Kill Switch Read online

  There was another change. Locking his car. He’d never locked his car before this. Maybe Hargis was right. Maybe he was learning.

  But the thought of Hargis wasn’t comforting. As he drove home, he tried to recall everything the agent had said to him, trying to puzzle out if there was a way to tell from his words whether he could be trusted or not. These people were too smart to be obvious about things. They hadn’t gotten this far, killing five people and barely raising a suspicion, by leaving footprints.

  But that was the problem. If Hargis was honestly trying to protect him, then he’d say exactly the same things he would if he was trying to kill Chris.

  So how could he know what to do when there was no way to tell truth from lies? Maybe he should call the local FBI office. Verify that these guys were on the level.

  He turned onto his street, looking for the telltale white sedan, but it was nowhere in sight. The only thing unusual was a New York State Electric and Gas truck parked across the street from his house, its familiar orange and white logo blazoned on the side. One man was standing in the bucket of the cherry-picker, and had the transformer box open. The other was feeding him cable from a large spool. Both wore yellow safety vests and hard hats.

  Chris felt the panic rise in him, but immediately laughed at himself.

  NYSEG workers.

  He parked his car and shut off the engine, then walked down his driveway and across the road.

  “Hi. What’re you working on?” he asked the man paying out cable.

  The man gave him a genial smile. “Routine maintenance. Replacing some old junctions and wire. There’ve been a lot of power outages in this area, and we’re hoping to head off a few of them before the weather goes bad.”

  “Oh. So nothing I need to be concerned about?”

  He laughed. “Nope.”

  “Have a good day, then.”

  “You, too.”

  Chris walked back up the driveway, his thoughts still in an internal war.

  He couldn’t go around suspecting everything and everyone, but he also realized that lack of caution was how the others got killed. He had the advantage of having at least some idea of what was going on.

  But there was a difference between “forewarned is forearmed” and shrieking paranoia. He knew that to stay alive, he had to be smart, be skeptical, and question what he saw, but not assume that everything was out to kill him.

  Baxter greeted him with a thwack of his tail against the floor, but it was mid-morning, right in the middle of canine nap-time, so he didn’t even get up. Even Jabberwock was asleep in his cage on the bookcase.

  A whole day, and nothing to do but sit around and fret. Just like the previous day. And the day before.

  He was going to go batshit crazy if something didn’t change. He rolled his eyes at his own paranoia. Freaking out over some electrical service guys, for chrissake.

  He sat down, turned his computer on, and checked his email. Nothing new from Elisa. Nothing, in fact, except an email from a Nigerian prince who promised him a million dollars if he’d reply with his bank account and social security number. Chris deleted it and shut off his computer. He leaned back, and gave a harsh sigh.

  The idea from earlier came dancing back into his thoughts—verification. At least there was one thing he could settle. He could cross the NYSEG workers off the list of things to worry about.

  Getting out his telephone directory, he looked up the number for New York State Electric and Gas, and dialed it. After going through several menus, he finally got a real person on the other end of the line, a harassed-sounding woman who clearly was not in the mood for inane questions.

  “I’m calling about some service being done on my road.”

  “Address?”

  “515 North Glen Road, Guildford.”

  There was a pause, and then the woman said with an audible sigh, “I’m sorry, sir, there is no scheduled service being done on your road.”

  Chris’s stomach clenched painfully. “I… what?”

  “I said—” her voice became even more peevish, “—that there is no service being done on your road.”

  “But I just talked to them. Two guys in a NYSEG truck. They were working on the transformer.”

  “Sir.” The woman’s tone made it sound like an insult, “I have access to the itinerary of all scheduled service and maintenance being done in the entire region. I can tell you for certain that there is no work scheduled anywhere along North Glen Road. If there were, I would know, sir.”

  “I…” Chris started, and then said, “thank you,” and hung up.

  He stood there staring into space, listening to the sound of his heart hammering in his chest, as his conscious mind tried its best to fly away.

  They’re… Them. The NYSEG guys are… Them.

  Maybe the waitress at Paul’s is, too. So far they haven’t left footprints, but at what point will they give up being subtle and just go for the kill and be done with it?

  Maybe everyone was in on it.

  Something cold and wet nudged his hand. Baxter, sensing Chris’s distress, had roused himself from slumber and was standing next to him, his face questioning, worried, his tail down.

  Still feeling like he was dissociating, Chris went back to the front door, Baxter trailing him. He opened it, went down the steps onto the sidewalk, and past his car and out to the road.

  The NYSEG truck was gone. What the hell was going on here?

  That’s when his house exploded behind him.

  The concussion knocked Chris and Baxter both off their feet. Chris landed on his belly, which was how he narrowly missed being beheaded by a whirling chunk of his screen door. Debris rained all around him, and he reflexively put his hands over his face. Baxter gave a terrified whine and pressed into him, shuddering.

