Legacies

13.

I don't think I like this, Alicia thought as Jack stopped his car across the street from a tiny ranch house on a gravel road in the middle of a sea of potato fields.

They had turned off the LIE a while back, traveled through some suburban towns that had given away to farmland, and now they were… here.

"I want to go back, Jack," she said. She'd said that maybe a dozen times now. He probably thought she sounded like a broken record.

Broken record… an irrelevant question fluttered through her mind: would the next generation, raised on CDs, even know what that sounded like?

"I told you: I'll take you back as soon as I'm sure we're not being tailed."

He got out and stood with the door open, staring back along the dark country road. Alicia turned and looked through the back window.

"There's nobody there, Jack."

"But there was. Somebody picked us up as soon as we got the car moving. That's why we made this little detour."

"Little" was not the word Alicia would have chosen to describe this trek. She'd had a long day, a harrowing night. My God, when was this going to end?

First, reentering the house… bad enough, but then those two men had been gunned down right in front of her. That bloody face and staring eyes, glimpsed for only a second, still strobed through her brain.

Death… so much death connected with the house.

So now she just wanted this awful night to be over. She wished she were back in her own little place with her plants and in her own bed, getting some sleep. Or at least trying to get some sleep. She did not want to be skulking through this empty farming country in eastern Long Island.

Especially with an armed man who insisted he was being followed when it was obvious to anyone with eyes that he was not.

"Okay," she said. "Maybe somebody was following us for a while. But there's nobody back there now. There hasn't been for miles. So can we please go home?"

He looked up and scanned the sky. Alicia followed his gaze. A clear cold winter night, with half a moon and a billion stars providing the light.

"More than one way to follow somebody. And trust me, we've been followed all night. I can feel it." He leaned inside and grabbed the keys. "Maybe we'd better go inside."

She looked past him at the little house. Even in the. moonlight she could tell it was run-down. The storm door hung open at an angle, and an old pickup rusted amid the knee-high, winter-brown weeds in the front yard.

"In there?"

"Yeah. It's mine." He grinned. "This 'delightful little two-bedroom ranch' is my country place."

"I don't think so."

"Come on. Just for a few minutes. I've got a feeling we're going to have company soon, and I'd rather be inside when they arrive."

Alicia looked back along the road again. "Jack… there's nobody coming."

"Just ten minutes. If nobody shows by then, we're outta here.. Okay?"

"Okay," she said, and checked her watch. "Ten minutes, and not a second more."

She saw him pull a toothpick from his pocket, then kneel and fiddle with something inside the car door near the hinge. The courtesy lights went out.

"What are you doing?"

"Jamming the light button."

He snapped off the rest of the toothpick and closed the door without latching it.

"What in God's name for?"

"You'll see. Won't matter if we haven't been followed. Let's go."

She followed him up the walk where he unlocked the front door and flipped on the lights. Alicia stopped at the threshold and took it in.

First off—the smell: Mold and mildew had been having a ball here. Then the look: The living room rug was filthy, the furniture sagging and worn, and here and there around the room, near the ceiling, corners of wallpaper curled back like peeling skin, revealing mildewed plaster.

"Your 'country place?' " she said. "When was the last time you stayed here?"

"Never." He closed the door behind her and moved to the drawn Venetian blinds. "This is my decoy place."

"For hunting?"

"No. For a situation just like this—when I'm being followed, or think I am, and can't be sure."

"You bought a house way out here just for that?"

He nodded as he lifted one of the slats on the blind and peered through. "Well, yeah. I wanted three things: isolation, low maintenance, and cheap."

She glanced around again. "I don't know what you paid for it, but you certainly got one and two."

"It was cheap enough to allow me to make some improvements."

"Improvements? Where?"

"They're not readily apparent."

"You can say that again. Looks like a crack house."

He laughed as he kept watch through the blind. "Oh, right. Like you'd know."

"Yeah, I would know," she said, resenting his sarcasm. "I've gone along when we've had to retrieve sick children from addict parents. You don't know a fraction of what I've seen."

Jack glanced at her. "You're right. I don't. Sorry. I'm sure there's lots I don't know about you."

What does he mean by that? Alicia wondered as he turned back to peeking through the blind. She was about to ask him but held back.

Ease up, she told herself. You've been acting a little weird tonight. All right, more than a little. He's got to have some questions about you. Anybody would.

She glanced at her watch: three minutes gone. In seven minutes she'd hold him to his word and make him take her home.

"Uh, oh," he said from the window. "Company."

He stepped aside and held up the slat for her. She peeked though.

Out front, beyond the derelict pickup, a car and a panel truck—her heart began to race as she recognized that truck—were pulling to a stop.