My dreams were vivid and heartbreaking, of snow falling like feathers through headlights, of a shotgun setting the night on fire, of burning slash piles glowing like tunnels to hell, of pale gold light illuminating a white footbridge into darkness, of a halo turning into an oily stain in the snow, of my world unmaking itself in a lonely place where a wolf tried to take down sheep who had wandered away from the fold.
Chapter 13
The next morning was clear and sunny. The sunlight reflecting off the ocean was visible through the coastal pine trees again. The baseboard heaters made ticking sounds as they warmed and cooled. The dull thudding noise of the waves crashing at the beach felt like a heartbeat in the cabin.
I was in the kitchen scrambling a pan of eggs when Bonnie appeared in the doorway. She was still wearing the pinstriped shirt but had pulled a pair of jeans on underneath. She'd combed her hair out and put lipstick on.
"Hi," she said. She was looking past me as if I wasn’t there.
"Hi. Want some eggs?"
She nodded.
"Take a seat at the bar. Scrambled eggs coming right up."
She picked one of the barstools at the small table that separated the kitchen from the living room. She held her knees close together and had her arms crossed over her chest. Still no eye contact.
I used a Teflon spatula from one of the drawers to divide the eggs in half, then slid Bonnie's portion onto one of the ceramic plates I'd found in the cabinet. The toaster popped up a pair of brown slices of bread, and I put one on Bonnie's plate and one on mine.
I slid Bonnie's plate in front of her, along with the small tub of margarine from the refrigerator.
"There isn't a lot to choose from," I said. "We can get out later and go to the grocery store. It isn’t far from here."
"It's okay," she said. "Thank you."
We sat beside each other in companionable silence.
"Did you sleep okay last night?" I asked.
"I slept but I had nightmares."
I nodded.
She was quiet again and just stared at her food. After a while she picked up the salt and pepper shakers and seasoned her eggs with delicate shakes. Then she stared at her food again before finally picking up her utensils and beginning to eat breakfast.
I finished my breakfast, washed my plate, then picked up her plate and washed it, too. While I had my back turned at the sink, she left the room so quietly that I didn't know that she'd gone. After I finished in the kitchen I went into the living room. She stood close to the glass of the window, looking at the ice-blue shine coming off of the Pacific Ocean through the trees.
"I feel like I'm going crazy," she said. "I've never done anything like that before. I don't know how to be normal after last night."
"Give it some time. You stepped into a different world for a while but you're back in this world now. You're still the same person, but you're having to find your balance again."
"Do you feel okay?" Bonnie asked.
"No, not really,” I said. “I feel like I broke something inside myself."
"I know. It's just..."
"You think you might be a different person. A bad one."
"In a way. I wonder if I can trust myself to be around other people. Like it's in me to kill someone now."
"I think it's probably in most people to do what we did. We're socialized from childhood to get along with other people, compromise, take turns. But we're really just animals who want to survive, Bonnie. Even if it means killing someone to do it. Every one of us, including you, wants to stay alive."
"I just want my old life back."
"I don't think you can go back to El Paso to work in that bar, Bonnie."
"I just mean the life where I got up in the morning and went through my day and was sort of oblivious. I just … did stuff and was mostly happy. I flirted with guys like you sometimes; I went to movies with my roommate. On the weekend I had dinner with my parents. Things were good. I don't think I really appreciated that."
"You didn’t have anything to compare it to, Bonnie. And I'm sorry."
"Why?"
"They came into the bar looking for me. That's when the trouble started."
"If I hadn't said I'd testify against those guys they would have left me alone."
"We're well-matched for each other, then. That's how I brought them down on my head, too."
She rested her forehead against the glass before turning away from the window. Then she leaned against the wall with her arms crossed.
"Do you think they were after you or after me when they started following us?” she asked.
"Initially I think they were looking for you,” I said. “When that guy saw me at the airport he recognized me from a picture or from the news and realized that there might be a chance to cancel both of our tickets."
"Explain why they would do that. Wouldn't it just make more trouble for them?"
"Because the people the hit man worked for put the message out that anyone who raises a hand against them gets killed, and maybe their family gets killed, too. You and I both decided to testify anyway, so now they have to make good on their threat."
"But I decided not to testify. Why come after me anyway?"
"I don't know. For a while you were talking to the police about testifying. Maybe that's enough. You told that asshole in the bar that you'd kill him if he ever touched you again. Maybe that was enough."
