprise be flowers and champagne. Don’t surprise me by having the upstairs bathroom remodeled. Then she felt guilty and unworthy. The man she loved and wanted to spend her life with was planning a surprise. Whatever it was, she resolved to smile and throw her arms around his neck and kiss him as though all future happiness depended on it. She was not foolish enough to think that it didn’t.

Jane walked out of the park building and found Pete Hatcher on the steps with their two full canteens. She cinched hers onto her pack and did the same for Hatcher.

“I thought you were supposed to wear them on your belt.”

“Soldiers have to put up with two quarts of water whacking their butts, but I don’t,” she said. “Unlike them, we can stop and take off our packs when we want without getting shot.”

“I hope,” he said.

She walked across the lot and waited at the edge of the road. “Did you feel the change yet?”

“What change?”

“We just stepped across the Continental Divide. If you spill your canteen now, it goes into the Mississippi instead of the Pacific.”

“I’ll try to be careful to preserve the levees.”

There was a break in the traffic and they hurried across the road. Pete stopped beside a wooden sign that had nothing on it but HIGHLINE TRAIL and an arrow pointing north. “Just how long is this trail?”

She began to walk on the soft, irregular ground, under hemlocks and cedars. It forced Pete to take the first step off the pavement, then hurry to catch up with her, and then they were walking along and the decision was over. “How long?”

“Long.”

“What does ‘long’ mean to a woman like you in miles?”

“On the map it looks like twenty as the crow flies, and maybe thirty if you take it in sections, point to point. The map isn’t big enough to take into account all the meandering, which is what trails through wilderness do. And it’s two-dimensional, so I can’t tell just how hard the climbing will be. It could be fifty miles and seem like three times that.”

“Do you mind if I keep asking questions?”

“Nobody can hear us, and the trail is shorter if you talk.”

“What if they find the car?”

“Then they have to make a guess. If they think we changed cars, then they’ll drive fast away from here to try to catch up and see the new one. If they think we abandoned it and walked off into the mountains, they have to guess which trail we took. If we went north toward Canada, there are a dozen branches ahead that come out pretty far from each other. But most likely they’ll think we left the car so it would look as though we headed north for Canada, but turned south or east or west instead. Those trails all reach roads at some point.”

“What if they don’t fool themselves, know we headed for Canada, and pick the right trail?”

“Then they have other choices. They have to guess where we’ll surface when we get to Canada, drive up there, and wait, or come up the trail after us.”

“That’s the one I don’t like: some guy with a gun coming out here after us.”

“Even if they do, they still have choices. We’re carrying about what a cautious person would take on a day trip. A smart person would know there was the possibility of not making it back by dark and having to spend one night out there. Anybody who follows could choose to travel lighter than that for speed, or they could carry tents and heavy clothes and a week’s food and water. If they travel lighter than we are, they could easily have to turn around and give up. If they load themselves down with lots of gear, they’ll have a very hard time catching up with us.”

“Especially with all those guns.”

She laughed. “I wasn’t going to mention those.” She looked at him for a moment as they walked along. He seemed calm. “But you’re right. Good sniper rifles are heavy—ten to fifteen pounds with the scope. The ammo isn’t light, and this guy isn’t likely to scrimp on that. It’s usually made for the military, so it’s 7.62 millimeters wide and 50 millimeters long. He’ll also carry a sidearm of some kind, and ammo for that. I’d say he’ll be carrying an extra twenty pounds of metal that we’re not.”

“Maybe we’ll wish we were.”

“I doubt it, because if he’s carrying the weight, he probably won’t catch us. What you do when you’re running is put lots and lots of forks in the road behind you. Each time the hunter comes to one, your chance of losing him is fifty percent. Next fork, fifty percent. We’ve put a lot of forks behind us already. If we stay ahead of him, then even making all the right choices won’t help him.”

She looked up at him as they walked. He was tall and strong, and he was in acceptable physical condition, because all the women who got off airplanes in Nevada would have found that attractive. “How do you feel?”

“Scared.”

“Me too. Are you dizzy or light-headed, sick to your stomach?”

“No more than I have been for months. Why?”

“Then you don’t have mountain sickness. I didn’t think you would, after three months in Denver. Are your muscles warm and loose?”

“Don’t tell me,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” said Jane. “But we’ve only got about two hours of light left. I’d really like to get the first of those forks in the trail behind us.” She began with a slow trot, the pack shifting at each step and making clanking noises. Pete trotted along, making even more noise. When Jane felt the sweat beginning to come, she lengthened her steps a little, watching the trail for rocks and roots and trenches.

He said, “We sound like a pair of skeletons on a tin roof.”

“The noise is good,” she said.

“It is?”

“Bears don’t like surprises.”