Dee greets me at the door, and I start setting up in the kitchen. She sits at the table, a basic wooden one, and asks me, “So what did this Fletcher guy say?”
“He’s got a safe house,” I say, filling up the sink and soaking the broccoli. “That we can use if we need to.”
“That’s good.”
“And he said he’ll send me the details for a gig. Just a small one,” I say, shaking my head when I see her expression. “Nothing big or fancy. Small-ish payout, maybe thirty to fifty grand if I win all the rounds.”
“A tournament?”
“I think it’ll be five rounds with a bye.”
“I can’t talk you out of fighting, can I?”
“Why would you want to?”
“I just can’t help but think you’re out of practice, out of shape. You’re not at peak conditioning.”
“I don’t need to be. I’ll still win. I’ve got more to lose, anyway.”
“Like that’s a comfort to me.”
“Anyway, I asked Fletcher about getting a gun.”
There’s a pause, and I start washing the broccoli heads.
“A gun?” Dee echoes slowly. “You’re not supposed to have guns here.”
“I know,” I tell her, meeting her eyes in the reflection of the kitchen window.
“Aren’t we taking a risk, then?”
“We’ll keep it here. It’s just a precaution. Look, would you rather need it and not have it?”
“No,” she says, her voice quiet. “But I’d rather not need it at all.”
“So would I, but your father’s still looking, which means that we have to still be prepared. I’ve thought about it. I’ll get the cash from the fights, we’ll hide it here in the apartment, along with the gun. We pack a couple of small suitcases, park them by the door. We fill the trunk of the car with non-perishables. Canned food, that kind of thing.”
“Sounds like a fallout shelter.”
“Well, if we get wind of Glass, we’re out of here straight away. Grab the bags, the money, the gun, and we hit the road to Fletcher’s safe house where we lay low for a while.”
“Why does he have one?”
“Leftover from his fighting days, probably,” I say.
“And so, what, we just wait?”
“We can go now,” I tell her. “You and me. I can transfer all my money out of the States. We risk Glass tracking it here, but we think he’s coming here, anyway. We take it, and go.”
“And then what?”
I shrug. “The world’s a big place, Dee. We could get lost, anywhere. All that money… all that fighting, that was for you, even if I didn’t know it back then.”
“What do you mean for me?”
“I think I was saving it all to buy you out.”
“Buy me out of what?”
“Your father’s grip. Remember? Just a few more fights? I figured we could go get lost. Who knows where… Asia if we want. Europe. We could just go traveling, move from place to place. Or we could find a place to settle down, change our names, leave no trail.”
“We can’t do that now,” she says, rubbing her belly. “Not with Thom on the way. I trust my doctor here, and traveling would just put stress on my body.”
“I agree,” I say. “Things have changed, now. Now, you haven’t just left home. Now you’ve left home with a baby, and that’s what Glass wants. The stakes are higher for him, too.”
“I can’t believe he wants to raise the child as his own.”
“I can.”
“What do you think?”
“We don’t know for sure Glass is coming here, not yet. If I access any of my accounts back home, he’ll know from where exactly, and he’s probably got connections out here.”
“Probably.”
“So,” I say, leaning back against the kitchen counter, gazing down at the pack of chicken breasts. “I say we start exploring ways to get that money through a middle man if we want to use it to buy ourselves privacy. Or… or we just make do, say goodbye to it for now. I get a job, we try to do it here and hope Glass doesn’t find us, but always have an exit strategy.”
“Those don’t sound like great choices.”
“I don’t want to live like that, either.”
“I’m not letting Dad take my… take our baby.”
“Then I’ll get to work on the money. In the meantime, we go as usual, just together. Always together.”
Dee nods at me. “Okay. If we get that money, then what?”
“Then we go anywhere we want. We just can’t tip your father off.”