"Hell."
"There’s another possibility," I said.
"What?"
"That they knew Fullmeyer was sending you to stay with me, so they followed you to Portland and then waited for a chance to kill me once we'd left the airport."
Bonnie frowned. "So maybe I was just a way to get to you, instead of a target?"
"Maybe you weren't before. I think that you probably will be once they realize we took down one of their crew. They won't like that, and they'll probably think that you were involved in some way."
"You seem very analytical about all this," Bonnie said.
"I'm trying to stay alive. I can't expect the police to watch my back, and the witness protection program won't take me, so I'm trying to look at this from all the angles."
"Do you think Mr. Fullmeyer can help?"
"I thought he could before. Now I'm not sure."
"Are you going to tell him about what happened?"
"I haven't decided yet."
"He's a federal marshal."
"I know. He also put you on that plane and they knew you were on it. How did they find that out?"
Bonnie was quiet.
"Did you tell anyone, your family, your roommate, your co-workers where you were going?" I asked.
"Mr. Fullmeyer told me that he called my parents and roommate and told them that he would be providing a temporary safe place for me until things cooled off. That's all."
"Did you use a credit card at the airport?"
"No."
"Did you travel under your own name?"
"Mr. Fullmeyer walked me through security using his badge and put me on the plane with some kind of special ticket. It didn't have my name on it. I think it was some kind of ticket related to the
Marshal’s program."
"Do you still have the ticket?"
"No. They scanned it at the boarding gate and Mr. Fullmeyer took it with him."
"Okay."
"You don't think he had anything to do with us being followed, do you?" Bonnie asked.
"I doubt it. But somehow the cartel knew, and he was the only person who knew where you were going. Maybe other federal marshals slipped up and leaked Eric’s plans. I guess it's possible someone was watching the airport and saw you. Was your phone GPS turned on?"
"No. Marshal Fullmeyer had me turn the phone off before we left for the airport. Delorean, if you don’t want to tell the police, and you aren’t sure we can trust Marshal Fullmeyer, isn’t there anyone else we can ask for help?"
"It's just us, Bonnie. I think until we figure it out, the sma
rt thing to do is just lay low."
Chapter 14
The phone on the wall in the kitchen began to ring. Bonnie and I looked at each other.
“Are you going to answer it?” she asked.
I thought about it, then went over and picked up the handset from the cradle.
“Hello?” I recognized Fullmeyer’s voice.
“Hi,” I said.
“Did you pick up your passenger at the airport yesterday?” Office sounds in the background, like he was at work.
“I did.”
“Did you have any problems getting back? I saw online that they closed the highway because the roads were so bad.”
“We made it through before they shut them down. Your Camry does pretty well on snow.”
“Okay. That’s good. I called last night and didn’t get an answer. I thought maybe you’d had to get a hotel or something.”
“No. Just had to drive slow.”
Silence.
“Is she there now?” Fullmeyer asked.
“She is. Do you want to talk to her?”
“Yeah. Put her on.”
I held my hand over the mouthpiece and shook my head “No” at Bonnie before giving her the phone. I listened to her side of the conversation from across the kitchen.
“Hello, Mr. Fullmeyer,” she said. “No, I’m doing okay… No, I don’t need anything right now... Yes, I’m fine.” She gave me that small crooked smile for the first time since we’d left the airport. “He’s been a real gentleman, so far. I’ll tell him you said to keep the crazy vigilante behavior on the down low… Okay… Okay… Thank you Marshal Fullmeyer.” Then she handed the phone back to me.
“Hello,” I said.
“Can you keep an eye on her for a couple weeks?” he asked.
Bonnie leaned against the kitchen countertop by the sink. She crossed her arms and watched my face.
“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I don’t want her to come back to El Paso until I can get a few things sorted out. Both of you made the cartel people pretty mad with what you did in the bar.”
“Sorry they’re mad. I’ll be more polite the next time someone comes after me with a blowtorch and a machine gun.”
“Laugh if you want. Word on the street is that they’re about twice as pissed off at you as they were before.”
“So they want to kill me twice as dead? Okay, I’m twice as scared.”
“Delorean, they put a bounty on you the same size as what you took from Sheriff Bullard’s house. The person who delivers you to the cartel gets a quarter million dollars. They might feel like Bonnie gives them some kind of angle on you since you protected her in the bar. You still feel like laughing?”
