The Eighth Day

Chapter 22

Shawn Jaffe fled north across Texas and into Oklahoma. As the hours passed, his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel relaxed, his compulsion to stare into the rearview mirror faded, and the steel rod of his spine relaxed into the curve of his seat.

The world rolled by, and he contemplated his life, growing up in Moore City, attending Ohio State, losing his parents. Those memories remained whole and real. It wasn't until Victoria that his memories tore apart and led him down two paths of madness ending in Amarillo and New York.

"Abort," she'd said. "You hear me? Abort!" Someone had been listening.

Another memory of a stranger and a warning stirred like a restless omen. They're watching you.

She'd called him Ryan Marshall. The ID on his smartphone said Ryan Marshall. He knew he was Ryan Marshall, yet he also knew he was Shawn Jaffe.

Had Victoria conspired against him all along? Had their relationship been nothing but a fabricated truth? Memories of her were superimposed over those of New York, obscuring but not blotting them out.

The answers waited in Ohio. Although the last time he'd visited Moore City was for his parents' funeral, small towns had big memories. At least he'd figure out whether his Christian name was Shawn or Ryan, after which he'd continue to Ohio State, where the unreality had begun.

A light glowed on the Ford's dashboard, a red power-plug icon, and a dialogue box warned him the battery was at 5 percent of its charge. Shawn sighed. What can go wrong, will. He took the next exit and passed the long row of name-brand truck stops and fast-food chains with their crowds of vehicles and bodies. A couple of miles farther, a weary charging station slumped on the side of the road, time heavy on its shoulders. Not a soul in sight. Perfect.

Shawn pulled in and stopped alongside one of the terminals, got out, and pressed his smartphone against its screen. It made a mechanical error tone.

"Funds declined."

Brow furrowed, he examined his smartphone, wiped it on his jeans, and started to press it against the terminal's screen again but jerked it away at the last second.

Could they trace his smartphone payment? Were they tracking him even now through its geo-location services? Shawn scanned the road. Did they have the resources to do that? He didn't know, but at this point, he didn't have a choice. He wasn't going anywhere if he didn't get his truck charged.

He pressed his smartphone against the screen again.

"Funds declined."

"Come on," Shawn said.

"Funds declined."

He glanced up and down the road again before hurrying toward the charging station's storefront. Perspiration fell from his brow, and he wiped at it with one hand as his boots scraped across the crumbling asphalt. As he pushed his way through the glass doors, a bell chimed.

The clerk leaned over a counter to his left and regarded him with a bland expression through lidded eyes. She must've outweighed him by close to a hundred pounds.

"The terminal isn't reading my phone," he said as he stepped up to the counter.

"Terminal is working fine," she said.

"You mind if I try it here?"

"Nothing wrong with the terminal." She shrugged. "How much you want?"

Shawn cast a furtive glance outside. "Fifty bucks."

The woman tapped at the digital counter's display, the flesh of her upper arms two plump pendulums of fat. "Go 'head."

Shawn swiped his phone across the counter and got the same mechanical error tone.