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“Come on, Kat!” Jason
Winter—the to-die-for-cute boy she was crazy about—yelled up to her.
She looked down in terrible indecision. He was at the wheel of his
beat-up blue Camaro, which was idling in the alley below. It was
crammed with kids; her best friend, Leah Oscar, had her head stuck out
the rear window on the driver’s side, yelling, “Come on,” to her along
with Jason, while making urgent get-down-here-yesterday motions. A kid
with black, curly hair—Mario Castellanos, one of Jason’s good
friends—had his head out the front passengerwindow, his hands cupped
around his mouth as he yelled insults at Mrs. Coleman, who was now
raining abuse down on Kat’s head.
Marty Jones, Mrs.
Coleman’s live-in boyfriend, had taken Mrs. Coleman’s place and was
halfway out the window. Last time she’d seen him—about half an hour
ago, when she had supposedly gone to bed in the small room she shared
with Natalie and LaTonya—he’d been zonked out on the couch. Now here he
came after her, barefoot, wearing his gray work pants and a
wife-beater,which looked disgusting on his huge, hulking, hairy body.
Like Mrs. Coleman, he was maybe in his mid-forties. Unlike Mrs.
Coleman, he didn’t even pretendto like the girls she fostered for a
living.
What he would do Kat
never heard, because she jumped down the last two steps just then to
land hard on her wooden soles on the cracked asphalt of the alley, and
hands reached out of the Camaro’s door, which had opened in
anticipation of her imminent arrival, to drag her inside. She half
leaped and half was pulled in on top of a shifting mass of teenage
bodies. The door was still partially open when, tires squealing, the
Camaro peeled rubber out of there. It slammed shut, though whether from
the force of the forward motion or because somebodyreached out and
grabbed it she couldn’t have said. As she struggled to sit up, Kat
caught glimpses of long rows of brick walls broken up by cheap
aluminum-framed windows and zigzagging fire escapes, and overflowing
dumpsters and piles of trash that hadn’t quite made it into the
dumpsters, and an odd person or two slinking through the dark as the
headlights flashed over them.
“No, they won’t call
the cops,” Kat replied to the last thing she heard as she wiggled her
butt down between Leah and her boyfriend, Roger Friedkin, while Donna
Bianco was squashed against the far window. With the four of them
wedged into the backseat and Jason and Mario up front, the car was hot
despite all the windows being rolled down, which was due to a broken
air conditioner.It was too humid for jeans, which she was
wearingbecause she didn’t possess any shorts, but she had teamed them
with a red tank she’d “borrowed” from LaTonya so she wasn’t actually
dying or anything. “If they did, the social workers would come and take
me away, and they don’t want that. They need the money. I heard them
talking about it.”
Special Agent Nick
Houston, FBI, stood in the kitchen of his small house in Alexandria,
Virginia, head bowed, rubbing the back of his neck as he listened to
the answeringmachine message. It was a little after eleven p.m. on a
muggy Wednesday night, and he was dead beat. He’d alreadyhad the day
from hell, testifying at the sentencing hearing for a man who had acted
as his informant for more than a year, and then watching the guy’s
daughter practically collapse in the courtroom as the
tough-on-crimejudge handed her father ten years in federal prison,
despite Nick’s promises and the old guy’s cooperation. Then he’d spent
what was left of the day sparring with high-priced lawyers who were
trying to paint him as a whack job as he’d testified in a related case,
giving depositions,filling out the mountains of paperwork that
followedthe conclusion of every case like a tail follows a dog, and
then, finally, on his way home, getting called in as an adviser to a
hostage situation that had resulted in one of the hostages, a woman,
being killed.
“Goddamn it, Allie.” Nick slammed his hand down
on the fake butcher-block counter. The counter wasn’t all that
sturdy—he’d been meaning to redo the kitchen since he’d bought the
house five years earlier, but so far had never found the time—and
everything on it jumped, including the water in the fishbowl. His two
goldfish, Bill and Ted, gave him reproachful looks. Of course, the
reproach in their little bulbous eyes could be because the box of fish
food was sitting right there besidehis hand, and he hadn’t yet made a
move to feed them. Bill and Ted—who were still on the excellent
adventurethat had begun two years ago, when he had met them at a
carnival where he’d very misguidedly taken a woman and her six-year-old
son on a date, only to have the kid beg for the fish, which Nick had
won after spending about forty dollars on Ping-Pong balls to throw at
their bowl, after which his date (the mother) had said she wasn’t
having nasty, smelly fish in her house and given them back to him, his
lucky day—were sticklers like that. They wanted their two squares and a
clean fishbowl. Other than that, they were dream roommates. They were
quiet, they never had a bad day, and when he needed a listening ear,
they were there.
Blood’s thicker than water. He could almost hear
his mother saying it as she stood swaying from too much booze in the
doorway of one of the succession of trailers that had been their home
when he and Allie were growingup. Usually when she said it she was
sending him out after Allie, his beautiful, unstable, four-years-older
sister whose own weakness for all kinds of chemical highs had
manifested itself as early as middle school. He had been the stable one
of the trio, the one who took a good, hard look at his hardscrabble
life and vowed to do better, to circumvent an apparent family weakness
for drugs and alcohol by not drinking, not getting high, not doing
anythingbut working really hard, first for grades and later for money,
so they could all have a better life. Unfortunately,his mother died
while he was in college. But when he graduated, he kept his promise to
himself: He took Allie, who’d already been through one husband, away
from the squalid Georgia town in which they’d grown up, and moved her
with him to Virginia, where he was just starting his career with the
FBI.
