I couldn’t see us making Manhattan that night. But I didn’t want Jeremy to spend the night at my apartment, in case there were people who already knew we were here. The black van I’d seen out front had rattled me. It might or might not have anything to do with the brick that got thrown through the front window of Madeline Plimpton’s house. It had not been a black van I’d seen speeding away from her place.

I grabbed my bag, and the cooler, which we had packed with the sandwiches and a few other snacks, and headed down to the street. I locked up my place, dumped the stuff into the car, and told Jeremy to get in. There was something else I had to do first.

I got down on my knees and, with a flashlight I took from the glove box, inspected the undercarriage of the car. Then I felt inside the wheel wells, patting my hand on the insides of the fenders. Finally, I gave the bumpers a good going-over.

“What was that about?” Jeremy asked when I got in behind the wheel.

“One time,” I said, “somebody attached a tracker to my car. In fact, not one, but two.”

“Whoa,” Jeremy said. “Cool.”

I glanced over at him. “No, it wasn’t. I got someone killed.”

“Oh, shit. When was this?”

“Four years ago.”

“What happened?”

I ignored the question.

I got us out of Promise Falls and went south on 87 toward Albany. The plan was to get around the capital, then continue on in the same direction toward New York. We dug into the cooler and killed off all the sandwiches in the first hour. Jeremy didn’t have much to say, and I didn’t feel all that much like talking.

We were about to pass the exit to the Mass Pike, around Selkirk, when Jeremy suddenly said, “Can we get off at the next exit?”

“What for?”

“It’s right here. Get off! Get off!”

I hit the blinker and took the exit. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“When you get to the end of the ramp, take a right,” he said.

“What I’m gonna do is pull over until you tell me why you made me get off the thruway.”

He seemed to need a few seconds before he could work up the nerve to tell me.

“You have to promise not to tell my mom,” he said.

“Come on, Jeremy, don’t make me promise something I might not be able to do. You tell me, or we carry on south.”

“My dad lives here,” he said. “Like, close. Yeah, turn here.”

I made a right where the ramp ended. “Okay,” I said. “So we’re going to visit your dad. That would upset your mom?”

He shrugged. “Kinda. Probably. She doesn’t like him.”

“That happens a lot when people split up.”

“Yeah, but this is different,” Jeremy said.