"He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking." - Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
The words of Tolstoy whisper in his mind as she steps into the room. He can not bring himself to look upon her, knowing that even now she still forgives him.
He keeps his head down looking at the old logging map under flickering candle light. The cabin has been a God send but it won't be safe for long. She stands beside the bed watching him.
"They'll have road blocks up here," he says pointing. "And here as well. They think they have us hemmed in now."
"Couldn't we just wait it out here," she asks.
"No," he says. "They'll move in soon, checking house to house."
She waits as he pours over the map.
She knows no one can understand why she loves him. He is irrational and wild, his life a series of poorly made choices leading here to this cabin in the woods, trapped and waiting for the FBI to finally take them in.
Bank robber was not something she had ever thought she would be called. She was intelligent, well educated and measured in her thinking. At least she had been before she met Tom.
He was gentle and loving, even now as there world closed in around them, but he was perilous as well and she had followed him blindly.
"Here," he says brightening suddenly but still not raising his head.
His finger traces slowly acroos a faint line in the old weathered map.
"An old logging track. See." He raises the map and shows her the thin black line running through a green section of the map. It winds sharply left and right like a river as it cuts through the mountains but he was right, it comes out past the checkpoints.
"They'll know about it," she says.
"Maybe," he says. "But this is an old map and the track isn't used anymore. It's not even on the new map, look."
He brings out another map, lying beneath the first.
"See it's not there in this one. They might not even know it exists."
"Perhaps it no longer does," she says.
For this he has no answer but he does not look defeated yet.
"Let's go," he said. "It's our only chance."
She knows he is scared now and that it is not for himself. She has long known that he does not care if he dies.
She has always known that sooner or later they would be caught and when that happened they will Be killed.
They will fill him full of holes like Bonnie and Clyde. There will be no trial for them, they have been on the run for too long now and been too much trouble. There end will be swift and violent.
"And," she thinks. "It will happen tonight."
An understanding that for all his eternal optimism and hope they will never make it to Mexico comes over her and for the first time she is truly afraid herself.
In the car she sits beside him on the bench seat, his arm around her shoulder holding her close. They need to look relaxed, like honeymoon lovers but the fifty thousand in the boot of the car burns into her mind as she realises the case it is in sits uncovered. If they pull them over it will be the first things they see.
The turn off isn't far. It is a slightly overgrown gap in the trees and they pass it by three times before they find it.
In the headlights they can vaguely see the path it takes between a canyon of heavy timber. There is undergrowth sprouting along it's length but not enough to stop them. Not yet anyway.
"What do you think?" he asks.
"I trust you," she says.
He knows it is a lie. She is too smart to trust him, not after the years of disasters that she has been following him through. Her lie makes the knot in his stomach tighten even harder and he considers surrender.
"If we just give in maybe they will spare her," he thinks.
But he knows better than that. The G men have a target fixed on both their heads and will shoot them down and think of an excuse later.
