DAY 13
At ten to three Vlad had Doug’s atlas open on the kitchen table and a pencil in his hand.
It was a DeLorme, the big floppy kind, with a coffee ring on Grand County. He had found it on the shelf over the sink next to a jar of matches. He had already drawn the line once, before midnight, while Marcus was on watch. He drew it again now, over the first one, harder. Down off East Portal Road to the highway. South to 285. Through Fairplay, down the long valley past the dunes, and over into New Mexico by the time the stores opened.
He wanted the four of them and the dog in the red truck several hours before it got light.
Seth had gone back to sleep on the floor by the door, on his back, snoring like a man who had never once been hunted. Samantha was lying down by the stove with her eyes open. Cooper was against her back. Marcus was on the couch with his foot on the milk crate watching Vlad.
“You’re doing the map again,” Marcus said.
“Yes.”
“Sam said—”
“I heard what she said. I was standing there.”
Vlad measured the line with his thumb. Five and a half hours if nobody stopped them. Six with the dog. He thought about when he was ten, in Kyiv, and his mother had packed two suitcases in their kitchen. Since then he had never lived anywhere without knowing how he would leave and get away cleanly. In Cambridge he had a bag under the bed and two routes out of town. In Basalt his moving boxes were still taped up in the corner of his room and the bag was under the bed with two routes for it. Doug’s cabin had one road. That was definitely not the best way out but there was no other road.
He went out to the garage in his socks and checked the gas in the red truck with the flashlight on his watch. Three-quarters of a tank. He put the keys in his pocket and came back in.
He took the black case out from under the chair and opened it on the table next to the atlas. The dish lay in the foam with its cable coiled beside it. It was a good dish. It found the satellites in under a minute and it updated its own software at night without asking. So did the tablet. So did the inverter in Doug’s garage, if anyone ever turned it on.
Every one of them would install an update if the right key signed it.
“What are you doing?” Marcus asked.
“Reading the dish.”
“Does it say anything good?”
“It says it is a very obedient dish.”
Marcus looked at the dish in its foam. “You’re going to tell me that’s bad.”
“I am going to tell you nothing. You will be asleep.”
“I can’t sleep. My heel feels like somebody is hitting it with a spoon.”
“Then be quiet while it happens.”
Marcus giggled and put his head back against the couch. In five minutes he was asleep with his mouth open. Marcus could fall asleep anywhere, in any amount of trouble, and wake up an hour later with an opinion. It was not fair.
At three-thirty Samantha’s eyes were closed. Cooper had his chin on her hip.
Vlad sat and stared at the atlas. Eleanor had written Days. The companies were going to announce at four, his time, and Eleanor said ten days to finish. Seth said fifteen, if they were good. Vlad believed Seth. So for a week, maybe two, the people running the job would be finished and the companies would not. Anything they signed in that week, the dish would install. So would every register Samantha had named. He did not know when they had started.
At four he put on his jacket and took the case out to the porch.
Cooper got up from Samantha and followed him to the door. Vlad again pushed him back with his knee and shut the door.
The cold was worse this morning. There was frost on the railing again and his breath went straight up. Below the trees a train was coming out of the tunnel with its lights on the rails. He had counted six since midnight. They went to Denver and nowhere else, and somebody with a camera watched every one of them come in. He set the dish on the rail where it had been at two, angled it at the gap in the trees, and powered the tablet. Fifty seconds. Then the bars.
One message, from Eleanor. It had come in at four-oh-two.
They will have this channel by four thirty.
Don’t use it again.
He read it twice. The clock on the tablet said four-oh-four.
He had been rude to Eleanor every time they were in a room together. He was annoyed with himself. She was helping them. He’d underestimated her.
He knew what they will have this channel meant. Somebody had taken her laptop, or was about to. By four thirty an agent in Denver would read the thread and see I can do it in three and a half days. And then they would not close the address. They would write to it. They would sign Eleanor’s name, and wait for somebody to answer.
At two he had told Samantha that everyone who read Eleanor’s notes would know what she was worth to the people hunting her. By four thirty that number would be in a federal evidence room, with a case number on it. Vlad’s heart sank.
He checked one news site before the four minutes were up. The companies had announced on time, at six in the East.
He signed the tablet out of the account. Then he deleted the account, and then the app. He powered the dish down and coiled the cable the way it had come. Three minutes, fifty seconds.
When he went back in Cooper was waiting on the other side of the door.
Marcus was awake again. “Was that her?”
Vlad set the case on the floor and sat down at the table.
“She says the government will have the thread by four thirty. She says do not use the address again.”
Marcus was quiet. Then he asked, “Did she get in trouble?”
“She is in trouble. She just did not get caught yet.”
“She’s seventy-four.”
“She is braver than you,” Vlad said. “She is braver than me.”
Marcus didn’t argue.
Vlad closed the atlas.
“We do not go south,” he said.
Samantha opened her eyes. She hadn’t been asleep. Vlad should have known that.
“South is the same as here,” Vlad said. “The dish is the same dish in New Mexico. The government cannot move fast, and now the government also has everything we wrote. The other people are ahead of everybody. So it is us. We give Eleanor’s people the thing Sam said. Which key, how long, what to refuse.”
“Okay,” Samantha said.
“Last night I made a rule,” Vlad said to Marcus. “Nobody talks to anybody outside the four of us.”
“I remember. You said ever.”
“It was correct last night. It is wrong now.” Vlad got up and put the atlas on the couch next to Marcus’s good knee. “The address is dead. We cannot write to Eleanor, and the people who have her laptop are waiting for us to try. Seth knows where she lives. Somebody has to talk to people. To her, and to whoever she trusts. It has to be somebody who people say yes to.”
“You mean me.”
“Nobody ever says no to you. It is very irritating.”
“You’re letting me talk to people outside of us,” Marcus said. “After the text to Brett.”
“Yes. I’m not forgiving you. I don’t have time. You read every word to me before it goes. You and Seth. Every word.”
“Every word,” Marcus said.
They were going to get on a road with one way off it and talk to the government, through Marcus. Vlad was terrified.
At twenty to seven the windows went grey. Seth stopped snoring, sat up, and looked around the room like he was counting them.
“Are we going?” Seth asked.
“No,” Vlad said. He took the keys to the red truck out of his pocket and put them on the table. “We are staying. Marcus will explain. He is good at that.”
Cooper was at the door again, standing, with his nose in the gap at the bottom of it.
Vlad got up, opened the door, and went out with him into the cold. Cooper went straight off the porch into the frost under the aspens and peed for a long time, steaming. Vlad stood on the step with his hands in his jacket and watched the light come down the trees. He didn’t know yet whether he could sit through Marcus reading him every word.