Chapter 67

I spent the day cleaning up my affairs. I arranged for the management of the rent property with the bank's Property Management Department. The rent payment would go directly into my bank account. Carlos would be in charge of the maintenance. The Management Company would pay him for his work. The sale of the unused land in the Village to Carlos and Juan was also arranged by the bank's Trust Department. The land also included the building materials that were lying about on the site. The price was one dollar US. The bank was so small both Departments were headed by Selena Martinez.

I arranged with the Realtor, who had been in charge of the Village sales, to sell the Country Store as well and the remaining houses. I gave Selena, the power to sign the sales contracts with the money again going directly to my savings account.

Then on the advice of the people at Church Camp I took the trike and disappeared. Oh they didn't say get out of town by the end of the week, but it was clear people would be looking at me seriously. That is, if they could find me. My records at the state prison farm had been expunged. My prints misplaced inside the state department of corrections. The National Database had someone else prints under my old name. So the prints that Homeland Security had obtained should be of no use to them. However no one could get them out of the system this time. Best thing that could happen for me was to disappear. I was in the database again as Jane Doe.

"Run fast, run far, and leave soon," the voice in my head said.

"So you came back. You couldn't stand to leave me in peace," I said.

"You forget girl. I have twice the life experience you do. Some of that is in how to avoid being found," he said.

"Well I may run far, but I won't be running fast. I am dropping off the grid for a while and it won't be around here," I said.

"Even I can figure that out. Actually your way may be better," Liam admitted.

I decided to take the trike so I took the motor and battery holder off the bicycle and installed it on the trike. The trailer for the bicycle is not suitable for travel since it was mostly to stabilize the bicycle.

"I want a light weight trailer, but I don't have time to wait for it to come," I said.

"Then we need to get you out of town with what you have, then get what you need while we are on the road," Liam said.

"What's this we shit, you has been mercenary?" I asked.

"Some one has to keep you out of trouble and give you good advice," he said.

"I should write a book, 'Advice From the Other Side'," I said.

"You do that and they will have you in the mental hospital. Homeland Security will know right where to find you," he said.

I left as the sun rose on the day after I finished closing down my tiny empire. I had lots of things going on, but as the man said I needed to leave right the fuck away, the sooner the better.

I planned to travel 75 miles to the east the first day. I had to use old deactivated state highways. They had been re designated as county roads in some cases or secondary state roads. I rode 75 miles to make it less than fifty miles as the crow flies.

I found a motel in the small town which was my destination. I checked into the small motel. I check my big battery before I went to dinner. I switched the battery on the trike from the 40ah to the 20ah one then plugged the charger in on the 40ah to start it charging while I was gone. I also read it for amount of usable charge left. It appeared that I might have had ten more miles left on the battery. The crazy terrain was playing hell with the calculations, but I had the spare along just in case I had to switch them out. Fortunately I hadn't needed to do that on day one.

I paid cash at a local burger type restaurant then took the giant burger back to the motel. On my laptop I had two different ways to get to the Internet. One was on any WiFi I could hijack, and the other was on a dial up IP. That particular motel clerk agreed to let me use the phone in my room to connect to the Internet long enough to check my email. So I used it. After that chore I watched a landline TV provided with the room, until I fell asleep.

I was up before sunrise. I was also sore as an open wound that morning. The pedaling though minimal had been almost continuous. I opened the bottle of OTC pain meds and took two. I still wanted to get down the road farther before I took a break from the Trike.

I had breakfast at the same burger restaurant, before I left the small town. I rode and pedaled through two more small towns. I found a small convenience store early that morning. I purchased several packages of crackers and filled my two cup stainless steel coffee thermos before I left. Just as I expected I didn't get to a town of any size until 5 PM. I could have traveled three more hours but I was exhausted and I wasn't sure how my batteries would hold up. I also didn't know if there would be a motel in the next town.

The night went the same as the one before. Liam didn't bother to talk to me, so I slept like the dead again.

The days began to run together as I rode the trike east. I could travel the distance in a day that a person in a car could travel in an hour more or less. It was not an efficient way to travel, but it suited me at the moment. I was just trying to stay out of sight and one day get to a warm climate.

On the fourth day I rode under an interstate highway, so I decided to stop at a chain motel with high speed WiFi. The room price was twice what a Mom and Paki motel would have been but I could use all the Internet I wished.

I used the time to do some window shopping on line. I wasn't anywhere I planned to stay long enough to have a package delivered. So looking was all I could do at the moment. I had been drawing since I left home for New York. By the time I checked into the motel I had a leather envelope half filled with sketches. I was tempted to mail them to Luis but decided against it. I had to stay disappeared for a while longer.

