All The Stars In Heaven (30 page)

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Jay was tired of standing but didn’t dare sit down or complain. A quick glance at his watch told him they’d been on the roof for almost fifteen minutes. During that time the sun had dipped below the horizon so that it was almost dark. The wind had picked up. Jay was starting to feel uncomfortable in more ways than one. Thanks to Christa and her scissors, his ears were exposed and freezing. His fingers were numbing as well, but he didn’t risk putting them in his pockets; he needed his hands free. Every fraction of a second would count in defending himself. He had to do something soon—before the guy decided he’d waited long enough and carried through with his threat to shoot.

Except that Sarah wasn’t here. Jay had extracted enough monosyllables from the guy to understand that she was the bigger concern, while he was an unfortunate bystander, the bait. Sarah was the one with the information—information that couldn’t leave this building.

Unless it already had.
Please let her be gone.
Jay uttered the same prayer over and over.

“All right. I’ve wasted enough time.” The man leveled the gun at Jay’s heart. “What’s it going to be? A tragic fall, or did your girlfriend kill you?”

“Be a bit difficult to pull that one off, since she isn’t here,” Jay said. Beneath his jacket, his heart thumped wildly.
I’m going to have to rush him. It’s the only chance I’ve got.

“She’s hiding somewhere. My partner and I will find her. Now jump or take the bullet.”

Jay raised his hands in the air. “I think I’ll reconsider my position on heights.”

“Wise choice,” the man nodded. “Less messy for me.”

“Glad to help.” Jay glanced over his shoulder as he stepped backward, judging how much farther until he reached the rail.

“Hurry up.” The gunman followed him closely, the Beretta never wavering from Jay’s heart.

Grab the rail. Raise my leg to climb up. Kick him instead . . . Lame plan. Think of something else—
quick
.

He did. He thought of Sarah, alone and hunted down. If she were the one standing by the rail, he’d already be in motion. He couldn’t wait any longer, could
not
leave her by herself. He turned, grabbed the rail, bent over, and raised his leg.

A gunshot echoed across the rooftop.

“Jay!” Sarah’s voice pierced the air.
No, Sarah.
His foot came up as he looked over his shoulder, kicking as hard as he could, feeling contact. Pushing off from the rail, he whirled around, fist already in motion. It caught air.

The gunman pitched to the side, surprise on his face as he fell. Jay dove on top of him, jerking the gun from his hand, flinging it across the roof. He raised his fist, pummeling it into the side of the guy’s face again and again.

“Jay. Stop. I think he’s—dead.” Sarah touched his shoulder. “We’ve got to get out of here. There’s another man inside. I sent an elevator down empty, and I think he believes I’m on it, but that won’t buy us much time.”

Jay froze mid-punch, realizing that the guy wasn’t fighting back, wasn’t even moving. Jay climbed off, staring in shock at the blood starting to ooze through the fabric of the man’s shirt.

Jay looked over at Sarah and saw the gun gripped in her hand. She was pale and shaking all over. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her away from the body.

“You saved my life.” Awed, he looked into her eyes. “You can’t remember how to use the brakes on a ten-speed, but you can shoot with accuracy from across a roof, fifty feet away?”

Tears slid down her face. “My father taught me how to shoot to kill.”

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Sarah met Jay outside of the women’s restroom in Boston’s South Station. They’d separated for a few minutes so she could attempt to clean herself up and so Jay could purchase tickets to somewhere—far away preferably. “Where are we going?”

“We’re not,” he said. “Police are all over the place. Probably because of holiday travel, but still . . . We get on a train, we’re stuck. I bought two tickets to D.C. at the machine, but we aren’t going to use them.”

“Oh.” Sarah lengthened her stride, trying to keep up with Jay’s brisk pace. What she really wanted to do was lie down—on the nearest bench, the floor—anywhere. “The car again?” He nodded. “If we’re lucky, they’ll track that purchase and think we have something big and important to tell someone in Washington. In the meantime, Kirk’s Jetta has almost a full tank. That will get us across the state line and then some. We’ll figure out what to do from there.”

