Chapter Twenty-Three

Daylight found them still in the wooded area that ran parallel to the main road. Their march from the motel brought them deeper into the Wilderness country. The Civil War national parklands stood where Stonewall Jackson once took on the advancing northern aggression only to be gunned down by friendly fire. There was a feeling of irony that overwhelmed Ronald. He saw the face of the man sent to kill him and William. It was the face of an enemy that shared the same American heritage as they did. The clothes and issued radio were products of the United States military.

He was quietly resting beside William. They had stopped after sunrise. Redressed the wound on William’s chest and waited in an area not far from the road. None of the vehicles passing by them saw the two men lying in the underbrush.

“Are you okay?” William asked from Ronald’s side. He felt William’s hand on his shoulder.

Ronald stared at the blue sky beyond the clawing boughs. “Is it wrong that I am dying for a coffee?”

“Not at all,” William told him with humor in his voice, “Me too.”

“Good.” Ronald waited a while, listening to the passing vehicles along Route 3, on the north side of Orange County. “Is it wrong that all of this is kind of exciting?”

William snickered and squeezed Ronald’s shoulder. “Not unless it’s the violence that gets you horny.”

“Not at all,” Ronald explained quickly. “I just feel like all this is a little empowering.

“I know what you mean.”

“Is this how it feels for you when you’re in the field?”

“Some of it, yes.” William rolled on his back to stare at the same patch of sky. “It’s like extreme sports, I think. That’s how I look at it. Most of the times I feel like have a lot of control over the situation.  At least, as much as you can when dealing with people, but it can’t go on like this.”

“What do we do now?”

“We keep going. We need to get away from the cities.” Civilization had on-going electronics. CCTV was everywhere. They needed disguises and nighttime to venture into populated areas.

“How do we stop this?” Ronald asked.

“We need to figure out why they’re after you.”

“I feel like you’re more of a target than I am now.”

“Maybe,” William hummed. “It definitely changed their tactics knowing they can’t just use a random taxi to run you over. I knew the minute I found the sniper you were someone they wanted to eliminate.”

“But it doesn’t make sense.” Ronald turned his head to look at William’s profile. The buzz of cicada in the trees around them drowned the sound of passing cars. “I’m nobody. I haven’t discovered a plot to assassinate a senator or a covert design to overthrow the government. I got lucky on a guy that couldn’t keep his mouth shut about his million-dollar yachts and business trips to foreign cities. I just pieced together the money from his public companies and figured out he was spending more than he made.”

“That’s how greedy people get caught.”

“But it doesn’t mean he was part of a grand design.”

“These guys use legitimate companies. They find ways to blackmail or throw money at people who can’t say ‘no’ to fund their terrorism or drug trafficking.”

“But that still doesn’t make me a target. We’re on the run, and we don’t know why. And if I’m any judge of something, someone went out of their way, spent a lot of money to track me down.”

“I know. That bothers me too. Taking out anyone is expensive. This is professionally managed. A lot of these guys are strictly organized, military men. These guys spent their lives training for missions and don’t question it.”

“It doesn’t feel like we’re up against the mob or some cartel.”

“I don’t want to think about it.” William sounded far away.

He turned back to watch the road. They were free of electronic devices. The laptop and radio were turned off; all the batteries were removed from the phones. William was sure they didn’t have any hidden trackers. If they were still wired into any system, the black SUVs that descended on the motel would pull up along the roadside and finished them off hours ago.

“How do we get out of this?” Ronald asked the expert. “You obviously know there’s something else going on here that you’re not telling me.”

“We’re up to our neck here.” William sighed. He drummed his fingers on his chest. “I’m trying to hold it together in front of you because we don’t have a bathroom nearby where I can go and have a good cry.”

Ronald laughed. “At least, you have the courtesy to hold it together in front of me.”

“I’d do anything for you,” William said firmly. Ronald rolled to face, him. They lay against the clothes pulled from the duffle bag to protect them from the wet grass. Ronald kissed William. A soft, knowing kiss, that went further than any words between them.

“What’s next?” Ronald whispered.

“We become fully fledged criminals.”

“And we’re not already?”

“We’re playing defense right now. We have been since we started. Now we’re going to start operating outside the law. Anything we do from this point forward won’t be defendable.”

“I’m not sure how anything could be more dangerous than what we’ve already been through.”

William smiled for Ronald, lifting his heart. “Being a criminal isn’t dangerous. It just means we’re running outside the law. It's getting dangerous if we’re stupid about it.”

He sat up and stretched. “There’re a lot of farms around here. I bet a lot of them have farm-use trucks. We need to steal a vehicle. I prefer it’s something that’s not going to get noticed right away; preferably something without a GPS system in it.”  

Ronald nodded. He felt that flutter in his heart. They weren’t safe. His world had changed dramatically overnight. But he wasn’t alone. William was there. And Ronald felt as long as he had William at his side, the world could fall apart around them, and it didn’t matter.