CHAPTER SEVEN
Always on the Run
For several seconds, Jonah Reed stood alone in his office and understood something his body had known before his mind.
You cannot trust the Government. He looked down at the stack of paperwork.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF HENRY CALDER
Jonah stopped.
He remembered Henry.
Experienced hiker.
Thirty-one years old.
Vanished in September 1987.
His backpack had been found six miles from the trail.
Search dogs lost the scent beside water.
Jonah had written four thousand words about him.
He read his own article.
The final paragraph embarrassed him.
Perhaps the wilderness simply keeps some answers.
Jonah had written like that when he was younger.
He thought mysteries needed poetry.
Now he knew families preferred bodies.
Jonah returned to the email.
You wrote about him in 2018.
He replied.
Who is this?
The message bounced.
Address not found.
Jonah sat back.
Outside, something moved near the fence.
He looked through the window.
Nothing.
The woods beyond his yard were thin.
Mostly oak.
A few pines.
In winter, Jonah could see the abandoned rail bed through the branches.
He watched.
A branch moved.
Then another.
Wind.
Jonah looked at the trees above it.
They were still.
He stood.
The branch stopped moving.
Jonah remained at the window.
Thirty seconds.
One minute.
Nothing.
He returned to his desk.
At 12:03, Jonah began researching his old friend Mara Vey.
Dead now.
Civilian federal employee.
Office of Interagency Records Management.
Twenty-three years of service.
Divorced.
No children.
Jonah found an old professional conference agenda from 2011.
Mara had given a presentation.
LEGACY RECORD MIGRATION AND CROSS-JURISDICTIONAL DATA INTEGRITY
Jonah smiled.
“Thrilling Mara.”
He opened the PDF.
Mara’s biography was six sentences. They didn’t know her.
Doctorate in information science.
Federal records analyst.
Specialisation in historical data reconciliation.
He continued reading
Historical data.
Missing records.
Henry Calder.
The disposable camera.
The hair on his neck stood up someone was standing there.
He could not see them.
But they could see him.
His phone vibrated.
Jonah looked.
The photograph showed the back of his head.
Don’t Look Behind You
Jonah ran.
All he heard was “We’d just like to ask you a few questions.”
He did not look behind him.
Later, this would bother him.
For years, Jonah had interviewed people who survived terrible things.
Home invasions.
Kidnappings.
Animal attacks.
He had asked them questions from the safety of coffee shops and living rooms.
What did you see?
What did you hear?
When did you know you were in danger?
Survivors always remembered details.
The smell of someone’s breath.
The pattern on a shirt.
The sound a door made.
Jonah remembered nothing about leaving his office.
One moment he was looking at a photograph of the back of his own head.
The next, he was in his car.
Engine running.
Driver’s door unlocked.
He did not remember coming down the stairs.
He did not remember grabbing his keys.
He did not remember opening the front door.
Jonah drove twelve miles before realising he was barefoot.
He pulled into a grocery store parking lot.
Parked beneath a light.
Locked the doors.
His phone sat on the passenger seat.
Jonah stared at it.
The screen was dark.
He did not touch it.
People walked between cars.
A woman pushed a cart.
A man loaded groceries into an SUV.
Two teenagers argued near the entrance.
Normal.
Jonah watched them.
He had never appreciated strangers so much.
His phone vibrated.
Jonah flinched.
He looked at the screen.
Unknown number.
One new image.
The phone vibrated again.
Jonah picked it up.
He opened the first photograph.
His empty office.
The picture had been taken from the doorway.
Jonah enlarged it.
Nothing.
Desk.
Chair.
Window.
He opened the second.
The staircase.
Empty.
Third.
Living room.
Fourth.
Kitchen.
Jonah stared.
The photographs were moving through his house.
Room by room.
His phone vibrated.
New image.
The front door.
Photographed from inside.
Jonah looked through his windshield.
The grocery store parking lot stretched around him.
He checked the rearview mirror.
Back seat empty.
He looked at the phone.
Another image arrived.
His driveway.
Photographed from the porch.