Sarah shivered as they stepped outside the station. The wind blew hard against them, raining wet snow across her line of vision.

“Keep your head down and walk fast,” Jay said. “Stay behind me. I’ll act as a shield.”

She pulled the jacket tighter and lowered her head as they crossed the street, grateful the blinding snow gave her a real excuse to do so.

By the time they made it to the car, her toes were frozen and her body was shaking with chills. Jay hurried to the driver’s side, clicking open the automatic locks. He had the engine started before she was inside. He cranked on the defrost and grabbed the scraper.

“See if there’s any kind of map in the glove box, will you?” he asked as he got out.

With difficulty she used her numb fingers to pop the latch while he scraped the windows. The box yielded nothing except an owner’s manual and a couple of gas receipts.

“No luck,” she said when Jay was seated again.

“Thanks for trying.” He hit the automatic locks and backed the car out. “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. Connecticut was nice,” she said, remembering the Yale game that seemed about a hundred years ago. She sat on her hands while they drove, willing the heater to warm up faster.

“That’s the same direction as Washington. I’d rather go north, or west.”

“West,” Sarah said.

At a stoplight Jay dug through his pocket. He held out a somewhat smashed package of Fig Newtons. “I got these in the vending machine. It was the closest thing they had to a decent meal.”

She took the flattened cookies. “Thanks. Did you get some too?”

Jay shook his head. “No. I’m too stressed to eat right now. You have them.”

She would have protested, but it had been a long time since lunch, and she’d thrown that up, along with everything else she’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours. Her stomach ached with hunger, though she was more than a little leery of eating again. After ripping open the package, she nibbled the edge of a cookie.

“These wipers are terrible,” Jay complained. He rolled down his window, reached out, and tried to catch one as it swished to the side. A clump of icy snow came off and stayed in a perfect diagonal across the windshield. “Great.”

“Anything I can do?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah. Take my phone and call Kirk.”

She tensed, the bite of cookie sticking in her throat. “Anything else?”

“No.”

Sarah turned away, staring out the passenger window. Traffic was thinning now as they neared the interstate. She wasn’t sure whether it was good or bad that there weren’t a lot of cars. She wasn’t sure running away, heading west, was the right thing to do.

She was pretty sure that right about now Jay was rethinking their engagement.

She leaned her head against the cool glass. The heater was finally working. She was starting to get warm. Too warm.
Maybe I have a fever. Maybe I have the flu.
Her eyelids felt heavy. But she didn’t want to fall asleep with things as they were now. They’d been tense and stressed in the past hour and a half since fleeing the Hancock Building and the two dead bodies. She’d been frantic and demanding.

Before they’d left the roof, Jay had retrieved the tape recorder and his cell phone from the phony Detective Doyle. Jay wanted to call Kirk, tell him what had happened, and decide what to do next.

Now Sarah cringed, remembering her reaction, her hysteria and outright insistence that he
not
call Kirk or anyone else. After all, it was Kirk who’d sent them to the Hancock Building. Kirk who knew the detective who lay dead.

“That’s exactly why we need to talk to him,” Jay had argued. “Kirk didn’t set us up. Someone found out about our meeting. Don’t you think that same person is going to find out Kirk is helping us? Do you want Christa and the boys to be in danger?”

“No.” Sarah had pushed the hair back from her face and struggled to see him through her tears. “But the man who found out is dead.” She kept her gaze averted from his body. “Let’s just go away somewhere—disappear.”

“We can’t,” Jay had said. “Kirk’s risked everything to help us, and we have to help him in return. You know that. What happened to the girl who risked her life for James yesterday
?
”

“She just killed someone.” Sarah glanced over her shoulder once more as Jay led her away. “Don’t call him,” she’d begged. “If you love me at all,
do not
call him.”

