Yeah, right. Like that would happen. It’d probably be more like, Well, Charlie, my boy, thanks for your help. Be sure to look me up in twenty-five years to life when you get out.
I climbed down off the bus. I shivered as the air hit me. We were up in the hills here. It was colder than the city, and all I had to wear were the jeans and flannel work shirt I’d gotten from Mrs. Simmons.
I found myself standing in front of the Cale’s Station bus depot. It was a small box of a building at the very edge of a short, rural main street. I headed for the door. I knew I had to get moving, start hiking over the hill. It was already after eleven. In less than an hour, Richard Yarrow’s motorcade would start traveling over the highway toward the canyon bridge. Even if I started right now, I was going to have to hike fast to cut him off.
All the same, before I started, there was one more thing I had to do.
There wasn’t much inside the depot. A ticket window with no one behind it. A couple of benches against the wall. An old pay phone.
I went to the phone. Like I said, I figured when this was over, I would be going back to prison. That’s if I was lucky. If I wasn’t lucky, I might just get myself killed. In either case, I wanted one last chance to say good-bye.
I picked up the handset and pressed zero for the operator, then I dialed the number. It was the number Beth Summers had written on my arm. I had read it over so many times that I knew it by heart. I’d forgotten the whole year of my life that followed that moment, but I remembered the number.
The operator came on. I told her I was placing a collect call to Beth from Charlie. As I waited, listening to the phone ring, I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one recognized me. The place was empty.
“Hello?”
The sound of her voice sent an ache through me. It was the same kind of ache I’d felt on the bus when I woke up and realized my mom wasn’t really calling me, that it was just a dream. It was that yearning to be back home again, back in school, talking to my friends and trying to figure out calculus and asking Beth to go to the movies. It was an ache to be normal and have my life back and have everything be all right.
I opened my mouth to talk to her, but the operator cut me off.
“Will you accept a collect call from Charlie?” she said.
I heard a little sound far away over the line, a little intake of breath. There was a silence after that. Then, in a weak voice, Beth said, “Charlie?”
“Yes, ma’am. Will you accept the charges?”
“Yes. Yes, I will.”
I licked my lips. My throat suddenly felt dry, almost too dry for me to speak.
“Charlie?” came Beth’s voice over the line.
“Hi, Beth,” I said. “It’s me.”
“Oh . . .” There was another silence, another breath, and when she spoke again I could tell she was crying. “Charlie . . . are you all right? Are you hurt or anything?”
For a minute I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. I mean, no—no, I wasn’t all right. I was lost and alone and afraid. Everything I loved, everything I knew, was gone. Terrorists were trying to kill me. The police were trying to arrest me. I was setting off to do something that seemed almost impossible, and even if I succeeded I’d kprobably end up in prison or dead. No. No, I would have to say I was very much not all right.
“Charlie?” said Beth again, crying.
“Yeah. Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay, Beth. I’m fine. I just wanted . . . I just wanted to hear your voice. I needed to hear your voice, that’s all.”
“Charlie, what are you doing? They’re hunting for you everywhere. Your picture’s on TV. You’ve got to turn yourself in. You could be shot. You could be killed.”
I nodded, but for a second or two I couldn’t answer her. Finally, I got the words out. “Listen, Beth. Before I can turn myself in, there’s something I have to do. But the thing is, it’s kind of dangerous.”
“Charlie . . .”
“Listen to me, Beth. You have to listen and you have to tell my mom and dad what I say too. Okay?”
“What? What is it?”
Her voice was so sad, so tearful—there was so much emotion in it—that I wanted to reach out over the distance between us and wrap my arms around her and hold her close and tell her it was going to be all right.
But all I could do was say: “I don’t know what’s happened. About Alex and everything . . . I always tried to be a good person . . .”
“I know that. Your mom and dad . . . we all know it. We all believe in you, Charlie.”
“Whatever you hear about me next, I just want you to know: I was trying to do the right thing. See, there’s a man who’s going to be killed . . .”
“What? Charlie, what are you talking about?”
I closed my eyes. I leaned my forehead against the cold plastic edge of the phone booth. There wasn’t enough time. It was all too complicated to explain. I just wished I could see her. I wished I could touch her face.
“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. I just want you to know that I’m trying to do what’s right. There are all these bad things happening. I can’t make anyone understand. I don’t understand it myself. The thing is, Beth, I can’t remember anything. I mean, I remember everything up to that day you gave me your phone number, but after that—this whole last year—it’s just gone.”
When I stopped talking, I heard Beth crying, sniffling. “You don’t remember?”
“This year. What happened. It’s all a blank.”
“You don’t remember . . . us? You and me?”
I reached my hand up to the phone as if I could reach through it and touch her. “I remember you,” I said. “I remember you and how much I liked you, but . . .”
“But . . . you said you loved me . . . we love each other. Don’t you remember?”
My throat felt so tight I could hardly get the words out. “I want to, Beth. Believe me, I want to a lot, but . . .”