  Then, with hardly any conscious awareness of what he was doing, he was back up and running for his car. He flung the door open, called once for Baxter—who needed no additional encouragement—and stuffed his hand in his pocket to find that he still had his car keys, cellphone, and wallet. He slammed the door behind him, turned on the ignition, and peeled out of the driveway as his house’s natural gas line went up in a second, much larger, explosion.

  It was fortunate no one was coming down the street, or Chris would have been t-boned. He screeched out onto Glen Road, gravel spitting from under his tires, and took the first left onto Martin Street. Forcing himself to slow down, he turned up Hyland Street and into a maze of suburban neighborhood lanes, which he drove in no particular pattern.

  Gone. His house was gone. They blew up his fucking house. And if he hadn’t made that call to NYSEG....

  He’d be dead now.

  His pulse accelerated, but his thoughts had an odd, detached calm, as if he were hearing a story about someone else. He wondered if they had waited around to see the explosion. Probably not. These people set their traps and assume they’ll work. No way would they be around the scene of the crime. They were too careful for that, too cocky. But what about Hargis and Drolezki? Where the hell were they?

  Chris passed the house of his friend, Janina Vannoy, the high school choral music teacher. He knew that Janina wasn’t there. She had mentioned to Chris at the last faculty meeting of the year that as soon as school was out, she and her family were heading off for a three-week family vacation to Belize, where they were all going to take scuba diving classes.

  And the last thing he’d said to her was, ‘Wow. Your summer is sure going to be more exciting than mine.’ Ha!

  He drove his car around and behind a forsythia hedge, screening it from the road. He turned off his motor, and started to laugh—a panicked, desperate sound that would have looked to a passerby as if he were sobbing uncontrollably.

  And honestly, it probably wasn’t far from that.

  The storm passed, and he realized he felt completely exhausted. Fighting sleep, he looked out toward the road, wondering if any neighbors had seen his car go up the driveway, and saw, driving
slowly along the street, a white four-door sedan.

  There were sirens in the distance now. Fire trucks, no doubt, coming to deal with the blazing remains of his house.

  “Oh, God, I can’t deal with this. I can’t fucking deal with this.”

  If they find me here, they can kill me. That’s all. They can just fucking kill me and be done with it.

  And he closed his eyes.

  —

  He awoke to rain striking the windshield of his car. The light was dim, and lightning flashed in the distance. He consulted his watch. It was only a little after two in the afternoon, but the sky was dark with rolling clouds.

  He blinked groggily, and looked over at Baxter, who was sitting upright in the passenger seat, as if on guard duty.

  “That’s a good boy.” He looked over at Chris and wagged. “I bet you need to pee, but I don’t imagine you’ll want to go out in this, do you?”

  Chris started the engine and cautiously backed out of the Vannoys’ driveway. He looked up and down their street. No cars visible. He pulled out, heading away from what was left of his house. In his rearview mirror he could see a reddish glow on the underside of the clouds, the unmistakable ruddy glare of fire. He barely gave it a glance. His car was headed north, out of Guildford and into the hill country beyond.

  Even if Hargis and Drolezki were on his side, they couldn’t protect him. Some fake electrical workers were able to get in and sabotage his house, right under their noses. Or maybe he’d been right, and the two FBI agents were in on it, too. Either way, Chris knew he had to get out of there. Anywhere was safer than Guildford.

  He took a winding, circuitous route, north and west, checking frequently for any sign of pursuit. If there was anyone trailing him, they weren’t being obvious about it.

  Chris was surprised at how little he worried about the idea of someone following him. Whatever happened after this he wouldn’t be able to predict, just like he hadn’t been able to predict anything else connected to this insanity. Up till now, though, he’d been trying to pretend that he could parse it, make sense of it, anticipate the next move.

  No more of that.

  It was like a deer pursued by hunters. The deer has no idea of why it’s being hunted; all it knows is that its life depends on its next move. So no more intellectualizing, no more puzzling over why all this was happening. Instincts and reflexes. Just run.

  Be the deer.

  He came up to the junction with Interstate 90 in Geneva, went west, toward Buffalo. The same road that ran right through Seattle. One long, continuous piece of pavement running across the entire United States, connecting this place to where it all started.

  By this time, the wind was howling, the rain was coming down in sheets. He pulled off into the Seneca Service Area to wait out the worst of the storm.

  After about forty minutes, the rain tapered off to a drizzle, the storm passing away south and east. He let Baxter out to pee, and hit the road, again heading west into the lengthening shadows of dusk.

  He looked back over at Baxter. “Let’s see how many miles we can put behind us before dark.”

  His faithful companion sighed and went back to sleep.

  Chris stopped for the night at a Super 8 in Erie, Pennsylvania. He didn’t tell them about Baxter. He followed his father’s dictum that it was always easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask permission. He waited until the coast seemed clear, and then snuck his dog down the hall and into his room, which fortunately was on the first floor.

  Grabbing a hurried dinner in the hotel restaurant, he brought leftovers back to his room for Baxter, and then went to the computer in the lobby. He signed into his email account, despite a nagging voice in the back of his head that told him every time he connected with anything electronic, he was leaving a footprint.

