Chapter 12

We'd fallen into a kind of phone routine, Lee and I. I'd call in the morning, usually about 10:00, and then an evening call somewhere around 8:00 to say good night. So when I called her at 1:00 in the afternoon she wasn't expecting me, and I'd told Spook to use "unknown" as the caller ID.

"Hello," she said. Lee could never leave a call unanswered if she was able to take it.

"Don't say anything!" I told her urgently. "The Feds can hear you but not me, to them it's a dead line. Just say 'hello' a couple of times and hang up. Then find a convenience store with a one-person john and go in, lock the door and then call me."

She'd caught her breath when I'd started speaking, but then I heard her say "hello" again, and a third time sounding irritated. Lee had always been quick on the uptake. I broke the connection before she did.

I hadn't been able to think of any other way to handle it. Spook was able to block the tap, but I thought it likely she was being observed, too. It would be a dead giveaway if they saw her talking on the cell but the tap was blank, and I was afraid it might worry them enough to pick her up again. I didn't trust her apartment, either, they'd had plenty of time to set up bugs. Hence the cloak-and-dagger.

It was half an hour before my phone went off. This time I'd told Spook to block everything, even her dial, nobody'd be listening to any of this.

"Hey, sweetheart," I greeted her. "You're where nobody can see you or hear you?"

"Hi, Jackie," she said warmly. "I figured that was it. I'm in an empty room at the library, you know I hate public restrooms. They're nasty, most of them. But there's just one small window here and I'm away from it, and the room's way down a hall and I'll hear if anybody comes. Lover, what's going on?"

"I needed to talk to you without our official audience, honey. The line's clear right now, and I have some things to say."

"How nice!" she said with a giggle. "I've really hated knowing other people were listening to us. I mean, phone sex was kind of out of the question. But how can you do that?"

"That's still for later, Lee. Right now I want to talk about something else. You said the other day that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me. Honey, do you still feel that way?"

I could hear her take a quick, gulping breath. "Oh, yes, Jack. Yes, yes, yes for sure. Does that mean all this craziness is coming to an end?"

"Well, yes and no," I told her. "Yes, we can be together. But do you still want that if it means living somewhere else and cutting off completely from everybody?"

"Everybody? Even Mom?"

"Especially your mom, but your friends too, all of them. Honey, your mom won't even know." Lisa's mother was in a nursing home in the last stages of Alzheimer's. For nearly a year she hadn't even recognized her daughter, but Lee visited faithfully anyway, twice a week, and came away in tears every time.

"What are you saying?" she asked. "You want me to come on the run with you, hiding away from everybody and always afraid the police—"

"Not like that at all, honey," I said soothingly. "We'll live openly, socialize, have friends, all of it. I think I have a way of turning off the search for me, and they're not really interested in you anyway. It's just that we'll have to start completely fresh, cut off everything about the past."

"Live where, Jack?"

"Pretty much anywhere you like. We like. Anywhere in the world, actually. Except D.C. or anywhere people know us, at least for a long time."