Page 120 of Never Flinch

“Christopher, I won’t do that.”

The anger bursts free. “You will, though. You better. If you don’t, I’ll tell them all this was your idea. Yours and Pastor Jim’s.”

Fallowes makes a sound that’s half sigh and half moan. “If you did that, you would kill this church, son.”

“I’m not your son,” Chris says. Then, without knowing he means to do it, he screams, “She can’t kill babies! Bad enough that God can!”

He looks around to see if anyone heard, but the parking lot is his alone under the beating-down afternoon sun.

“Dammit, son… Chris, I mean…”

“Find me a place where I can disappear, Deacon Andy.”

“Any abandoned buildings I find will be locked—”

“I’ll get in.”At least as long as it’s not alarmed.

“Chris—”

“I’ll get rid of my phone and hold onto this burner until you call. After, I’ll get rid of this one, too. I want at least four abandoned buildings, so I have a choice. No, make that five.”

“The internet isn’t reliable, Chris. I may find a building that issupposedto be abandoned, but inrealityit might not—”

“That’s why I want a choice,” Chris says, and has to restrain himself from adding what would have been unthinkable when he started on this crusade:You dumbbell.

“Chris—”

He hangs up.

5

Chris walks back to the hotel with his head down and his John Deere cap pulled low. As he approaches he sneaks a look up and sees the assistant, Corrie Anderson, getting out of an Uber. A close one! He waits until she’s inside, and gives her a little extra time to get to the elevators. He has a bad minute passing the doorman, but that goes okay. At least he thinks so. Hopes so.

In Room 919, Chris dons a lavender pants suit—she thinks of it as her Kamala Harris suit—earrings, makeup (including a bright slash of lipstick), and becomes Chrissy. Her purse is in the pink suitcase, along with two wigs. She left on this pilgrimage with three, but got rid of the red one in Reno. One of the remaining wigs is blond, but she doesn’t want to wear that, because her own hair is blond. She dons the black one, fluffs out the bangs, and adds an Alice band that matches the lipstick.

She slings her purse over her shoulder, picks up the pink suitcase, and leaves the room. She’s praying she doesn’t meet the bodyguard from McKay’s party in the elevator or the lobby. She doesn’t know for sure, but thinks the Gibney woman was probably the one who put the fear of God into Andy Fallowes.

The lobby has cleared out for the time being. One of the female desk clerks gives Chrissy a look of casual contempt as she goes out. Chrissy doesn’t understand it at first, then does. The clerk thinks she’s looking at a hooker that’s just finished providing a client with a little afternoon delight.

Outside the hotel she turns right for no other reason than that the doorman is looking left. She has no idea where to go and wait for Andy Fallowes’s call. A block down, she asks a passerby if there’s a place outside in the sunshine where a gal can rest her feet, maybe even get a bite to eat.

“How about Dingley Park?” he says, and points in the direction she’s going. “Six or eight blocks, plenty of benches, plenty of shade, and the food trucks will be open.”

“Isn’t that where the charity game is going to be played tomorrow?”

“Yeah, but that’s way on the other side of the park.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Always a pleasure to help a pretty girl,” the passerby says.

He goes on his way and Chrissy, feeling flattered, goes on hers.

6

Kate does her press conference from four to five in the hotel’s Lake Room. She looks fresh and blooming following her exercise and a quickaprès-pool shower. Holly stands at the back, unnoticed even though this is her hometown and she’s made a few headlines here herself. Small and graying, rather plain in the face but well-groomed, she has a talent for being slightlydim. She keeps her hand in her purse, touching but not grasping her pepper spray. She recognizes most of the local news people, also national TV news demi-celebs Clarissa Ward, Lauren Simonetti, and Trevor Ault. Corrie got her wish; being shut down in Toledo has turned Kate’s tour into a crusade.

All the reporters have Christopher Stewart’s Iowa City picture; Jerome gave a stack to Holly before buzzing off to talk to Tom Atta at Dingley Park. She asked the hotel’s chief of security to hand them out. Buckeye Brandon, the city’s demi-celeb podcaster, is sitting in the front row wearing his old-fashioned newshawk’s fedora, and with his old-fashioned tape deck slung over his shoulder on a leather strap. He tilts his mic (definitely newfangled) toward himself long enough to ask the first question.

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