Jay hadn’t called. And now Sarah still didn’t give in. It was a critical time to be having their first fight—when they literally needed each other just to stay alive. But they’d made it out of the building and this far safely without calling Kirk. Why couldn’t they make it even farther, somewhere so far away no one would ever bother them again?

Her gaze shifted down to the red stains on the knees of her jeans. She’d had to kneel on the bathroom floor to get the real Detective Doyle’s gun free. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the gruesome images parading through her mind—the detective’s eyes staring blankly, his cool skin . . . and then Jay against the railing, the pistol held firm in her hands as she took aim. The second she knew that aim was true . . .

Her stomach lurched, and she leaned forward, dry heaving.

I killed a man.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

The rest-stop sign seemed like a godsend to Jay. He concentrated on keeping his eyelids open, as well as the windshield clean, the last mile to the pull-off on I-90 West through New York. It was only one a.m.—ridiculous how tired he felt. He’d worked this late before, and he’d certainly stayed up later than this finishing papers or cramming for exams, but somehow driving in the storm, constantly checking the mirrors to see if anyone was following, had worn him out.

It didn’t help matters that they hadn’t dared to stop anywhere to eat all evening, and he was starving. Between hunger and sleep deprivation and arguing with and worrying about Sarah all afternoon, he had one heck of a tension headache. It burned behind his eyes, up over his scalp, and around to the muscles in the back of his neck.

Right about now he would have given his whole paycheck for a bottle of aspirin.

And a warm bed. A roof over our heads. A hamburger. A normal life again.

Instead, he tried to be grateful for getting off the road, for making it safely this far.

Sarah, at least, seemed to be sleeping peacefully now. Earlier she’d tossed and turned in her seat, making whimpering sounds every time he thought she was finally in a deep sleep.

Jay had wondered
which
nightmare she was having. The one where Carl nearly ran them down, the one where a man attacked her in a dark alley, or the one where she shot and killed a man who was trying to kill them.
And dozens of others I can’t even imagine.
He felt bad he’d pressured her to let him call Kirk. Who could blame her for shutting down this afternoon?

The exit came into view, and he felt overwhelming relief. Slowing the Jetta to twenty-five, he drove down the off-ramp to the roadside rest stop—a tiny brick building, a historical marker about the Seneca Indians, a rectangle of grass and some trees. A parking lot—heaven.

Pulling into the stall farthest from the single light, Jay killed the engine, checked the door locks, and reclined his seat. Aside from a truck parked near the on-ramp, the rest stop was vacant. He hoped it would stay that way for a couple more hours, though tomorrow the roads would likely be heavy with holiday traffic.

A bit of sleep could only help him think through their dilemma with more clarity. That they were on the run from Sarah’s father and some drug ring, both the Summerfield and Cambridge police departments, and now possibly the DEA, was a reality he couldn’t quite process. That the gas tank was low, they needed to eat, and the car was quickly dropping to a temperature below freezing were the more immediate concerns.

Turning his head, Jay studied Sarah, curled in a ball on her side. It was difficult to reconcile the woman who’d wielded a semiautomatic this afternoon with the girl asleep beside him. With her halo of blond hair spread across the seat, he could only envision her as the angel he’d heard singing in church not so many weeks ago. And though he’d witnessed her kill a man, already he wondered if he’d imagined it. The Sarah he knew didn’t shoot to kill. The Sarah he knew didn’t shoot at all—or did she? He knew the loaded gun was still beneath her seat.

Sarah shivered in her sleep, instinctively tucking her arms closer to her body. Jay looked in back, hoping to find a blanket or something to cover her with. The only thing he found was an old newspaper on the floor of the car. He reached for it, then hesitated, thinking of Sarah’s germ phobia. Being covered with newspaper would only add to her misery, but the jacket she’d brought this morning wasn’t warm enough for spending the night in a car without heat.

Feeling helpless and frustrated and totally inadequate as a protector, Jay removed his own coat. This he placed carefully over Sarah, flipping the collar up over her neck and draping the sleeves down her back. He took the old paper, opened it wide, and laid it over him. He leaned back in his seat, eyes closed a second later. Sleep came almost at once.