Then the street.
Jonah’s stomach tightened.
The photographs were leaving his house.
His phone vibrated.
A road.
He recognised it.
The entrance to his neighbourhood.
“No.”
Another photograph.
An intersection.
Jonah knew the intersection.
Three miles from his house.
He started the car.
He didn’t know where he was going.
Only that he wasn’t staying.
The phone vibrated.
Another road.
Closer.
Jonah drove.
He turned left.
Then right.
He entered the highway.
Accelerated.
The phone vibrated every few minutes.
Jonah stopped opening the photographs.
He drove south.
Forty miles.
Sixty.
At 4:18, the phone had been silent for twenty-three minutes.
Jonah exited the highway.
He found a motel that served as a makeshift apartment for wayward deadbeats beside a truck stop.
One story.
Exterior doors.
Security cameras above the office.
Jonah paid cash.
Room 17.
The clerk gave him a key card.
“Long day?”
Jonah looked at him.
“Yes.”
“Been there.”
Jonah doubted it.
Room 17 smelled like bleach and cigarettes despite the NO SMOKING sign.
Jonah locked the door.
Deadbolt.
Chain.
He pushed a chair beneath the handle.
Then closed the curtains.
The room contained two lamps.
Jonah turned both on.
He turned on the bathroom light.
Then the television.
A game show filled the room with applause.
Jonah sat on the bed.
His phone remained silent.
At 5:03, he called the police.
He told them someone had been inside his house.
He told them about the photographs.
The dispatcher asked where he was.
Jonah gave the motel address.
“Are you in immediate danger?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is anyone there with you?”
Jonah looked around the room.
“No.”
The answer felt wrong.
“Sir?”
“No. I’m alone.”
Police checked his house at 5:47.
Jonah spoke to an officer by phone.
No forced entry.
No broken windows.
No one inside.
“Did you leave in a hurry?”
“Yes.”
“Your front door was open.”
Jonah gripped the phone.
“I closed it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
The officer paused.
“Anything missing?”
“I don’t know.”
“We can file a report.”
Jonah laughed.
The officer didn’t.
“Sorry.”
“Mr. Reed, do you have somewhere you can stay tonight?”
Jonah looked at the motel room.
“Yes.”
“Don’t go home until morning.”
Jonah thanked him.
He hung up.
The game show ended.
A local news broadcast began.
Jonah muted the television.
The room became quiet.
Too quiet.
He turned the volume back on.
At 6:11, Jonah ordered food.
At 6:43, someone knocked.
Jonah froze.
Three knocks.
He looked through the peephole.
A young man stood outside holding a paper bag.
Delivery.
Jonah removed the chair.
Chain.
Deadbolt.
He opened the door six inches.
“Jonah?”
“Yes.”
“Turkey club?”
Jonah took the bag.
“Thanks.”
The delivery driver looked past him into the room.
Jonah noticed.
“What?”
The young man looked at Jonah.
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Nothing, man.”
“You looked at something.”
The driver shifted his weight.
Jonah opened the door wider.
“What did you see?”
The young man’s face changed.
“I didn’t see anything.”
“You looked behind me.”
“I was just looking.”
“At what?”
The driver stepped backward.
“Have a good night.”
He walked quickly toward the parking lot.
Jonah watched him get into his car.
The driver looked toward Room 17.
Then drove away.
Jonah closed the door.
Locked it.
Chain.
Chair.
He did not turn around.
The television played behind him.
Weather.
A woman discussing weekend temperatures.
Jonah stared at the door.
His skin prickled.
The delivery driver had looked behind him.
Jonah knew what he’d seen.
Nothing.
That was the problem.
Jonah slowly turned.
The room was empty.
Bed.
Television.
Table.
Bathroom.
Nothing.
He laughed.
“Stop.”
Jonah ate half the sandwich.
At 8:02, he called his sister.
He didn’t tell her what happened.
They talked about their mother.
Her blood pressure.
A plumbing problem.
Jonah listened to his sister complain about a contractor for twenty-seven minutes.
He loved every second of it.
