“Denial is my defense against most things. Whatever gets you through the day, I say.” Right. Like that philosophy had never got him into strife.
“But shouldn’t we be thinking through the possibilities of things going wrong?”
Ah, he should never have brought up the senator. “Like what?”
“Like we get arrested for stealing a car and demolishing half a London block and trespassing and breaking and entering and having an illegal weapon and illegal drugs and carrying a false passport and entering the country illegally—well, that last bit is just me—and I get extradited to America and locked up next to Tess and we’re found guilty of some fictitious charge, on top of all the real ones, and jailed for twenty years and you lose your job and wind up with a criminal record and Hyland becomes the American president and appoints the most corrupt government in the history of—”
“Whoa. Stop. Wow. Jesus. Is this seriously what goes on in your head?”
“I’ve...been alone a lot lately.”
“You must have burned a lot of calories just thinking about all that. How do you ever get to sleep at night?”
“Is this not normal? Is this not what you’re thinking?”
“Normal? There’s no such thing as normal and I’m most certainly not it, but before you dumped all that on me I was just grateful that it’s not raining and that the traffic’s mostly going the other way.”
She shook her head.
“And now you’re looking at me likeI’mthe crazy one.Notthat I’m calling you crazy,” he added, quickly. “Far be it from me...”
“No, this is me looking at you in awe. I wish I could feel that relaxed.”
“Okay, so I’m thinking you’re the kind of person who needs to work through every scenario of what could go wrong before you can have confidence that things won’t go wrong.”
“I guess.”
“So, let’s go back to the start of that train of thought. How will the authorities catch us?”
“I don’t know—a hundred different ways.”
“Give me a scenario. You’re evidently good at scenarios.”
“Okay. That cop in Putney puts out a description of us and someone links it to my wanted picture. Or the cop who caught us...you know.”
Oh, he did know.
“Or they both do!” she said. “Shit.”
“Well, the cop in Putney will have everybody chasing a couple from Essex, if she noticed us at all, which I doubt, and the cop who caught us you-know-whatting would have written you up as a Scot—if he’d written us up at all, and he didn’t seem the type to want to burden himself with the paperwork. You’re giving the system too much credit for intelligence.”
“But what if—?”
“What if, what if...? Two words to drive anybody crazy. But, okay, it’s all highly unlikely but let’s take that scenario to its natural conclusion. How would they find us?”
“They...catch us speeding.”
“I won’t speed. What else?”
“Someone we meet recognizes me from the wanted photo or you from the security footage and calls the police.”
“So we don’t show our faces until this is over and you’re exonerated and no longer wanted. Next?”
“The car. The hospital discovers it missing and a cop spots it.”
“Samira, it’s a white hatchback, like all the other white hatchbacks. You know how many are in the UK?” He swept a hand in front of them. “I can see one up ahead right now. Oh, and look, one’s just passed us. It’s basically an urban camo car. Every cop from Land’s End to John O’Groats is not going to be checking the plate of every white hatchback they see—we’d have to be doing something suspicious for them to bother. And we’re avoiding traffic cameras. Besides, we’re operating on a pretty sound theory that the hospital won’t discover the theft in a hurry. But just to keep you happy, we’ll ditch the car and hide as soon as we’ve done this hack. What else?”
“The police are tracking us somehow. Or Hyland’s goons are, like with the postcard. Or both.”
