Sam hung up on him. That was Sam. When the decision was made she stopped talking and just took action. Get out of Basalt. Thirty minutes. Meet at his house.
Marcus could do thirty minutes. Thirty minutes was a lot of time. He stood in the middle of the kitchen and made a list. He loved making lists.
Jeep. Camping bins from the garage. The good cooler. Water. The Starlink Mini — Sam said it was already in the back, but he’d check, because he’d already screwed up by not checking on the harness. He wasn’t going dark for three days. Laptop. Chargers. Cash. He had maybe sixty dollars in the money clip he used for valets. Everything else was Apple Cash. Shit.
Phones off, in the bag. He’d get to that when it was time to go.
He started moving. He was good at taking action once he had a list.
The bins were where they always were, stacked next to the kayak he’d used twice. He’d done this drive a dozen times — load the Jeep on a Thursday, be at a trailhead by dawn, back Sunday sunburned and pleased with himself. It was almost automatic. Bin, hatch, bin. He had the second one in before it caught up with him. This wasn’t a Thursday. This wasn’t a casual camping trip. Beer and weed were unlikely to be included.
He kept packing. His hands and body needed to do something so his brain wouldn’t spiral. Three camp chairs. Then he stood there looking at the camp chairs folded in the hatch and took them out. They were not going to sit around a fire. Fuck. He didn’t actually know what they were going to do. He stared at the back of the Jeep and put the folded chairs back into it.
The Starlink was in the back, in its case, where Sam said it would be. Of course it was. Sam left things where she said she left them. He felt a small, stupid gratitude for that. Then he was annoyed. Was she going to berate him about the harness? She should have checked it. It wasn’t his fault she just used it.
He grabbed the solar charger — they’d probably need that also. The Starlink was Vlad’s, and Vlad had rules about how they used it. He’d deal with Vlad later.
The cash nagged at him. He had the sixty in the money clip. He went back inside and dug through the top dresser drawer. A watch that didn’t run, cufflinks, an envelope from a poker night — and came up with eighty more in twenties.
The bank was ten minutes away. He could pull the daily max, but then there would be a photo of him and the exact time he was trying to disappear. The $140 was going to have to be enough.
His phone was on the counter, face up, the way he always left it. Being reachable was his job. Daniel’s message sat there. There’s a clean version of how this goes for you and your partner.
He picked it up. He told himself he was picking it up to turn it off.
He read the message again. Twice now Vlad had told him to kill the phone, and Sam had told him to bag it. He knew both of them were right. But he desperately wanted to type three words. Who are you.
Marcus ached to open that door. Just to see what happened.
He didn’t. He was proud of not doing it for about four seconds, which was how long it took him to thumb out a reply, look at it, and delete it before it sent. Talking soon. Deleted before it went anywhere. He decided that counted.
He did not turn the phone off. He’d bag it the second Sam’s truck pulled in, so that if she needed to reach him in the next ten minutes, she could. He set the phone back on the counter. Face up. Reachable. Brett had called twice this week — best friend since the frat, running his own company now, needing Marcus’s read on something. Marcus had meant to call him back. He hadn’t.
He picked up the cooler and carried it out to the driveway.
That’s when he saw the car.
It was at the end of the street, past the Hendersons’, parked where nobody parked because there was nothing down there but the turnaround and the ditch. Lights on. Engine running — he could see the exhaust under the streetlight.
Not moving. Just idling.
You’ve got more friends than you think, and fewer than you’ll need.
Vlad’s flat certainty on the call earlier. We are already being watched. Marcus had been the one who said Vlad was being paranoid. He’d said it gently, to calm him down. But maybe Vlad was right.
The car sat at the end of his street with its lights on, not moving. Marcus stood there holding the cooler.