Normal voices.
Normal problems.
Before hanging up, his sister said, “You sound weird.”
“Long day.”
“You working on something?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t get obsessed.”
“I don’t.”
She laughed.
Jonah smiled.
“Goodnight.”
“Night.”
The call ended.
Jonah looked at the phone.
No new messages.
At 9:17, he showered.
He left the bathroom door open.
At 9:31, Jonah checked the deadbolt.
At 9:34, he checked it again.
At 9:42, he turned off the bathroom light.
At 9:43, he turned it back on.
At 10:06, Jonah got into bed.
The television remained on.
He watched a sitcom.
Then another.
At 11:14, he fell asleep.
At 2:17 in the morning, Jonah woke.
The television was off.
He opened his eyes.
Darkness.
Jonah did not move.
He listened.
Air conditioner.
A truck on the highway.
Water moving through pipes.
The television screen reflected the motel room.
Jonah could see the bed.
The window.
The bathroom door.
He could see himself beneath the blankets.
Jonah stared at the reflection.
Something was wrong.
He didn’t know what.
His eyes moved slowly across the black screen.
Bed.
Window.
Bathroom.
Chair.
Door.
Jonah’s heart began to beat harder.
The chair.
He had placed it beneath the door handle.
In the reflection, the chair was beside the table.
Jonah looked toward the door.
The chair was beneath the handle.
He looked back at the television.
Beside the table.
Jonah stopped breathing.
The reflection was wrong.
He watched the screen.
Nothing moved.
Jonah slowly reached for his phone.
The television reflection remained still.
His hand touched the phone.
The Jonah in the television did not move.
Jonah stared.
His reflection lay beneath the blankets.
Both hands visible on top of his chest.
Jonah’s right hand was holding his phone.
In the television, the bathroom light went out.
The real bathroom remained lit.
Jonah closed his eyes.
He counted to five.
Opened them.
The television screen was black.
The reflection had changed.
The motel room was still there.
The bed.
The door.
The bathroom.
Jonah’s reflection was gone.
The bed in the television was empty.
Jonah sat up.
His phone vibrated.
The sound filled the room.
Unknown number.
One photograph.
Jonah opened it.
A motel room.
Room 17.
Photographed from the corner near the ceiling.
Jonah was sitting upright in bed.
He looked toward the corner.
Nothing.
The phone vibrated.
Another photograph.
Lower.
Closer.
Jonah in bed.
The phone vibrated.
Closer.
Jonah could see the fear on his own face.
The phone vibrated.
The newest photograph had been taken from the foot of the bed.
Jonah pulled his legs beneath the blankets.
The phone vibrated.
The side of the bed.
The phone vibrated.
Jonah stared at the empty space beside him.
The mattress sank.
Slowly.
As if someone had sat down.
Jonah could not move.
His phone vibrated in his hand.
He looked at the screen.
One new photograph.
Jonah did not want to open it.
He opened it.
The picture showed Jonah sitting in bed.
The mattress depressed beside him.
Nothing was visible there.
At the bottom of the photograph, someone had added three words.
DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU
Jonah stared at the message.
His eyes filled with tears.
Because he could feel it now.
Warm air.
Against the back of his neck.
Three low notes began humming beside his ear.
He could feel them, sense them, but he was one step ahead.
———————————–
Chapter 8
The Files They Couldn’t Erase
The hotel room remained silent long after the agents left.
Jonah didn’t move.
He counted to three hundred in his head before sliding the narrow access panel aside.
The kitchen looked as though a storm had passed through it.
Cabinet doors hung open. Every drawer had been emptied onto the floor. Books lay with their spines broken. Someone had slit open the cushions on the sofa.
His laptop was gone.
So was the disposable camera.
Jonah wasn’t surprised.
He quietly stepped into the room and closed the panel behind him.
“They never learn,” he murmured.
He walked straight past the overturned furniture and knelt beside an old cast-iron radiator beneath the living room window. Reaching underneath, he pressed against a loose section of plaster. A small metal tin dropped into his hand.
Inside were two memory cards.
