The Blue Zone

PART THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Even in darkness the man behind the wheel noticed the terrain changing. The flatlands of Indiana and Ohio were well behind him now. The interstate wound through the rising valleys of the Pennsylvania hill country. Heading east.

Only a few hours more…

The driver flicked on the radio, fighting off fatigue. He’d been driving so many hours now he’d lost count. He pushed the speed-search through the static of late-night talk shows and country-music stations until he found an oldies station that pleased him. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” was playing.

Benjamin Raab’s eyes burned.

His name was Geller now, the name they’d been living under for the past year.

Or was it Skinner-what his license read? It didn’t matter. They were all names he would never go back to again. Raab always claimed, in business, that preparedness had been one of his chief skills.

And he had been preparing for what he was doing now for a long time.

Raab caught a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror. His eyes had lost the softness and light of the past twenty years. His smile…He wasn’t sure if he even remembered how to smile. That was all in the past now, buried in the lines of his old face.

His old life.

He knew he had done things they would never understand. That he was driven by a part of himself that he had never shared. The ugliness…that was all part of it. That had taken everything he had. He thought of the pain he’d caused everyone. All the falsehoods he’d had to bear. They hurt. They hurt, until he forced himself to forget. Bury it in the past. They hurt him even now.

Still, the past didn’t die, did it?

Raab remembered how Kate had taken his hand that night, after everything had come out. “I just want to know that the person who walked through that door tonight is the same one I’ve known all my life.”

And how he’d looked back at her and answered, “I am that man.”

I am that man.

A Chevy Blazer shot by him with Pennsylvania plates. It made Raab recall the game his family used to play when they drove on long trips.

“I see a P!” The Keystone State. He almost heard Justin shout out from the backseat, “There’s an N!”

And Emily answer, “ New Hampshire. ‘Live Free or Die’!”

A smile came to Raab’s lips. How Justin and Em would fight it out, like boxers in the ring, until it was clear Justin had memorized all fifty states, and Em would accuse him of cheating and roll her eyes, saying that it was just a stupid game anyway, for babies…

A tremor of complete loneliness and isolation stabbed him. He missed them all very much. Still, there would be no doubt. He would do what he had to do. Maybe one day they would understand. Maybe even forgive him. He had not been the person they thought he was, but he had never lied.

Family, he had always told them. It was always about family.

Raab pulled up behind a truck in the left lane. An I. Illinois.

Land of Lincoln ! he almost heard himself call out loud.

Blood washed away blood, he thought. That was the code. The law he lived by. It was who he was. There were actions that needed to be righted. He wouldn’t stop until it was done.

The hunt was just beginning.

It was still about family now.