Replica

Once again Gemma stopped Jake from closing the door, just barely, on her fingers. She kept her hand in the doorjamb so he couldn’t. She had that hard-throat feeling of trying not to cry. “What happened?” she said. “Are you in trouble with the cops?”

“The cops.” Jake let out a sound that could have been a laugh or a cough. “Not the cops.” He took a step forward, startling Gemma and forcing her to release the doorjamb. “My lights are working just fine,” he added almost angrily, leaning so close that Gemma could feel his breath on her face. Before she could ask him what he meant, he closed the door, and the lock slid back into place.

For a second Gemma just stood there, stunned. Even with Pete standing next to her, she had never felt so alone in her life. She was too embarrassed to look at Pete. She’d dragged him all the way here, promising that Jake would help, and he hadn’t even let them inside. “Something must have happened. He wasn’t like this yesterday.” She thought of the way he’d looked, with sweat standing on his skin, and what he’d said to her: My lights are working just fine.

“Gemma.” There was a warning in Pete’s voice, but she was too upset to listen to it.

“Someone must have gotten to him—yesterday he was practically begging me for information—”

“Gemma.” This time, Pete seized her hand, and she was surprised into silence by the sudden contact. Her palms were sweaty, but his were dry and cool and large. “Funny they need so many guys to work the wires, don’t you think?” he said in a low voice, as he piloted her off the porch and back toward the van. He didn’t look at the Florida Energy men a little ways down the road, but she could tell by the way he was staring straight ahead that he was trying not to look.

Instinctively, she glanced over to where the six or seven workers in their hard hats and vests were still standing—doing nothing—and had the sense that they had only avoided meeting her eyes by a fraction of a second. And then she understood what Jake had said about the lights.

Not nonsense. A code. My lights are working just fine. Meaning: no reason for the Florida Energy truck, and the people gathered across the street with their van spiky with antennae. Although Gemma had looked away as quickly as possible, she had caught the eye of one of the men down the road: clean-shaven, hard-eyed, pale as paper. Not the complexion of someone who spent every day working outside.

Jake was being watched. Which meant: they were now being watched, too. No wonder Jake had practically shoved them off his doorstep, had shouted that he didn’t know them. He’d been trying to protect them. She had the overwhelming urge to turn around, to hurtle back up to the door and pound to be let in and to thank him. But that would be beyond stupid. Instead she walked stiff-backed to the minivan and climbed in, trying to appear unconcerned, as if maybe the whole thing really had been a mistake. Maybe the men—whoever they were—would believe that they were just casual acquaintances of Jake’s, there to return something or say hello.

In the car, Pete wiped his hands on his jeans before grabbing hold of the steering wheel. They didn’t speak. Pete kept glancing in the rearview mirror as he backed out of the driveway. Please don’t follow us, Gemma thought. She pressed the desire through her fists. Don’t follow us. But a moment later, a maroon Volvo pulled out of another hard-packed dirt driveway and crept up behind them. Could it be a coincidence? She didn’t think so.

“Do you think—?” she started to ask, but Pete cut her off.

“Not now,” he said. “Need to think.” Somehow, the fact that Pete—Pete of the endless, stream-of-consciousness babble—had run out of things to say scared her even more than the car behind them.

It wasn’t a coincidence: the car followed them no matter how many turns they made down shitty country roads, even after they reached downtown Little Waller, such as it was: a few bleak roads studded with tire shops, fast-food restaurants, and liquor and discount stores. The driver didn’t even bother going for subtlety—and this, too, scared Gemma, and made her angry. It was the way a cat toyed with its prey, batting it around a bit, taking its time, certain already of its satisfaction.

“We need to lose them.” Gemma hardly recognized her voice when she spoke. It was as if an alien had crawled into her throat and taken over her vocal cords.

“Lose them?” Pete repeated. Gemma realized how tense Pete was. He was practically doubled over the steering wheel, staring hard at the road as if it might simply disappear. “Christ. You’re really taking the knight-in-shining-armor thing to the limit, you know that?” He yanked the wheel hard to the left, and Gemma was thrown against the door. But only thirty seconds later, lazily, the Volvo turned, too. It was so absurd that they were riding around in an eggplant-colored minivan. They might as well be driving a hovercraft. It wasn’t exactly like they could blend. “Who are these guys, anyway?”

“Maybe cops,” Gemma said. She had an awful, heavy feeling in her gut, like she was trying to digest a roll of toilet paper. She’d dragged Pete into this. She’d dragged them all into this. “Probably military.”

“Military.” Pete repeated the word as if he’d never heard it before. His freckles were standing out ever more clearly from his skin, like even they were thinking of making a break for it. “Jesus . . .”

“You told me you wanted to help.” Gemma was squeezing her hands so tightly she was sure she’d break the skin.

Pete sighed. “I do,” he said. “I just didn’t think we’d end up in a chase scene so early in the movie.” Then: “All right, look. Are you buckled in?”