Three folded photographs.
A key.
Nothing else.
He slipped the tin into his jacket.
If the government had spent another five minutes searching, they would have found it.
Fortunately for Jonah, they always searched for evidence.
They never searched for habits.
Dawn was still an hour away when he left the apartment building through the basement.
The maintenance tunnel emptied into an alley behind a boarded-up grocery store two blocks away.
He stopped long enough to watch his own apartment from the shadows.
Black SUVs still lined the street.
Agents carried cardboard boxes from the building.
Computers.
Paperwork.
Anything that looked important.
One young agent held up a stack of newspaper clippings.
The older man glanced at them before shaking his head.
“Burn them.”
Jonah smiled faintly.
They were copies.
Every article they carried away had already been scanned years ago.
He had stopped trusting paper long before anyone started following him.
By sunrise he was driving north in a rust-speckled pickup that looked as though it belonged on a farm.
The registration wasn’t in his name.
Neither was the insurance.
Neither was the license plate.
He’d learned years ago that people searched for reporters in rental cars.
Nobody noticed an old work truck with cracked vinyl seats and a coffee stain older than most college students.
The road climbed steadily into the foothills.
Morning mist drifted between the trees.
For anyone else, it would have been beautiful.
For Jonah, forests had become archives.
Every valley held someone’s last known location.
Every overlook reminded him of a search that ended with too many unanswered questions.
His phone buzzed once.
The burner.
A single text.
THEY TOOK YOUR APARTMENT AND HOTEL ROOM. BOOKED YOU ANOTHER.
No signature.
Leila.
He typed three words.
Expected. Stay away.
The reply came almost immediately.
Too late.
He frowned.
Another message followed.
Found something.
The ranger station had been abandoned for nearly twelve years.
The state built a larger facility farther down the highway, leaving the old wooden building to weather quietly beneath towering pines.
Jonah parked behind it.
A man in his seventies sat on the porch drinking coffee from an enamel mug.
He didn’t bother turning around.
“Took you long enough.”
Jonah smiled.
“Morning, Walt.”
Walter Garrison had spent thirty-four years leading search-and-rescue teams through the Smokies.
He’d found hikers.
Runaways.
Crash victims.
Hunters.
He had also failed to find more than forty people who should have been found.
Officially, he retired.
Unofficially, he stopped asking questions that made federal visitors uncomfortable.
“You bring them?” Walt asked.
Jonah handed him Mara’s photographs.
The old ranger studied them one by one.
His expression never changed.
Until the last photograph.
He stared for nearly a minute.
Finally he looked up.
“Where’d she get this?”
“Mara mailed it before she disappeared.”
“She dead?”
Jonah nodded.
“I think so.”
Walt set the photograph down very carefully.
“I hoped I’d never see another one.”
Jonah’s pulse quickened.
“Another one?”
Without answering, Walt disappeared inside the station.
He returned carrying a faded manila folder secured with brittle rubber bands.
The paper smelled of mildew.
Across the front someone had written:
SEARCH REPORT — AUGUST 14, 1987
Inside were photographs.
One showed a rescue team standing beside a creek.
Another showed a helicopter landing in a clearing.
Then, something…
Jonah stopped breathing.
In the background of the final image, nearly hidden among the trees, stood the same impossible figure.
Not close enough to identify.
Not clear enough to prove anything.
Just…
There.
Exactly where no one had noticed it.
Until now.
“That’s impossible,” Jonah whispered.
Walt shook his head.
“This is not good.”
“It’s worse than impossible.”
He leaned back in the creaking chair.
“I’ve seen it three times.”
“You never told anyone?”
“I did.”
“What happened?”
“The photographs disappeared.”
Jonah looked up.
“The originals?”
“And every copy.”
Silence settled over the porch.
The wind stirred the pines.
Far below, a raven called once before disappearing into the forest.
Walt spoke quietly.
“They told me I imagined it.”
“You didn’t.”
“No.”
He looked Jonah directly in the eyes.
“They told me that before they took the negatives.”
Jonah spread both photographs across the porch table.
