Parker got the AC going. The room wasn’t that hot but she wanted to cover up the sticky noise of traffic on Route 92, trucks mostly. This she found both intrusive and, for some reason, depressing.
She was going to unpack completely. Organized to the extreme, Allison Parker always did this when she traveled, never happy living out of suitcases. But it occurred to her Hannah would deduce that “for now” might extend longer than the girl hoped.
Still, as Hannah scrolled through the basic cable stations, Parker risked scrutiny and got the toiletries assembled in the bathroom and some clothes hung in the closet. The Keurig coffee maker, on the desk, seemed in working order and there were pods that she guessed had distant expiration dates, if any. The creamer was of the powdered variety. She was stabbed by a memory—not long after she and Jon had been married and they were having his lieutenant from FPD over for dinner. She’d realized there was no milk for the cake she was going to bake. It was important to her to make a nice meal but it would have taken too long to hit the store for a quart.
Parker told Jon she had an idea—and concocted a cup of “milk” by mixing warm water and Coffee mate.
At dinner the supervisor’s wife had eaten the confection and had a second sliver. Then she had asked for the recipe, wondering aloudwhat made it so special. Parker and Merritt had shared a smile. “There’s a secret ingredient,” she’d said.
With this memory, she was suddenly overwhelmed and tears pricked. She glanced at Hannah to see if the girl caught it. She did not and Parker wiped fast.
For dinner: Burger King (Hannah’s the meatless selection). They heated the sandwiches and onion rings in the microwave that she thought about scrubbing but gave up worrying about.
Hannah seemed to enjoy her meal, splurging, for a change, with a vanilla milkshake.
To Parker everything was merely fuel.
U-235came spontaneously to mind.
She gathered up the empty bags and wrappers and stuffed them in the too-small trash container.
“Go take a shower.”
“Mom...”
“And your teeth.”
“I didn’t bring any...”
Parker handed her daughter an unopened box of Crest and a sealed brush.
The girl sighed once more, but this exhalation fell into the off-the-shelf mother-daughter-nighttime-routine playbook.
All good.
The instant the door closed Parker dug through her purse and extracted a black envelope, about twelve inches by three and quite thick. It was made of a polycarbonate material and was fireproof. Even temperatures over two thousand degrees would have no effect on the contents.
When she’d cashed the check at First Federal Bank in Carter Grove after fleeing from Jon that afternoon, she had gone straight to her safety deposit box—hers alone, unknown to anyone else—and removed the envelope and stashed it in her purse. She’d taken theCoach, rather than her usual leather bag. It would be a curious choice for a simple check-cashing errand but the girl had not noticed.
A glance at the door, an ear to the shower. Then Parker lifted the Velcro-sealed flap with a loud tearing noise and pulled open the zipper. Inside were scores of documents and a thumb drive. She plugged the storage device into her laptop’s USB port and, after opening an encrypted container on her drive, selected thirty files—text and JPG photos—and copied them to the drive. When the bar hit one hundred percent, she tugged it out. She then wrote a note on the top document, jotting quickly in her careless hand. Then the papers and USB went back into the formidable envelope.
After sealing it up once more, she rose and, checking that the water was still streaming, she stepped outside and hurried to the car.
There she slipped the envelope into the glove compartment and closed it.
She returned to the room, locked the door and sat back on the bed, sipping Diet Coke. Her heart was pounding and her breath came hard. Slowly, eyes on a TV show she wasn’t watching, Allison Parker began to calm.
Much of the peace, she realized, came from her confidence that the contents of her secret envelope would be safe from fire, flood and any other disaster, except—she couldn’t help but think—nuclear ones.
27
Colter Shaw was sitting in an unoccupied office in the security division of Harmon Energy Products’ Building One.
His high-tech ergonomic chair was before a glass-topped desk, on which sat a computer, presently snoozing, and his notebook and pen. He flipped through the pages, reading his handwriting. Sonja Nilsson was playing private eye, canvassing employees who knew Parker, and she had been feeding him facts as to their possible leads, of which there were not many.
Jon Merritt, 42, ex-husband of Allison Parker, 42. Released from Trevor County Detention, early discharge. Serving 36 months for assault and battery with a deadly weapon causing grievous bodily harm. Parker told police that Merritt said he intended to murder her. As part of plea bargain, the state dropped the attempted murder charge.