52

            Once they had driven north of the Atlanta city limits and entered suburbia, Anthony rose in the seat and asked Lisa to pull off the highway.  

            In the parking lot of an apartment complex in Marietta, they found an old Buick sitting on a flat, but the car had a valid license plate.  He used his Swiss Army Knife to remove the plate, and put it on the Volkswagen, trusting that it would be a day or so before the owner of the Buick noticed the missing tag.     

            It was reasonable to assume that since the lunatics had learned they were at the condo in Midtown, they would discover Lisa’s sister lived there, and might soon begin searching for her vehicle.  With no GPS, satellite radio, or other high-tech snares on the car to aid their hunt, they would turn to auto tags. 

            To stay ahead of these people, he and Lisa would have to continue to out-think them.

            “We’re all set,” he said, easing into the front passenger seat.  “Now, we need to find a hotel where we can lie low for a while, and think.”

            “And sleep,” she said, eyes red with fatigue. 

            There were numerous hotels off I-75 in Cobb County.  They decided on a budget-priced chain hotel that advertised free Internet access, and that offered quick passage to the highway.  He used a moist toilette to clean the grime and crusted blood off his wrist, and then went inside, alone, to book a room.

            At the front desk, he paid cash for a room for one night, adding a couple hundred dollars as a deposit for incidentals.  He claimed that he didn’t have his driver’s license, gave his name as Mark Justice, the pseudonym of a local thriller writer that no one would be likely to connect to him, and supplied a fake Atlanta address and phone number.  

            He requested a second-floor room on the western side of the hotel, which would provide him a view of any vehicle that entered the parking lot, and access to a side exit.         

            In the gift shop, he purchased a pack of Band-Aids, disin-fectant ointment, pain reliever pills, and bottles of water. 

            Finally, he and Lisa entered their room with all of their bags in tow.  They stripped out of their soggy, soiled clothes, and showered together. 

            There was nothing sexual or romantic about their shower.  It was an opportunity for them to decompress, together.  He washed her back; she washed his; and for several minutes afterward, they held each other, letting the warm water cascade over them.

            As they clung to each other, neither of them spoke.  Words would have failed to convey the closeness he felt toward her.  The sense of partnership.  They were in this together, to the end.  Her commitment to him—twelve hours ago, it would have been so easy for her to demand that he drop her off at her parents’ while he went at this alone—inspired a quiet sense of awe.  He had a few buddies who were married, some longer than he had been, and they spoke disgustfully of how their wives failed to support them, how they had drifted apart and lived in separate words linked together solely by children, or a house, or plain old habit.  Commitment was not embodied in the mere exchange of vows; it was best exemplified in action, and Lisa had gone far above and beyond anything he ever could have expected, or asked.    

            “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” she said suddenly, head against his chest, as in sync with his thoughts as ever.  “This is where I’m supposed to be.  Doing this with you.”

            He kissed her wet forehead.  “Thank you.  I hope it’s not all for nothing.”

            “It’s not.  There’s always a purpose, a plan.  Even if we don’t immediately understand what it might be.  Over time . . . it all becomes clear.”

            “You really believe that?”

            “If I didn’t, what would be the point of anything?  Life would be meaningless.”

            He closed his eyes and let the water bead against his face, her words ricocheting around his mind. 

            After they toweled off and dressed in underclothes, she cleaned and bandaged his wrist wound, and he swallowed two pain reliever capsules.  Then, she pulled the curtains over the windows and adjusted the air conditioner, while he hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and set the bedside alarm clock for ten o’clock in the morning.

            “We’ll get about three hours of shut-eye,” he said.  “After that, it’s back to work.”

            “Wow, three whole hours.”  She stretched out across the king-size bed.  “I’m joking, but with the way I feel right now, the idea’s as tempting as a full night’s sleep.”

            With the curtains drawn, shadows gathered in the room.  Although none of the pockets of darkness were deep enough to hide an intruder, he imagined faces floating in them, shining fanatical eyes watching, plotting.

You’re safe, he told himself.  Relax.

            Nevertheless, he buried a handgun underneath his pillow.  He put another piece on the nightstand, beside the clock, and Lisa had placed her .357 on the table on her side of the bed.

            He closed his eyes and, after a short while, drifted asleep. 

            He dreamed, again, about his father.  They were on the lake, fishing rods dipped into the silver water.  Blood glistened on his dad’s shirt, of which he again seemed unaware.   

Something jerked the end of Anthony’s line, and he pulled it out to discover that it was a not a fish, but a rifle, and he reeled it in and dropped it onto the floor of the boat, and his dad picked it up and thrust it into his hands, saying, “Now you take this gun and you go get them suckers, son, go get justice for me, dammit, ‘cause it’s time for war . . .”