They waited at the light, the Fords a couple of cars behind. Wells reached down for the screwdriver. He slid it under his ankle bracelet and twisted. The plastic strained and gave. No turning back now.
“What’s this about?” Walter said.
“There’s this song. From sometime in the nineties, I don’t know,”
Wells said, more to himself than Walter. “ ‘Time is all the luck you need.’ ”
Walter shook his head in disgust. “Just gimme the hundred, man.”
Wells did. The light changed. Walter went.
wells rolled out of the taxi, paper bag in hand. He landed smoothly on his shoulder and popped to his knees, then scuttled behind a beat-up black Jeep Cherokee. The taxi disappeared. Walter had already closed the door, Wells saw. The two Fords came by, flashing their emergency lights, no sirens. Then they too were gone. The Cherokee would do. No alarm. Wells swung the hammer at the front passenger window, breaking it with a satisfying crunch. He swung again to widen the hole, reached through, and unlocked the driver’s door. He jogged around the Jeep and slid inside. He popped open the steering column with the screwdriver and twisted together a pair of wires. The engine started on the second try. Wells looked down the road. The Fords were nowhere in sight. He rolled away. he called exley’s apartment from a pay phone on Massachusetts Avenue. “Hello,” she said on the second ring. Her voice was quiet and slightly smoky; she had smoked when Wells knew her last, but she must have quit. A pleasant shiver passed through Wells. “It’s me,” he said.
“John?”
“Be on your front steps in five minutes.” He hung up. Calling her was a mistake. He should be on the road to New York already. There he would ditch the Jeep, pick up the money he had hidden, and find a Greyhound that would get him to Atlanta without coming through D.C. She could stop him with a ten-second phone call. But he needed to say good-bye to her. He needed to believe there was at least one person he could trust.
she trotted over to the Jeep. He popped open the door and reached out a hand.
“Watch the glass.” He’d tried to sweep it onto the floor but hadn’t completely succeeded. He was surprised to see she was wearing a knee-high skirt. She ought to wear skirts more often, he thought. Even the Talibs would approve. Well, maybe not. She swept off the window fragments and arranged herself gingerly on the seat. He drove off, north on Thirteenth Street.
“You stole this?”
“Borrowed.” He held up the Jeep’s registration. “I guess I owe Elizabeth Jones a few bucks.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re not going anywhere. I just wanted to see you. For a minute.”
“Where are you going?”
“Away.”
“John—”
and suddenly exley understood. Shafer had set this up, like he’d set up Wells’s trip to the camps so many years before. Shafer had known that Duto, out of stupidity or spite, would shut down anything Wells tried to do. So Shafer had taken Wells for himself. Then he’d let Wells twist until Wells believed he had no choice but to run. That was why they hadn’t told Wells he’d passed the poly, why they’d kept him at arm’s length. Why Shafer had put Wells at that safe house instead of someplace more secure. It was the only way to get Wells out.
“It’s so risky,” Exley said aloud. What if Duto called out the dogs? But he wouldn’t. He didn’t think Wells was dangerous, and he’d be happy to let Shafer twist over the loss of his prize pet.
“I know what I’m doing,” Wells said.
Do you, John? Exley wondered. She put her hand on his arm. at her touch Wells wanted to pull the Jeep over and have her there, on the side of the street. Let the neighbors watch. Let them call the cops. And then Langley can bail you both out, he thought. She took her hand from his arm.
“John? There’s something I’ve been wondering.”
“Yes?”
“Why’d you go see Heather?”
“It wasn’t Heather I wanted to see. It was Evan.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and Wells wondered if he’d un derstood the question properly: Do you still love her? Then Exley put her hand on his arm again, and he knew he was right.
“Tell me a story,” he said. To distract himself. To hear her voice for a little while more before he disappeared.
“What kind of story?”
“Anything. I don’t care. Something personal.”
she wondered what to tell him. All she did was work. Should she explain how her son had yelled at her the last time she’d seen him, told her he liked Randy better than her? About how she kept the radio in her bedroom tuned to sports talk, not because she cared about the Nationals but because if she woke up at three a.m. she could turn it on and be sure of hearing a man’s voice?
“You want a story,” she said. “Okay.” And before she could stop herself she said, “So, the night I lost my virginity. I was fifteen—”
“Fifteen?” Wells sounded surprised, she thought. He didn’t know what he’d gotten himself into. She wasn’t sure she did either. She’d never told this to any man before, not even her husband.
“You want me to keep going?” She wanted to keep going.
“Please.” His voice was steady again.
