Chapter 19

The next three days were simply more of the same—go to work, work, go back to the hotel after work, all incident-free. I did follow Brodine's advice to the extent that I varied my comings and goings as much as I could, took different routes to and from the office, and other than work didn't go much of anywhere. I continued to take my meals via room service, and our entertainment, Susan's and mine, was limited to the TV and talking to each other.

But I was gradually going stir-crazy. The confines of a hotel room, even a reasonably well-appointed one such as this, were beginning to grate badly on my nerves. And the mounting bill was eroding my bank account, and the limit on the credit card I'd given them. Pretty quick now I'd hit it, the limit, and they'd want another card and I'd eat through that one, until I ran out of cards—I only had three—and ran out of money to pay them off.

This had to end, I told Susan. Walter Whatsis seemed to have given me up; at least we'd seen neither hide nor hair of him since the parking lot. It was time and past time to end this charade and get back to my apartment. The idea still made her antsy, but she was starting to come around.

"The thing that gets me," she mused Wednesday evening, "is that Walter isn't a quitter. Neither is Bobby, and it's his whole life on the line here. Walter has to know where you work, so where is he? Why isn't he hanging around for another try at you?"

"I don't know, sugar," I said. "Maybe he and his boss both figure it's a lost cause by now. I mean, I've had over a week to dig out that flash drive and give it to the Feds, and they probably think I've done it. Who knows? They took their shot at me early, when you were first in the hospital and maybe not going to make it. Now they have to either believe the reports that you died or realize that the Feds moved you someplace they can't find, and either way you're out of their frame now. So you'll surface or you won't, the drive's beyond their reach, and they're cutting their losses."

"Maybe," she murmured in a voice full of doubt. "I don't know. I can't explain it, really. But I suppose you're right and it's silly for you to keep on hiding. And you're not really hiding, you've been at work three days now and it's been fine. So I guess..."

Friday, we agreed. Friday morning I'd check out and take my stuff, leave it in the car for the day, and then go home again that night. I'd be really careful answering the door, I'd continue to keep my hours and my doings unpredictable, but I'd start to get back to my normal life again.

Well, as "normal" as it could be, considering my situation. There was one thing that wouldn't be "normal" at all, and that was Susan's continuing phantom presence. In fact, it was beginning to worry me a little, her still being with me.

Shouldn't they have wakened her from that "induced coma" they'd put her in by now? And if they had, why hadn't her body called her back to it? I could think of only a couple of explanations, and both of them scared me shitless.

One, of course, was that she'd died for real. The move had been too much for her, the Feds had miscalculated and she hadn't made it to the other end, or she'd been so weakened that she'd died in the new place they'd taken her. I consoled myself with the thought that surely Brodine would have let me know if that had happened, there'd be no more security reason for him not to. But would he? All he'd seemed to care about was the job he was doing protecting her, and if she was gone so was the job. Would he have spared even a thought for me? I wished I could have been more certain of that.