* * *

Two hours, he’d told himself before drifting off.
Just let me rest for two hours and I’ll be able to figure out what to do.
Now the dashboard clock read 5:27. “Shortest four and a half hours of my life,” Jay muttered as he raised the seat and the newspaper slid to his lap. If anything he felt more tired than when he’d laid down a little after one. He doubted he would have woken up so soon if not for the fact that he was freezing.

Choosing to ignore the near-empty gas tank, Jay turned the key in the ignition. Cold air whooshed from the vents. He closed them, glancing at Sarah to see if she’d awakened, but it didn’t appear she’d moved at all.

“Must be nice,” he whispered, “to be able to sleep through all this.”

Sarah didn’t respond, and Jay returned his attention to rubbing his hands together briskly in front of the heater. He glanced at the gas needle, hovering slightly above the E. He knew he should start driving—using what little gas they had left to put as much distance between them and the dead man they’d left behind, but Jay couldn’t force himself to move just yet. There really was no point in running until he knew where they were running to.

Leaning the seat back again, he looked up through the window at the stars overhead. Out here, away from the lights of the city, they were much clearer.
If Sarah were awake, she’d be thrilled with the view.

The North Star shone brightly, and farther west Orion mocked him. A strong guy like that, with his sword raised, would certainly never get himself, and the girl he loved, in a situation like this. And if for some reason he did, he’d have a plan to get them out of it—even if it was through simple brute strength.

Some chivalrous hero I turned out to be,
Jay thought. Old Humphrey would’ve had a plane waiting to whisk his true love to safety.
I can’t even keep the car going much longer.
Jay closed his eyes, wishing all of it—the cold, his hunger, this situation, everything but Sarah—away.

He fell asleep again, this time waking at 6:03. The car was warm, the red warning light on the fuel gauge lit. He switched the ignition off as the faintest hint of dawn began coloring the sky. While he’d slept, an RV had pulled into the lot and parked next to them.

Would the DEA use a motor home?
He shook off the sleep-deluded thought and sighed with relief when the door opened and an elderly couple emerged. Each held a poodle on a leash.

From the corner of his eye he watched as they walked the perimeter of the narrow lawn. The man held his arm out for the woman, who leaned on him for support.

Acute longing cut straight to Jay’s heart.
I want to be that couple,
he thought.
I want to grow old with Sarah, have children, travel a little. But a simple life. Nothing spectacular, no complications. The kind where you appreciate each sunrise and sunset together.

The elderly couple was doing just that. They stood at the edge of the lawn, enjoying the first rays of sunlight filtering through the leafless trees.

Jay watched, mesmerized with yearning. On the seat beside him, Sarah stirred. Her lips parted in a worrisome frown. The temperature in the car was already dropping.

Do something. I’ve got to
do
something.

The couple returned to their motor home. He thought of the heater they probably had going, the bed they’d slept on, the hot cereal they might eat for breakfast.
We could use a motor home right about now, but I can’t even fill up the car . . .
He sat up so quickly the top of his short hair brushed the roof. RVs required a lot of gasoline. Maybe this couple would have a spare container. But if they left before he asked, he and Sarah might be stranded here for hours.

Taking care not to make any more noise than necessary, Jay unlocked his door and got out. The cold took his breath away, and goose bumps sprang up on his skin. He hurried to the RV and knocked, hoping for a small miracle.

* * *

“These are fantastic,” Sarah exclaimed after holding the heat packs in her hands for a couple of minutes. “They’re actually warm.”

“Too bad we didn’t know about them last night.” Jay bit into a granola bar. It was cold and stale and about the best thing he’d ever tasted. Unscrewing the top of his second water bottle, he took another long drink.

Sarah set the heat pack on her lap and unwrapped a shiny Mylar emergency blanket. Jay finished off the water bottle, opened a pack of Life Savers, and popped three in his mouth. He felt like he’d discovered a gold mine. And it had been with them all along—in the trunk.

