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From the airport, I phone Saul and ask him to come and get me. I thought I was fine until I heard my voice.
Journal
Gun dog
Every time they send me out, it’s like I’m their fucking gun dog. They shove me out on my own, in a strange place, often somewhere frightening, and I have to find something. Something I can bring back for them. Something I can nose out with the gift.
They send me to spy for them, with no protection.
The first few times, they pretended I had backup, and they were watching me. ‘Oh, we’re never far away,’ they said. ‘We’ve got you covered.’
Yeah. Until the time I found them.
Three of them were propping up the bar in a lap-dancing club. The other two were in booths out back.
So I asked them, “You got me covered with those beer mats? With the fives and tens you’re slipping in those girls’ underwear?”
Biggest mistake I ever made.
They dropped all the pretense right then. From there on, there was no sugar-coating. They stopped calling the places where they kept me ‘safe houses.’ They stopped pretending they were monitoring me, watching my back, keeping me under ‘close surveillance.’
Even though I knew they were lying from the start, it was way harder afterward. Going out into those meets, in backrooms and dark alleys, cultivating dangerous people. Asking them stupid questions. Questions that made them immediately search me for a wire.
After somebody searches you, when you’re powerless and afraid and now they know for certain you’ve got nothing you can use to defend yourself, after they patted you down from head to foot, and none too gently, then the atmosphere changes in those cold, dark rooms.
That’s when everybody notices that they’re all brutal men. And you’re exposed, and very much in their hands.
You don’t need any ‘talent’ to feel how hard the air is to breathe after that light goes on.
Journal
The Carlisles
The Carlisles are not bad people, not as far as I can discover.
It looks like they got trapped, just like I did. And they were probably offered the same kind of ‘choice’ that I was. I have to believe that you’re better off with them than you would have been with me. If there was any way I could have kept you, you have to know that I would have.
But you would have lived in constant danger, like I do. I’m not sorry you escaped that.
So far, at least.
Boy, when Carlisle went off grid, when he snapped their blip off the radar, that lit up this whole nest of drones and thugs and all their evil masters. The whole organization flashed like Times Square on New Year’s.
One day you and they were there in a sleepy Maryland suburb, then they were gone. And you with them.
Now I’m doubly afraid for you. Where have they taken you? And why? I want to believe that they just wanted to escape from the Agency, to get out from under the jackboot. But I don’t know about them.
Chapter Fifteen
Nobody knows that I’m here.
The cozy church house always seems smaller than I remember it. And that seems odd, since I don’t ever remember coming in here when I was a child.
Saul is the perfect man to take refuge with in a time of absolute, screaming panic, though.
He sits me down, gives me simple food, and then takes me to a rocking chair in his study. He brings me sinfully good hot chocolate, he doesn’t ask me any questions and, best of all, he sedates me with local gossip.
“You aren’t expecting me to take any of this in or remember it, are you, Saul?”
