He took a deep breath and remained polite, would have to take his chances there would be a room available later, hopefully before the sun went down and the truckers who were tired of sleeping in their cabs started checking in. He stopped at a Quik Mart next to the motel and got a bottle of water for the trip. Imagine that, three brands of water in bottles. Cold, too.

He walked about six miles without getting tired of walking, even though his prison shoes were not the best. From time to time he’d pick up that tune he knew, the one where he popped his lips at the rest. The sensation of going and going without stopping, without running into a wall or a barbed-wire fence, was exhilarating, almost religious. He didn’t mind the humidity or the bugs, they came with the freedom. He felt like he could have walked all night. He was in good shape.

But he didn’t keep walking. He stopped at some property past the side of town that was too poor to attract any developers. No one had ever bought this land, a bunch of dirt marked here and there with oak trees sagging with Spanish moss. The only sign of human life that remained on the property was the blackened chimney of a fireplace that had once risen from his childhood home before the place burned down.

His heart started to race as it had not from the walking. He strode over the concrete foundation of the house in a few steps, marveling how small the place was, much smaller than he thought when he was seven years old or so. What he was looking for wasn’t in the chimney. It would have been easy to put it there, but too chancy that someone would nose around and find it. He put his back to the back of the chimney, feeling the stonework that had eroded in decades of exposure to the wind and the rain. He put his arms straight in front of him, sighting the line they led to. Then he walked the line.