“Eric, I’m just a crazy vigilante dangling in the breeze. The laughs come easily to me.”
“That’s the category one stuff again, Delorean. Crazy talk.”
“Bonnie and I were just headed out the door to get groceries,” I said. “Is there anything else?”
“Yeah, watch your back,” Eric said.
“I’m getting better at that.”
“I’ll check in with you later in the week.”
“One more thing,” I said.
“What?”
“If our current location becomes compromised, if I think we’re being hunted here, where should we go next?”
“Why? Did something happen?”
“Where would we go next, Eric? Is there another safe house? It seems prudent to plan ahead.”
“If you have to abandon your current location, the address on the driver’s license I gave you is for the alternate safe house. If you have any reason at all to feel unsafe in Cannon Beach, call me and let me know, then get to the other house as fast as you can. If you need help immediately, call 911 and tell them you and Bonnie are under federal protection and you need immediate help. Bonnie has my number on a business card. You can call any time, and I’ll send marshals and will come myself, too. Okay?”
“Okay. Just thought I’d ask.”
“Anything else you want to tell me?”
“No, Why?”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. I’ll be talking to you later in the week.”
“Talk to you then.”
Chapter 15
Bonnie was still leaning against the counter with her arms crossed. “What were you and Eric talking about?” she asked.
“Eric told me he thought you’d need to stay here a couple weeks until things cool off in El Paso.”
“Do you think Eric’s right? That they’ll cool off if I stay here?”
“I doubt it.” I stood beside her and got a red plastic tumbler from the cabinet to the right of the sink, then filled it at the tap.
“You didn’t tell him about what happened?”
“Not yet.”
“I heard you say something about another safe house. Does Eric want us to move?”
I shook my head. “I just wanted to know where we should go if we have to run. Eric said the address is on the fake driver’s license he had made for me. So that’s good to know.”
“Okay.” She frowned.
I took a long drink and drained the glass, then leaned forward to look through the window over the sink at the blackberry bushes that encroached on the side of the house. The water left a faint aftertaste of minerals and smelled vaguely of chlorine. The sun was out, though, and I wanted to take advantage of it to escape the cabin.
“We should get outside, Bonnie,” I said. “There’s a sun break, and the beach is just a few minutes walk from here.”
“Before we go, can I ask you something?” Bonnie asked.
“Anything.”
“Have you hurt people before, like in the army or something? You just seem like you can live with all this. I’m barely keeping it together.”
I told Bonnie something then that I’d never told anyone else. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I did once.”
Bonnie’s eyes got wide. “And you can carry that weight around every day? Really?”
“It happened when I was a kid, Bonnie. Believe me, there was no other way.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Thing is,” I said. “You carry a weight around that long, you get better at carrying it. Some days I hardly think about it.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Bonnie asked.
“Not really, but if you want to know, I’ll tell you. You’ve earned that.”
Bonnie nodded.
“Let’s go for a walk then,” I said.
Chapter 16
We put on our winter coats and left the cocoon of warmth that the cabin provided. The chill air smelled of the sea and of moss and rain. The sky was clear, with a pale afternoon sun casting everything in a yellow tint. A dark band of clouds was forming at the edge of the Pacific horizon, though. I’d learned how to estimate the speed of approaching clouds from the afternoons I’d spent watching the ocean from Eric’s cabin. I thought we had about half an hour before the next storm hit.
Bonnie and I walked down the narrow footpath that led through several hundred yards of blackberry bushes and salal hedges on the way to the sand. The beach stretched in both directions for as far as the eye could see. To the north, the cliffs rose to about two hundred feet of height. It would be a difficult scramble up steep, loose soil to the top if I were ever trapped on the beach between the water and the cliff. To the south, the slope of the land down to the beach was much more gradual. We turned south towards Cannon Beach. It was a beautiful day, in spite of everything. I was glad to be there and have Bonnie beside me.
“Are you sure you want to hear this?” I said.
She nodded.
“All right.”
The waves that slapped against the beach had water the color of melted coke bottles, and rivulets of sea foam lay in stripes on the sand from waves that had pushed in as far as they could go before giving up and retreating. A gust of warm air pushed across us, port
ending a cold front.
Bonnie linked her arm through mine and leaned her head against my shoulder. We walked like that for a while.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she said. “I’m sorry I asked you about it.”
“No. It’s okay. I guess I feel like I can trust you with this. We’re in this together now, right?”