“I do,” she said. “My mom taught me how to cook. First rule is to know where the corkscrew and wine glasses are. Second is to know where the sharpest knives are. At least in my household.”
“Your parents sound very wise.”
“A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou, my dad always says.”
I smiled. “I’d like to meet your dad sometime.”
“I hope that you get to, Del. I think that you’d like him.”
Then Bonnie slid the sleeves back on her sweater. “Dinner will be ready in about fifteen minutes,” she said. Why don’t you sit at the table and keep me company?”
Chapter 21
For the next few days we pretended that the rest of the world didn’t exist. We ate breakfast at the table that separated the kitchen from the living room and drank coffee near the window that showed a sliver of the ocean through the coastal pines. We drove into Cannon Beach and shopped at the stores near the beach. I bought Bonnie a warm and waterproof hooded coat and a pair of hiking boots. We shopped for groceries at the store where we’d first pretended to be newlyweds. We walked along the narrow trail that led from the cabin to the beach and then hiked down the beach to Haystack Rock in the afternoon at low tide, when the sea stars and anemone were visible in the tide pools. We held hands on the outdoor deck at the Bald Eagle Coffee House under ice blue skies, our shoulders hunched against the cold. We spent hours in bed in the afternoon and made dinner together in the kitchen. Sounds of Bonnie cooking filled the kitchen: the sound of the knife on the cutting board, the hiss of the burner on the stove as it brought the water to a boil, Bonnie shaking a tablespoon of salt into the boiling water before tossing a pinch over her shoulder for luck. I remember taking Bonnie’s hand and pulling her towards me, her eyes deep, pure pools of jade green. Bonnie raised one eyebrow and asked me if I was having impure thoughts again. I told her it’s the only kind I have. She responded with the slightly crooked and knowing smile, the softness of her lips and the touch of her tongue against mine, her body pressed against me in the tiny kitchen, the pot starting to rock as the water reached a full boil, the dull thudding sound of the waves crashing on the beach resonating in the cabin like a heartbeat.
Chapter 22
We’d gone into the grocery store three or four times by then. On a previous visit, the cashier had asked us how the honeymoon was going and had teased me about always doing what the wife told me to do if I wanted to keep peace in the household. I held up several fingers. “Scout’s honor,” I said. Another time she’d commented on how nice it was to see a couple in love. Bonnie had blushed before hugging me.
The final time we went into the store, the cashier watched us furtively as we shopped. When we put our groceries on the countertop she said “You seem like nice folks, so I’m going to tell you something. Somebody was in her yesterday afternoon with pictures of you both. Offered five hundred dollars to call a number if I see you.”
The cashier held up a pair of pictures of the two of us. The picture of me looked like it was captured from a television news report. The picture of Bonnie looked like it was from a high school yearbook. She wore a cheerleader uniform with a bulldog mascot on the sweater.
“I said I’d never seen either of you before. I’ll tell you though. The man who asked about you is a scary-looking guy. If I were you, I’d be on my way to somewhere else.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“Not from around here, that’s for sure. Looks like he’s a bad-ass. Coveralls and boots. Denim coat. Cowboy hat tipped back, stripe of pink skin around his head like he’d been burned. ”
I felt the air go out of my lungs.
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks. And I appreciate you telling us.”
“No charge,” she said. “There are a lot of mean people in the world. Avoid them if you can.”
We paid for our groceries and went out to the car.
“We’re leaving, aren’t we?” Bonnie asked.
“No question.”
Chapter 23
We drove back to Eric’s cabin, with me checking the car mirrors every few seconds. No other cars seemed to be following us. After we parked the car we went into the cabin and began collecting our belongings. Bonnie got her suitcase out from under the bed and started putting her clothes inside. I got the shotgun and bullet-proof vest from under the kitchen sink and put them in the back seat of the car under a blanket from one of the bedrooms.
I took the pistol and put it in the back of my jeans. I slid the killer’s phone and wallet into my coat pocket. I had never looked at them. Everything I had taken from him carried an emotional weight that made me want to bury it under concrete. I put the cash from Bullard’s wall safe in Alamogordo into a gym bag along with my clothes. Bonnie came into the bedroom, her eyes wide with fear. “I’m ready to go,” she said.
The phone began to ring and we looked at it for a moment, then ignored it and went back to packing. It stopped ringing.
We loaded our belongings into the car, and then started collecting the things we’d bought at the grocery store. I kept an eye out the kitchen window that gave a view of the car and driveway. Nothing obviously wrong. Another gorgeous, cold, crystal-clear day on the Oregon coast. Bonnie filled two brown paper sacks with our groceries.
“Do you want the beer?” she asked me. “There are a couple cans left.”
“Leave it here,” I said.
“Okay. That’s it, then,” she told me. She closed the refrigerator door. She looked sad.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She put her head against my chest. “I’m going to miss this place. I was happy here with you. I loved looking at the ocean.”