Different cameras.
Different decades.
Different people.
The same shape.
He measured the distance between two trees.
Counted branches.
Compared shadows.
The figure hadn’t simply been standing in the same type of place.
It had been standing in almost the exact same position.
As though…
It had been waiting.
His mind rejected the thought immediately.
Coincidences happened.
Photographs lied.
Perspective distorted reality.
There had to be another explanation.
There always was.
Until there wasn’t.
A low rumble echoed through the valley.
Both men looked up.
A dark helicopter crossed the ridgeline.
No markings.
No registration visible beneath the fuselage.
It didn’t fly toward the nearest airport.
It circled once above the abandoned ranger station.
Then again.
Walt sighed.
“You should leave.”
“They found me.”
“They’ve been finding people for forty years.”
The helicopter banked sharply.
For just a second, sunlight flashed across the cockpit glass.
Then it disappeared behind the trees.
Jonah gathered the photographs.
“Walt…”
The old ranger interrupted him.
“They’re not here because of you.”
Jonah frowned.
“They’re here because somebody finally took the right picture.”
He slipped the photographs back into his satchel.
As he reached his truck, his burner phone vibrated again.
Another message from Leila.
Only five words.
Emma’s parents received another package.
Jonah stared at the screen.
His stomach tightened.
Mara had mailed him a camera.
Someone else…
Had just mailed something to Emma’s family.
His phone vibrated. Leila.
“You shouldn’t be calling,”
“I know.” Her voice was tight.
“I opened the package.”
Jonah sat up straight.
“What was inside?”
“A cassette tape.”
“A cassette?”
“With Emma’s name written on
it.”
“Did you play it?”
“No.”
“Good.”
A pause.
“It was addressed to her parents,” Leila said, “but there was another name written inside the box.”
Jonah’s grip tightened on the phone. “What name?”
“Mara Collins.”
His heart skipped. “You’re sure?”
“I checked twice.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“I already didn’t.”
“Where’s the tape now?”
“I took it.”
Silence. Then Leila said the words Jonah had been dreading.
“I think someone wanted us to find it.”
Jonah looked across the basement at the scattered files.
Mara had mailed him a camera. Someone had mailed Emma’s family a tape.
Neither package had been intercepted. Neither had been destroyed. Which meant one of two things, either the government was losing control, or someone inside it had started leaving breadcrumbs.
Jonah had spent eleven years believing he was chasing a conspiracy.
For the first time, he wondered if someone inside it had started trying to lead him.
His second phone buzzed with an unknown number, a text
“Leave now, they are closing in on you.”
Looking at the message Jonah did what he never would have done in any other circumstance, he replied.
“Who is this?
Thumbing his fingers on the table he started to feel a cold sweat take over as he waited for the reply. He was impatient to a fault and had no time for games.
“No time to explain now, you need to leave they are closing in on you.”
Another text.
“I met Mara she sent me to you. I will not text text from this number again, too dangerous….Run while you can.”
Outside, thunder rolled over the mountains.
The basement lights flickered once, then went dark.
He could almost smell them, he felt them as they drove outside.
Jonah saw the headlights out of the corner of his eye as he read the last text.
It was time to move. He had made an escape route thought the walls of the run down apartment building.
He gathered a disguise and made his way out through the walls quietly.
He heard the voices of men and women yelling to get down, shooting what he suspected were flash bangs into his apartment. He felt bad about the other tenants but he set it ablaze on his way out.
The government would be in for a surprise when they entered. Jonah had been one step ahead of them for years. Mara helped him find a fresh supply of corpses, each time they caught up with him, a body was planted and they would be forced to slow down in order to make sure it wasn’t him.
This time though Jonah had a little surprise for them. He had recently had paid to have implants put in, he carefully implanted his real teeth into the corpse that was left in his apartment burning.
Once outside he saw that the entire building had gone up in flames.
“Move you fucking homeless bitch.” A government agent yelled at him as they ran past him towards the burning building.
“Idiots” he muttered to himself as he strolled away pushing a cart full of trash.
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