  But I’ve got to let her know, he though, hitting the return key. There were no unread emails. He clicked on New Message, and wrote [email protected] into the address line.

  Elisa,

  I’m a little worried that you haven’t written, but I hope everything’s all right. I don’t want to tell you where I am, for the same reason I didn’t want you to tell me where you are. I’m on the run. I don’t know if you were right about the FBI men, but whichever way, they weren’t able to protect me. My house was blown to pieces this afternoon, and I only escaped by dumb luck. Two near misses are enough, so I’m gone from Guildford. I don’t know where I’ll go now. So far, “away” is as far as I’ve thought this through.

  I don’t know how easy it will be to track me. I have my cell with me, but I’m not going to use it, or even turn it on, unless I have to. The number is 607-555-2904. ONLY call it if there’s an emergency. I’ll try to be back in touch soon.

  God, I hope you’re okay. You have no idea how much I hope you’re okay. Sorry if that seems forward, or weird, or whatever. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as alone as I do now, and I can’t bear thinking that maybe they’ve got you, too. So as soon as you get this, send me an email to let me know how you are. I’ll be back on the road tomorrow, but I’ll check in before I leave the hotel.

  Take care.

  Chris

  Chris clicked Send. There was no familiar whooshing sound, as his computer had done, only a little note that said, Message Sent. His computer, along with everything else he owned, was now buried under a pile of charred rubble on North Glen Road in Guildford, New York.

  He headed back to the room. The clothes he wore, his car, his wallet, his cell, and his dog. That was all that was left of his life. He had, at times in the past, been what he’d considered poor, down to almost nothing in his bank account by the end of the pay period, eating instant noodles and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for dinner because he couldn’t afford better.

  He had never before been homeless.

  He unlocked his hotel room, turned on the light, peered in. Nothing seemed amiss. Baxter was lying on the bed, and his tail thumped against the mattress in greeting. He closed the door behind him, shot the deadbolt and slipped the chain lock into place. Only then did he sit down on the end of the bed and slump over, his hands over his face.

  Could they find him here? He probably shouldn’t have given his actual name at the register.

  He’d had to, though—he’d given them his credit card. But he knew they could track him that way. Next time he’d make up a name. He’d use his credit card at an ATM to get a few days’ worth of cash, and then pay for everything that way.

  If they caught up with him here, he would have no chance to get away. But was there anything he could do about it now?

  Not likely.

  Holy hell, but he was tired.

  Whatever happened, he had to get some sleep. There is only so long that the human body can ride an adrenaline high, and Chris felt a fatigue like he’d never experienced before—not even on his days of long, uphill backcountry hikes. He realized suddenly that if he didn’t stand up now, he was going to fall asleep where he sat.

  He stood and got undressed, leaving his clothes in a pile on the floor. Sliding between the sheets, he rested one hand on Baxter’s furry back, took a deep, hitching intake of breath, and was asleep in seconds.

  Chapter 7

  Chris awoke at 7:32 AM from a combination of a full bladder and Baxter snoring loudly in his face. He opened his eyes, squinting at the line of bright sunlight gleaming at him from between the opaque plastic window shades, then got up, and stumbled into the bathroom.

  He stood under the shower, marveling at the fact that he was still alive. Either that meant that they didn’t know where he was, or else they were letting him live for the time being, perhaps to see what he was going to do next.

  He had a momentary jolt when he considered the direction he’d chosen to drive. They knew he’d tried to contact Elisa, and perhaps also knew that he’d succeeded. Were they letting him live so that he would lead them to her, hoping to get them both at the same time? If so, it would be crazy to keep heading west. Running t
oward her would be the most obvious move he could make.

  But the drive to find her, keep her from getting killed, was too strong, and he put it out of his mind.

  He successfully sneaked Baxter out to take a hurried pee in the garden behind the hotel, and got him back to the room without being seen. Baxter gave him a hopeful look, but was rewarded only with some water poured into the ice bucket.

  “Look, dude, I know you’re hungry. At least I saved you some of my burger from last night. I promise, we’ll pick up some dog food today. Yesterday I was mostly focused on how not to get us both killed.”

  Baxter wagged his tail, which he took as understanding.

  There were two messages on his cell. A text from Matt van Valen, one of the high school history teachers, asking if Chris wanted to get together for a game of tennis. Evidently he hadn’t heard about the explosion. There was also a voicemail from Hargis, exhorting him to call back immediately.

  Chris deleted both without answering.

  Back to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, and another newspaper that described trouble in Syria, controversy over the state budget, and foolishness about celebrities. The news never changed.

  Humanity always does the same things over and over. We’re programmed to act a particular way by our brain wiring. It’s why we’re so predictable. If Chris had a chance of outwitting these guys and getting away, it would be because he’d done something that went against his programming, something that they honestly didn’t think he’d do. So far, all he’d done was make it easy for them. And yet, he was still planning on heading west. There was no doubt in his mind about that.

  He stopped in the lobby after breakfast, sat down at the computer, and signed into his email account. Several new emails, mostly from recognized addresses.