He felt like an idiot for not looking there sooner. Most people just had a spare tire—and maybe a set of jumper cables. But Christa and Kirk weren’t most people. They were Mormons, and, like Boy Scouts, Mormons believed in being really prepared.

Bless you,
Jay thought.
If we get out of this, I promise to listen when you talk about your church. I’ll come to the activities. Those guys who wear suits and ride bikes can even talk to me.

“Look at this!” Sarah exclaimed. She held up a sweatshirt that was probably Christa’s, then dug through the bag again. “They even have diapers in here.”

“Don’t need those,” Jay said. “You have to admit, running out of gas where there’s a bathroom was pretty good.”

“That old couple sharing some of their fuel was pretty good.” Sarah pulled a Snickers bar from the bag and looked at it reverently. “Chocolate.
This
is great.”

“Peanuts—protein. I can almost hear Christa’s logical thought process as she packed.”

“I love you, Christa,” Sarah mumbled through a mouthful of candy bar.

“And Kirk?” Jay asked warily. “Do you still feel like we shouldn’t call him?”

“No.” She sounded ashamed. “I know we can’t run away. I’m sorry I was so stubborn.”

“It’s okay.” Jay took her free hand. “Yesterday was awful. But you trusted your gut, and it saved our lives. Let me have a turn at it today.”

“A turn killing someone?” Her voice cracked, and despair swept across her face. She swallowed hard and shrank against the door as tears filled her eyes. “I killed a man, Jay.” The candy bar fell to her lap, forgotten, as she buried her face in her hands and wept.

He leaned forward over the console, pulling her into his arms as best he could in the awkward space. “Don’t do this, sweetheart.”

“You don’t understand,” Sarah said in a choked voice between bouts of crying. “I keep seeing his body jerk when the bullet hit, the shock frozen in his eyes, the look in
your
eyes when you realized what I’d done.”

Jay held her away from him. “Look at me. What do you see on my face now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gratitude,” Jay said. “You see profound gratitude that you saved my life and yours. And you see regret, because I sensed something was wrong too, and I didn’t act on my instincts. I
wish
it had been me who pointed that gun and pulled the trigger. I wish with all my heart, Sarah, that I could spare you this.” His throat constricted. “Because even though the circumstances were different, I
know
what a burden it is to feel responsible for ending someone’s life.”

Sarah’s eyes widened as more tears spilled from them. “Oh, Jay.” She leaned forward, throwing her arms around him as her body jerked with a heart-wrenching sob. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even think of that—of your mother—that you’d understand how it feels.”

He held her tightly, one hand stroking her hair as he whispered words of comfort—words he wished he’d heard himself after his mother’s death.

After several minutes, he brushed a wet strand of hair from her face. “We should go. There’s still a chance our benefactors might have recognized us and call the police.”

Sarah smiled through her tears. “I’m more worried about their abilities to recognize the road. They were
so
old.”

“We’re going to be that couple one day,” Jay said. “Tooling around in our motor home with a couple of little dogs, maybe a grandkid or two.” He returned Sarah’s smile, but then his face grew serious again. “We can’t call Kirk right away. My phone’s dead. And we’ve got enough gas to get us to a town to fill up, but the question is, which direction are we going?”

Sarah sat up in her seat and wiped her eyes. “East,” she said with conviction. “We’re going back. We can’t”—she took a deep breath—“run away from our troubles.”

“Running away and staying safe aren’t necessarily the same,” Jay argued.

“But ‘safe’ is only going happen when these guys are caught. Instead of running, we need to turn the tables and go after them. We still need to meet with the DEA,” Sarah said. “I’ll tell them everything, and maybe something I say will be the
right
thing, what they need to figure out who is after us and why.”

“We’ll get Kirk to go with us,” Jay said.

Sarah nodded her agreement.

“And maybe,” Jay said, a faraway look in his eye, “this time we’ll have something to show them.”