Jumper: Griffin's Story (18 page)

She nearly lost it, too. "Okay!" She chopped down with her hand, cutting me off.

"What's your first priority?" I said, pointing toward the house. "What's the most important thing in there?"

"My mother's jewelry, up on the closet shelf. The rosewood box."

"And then?"

"The photo albums–you know, in the living room."

I took a deep breath and jumped to her room. The closet door was already open from before, and I stood on tiptoe and snagged the box. As it dropped into my hand, I jumped back.

"Here," I said, pushing the box into her hands. I pictured the living room and then we both flinched at the flash of light and the horribly loud, flat crack that shook us, and then the tile roof of her house rose up and scattered like confetti in smoke.

I jumped her and the box away as the first fragments began to fall around us.

I killed them." Alejandra had been crying for about a half hour, lying on my bed. I'd tried patting her back, but I couldn't keep still. I'd tried pacing, then I'd jumped away, to the
makiwara
in the Empty Quarter, and hit them, hit them, hit them until my knuckles split, bleeding, and the pain was finally enough to cut through the other pain.

I was sitting by the cave pool, soaking my hand in the icy cold water, when I said it.

Alejandra, lying on her side, staring into the dark corner of the cave, lifted her head. "What?"

"I killed Sam and Consuelo."

I'd told her the circumstances already–the INS and the helicopter and the phone calls. The way I'd found them.

A look of understanding came over her face and that was more painful than anything.

"I killed them like I killed my parents. Like I killed that policeman in
San Diego
." My voice was ragged; my breathing cut through the cave like a coarse–tooth saw. "Okay, I didn't hold the knives, but I might as well have."

I looked at her and away. "And I've probably killed you."

"Callete!"
she said. "Stop it."

I took another ragged breath and held it. She got up and came over.
"Hay caramba!
What did you do to your hand?" She took it out of the water. The bleeding had slowed. "Did you hit someone? Mateo?"

"Mateo? Oh, Christ!"

I jumped.

Mateo wasn't on the island. It was a fairly short swim to the mainland, or he could've flagged down one of the dive boats and gotten a ride. I'd kicked him pretty hard, though, and his head did bang against the sidewalk.

So maybe he drowned in the strait.

I resented it either way, because I really wanted to hit someone.

When I appeared back in the Hole, Alejandra said, "Never do that again!" Her voice was strident and I flinched.

"Do what?"

She gestured sharply around. "You said there's no exit. What do I do when they kill
you?"

"I'm sorry," I said, but that phrase was like a can opener. "I'm sorry! Oh, God, I'm so sorry!"

She put me on the bed and held me while the sobs wracked me over and over again. Sometimes she cried, too; eventually we slept.

She stayed with me five days. With me–I never left her in the Hole if I wasn't there, even if it was just fetching food from Phuket or the
West End
. We'd take turns with the solar shower in the jungle near Bahfa Chacacual, the other waiting down the hill (though I peeked once. Oh. My. I was uncomfortable for hours).

I'd sleep on my side, away from her, aware of her every motion.

On the sixth day, we shopped–Harrods in Knightsbridge– clothes and luggage. Back in the Hole we took the store tags off everything and packed them away in the two bags. I put fifty thousand dollars in the bottom of her main case without telling her. In
London
I'd already changed a thousand dollars to francs at Barclays.

"Don't flash it," I said.

"No, I'm not
too
stupid."

The corners of my mouth turned down and she laughed.
" jSolo estaba bromeando!"
She pulled me to her and kissed my forehead, without bending. "Ai."

We jumped to
Rennes
and waited for
them
but apparently it wasn't the sort of place
they
were monitoring. I started to buy the ticket for her but she stopped me. "Sweet, but I must do for myself now, eh?"

The clerk delighted in helping her with the transaction and came out of his booth to direct her to the right platform for the
Paris
express. I bought a southbound ticket for Saint–Nazaire on the
Bay of Biscay
.

I had this picture of me standing on the platform, watching her train pull away, but I wasn't paying enough attention when I purchased my ticket–mine left first. She walked me to my platform, held me for a moment, hard, as if to take an impression with her flesh, an indented memory. Then she kissed me, on the mouth, a grown–up kiss that brought the blood rushing.

"Be careful–
sois prudent!"
And then she was walking away, her shoulder bag slung, her large suitcase trailing behind on its wheels.

I rode the train as far south as Redon and jumped away, from the space between the cars.

The papers said the helicopter was abandoned in
Mexico
, just over the border near Highway 2, the route to
Tijuana
.

There were no cars reported hijacked but there was also no sign of the fugitives.

Apparently the police theory was drugs. Drug smugglers killed the INS agents and Sam Coulton and Consuelo Mon–Jarraz y Romera. And they fled back into
Mexico
.

Sam's funeral was in El Centra, Consuelo's in La Crucecita. I didn't go to either. What could result but more death?

And not the right victims.

I tried to jump to Phuket, not my usual place out on Ko Bon island, but an alley near the market in Chalong, but I couldn't recall it well enough.

I jumped my dinghy to the island instead and sailed over, and, when I got there, I spent fifteen minutes sketching the spot.