“Me too. We’ll find somewhere else to be safe. I promise.”
“Let’s just go,” she said.
We locked the cabin and walked to the car. We put the groceries on the floor of the back seat, wedging the grocery bags against each other so they wouldn’t tip over during the drive.
As I began backing out of the driveway, Bonnie asked me “Are we going to Eric’s other safe house, the one he told you about?”
“I’m still thinking about that,” I said. “I don’t know if we’d be better or worse off there than we are here.”
“I thought he told you he’d come and bring other marshals.”
I made the turn onto Highway 101 and headed south towards Manzanita and Tillamook.
“Yeah. He said that. He also said we’d be completely safe here. They found us not once, but twice. We have enough cash that we can rent a place wherever we want. I’m not certain that I can trust Eric at this point, so let’s just take it one step at a time.”
“Do you really think he told the cartel where to find us?”
“I just don’t know.”
“Maybe they were just checking all the towns along the coast and checked Cannon Beach, too.”
“It’s possible. I think we need to put some distance between us and Eric’s cabin. And we need to get rid of this car as soon as we can, too.”
“Won’t Eric be pissed about his car?”
“I’m not going to abandon it. We’re just going to stop driving it. Maybe it’s got a tracking device on it. The sensible thing to do is just park it somewhere that Eric can pick it up. We’ll get something else to drive that isn’t connected with him.”
We continued south on Highway 101 with the Pacific Ocean on the right. The heart-lifting sight of all that blue water and the curve of the ocean’s horizon made me forget about the danger we were in, at least for a little while.
When we reached Lincoln City, the views of the rugged coastline and the brilliant blue Pacific Ocean gave way to gas stations, fast-food restaurants, car dealerships, and grocery stores. It felt safer to be there, more anonymous among the natives and the sparse collection of tourists than it had back in Cannon Beach. I started looking for an internet cafe and found one in a strip mall off of Highway 101. After half an hour online I’d found a furnished t
ownhouse for rent on the bank of the Siletz River. A thousand dollars deposit and a thousand a month for rent, all utilities paid. I called from a pay phone at a nearby convenience store, said that I thought I wanted to rent it, and asked if it was okay to pay cash or if they needed a cashier’s check. The landlord said that cash was always fine.
We drove over and toured the townhouse. The landlord, a lanky man with bushy brown hair and sunken cheeks, didn’t even ask to see a driver’s license. He took one look at Bonnie and said the place was ours if we wanted it. I pulled twenty of the hundred dollar bills out of my wallet, handed them to him, and he dropped the keys in my palm. He asked how long we’d be staying, and I told him that if I could find work we’d be staying for a while. He wished me good luck and walked away, counting the money. Over his shoulder he said “The rent’s due on the first of every month. I’ll be by to collect it.”
The townhouse came with a one-car garage. I drove the Camry inside the garage, closed the garage door, and Bonnie and I took our groceries inside. The townhouse had three bedrooms, pine cabinets in the kitchen, and a deck with an unobstructed view of the Siletz River. It came with wireless service and a big-screen TV. Not a bad place to be for a while.
I took a seat in a folding beach chair on the small deck off of the master bedroom. The view was first rate: nothing but pine trees, the crystal-clear Siletz River, and the sky. There was an open area maybe fifty yards wide between the river and the back porch, and it was covered with short grass and spotted with debris from the last time the river had overrun the banks. Clouds were rolling in from the ocean, a light rain starting to fall. I went inside through the sliding glass door and saw Bonnie putting the last of the groceries away in the pantry.
I sat down on the sofa, feeling that we had dodged the people who were hunting us, but unsure of what to do next. Bonnie came over, sat down on the sofa and leaned against me. “What now?” she said.
“I’m going car shopping,” I said. I’ll be back in an hour or two.” I went into the bedroom and took ten thousand dollars out of the gym bag, taking care not to pick any of the bills that had chalk crosses on them.
The internet cafe was only a ten minute walk from the condo. I searched for local cars which were “for sale by owner” who’d included the word ‘cash’ in the advertisement. I found a 2008 Chevy Impala SS in good condition for $7800. It had 126 thousand miles on it, but the pictures showed paint that shined, the interior looked new, and it had new tires and brakes on it. I bought a pay-as-you-go cell phone at the convenience store that had fifty dollars worth of phone credit on it. I called the number for the car and said I wanted to buy the car and was willing to pay cash if the driver could meet me to show me the car. I explained that I’d been saving for a while for the car but didn’t have a ride over to his house.
Fifteen minutes later I was test driving the car. The white paint was faded, there were rust spots behind the rear wheels, and the interior was in worse shape than the pictures suggested. On the other hand, the brakes were good, the V8 engine under the hood pulled strong, and all the accessories worked. Thirty minutes later I’d bought it and driven it back to our condominium.
