I thought of Benjamin in the oven, but I couldn’t miss this chance to ask Yosano what was in the papers.

“I never saw them.” The computer made a derisive sound to let him know he’d bombed. “But he used to say they’d make the Hollywood Ten look like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and it was a shame he was a man of honor who gave his word not to divulge them.”

“Didn’t you wish he’d show them to you?”

“Oh, sure,” Yosano said. “But we’re his executors, I knew I’d see them sooner or later. And then, you always wonder if it really is going to be such a big deal. It’s human, when you get that old, to hope you’ve done something so big the rest of us will never forget you, but a lot of the time it’s something no one cares about anymore.”

I was about to argue that someone cared, or Marcus Whitby wouldn’t have drowned outside the room we were standing in, when a gunshot ripped open the night.

CHAPTER 28

When You Need a Ride —

Steal a Car

When you hear a .45, you never think it was a backfire or a firecracker. Yosano and I froze, and then he ran through the swinging door to the front of the house.

As soon as the door swung shut, I opened the oven.

“Come with me. Don’t ask questions, and don’t speak,” I told Benjamin. He was giving off the sweet sickly sweat of fear, and he couldn’t stand, he’d been lying doubled up so long. I slung him over my shoulder, firemanstyle, and humped to the bathroom double time. He was clutching his book still, and it dug into my sore shoulder. He was fifteen or sixteen, but such a skinny kid it wasn’t as hard a ride as I’d feared.

Inside the bathroom, I set him down and worked on his legs. He was still shying away from my touch, but fear and cold had made him numb; he didn’t resist. As soon as he could stand, I turned off my headlamp, opened the window and looked out. We could hear the excited yelling from the front of the house, but we were clear here in the back.

“I’m going to give you a boost up to this window” I spoke in the flat, tongueless speech you learn in prison because it doesn’t carry far. “You slide through, you drop to the ground. You lie flat on your stomach and wait for me. Got it?”

I felt rather than saw him nod. I gave him a boost up to the sill and helped him wriggle his legs through. As he twisted, he dropped his book. He cried out.

I stuck up my hand and covered his mouth. “I’ll hand it to you. Get through and get down.”

When he seemed unwilling to leave without it, I pushed him. He clung briefly to the sill, and then fell. He didn’t cry out again, so I assumed he’d landed without breaking anything. I climbed up on the toilet seat, dropped his book through the opening and hoisted myself onto the sill. The stab of pain between my shoulders was so intense I had to hold back my own cry.