My plywood wall of sketches began having another purpose. If I wanted to return regularly to a place, I'd record it. Maybe photographs would've worked but when you sketch a place, you really
look
at it.

And I tried to sketch Mum. Then Dad.

Couldn't.

It wasn't memory–their faces were as clear as the day they–well, they were clear. But I couldn't see through the tears and my hands shook. It's hard to draw when your hands want to make fists.

It was the same with Sam and Consuelo, though I managed a head and shoulders portrait of Alejandra.

I tried another drawing of Mateo, as I'd last seen him, half in the water, half out, on the beach at Isla la Montosa. That I managed with some degree of accuracy.

I knew it was accurate–I had his driver's license. I also had his bag, which had held a gun–an odd gun.

I'd fired it in the desert, at a limestone outcropping, and it put two spikes into the stone with a cable taut between them. When I touched the cable it shocked the shit out of me, numbing my entire arm.

There were five more cartridges in the bag, all identical. The gun folded open at the breech, like an old–fashioned shotgun. I fired one more and it, too, shot out cable and two spikes. I didn't touch it this time. I put the bag back in my Hole.

I tried to relax, to do nothing, but when I did, I found myself wandering down to the end of the cave and turning on the flood that lit my villains' gallery. There were only four sketches. I thought there should be more.

I knew they were in
London
–they'd tried for me twice there, so I figured that was the place for the experiment. I bought two cheap video cameras and placed them on tree limbs in the corner of
Hyde Park
near the Tube station. I started them recording, walked out in the middle of the green, and jumped home to the Hole.

I returned in five minutes and left again. At ten minutes I returned, and stayed.

There were two of them, you could tell, their car came to a screeching halt in the bus lane on

I waited until they'd passed my cameras, then jumped away, west up the park toward Knightsbridge Station. They should've felt it, I hoped.

I walked across the street and into the station. After five minutes, a westbound train came through and I stepped aboard but got off, next stop, back at
Hyde Park
.

I strolled back casually, my eyes open for the two guys in green overcoats, but I didn't see them. I picked up the cameras and then jumped away, from the same spot I'd used before, by the Rose Garden.

One of them was blond with a receding hairline and a bald spot in back. He had almost no eyebrows and he looked familiar, but only vaguely, and I thought that perhaps he was the one who had attacked me on the stairs at the Elephant and Castle Tube stop.

I froze them on the little television screen at various points and sketched them.

His companion shaved his head, but he had dark stubble and bushy dark eyebrows and ran to fat–kind of jowly. Either of them could've been the one who'd tried at Embankment Station, when they'd snagged the two women instead–didn't see them that time. They both were Sensitives. They'd snapped their heads around the minute I'd jumped. You could see it on the tape clearly.

Must be a thankless job when your quarry can just jump away in an instant.

Then I remembered the circumstances of my first encounter.
Maybe it's not so hard, when your quarry is an inexperienced child.
Maybe they didn't have to hunt adult jumpers. Maybe the spent their time killing nine–year–olds instead. Or younger.

Now
that
would make it easier.

I had no sympathy.

I was irritated with the
London
police and with myself a bit, too. I should've stayed longer–as it was, the tape showed that when I jumped, the two guys had dashed back to their car to speed up Kensington after me. Not only did they not get towed or clamped, they didn't even get a ticket.

Their sketches went up on the board as London Blond and London Baldy, along with Post–its for the city and notes about where I'd seen them.

It was weird, but after I'd done this, I was able to draw a brief sketch of Sam, leaning forward, like he did on the edge of his living room couch.

Huh.

I wanted to see Alejandra, very much, but I'd insisted she just disappear, on her own, so I wouldn't know. So I couldn't betray her accidentally. Hopefully she'd discovered that she had enough money to buy a new identity–that was my hope.

I'd warned her about using her own passport–told her what happened to me in
Portsmouth
. She said she understood. She said not to worry. I pulled out the big gun. I told her, "Consuelo would be very angry with you if you were to come to harm."

I took a train south from
Rennes
, first to
Bayonne
, then on to Hendaye, across the Rio Bidasoa from Spanish Hondar–ribia. I skipped the border, using my binoculars to see across the river, then jumping to a walkway on the far bank.

Bienvenido a España.

The locals wouldn't mind my travel–they considered both sides Basque–but they probably would disagree with the "Welcome to
Spain
." I sat in the old quarter and sketched the wall and the castle. When the place had seeped into my bones, I walked to the train station and purchased a ticket for
Madrid
for the next day.

I jumped to the Hole from one of the narrow alleys.

I was exhausted but I couldn't sleep. I was thinking about Alejandra. After tossing and turning, I got up and took a fresh sketchbook over to the table, turned the lights on, and drew her.

I drew her nude, as I'd seen her under the shower in the jungle above Bahia Chacacual. I sketched for two hours. The memory was better than the sketch, but it was still the best drawing I'd ever done.

Then I was able to sleep.

The next day I talked a lot, on the train, finding interesting variations in the accent and once getting in trouble when using
taco,
which apparently means "swear word" in Spain. So much for lunch.

Because of a service problem on a train in front of us, it took six hours to get to
Madrid
. When I looked at the map, it surprised me that it took only that long, but going back to the scale, I realized
Spain
was smaller than the state of
Texas
.