were having their splayed bodies traced with chalk around the time I left for Columbia, a delay required to get things in order with Sylvia; my head chef, Ryan, was slowly becoming the general manager as it was, what with all of my recent random departures to places unknown (but with locales always resolving to suburban Baltimore).
I’d slept little, managed only to squeeze in a shaveless shower before taking to the highways in the predawn darkness. The first opportunity to assemble a plan came as I was exiting the Holland Tunnel. I had four hours to put something together. And as I rode down the New Jersey Turnpike toward I-95, I couldn’t stop looking in my rearview mirror for someone from our crew—or from the federal government.
Whatever plan I’d hoped might surface showed no sign of appearing even as I broke the line of the Keystone State. Then again, what choice did I really have?
“Hi, Melody. Sorry for breaking in but let me explain. Yeah, I’m the guy you’re on the run from, but look, here’s the thing…”
I had to keep reminding myself of the soul of the plan as it first came to my mind: Win her. The actions to match that sentiment did not come as I’d hoped, likely due to my having never considered this option; I’d spent my adult life determined to avoid getting in contact with her, from ever revealing who I was, how I was responsible for the way her life had turned out, for the way her life hadn’t turned out.
As I broke the Delaware line, I started to ponder the solution to the second part of my problem: Assuming I could gain Melody’s trust, what was I to do with her?
Tell her to run? She was doing that already, and other than me, no one was pursuing her. But if someone else put Gardner to work the way I did, she’d be taken out within twelve hours.
Tell her to come with me? Where, exactly, would we be going?
As the exit for Rising Sun, Maryland, came into view, the only thing I could sense rising was rage, a burn in my stomach derived from the ridiculous life I lived, forced into (supposedly) putting a bullet into an innocent woman because of nothing more significant than happenstance. And with the rage came a clouding of ideas, my mind preoccupied and disconnected.
As I drove half the circumference of the Baltimore Beltway, I noticed my heart pounding harder, my seat belt holding it back like a weight belt, could feel the beat of blood through my temples.
I’d started pushing the ideas to the front of my mind with such force that each one arrived broken and disabled. The closer I got to Columbia, at that point seven miles from Melody’s apartment, the less I had in my arsenal of possibilities.
And as I wound through the streets that led me to her building, as the suburb stretched and yawned and came to life, I decided I’d use my last remaining time, the final moments as I staked out her apartment, to draw a conclusion, a final scheme.
Except.
Except I pulled into her complex distracted—distracted by the pair of black Ford Explorers with dark windows and meaty wheels that followed me in. I might as well have waved to them: I dropped under the speed limit, a certain signal I was doing something wrong, my New York license plates as hard to avoid noticing as a chancre sore. The massive vehicles were on my tail for too long, inspired me to turn down a different row of apartment buildings—any direction but toward Melody—and when I did, they kept on going, gunning their engines toward some other destination. My instinct suggested they were rushing to box off the exits; my reaction was to keep drifting along in second gear, pretend I was looking for some other address. I drove in a figure eight around two unconnected buildings.
One minute passed. Nothing.
I poked the nose of the Audi out into the lane of the next apartment building like a cat sniffing the scent of an unrecognized animal.
Two minutes. Nothing.
I pulled out a half car length farther to get a look; everything appeared docile. I let the car slowly float forward, had to tell myself to breathe. I sat on the verge of something: capturing Melody, being arrested, death.
As I reached the end of the row of apartments, I gunned the engine and flew between the two rows like a soldier running from