Never Look Away

She held her hand out the window, felt the wind blow between her fingers. They didn’t speak for several miles. She was the one to break the silence.

“What was it like?” she asked.

“What was what like?”

“Prison.”

“What are you asking, exactly?”

“Not that,” she said. “I mean, just like, everyday life, what was it like?”

“Wasn’t so bad. You always knew what to expect. You had a routine. You knew when to get up and when to go to bed and when it was lunchtime and when you got to go out in the yard. You had stuff to look forward to.”

This was not the answer she was expecting. “But you couldn’t go anywhere,” she said. “You were, you know, a prisoner.”

Dwayne hung his left arm over the sill. “Yeah, but you didn’t have to make a lot of decisions. What should I wear? What should I eat? What should I do? That kind of stuff wears you down, you know? I don’t know sometimes how regular people do it, having to make so many decisions. Every day you got up, you knew what to expect. It was kind of comforting.”

“So, it was paradise.”

“Not always,” he said, missing the sarcasm. “The food was shitty, and there wasn’t enough of it. If you got in line last, there might not be anything for you. They cut back on how many times they did laundry. Ever since the place went private, the fuckers were looking to pinch pe

“Private?”

“The place was run by a company, not the state. Some of the guards, you’d listen to them, they got paid so lousy, they’d be talking about whether they were going to make it to payday, what with kids and the mortgage and car payments and all that shit. Almost made you count your blessings. Not that that’s going to be a problem for us very soon.”

Dwayne moved into the passing lane, went around a bus.

“You get what I’m saying?” he said. “About all those decisions? Only decision I want to make is how big a boat I’m go

She was thinking about what he’d said. She actually got it. Wasn’t that what her life had been like the last few years? Decisions? Endless decisions? Having to make them not just for yourself but other people?

It did get tiring.

“Let me ask you this,” she said. “You feel free?”

Dwayne squinted. “Yeah, sure, of course. Yeah, I’m free. I wouldn’t trade this for being inside, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

The thing was, she felt like she’d just gotten out of prison, too. She’d escaped, gone over the wall. Here she was, heading down the highway, feet up on the dashboard, the wind blowing her hair all over the place.

What a feeling. What a rush.

She wondered why she didn’t feel better about it.

The plan was pretty simple.

First, they had to go to the two banks. Then, once they had the merchandise from the safe-deposit boxes, they’d find this guy Dwayne heard about who’d assess the value of their goods, then make them an offer. If it wasn’t good enough, Kate figured there’d be room for negotiation. Or they could go see another guy. Where was it written that you had to take the first offer?

She just hoped it would be worth the wait. Hard to figure how it wouldn’t be. She-they-were going to be rich. The only question was how rich. It was the only thing that kept her going all these years. No doubt about it, money was a great motivator. Knowing that at the end, there was going to be-in all likelihood-millions of dollars.

Maybe, if she and Dwayne hadn’t swapped keys, and the moron hadn’t gotten himself thrown in jail on an assault charge, she’d have found a way to move the process along, even if it meant only getting a chance at her half. But when Dwayne got himself arrested, and the key to her safe-deposit box got tossed in with his personal effects where she couldn’t get at it, what choice did she have, really, but to hang in?

Hang in, and hide out. That last part was particularly important. Because she knew someone was going to be looking for her. She’d read the news. She knew the courier had lived, against all odds. Once he recovered, it seemed a safe bet he’d go looking for the person who’d not only relieved him of a fortune in diamonds, but his left hand as well.

She’d always figured she was more at risk than Dwayne. The courier had seen her face. He’d looked right into her eyes before he passed out. She hadn’t expected him to wake up.

The blood.

It wouldn’t take long, she figured, before the courier figured out how she’d gotten onto him.

It had been through his girlfriend, or rather, his ex-girlfriend. Ala

And the woman who now called herself Kate thought: Diamonds?

She’d been hanging out with this guy Dwayne for a few weeks at that point, told him what she’d heard. They tracked down Ala

It wouldn’t take the courier long, once the painkillers started wearing off, to figure out Ala

A couple of months after it all went down, there was a story on the Globe website about a woman named Ala

She might very well have given him the name Co

And so she vanished.

“So you think you’re on the news yet?” Dwayne asked.

She’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts she didn’t hear him the first time he asked.

“Get off at the next major intersection where there’s some hotels,” she said.

Dwayne aimed the truck down an off-ramp west of where 91 crossed 90, found a hotel with a business office where you could go in and check your email if you were the one business traveler in a thousand who didn’t travel with a laptop.

Kate strolled into the office, told the girl her husband was at the front desk seeing about a room. But first, she needed to check on her sick aunt Belinda. Every time she phoned, the line was busy or she got voicemail. Maybe someone had sent an update to her email address. If Belinda had taken a turn for the worse, she said, laying it on thick, they’d just have to turn right around and go back to Maine, no sense finding that out after they’d registered and-

Go ahead, the girl said. Use this computer, no charge.

She went first to the Standard website, as well as the sites of a couple of the local TV stations.

There were two things she wanted to know.

Was Jan Harwood’s disappearance getting a lot of play?

Had they found the body?

She sca