Sixty Days and Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson

it.”
    “But…”
    “I think I’m okay,” she said.
    For a while they went back and forth on this, saying much the same things they had said at the house. Whether Ed would look at her subjects, whether he would be able to find Mary…
    Finally Frank shrugged. “You don’t want to leave here.”
    “It’s true,” she said. “I like it here. And I
feel
hidden.”
    “But now you know better. Someone looked for you and they found you. That’s got to be the main thing.”
    “I guess,” she muttered.
    They came to the road they had parked beside. They walked back to his van and she had him drive south, down the shore of Jordan Pond.
    “Some of my first memories are from here,” she said, looking out the window at the lake. “We came almost every summer. I always loved it. That lasted for several years, I’d guess, but then her parents got divorced and I stopped seeing her, and so I stopped coming.”
    “Ah.”
    “So, we did start college together and roomed that first year, but to tell the truth, I hadn’t thought of her for years. But when I was thinking about how to really get away, if I ever wanted to, I remembered it. I never talked to Ed about Mary, and I just made the one call to her here from a pay phone.”
    “What did you say to her?”
    “I gave her the gist of the situation. She was willing to let me stay.”
    “That’s good. Unless, you know…I just don’t know. I mean, you tell me just how dangerous these guys are. Some shots were fired that night in the park, after you left. My friends were the ones who started it, but your ex and his friends definitely shot back. And so, given that…”
    Now she looked appalled. “I didn’t know.”
    “Yeah. I also…I threw a rock at your ex,” he added lamely.
    “You what?”
    “I threw my hand axe at him. I saw a look on his face I didn’t like, and I just did it.” And in fact the stone was below in the glove compartment of his van.
    She squeezed his hand. Her face had the grim inward expression it took on whenever she was thinking about her ex. “I know that look,” she muttered. “I hate it too.” And then: “I’m sorry I’ve gotten you into this.”
    “No. Anyway, I missed him. Luckily. But he saw the rock go by his head, or felt it. He took off running down the Metro stairs. So he definitely knows something is up.” Frank didn’t mention going by their apartment afterward and ringing the doorbell; he was already embarrassed enough about the hand axe. “So, what I’m still worried about is if he starts looking, and, you know, happens to replicate what my friend’s friend did.”
    “I know.” She sighed. “I guess I’m hoping that he’s not all that intent on me anymore. I have him chipped, and he’s always in D.C., at the office, moving from room to room. I’ve got him covered in a number of ways—a spot cam on our apartment entry, and things like that, and he seems to be following his ordinary routine.”
    “Even so—he could be doing that while sending some of his team here to check things out.”
    She thought about it. Sighed a big sigh. “I hate to leave here when there might not be a reason to.”
    Frank said nothing; his presence was itself proof of a reason. Thus his appearance had indeed been a bad thing. The transitive law definitely applied to emotions.
    She had directed him through some turns, and now they were driving around the head of Somes Sound again, back toward her place. As he slowed through Somesville, he said, “Where should we put my van?”
    She ran her hands through her short curls, thinking it over. “Let’s put it down where my car is. I’m parked at the south end of Long Pond, at the pump house there. First drop me off at the house, then drive down there, and I’ll sail down on the iceboat and pick you up.”
    So he drove to her camp and dropped her off at the house, feeling nervous as he did so. Then he followed her instructions, back toward Southwest Harbor, then west through the