Bonnie was sitting on the sofa watching Home and Garden Television. She looked up when I came in. “Did you find another car?”
“I did.”
“Can I see it?”
“Sure.”
Bonnie followed me out to the parking lot. I opened the driver’s door for her and she got behind the steering wheel. “Looks like it would be fun to drive. Can I drive it, too?”
“What’s mine is yours,” I said.
“I might just hold you to that,” she said.
We went back inside and started working on dinner together. I found a jazz station and put some music on low. Bonnie had packed a bottle of cabernet with our groceries, and I opened it up and poured some into glasses I found in one of the cupboards. Bonnie started chopping up some mushrooms to put on salads.
I sidled up against Bonnie. “What is the chef preparing for dinner tonight?”
Bonnie gave me a bump with her hip and brushed hair back out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “The chef is about to slice up some bacon, good sir.”
“You are a lady of many talents,” I said.
She picked up her wine glass and looked at me over the rim of the glass. “You don’t know half my talents yet.”
“I suspected as much. You’ve been holding out on me.”
“I was concerned that if I used all my talents on you at once you might get another life-threatening bruise.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
She gave me the crooked knowing smile. “Do you feel like you need to fortify yourself with dinner first? I don’t want you to be physically compromised when I unleash all my talents at once.”
“I’ll just have to risk it.”
Bonnie took a long sip off of her wine glass, the reached out and slid her hand silkily up my arm before it came to rest on my bicep. Then she leaned forward and put her mouth on mine. When she kissed me I tasted the wine on her tongue. She pulled my hand under her shirt and rested it over her heart. I could feel the strength of her heartbeat against my palm. She whispered in my ear “Do you think you could carry me into the bedroom?”
“Absolutely,” I said. My voice was hoarse and I could feel the blood rushing in my ears.
“Then what are you waiting for?” she said. “Afraid I might have too much talent?”
“Challenge accepted.” I picked her up. She felt weightless to me. Her cheek was against mine, and I smelled the wine on her breath, the subtle scent of her perfume.
As I carried her into the bedroom, she said “You know I’m falling in love with you, right?”
Chapter 24
Lincoln City, even in mid-winter, was big enough and had enough tourist traffic that it offered a degree of anonymity that Cannon Beach didn’t. Highway 101 was fronted on both sides by a large number of restaurants, gas stations, convenience stores, and beach-themed venues, so in that sense, it felt safer. At the same time, I didn’t kid myself that we’d left the danger behind us. I knew it was only a matter of time before the hunters who’d been looking for us in Cannon Beach expanded their search and started passing pictures of the two of us around in Lincoln City.
I asked Bonnie if she’d be willing to cut her hair to make her harder to recognize.
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she said “If you think that we’re in that much danger, even a hundred miles from Cannon Beach, then I want to call Marshal Fullmeyer. If you’re right, and he’s involved in all this somehow, I’ll never doubt you again, but I need to know that for myself, even if you don’t.”
“If he’s involved in this somehow, even indirectly, we could get killed in the process of finding that out.”
“You seem to be a pretty clever guy, Del. Figure something out that would prove one way or another whether we can trust him. Until then, no, I’m not cutting my hair. This is the way I look, and I like it that way.”
I went out on the deck and sat under the awning off the living room. The blanket of grey clouds which loomed over the coast and Lincoln City gave the Siletz River a black appearance, as if it were flowing with oil.
Chapter 25
The following morning I told Bonnie that I was going out for a while, then I drove an hour North to Tillamook, where any phone call I placed would come from a cell phone tower in that area instead of from Lincoln City. If Eric traced the call location I wanted it to show that I was in Tillamook, not Lincoln City.
I pulled into the parking lot of a shopping mall and picked a parking space that offered a good view of Highway 101 in both directions. Then I called the number on the business card that Eric had given Bonnie. It was nine in the morning in Tillamook, so it was eleven in Texas. I used the cell phone I’d bought at the convenience store to make the call.
“Agent Fullmeyer.”
“It’s Delorean,” I said. r />
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Bonnie and I took a sightseeing trip.”
“I’ve had the Cannon Beach police chief checking the cabin three or four times a day for you two. His patrolmen, who have better things to do, have been looking all over the place for you. Next time you decide to drop off the radar screen, you Goddamn well better tell me first.”
I weighed his words and tone.
“Oh? Why did you treat our absence as an emergency, Eric? What’s the threat?”
It was quiet on the phone.
“Bonnie is under my protection, and I’m trying to keep you above ground, too. I need to know where you are to keep bad things from happening to you. Why is that a surprise to you?”
I pulled the wallet belonging to the hit man from my coat pocket and flipped it open. I looked at the name on the driver’s license and put the wallet back in my pocket.
“Eric, I have a question for you.”
“What? What question?”
“Who is Julian Silver?”
It was quiet on the phone again, at both ends. I could hear a small amount of office noise at his end of the phone.