Beth’s voice sounded sad and small. “We were going to spend our lives together. You were going to join the Air Force and we were going to get married . . .”
I shut my eyes tight. I was sorry I’d called. It was selfish. I hadn’t accomplished anything. I’d just hurt her feelings.
“I want to remember, Beth, I really do,” I told her. “I’m trying as hard as I can. Beth, listen, I just have to do this one thing and then . . . somehow, I’ll find my life again . . . I’ll find you again . . . I promise. I just . . .”
“I love you, Charlie,” Beth said.
My heart swelled up in my chest.
“I’ll come back to you, Beth,” I told her. “So help me, I will find my life again and I will come back to you.”
My hand was shaking as I reached out to hang up the phone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Death Over Indian Canyon
As I walked down the road, I felt as if there were a lead weight in my chest. I could still hear Beth’s voice inside my head. I love you, Charlie. I could still hear the sound of her tears.
I thought about that, and I thought about my father crying on TV. And about my mother crying so hard she could barely speak. I’d caused everyone so much pain—so much pain—and I didn’t even know how or why.
I walked along the side of the road, leaving the little town of Cale’s Station behind me. I’d barely gone half a mile when the road curved. I looked back and saw that the last buildings and houses of the town had disappeared from sight. I waited while a huge tractor trailer went groaning past. Then I was alone.
I left the road and headed up into the forest.
There was no trail. I had to push through underbrush and tangled branches. The going was slow at first. But as I went higher, I found myself in the shadows of tall pines where there was little undergrowth. The ground was more open here, and I could move more easily among the tree trunks.
All the way, the sadness traveled with me. I didn’t know if I could stop what was going to happen, but whether I did or not,
I was pretty sure I would not escape. At the very least, I was going to be captured, arrested, sent back to prison, maybe for the rest of my life. I couldn’t prove my innocence. I couldn’t even remember for sure if I was innocent. All those tears I had caused—they were going to keep on falling. I couldn’t see any way to a happy ending.
I climbed on. It was cold in the shadows beneath the trees, but the walk warmed me. Soon I was sweating into my shirt. I’d bought a bottle of water at the bus station with my last dollar. I stopped near the top of the hill to take a sip. I checked my watch. It was five minutes after noon. Assuming he was on schedule, Richard Yarrow would be starting his trip from Centerville. Judging by my map, he would be at the Indian Canyon Bridge in about twenty minutes. I had to hurry.
When I reached the crest of the hill, I found a clearing where I could stand and look out at the other hills to the west and north. They spread out in front of me, rising and falling expanses of autumn trees. They looked peaceful from where I was. For a moment or two, the view held me there. I stood and gazed at it without thinking. I would’ve liked to have remained standing there that way a long time. But I blinked and came back to myself and headed down the hill.
With gravity helping out, the trip down was quicker. I spilled along the side of the mountain, the rocks and dirt tumbling out from beneath my feet. Sometimes I had to grab at trees to keep from falling. It wasn’t long at all before I began to sense I was getting close to the road. I still couldn’t see it, though—not at first.
Then, suddenly, there it was. The forest ended and gave way to a short expanse of rocky cliffs. Underneath the cliffs was the Indian Canyon Bridge.
The setting was amazing, really majestic. Below me and to my right, the forest just seemed to open wide. The trees parted on two sheer rock walls that plunged down into a gray stone canyon six or seven hundred feet below. On the far side, you could see the winding highway appearing and disappearing through the gaps in the hills. Finally, it emerged for a last stretch of straightaway and then reached the canyon itself. There it became the graceful arch bridge of gleaming steel, a narrow manmade passage that seemed almost to leap from one side of the gulf to the other. The bridge was at least as long as the gorge was deep, and the steel lacework of the arch structure that held it up looked so light it seemed to float impossibly in the empty space.
The moment I came out over the edge of the rock to see the bridge, I had to drop to my belly so I wouldn’t be spotted. The police were already there. I hadn’t expected that. Slowly, carefully, I inched my head up over the rock again until I could see them.
There were two state police cruisers, one parked just below me at one end of the bridge, the other stationed at the far end, where Yarrow’s motorcade would soon be. Between the two cruisers was another car—dark blue, unmarked—parked in the bridge’s center. There was one man standing by each car, a state trooper in khaki beside each cruiser, and a man in a dark suit standing by the unmarked car in the middle.
This was bad, really bad. I glanced at my watch. It was twenty after twelve. By my calculation, Yarrow’s motorcade should be coming into view around the final bend in the road any minute. How could I get down to the road, cross the bridge, get in front of Yarrow’s motorcade, and stop him before he was attacked—without the police spotting me and arresting me first?
I racked my brain to think of a plan. Obviously, the easiest way to avoid the police would be to work my way to the other side of the bridge through the forest, skirting the canyon. But was there enough time for that? I figured I had no choice but to find out.
But before I could, the killing started.
