The Innocent

He turned to go back to the house.

“So that’s it? You just let me walk?”

He turned back. “Like you said, it’s not my business. It’s your decision. And, frankly, I’ve got my own problems. Good luck.”

He started off again.

Julie did not move.

“What were you going to make for breakfast?”

He stopped but didn’t look at her. “Eggs, bacon, grits, toast, and coffee. But I have tea too. They say coffee stunts a kid’s growth. But then like you said, you’re not a kid.”

“Scrambled eggs?”

“Any way you like. But I do an exceptional over-hard.”

“I can leave in the morning.”

“Yes, you can.”

“That’s my plan.”

“Okay.”

“Nothing personal,” she said.

“Nothing personal,” he replied.

They walked back to the house, Julie trailing three feet behind Robie.

“I was pretty quiet getting out of the house. How did you know?”

“I do this for a living.”

“Do what?”

“Survive.”

Me too, thought Julie.

CHAPTER 21

Three hours later Robie lifted his head off the pillow. He showered, dressed, and headed to the stairs. He heard gentle snores coming from the guest bedroom. He thought about knocking but decided to just let her sleep.

He glided down the steps and into the kitchen. He kept the alarm on. He would not turn it off until he left the safe house. In addition to the house alarm, he had perimeter alerts spread around the property. One of those had been triggered by Julie’s escape. It had been easy for him to take a shortcut through the woods and intercept her.

Part of him was glad she had decided to come back. Part of him wasn’t looking forward to the added responsibility.

But more of him was glad that she had returned.

Was it guilt over letting a little kid die right in front of me? Am I making amends this way, by saving Julie from whatever and whoever is after her?

A while later he heard a door open and feet padding across the hall. Later, the toilet flushed and the water in the sink started running. It kept going for a while. She was probably doing a “sink bath” to clean up.

When she came downstairs twenty minutes later, the meal prep was far advanced.

“Coffee or tea?” he asked.

“Coffee, black,” she answered.

“It’s over there, help yourself. Cups in the cabinet by the fridge, top shelf.”

He checked the grits and then opened the carton of eggs. “Overhard, light or scrambled, or hard-boiled?”

“Who does hard-boiled eggs anymore?”

“Me.”

“Scrambled.”

He swished the eggs in a bowl and glanced up at the small TV sitting on top of the fridge. He said, “Check it out.”

Julie pushed her damp hair back over her ears and glanced up as she sipped her coffee. She had changed clothes. It was still partially dark outside. But in the light of the kitchen she looked younger and scrawnier than she had last night.

At least she wasn’t holding the pepper spray anymore. Both hands were cupped around her coffee mug. Her face was scrubbed clean but Robie could see her red, swollen eyes. She’d been crying.

“You have any cigarettes?” she asked, glancing away from his scrutiny.

“You’re too young,” he replied.

“Too young for what? To die?”

“I get the irony, but I don’t have any cigarettes.”

“Did you used to smoke?”

“Yes. Why?”

“You just seemed the type.”

“What type is that?”

“The ‘do things my way’ type.”

The sound on the TV was turned down low, but the scene on the screen that came on was self-explanatory. The still smoking bus, burned to a shell of metal. All flammable objects had pretty much disappeared: seats, tires, bodies.

Both Robie and Julie stared at it.

The bus had had a full tank of gas, Robie knew, for the trip up to New York. It had burned like an inferno. No, it was an inferno. There would be thirty-plus blackened corpses in that ride. Or at least parts of them.

Their crematorium.

The medical examiner would have his hands full with this one.

“Can you turn up the sound?” Julie asked.

Robie grabbed the remote and inched up the volume.

The TV newscaster, a grim-looking man, stared into the camera and said, “The bus had just departed for New York City. The explosion happened at approximately one-thirty last night. There are no survivors. The FBI is not ruling out a terrorist attack, though it doesn’t seem clear at this point why the bus would have been targeted.”

“How do you think it happened?” Julie asked.

Robie glanced at her. “Let’s eat first.”

The next fifteen minutes were spent chewing, swallowing, and drinking.

“Good eggs,” Julie proclaimed. She pushed her plate back, refilled her coffee cup, and sat back down. She stared at his nearly empty plate and then up at him.

“Can we talk about it now?”

Robie crisscrossed his knife and fork over his plate and sat back.

“Guy who was after you might have set it off.”

“What, like a suicide bomber?”

“Maybe.”

“Wouldn’t you have seen a bomb on him?”

“Probably. Most bomb packs are pretty prominent. Dynamite sticks lined together, wiring, battery, switches, and the detonator. But I tied him up, so it would have been impossible for him to set anything off.”

“So it couldn’t have been him.”