I checked my bank records and found that my account had the transactions I expected to see. That meant that the automatic deposits and withdrawals were being made as I had set them up to be. I had brought the twenty two thousand bucks from the grease pit along plus I put another twenty five thousand in the account with the debit card authorization. All that meant was that I had fifty thousand bucks that would be hard to trace. Even if they figured out where to look.

I wasn't too worried about my personal safety, but I must have given it some thought because I had traded one of my two shotguns for an old colt .38 snub nose revolver. I doubted I could hit a house at twenty yards, but if the bad guy was that far away, I would just run. That being the case I was pretty sure I could hit a man in the chest at ten feet if I stayed calm and I usually did stay calm.

After a full week and a day, I pulled into a small coastal town. It was a hundred miles from where the boat I worked on back in my early days with SBI had been berthed. It was a picturesque town with a short walk from downtown to the inland waterway. I decided that it wasn't the right place to settle for a month, mainly because it was too close to home. I needed to be farther south before the winter arrived. It was mid September when I checked into the motel whose lobby smelled of Curry. I had to consider where I would be on November First.

I did stay two days before I headed south. It was a long two day ride to Myrtle Beach but there were interesting things to see along the way. All along the way Iris Martin was a curiosity with her trike and backpacks.

The first time I used it Liam showed up to comment. "So you are using one of the Church Camp IDs?" he asked.

"Sure why not? It was a phony made by Wilson before he decided to use real people IDs," I whispered silently.

"It won't matter if the Feds run you back to Farmer's Grove," he suggested.

"Thank you for your input Mary Fucking Sunshine," I said and laughed so that only he could hear.

I had pulled out the Iris Martin ID only after I was seven days out of Farmer's Grove. The only thing I used it for was checking into the Motel, which sometimes required a driver's license. The fake one would hold up for a motel, but not a traffic stop. If that happened I would use the Rose Seabold ID. Truth is nobody seemed to do anything but blow their horn and wave. I had a few jerks cut me off, but it wasn't too bad. I just yelled 'asshole' and continued to ride.

"You know old girl if you settle in somewhere for a while, you could get another battery kit and travel twice as far in a day. The landscape is more bicycle friendly here," Liam noted.

"I know but by the time it arrived, I would have lost the whole month. I will do something when I can settle somewhere warm for a month," I said. The riding conditions changed so drastically that I could make it from Myrtle Beach SC to twenty miles past Savannah Georgia in three easy days riding.

Two weeks of traveling after I left Farmers Grove I was crossing the Florida State line. Then of course I got rained out for two days. It couldn't have been in a hotel that provided Wifi, so I had a miserable day looking out the window of a cheap motel. The owner did let me pull the trike onto the walkway near the room so I could watch it better and keep it somewhat dry. I also had a clear plastic cover, which would find its way to the trash when I left. Those could be purchased for a couple of bucks, so weren't worth packing. They never would go back in the package anyway.

Four weeks after I left home, I arrived in Fort Myers Florida. I was thrilled to find a small town with all the good stuff, and not too awfully large. I found a suite motel that rented for well under a hundred dollars a day. My plan was to stay just long enough to get a second 40ah battery delivered and have a trailer built for me.

I figured ten days minimum a full month maximum. When I sat down in the Econolodge long term suite, the first thing I did was tap their WiFi and order a new battery. I paid for it with PayPal which could be traced back to the bank in County Seat. That was if Feds knew who I was. I had the battery shipped to the motel with my exact address.

Then I did my routine bank account and email screens. The Realtor advised me that all the houses were sold and everything else turned over to Carlos. Luis was given the deed to his house as per my instructions. The email from the bookkeeper told me that they were making his collections on the rent houses and making the deposits. All appeared to be right with the world in Farmer's Grove. I went to bed feeling pretty good about myself.

"So you have enough money to do anything you want and you have done a good thing for your friends. So what now?" Liam asked from the chair at the end of my bed.

"I still have a lot left. I think I'm going to try spending some of it," I said.

"So what do you have in mind?" Liam asked again.

"Why don't you hang out with me and find out?" I suggested.

"So you don't have any Idea?" he asked.

"Not a clue," I replied and then drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke, I knew that even though I was settled I was going to have to ride the trike. I would need to ride at least a few miles a day to stay in shape when time came to move on. I hadn't had to think that way for several weeks. I found myself back in almost my regular schedule. If I didn't workout I would probably blimp up as well, I thought. I had actually lost ten pounds over the last couple of months. I kind of liked the well defined me. With that in mind, I left the battery packs on the chargers and pedaled the bike to breakfast. Even without the motor it was easy to manage the ride, way easier than I was used to, so it became a two hour ride after breakfast as well.