I was just about to move back into the trees when the man in the blue suit—the Secret Service agent standing by the unmarked car in the middle of the bridge—lifted his hand to his ear. I could tell he was listening to something—a message of some kind coming in over his earpiece. He stood like that a second or two, then he came away from the side of the bridge and stepped out in the middle. He lifted his hand to his mouth. I guessed he was talking into a microphone.
The state troopers at either end of the bridge reacted. They came away from their cars too. They moved to the center of the road, the same as the agent. They were looking at him. He lifted his hand and waved them toward him, first one then the other.
The state troopers hesitated a second. This wasn’t what they were expecting. Then they started to come forward, approaching the agent from either side.
A movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned and saw the first car of the secretary’s three-car motorcade appear on the road in a gap between the hills. It didn’t look to be that far away. I figured it would reach the bridge in about five minutes, maybe less. That settled it. There was definitely no time for me to make my way through the woods to the other end of the bridge before the cars arrived. I would have to go straight down and warn the police already stationed there. I would just have to hope they believed me and stopped the motorcade. There was no other choice. I was out of time.
I was about to head to the end of the bridge and crawl down onto the pavement where one of the state cruisers was parked. I took one last look and saw the two state troopers now approaching the agent from either end. The agent waited until they were about ten feet away.
Then he went into his jacket and pulled out a gun.
My lips parted. I understood at once. The man in the blue suit: it was Orton.
I was about to shout out a warning. But I had no chance—and I was too far away; they wouldn’t have heard me anyway. All I could do was stare as the man in the blue suit pointed his pistol at the state trooper on his far side and fired. There wasn’t much noise, only a muffled report. But I saw the hole open in the trooper’s chest. He started to fall but before he did, the man in the blue suit turned around and fired again, hitting the second trooper just where he’d hit the first.
The first trooper had fallen to his knees. Now he toppled over onto the surface of the road. The second trooper was staggering backward. Then his legs folded under him and he went down.
As I lay there, gasping, staring, the man in the blue suit—Orton—calmly slipped his pistol back inside his coat. He walked to the unmarked car parked by the side of the bridge. He pointed his key at the car and pressed a button. I heard an electronic chirp. Then the trunk slowly came open.
From my position on the rocks, so far from the center of the bridge, I didn’t have a clear view of the trunk’s contents. I didn’t need one. I could see there was some sort of mechanism in there, and it wasn’t hard to guess what it was.
The car was a bomb. Orton was going to wait for the secretary’s motorcade, then blow up the bridge and send him and everyone with him crashing to their deaths in the canyon below.
Almost as the thought came to me, I was off the rock, racing to the edge of the bridge. I slid down the last part of the incline and tumbled onto the road. Then I was on my feet, running over the bridge as fast as I could.
There was no more time to think or plan or do the smartest thing or the safest. I had to get to Orton. That was all I knew. I had to reach him—I had to stop him— before he destroyed the bridge and everyone on it.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Battle for the Bridge
It wasn’t far—but it was the longest run of my life.
Orton was at the center of the bridge. He had his back to me. He was leaning over the trunk of his car, working on the mechanism inside—activating the bomb, I guessed. I flew toward him, pumping as hard as I could, knowing that any second he might hear me, might turn and see me and gun me down as he had the troopers.
One of the dead troopers lay between us in a spreading pool of blood. It was a horrible sight. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I had to push past it. I had to get to Orton.
I ran and ran. It seemed to take forever. Slowly, slowly, I got closer, closer.
I was only a few steps away when he heard me coming.
He turned to look over his s
houlder and spotted me. His mouth dropped open, and his smooth, long features showed his surprise. I didn’t slow down. I kept charging at him, full speed. He recovered himself quickly. He jammed his hand into his jacket. He started to draw his pistol again. I could see there wasn’t going to be time to reach him before he leveled it at me.
He swung around. He pointed the gun at my chest.
Then I was on him.
I spun to the side. He fired. The bullet went past me. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand, pulling it past my body, pulling him toward me. I hit him with my right fist, sticking the thumb out so it went into his eye.
The blow stunned him. I twisted his gun hand. I grabbed the gun and pulled it free. I stepped away and turned the gun on him.
He kicked it out of my hand.
It was a great kick. A black-belt kick. The kind you usually only see at tournaments, at the highest level. It caught my wrist full force and sent my arm flying upward, the gun spinning out of my hand and into the air.
I never got to see where it fell.
Orton let the force of the kick bring him close to me, spinning to bring a slashing hand around at my throat.
I managed to duck. The hand chopped into the side of my head. It felt like a hammer blow and knocked me to the ground.
I rolled to get away from him. Orton, seeing me on the ground, charged after me. That was a mistake. I looped one foot behind his ankle and kicked out with the other, catching him just below the knee. It toppled him over to the pavement. I leapt on top of him.
The next moment, we were locked together on the bridge, ripping at each other’s faces, looking for an opening, each of us trying to drive a knee into the other’s groin or ribs. We rolled over each other once and then again, and then I was thrown free and smacked into the bridge’s railing, hard. The impact stunned me. Orton seized his chance. He drew up on his knees, drew back his fist, ready to knock me out.