My bag is on the floor where I dropped it. I sit on the edge of the bed. I look at my hands, which are clean, the gloves having done their job, no stain, no evidence, just my hands. I flex my fingers.
Different hair. Same hands.
Still me.
Still the person who is going to have to trust her own instincts again eventually, because the alternative is running forever, and I have decided—somewhere between New Mexico and this yellow-walled bathroom—that I am done running forever.
Not done running. Not yet. But done with the forever part.
I’m still running, I think. I’m still a woman with someone else’s story written across her record and a locked box of grief on a high shelf and four hundred dollars in her jacket pocket and no clear path to the next move.
None of that has changed. Except I’m in Sweetwater Valley and the air is different here. I felt something when I drove into this town that I haven’t felt before, something that sits in the back of my sternum without explanation.
I touch my hair. Not mine and also mine, now, for as long as I need it to be. I lie back on the cedar-scented mattress and look at the ceiling. Tonight I’ll besomeone slightly different walking through a town I’m passing through on my way to the next position.
I can’t sleep.
This is not a surprise. This is what happens when you’ve been running on adrenaline for seventy-two hours and then stop. The body doesn’t know what to do with the stillness. It keeps generating the chemicals, keeps the heart at an elevated pace, keeps the nervous system online and scanning for threats that aren’t currently present.
I lie on the pine-scented mattress and stare at the ceiling. I am absolutely, completely, frustratingly awake.
My mind runs the Amber calculation.
I shut it down.
It runs the evidence calculation.
I shut that down too.
It starts running the my-life-is-over-crisis, and I shut that down hardest of all because that one has the most variables and I don’t have the bandwidth.
I stare at the ceiling. The ceiling is not interesting.
It’s so damned quiet here. Way too quiet. There’s nothing else to focus on.
I try to remember what I saw around this pokey little town. The carnival wasn’t running yet. There were a few Mom and Pop restaurants. A late-night pharmacy. There was also a pub. I heard it when I drove in. It sounded lived-in rather than rowdy. It might be a good distraction?
I calculate the risk. New appearance. Small town. Late enough that the crowd is the core local version rather than the visitor version, which means everyone thereknows everyone there, which means a stranger is notable.
Counter-argument: I cannot lie and stare up at this ceiling for another six hours.
Counter-counter-argument: I have a reasonable cover now, at least the first-second version, and I could use a drink that isn’t from a gas station and a conversation that doesn’t happen inside my own head.
I sit up. I put my shoes on.
The pub is called The River and I learn this from the faded wooden sign when I get there, which is a name I appreciate for its directness. It does what it says. It is near the river. No further explanation required.
Inside it is warm. The warmth of a room that has been full of people for a long time and has absorbed the heat of them, the amber of old wood, the low lighting, the smell of beer and something fried, and underneath it something that is justpeople who know each other,the scent of ease.
The crowd is, as calculated, the late-night local version. Twelve, maybe fifteen people. A bartender who looks up when I come in with the assessment of someone who has seen everything and is filing me quickly.
I take a stool at the far end of the bar. Not the corner, the corner is obvious. The deliberate choosing of the corner reads as someone with reasons to be in the corner. The far end is someone who likes spacewithout being paranoid about it.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asks. He’s cute, probably not much older than I am. Blond hair, a dazzling smile.
“Whatever’s good,” I reply.
He considers this. Pulls something from the mid-shelf without ceremony and pours it. “Whiskey, local distillery. Valley’s been making it for forty years.”