For a while, things had
been good for both of them. Buoyed by this opportunity for a new start,
Allie had gotten a job and—as far as Nick knew, anyway— stayed clean.
The thing about Allie was, when she wasn’t high, she was a joy to be
around, with a bright, effervescent personality that drew people to her
like metal shavings to a magnet. She was also beautiful, a tall,
slender, blue-eyed blonde with the delicate, elegant features of a
model.
Lying on her stomach on
the hard, cold tiles with her wrists duct-taped together behind her
back, she was up close and personal with the slick, smooth expanse of
glazed twelve-inch terra-cotta squares in a way she had never been
before. That meant there was no missing the greasy smears on the
surface, as if something oily had been recently spilled and not so
carefully wiped up. Plus, there were small, muddy paw prints—the flat,
round face of her Himalayan cat, Muffy, flashed into her mind—along
with some dried blackish droplets that smelled like barbecue sauce, and
a random assortment of unidentifiable scuffs, stains, and dirt.
Lisa Abbott, her dear
friend and former sorority sister,had, in the unluckiest of
coincidences, selected this weekend to visit Washington, D.C., for the
first time in the seven years since Katharine had moved there right out
of college, armed with her spanking-new degree in political science and
a head full of change-the-world ideals. Katharine had taken Muffy to a
friend’s for the weekend—Lisa was allergic to cats—then picked Lisa up
at Dulles just after five. They had been excited to be together again
after so long, gabbing away a mile a minute as they filled each other
in on what was going on in their lives. They had stopped for drinks at
Le Bar in Georgetown, had dinner around the corner at Angelo’s, then
gone clubbing. By the time they arrived back here, at her elegant
two-story town house in the historic Old Town section of the D.C.
bedroom communityof Alexandria, Virginia, it was after midnight and
they both had been more than a little sloshed. They had toasted their
reunion with one more glass of wine, then gone to bed, not so much
totally exhausted as totally wasted.
While the thug who now
had his fist in her hair had done his best to pound information she
didn’t have out of her, the other had gone on a rampage through her
home. She had been beaten up to the sound of muffled thumps and thuds
and crashes as the other man had torn the town house apart, flinging
books from the shelves, snatching paintings from the walls, upending
furniture, flipping over the expensive Oriental carpets that covered
the highly polished hardwood floors. If her next-door neighbor, a
doctor whose name escaped her mind at present, had been home, he might
have heard something. But when she and Lisa had gotten home, the
windows of his town house had been dark, and she knew that he was
frequently away for the weekend. As for the junior congresswoman who
lived in the town house on her other side, she was definitely back home
in Minnesota until the end of August. There was a possibilitythat the
lawyer couple who lived in the last of the row of four town houses
might be at home—if they’d gone somewhere, they hadn’t told her, but
then again, why would they?—but even if they were there, it didn’t seem
to be doing anyone any good: So far, there had been no ringing
telephone as a curious neighbor called to ask what was up with the
middle-of-the-night commotion.Likewise, there had been no wailing
sirens, no banging on the front door, no shouts to open up. As far as
neighborly intervention was concerned, there was, in a word, nothing.
If the doctor or the lawyers were indeedat home, they were clearly as
oblivious to what was happening as the night-dark Potomac, which flowed
sleepily past just across the cobbled street.
According to the clock on
the black-fronted microwave,which was built into one of the exposed
brick walls that were a feature of the recently redone kitchen, the
time was one-oh-seven a.m. It was Saturday, July 29. Washington—at
least, official Washington—was all but closed down for the summer. That
meant that Old Town was thin of company just at present. Katharine’s
street, home to a number of the less important factotums of government,
was at least half-empty. Her town house— the lovely historic one that
had been totally remodeled, the one that came with a supposedly
state-of-the-art securitysystem, the one that was so pricey because it
was in a good section of town, the one that up until about twenty
minutes ago she had considered profoundly safe—was, on this steamy
summer’s night, as isolated as a cabin in the middle of a forest.
Her boyfriend. Edward
Barnes. A fit, distinguished-looking,soon-to-be-divorced
forty-seven-year-old, who was in Amsterdam until Tuesday. They’d been
seeingeach other for the past thirteen months. He’d been her boss for
the last four years. And—oh, yeah—he’d been the DDO—Deputy Director of
Operations—of the CIA for two of those, taking her, his executive
assistant,right up through the ranks with him, until now, when to all
intents and purposes she, Katharine Marie Lawrence, former notorious
party girl, was one of the most powerful people in the CIA.
“Yo, found it!” The
exultant cry cut her off in mid-spiel.It came from, she judged, the
small den that, with the living room/dining room combination, kitchen,
entry hall, and half-bath, made up the town house’s first floor. It, uttered in such a gleeful tone by the second bad guy, could only mean one thing: the hidden safe.
“Let’s go,” Lisa whispered. She grabbed
Katharine’s upper arm just above the elbow, propelling her to her feet,
hacking at the tape around Katharine’s wrists at the same time. The
tape split, and Katharine tore her wrists lose from their sticky
confinement. Coming uprightso fast made her head feel as if it would
explode. A knifelike pain from where she had been kicked shot through
her side, making her fear that she had at least one cracked rib. Pins
and needles attacked her blood-deprivedarms as they moved. Sucking in
air, she tried to run and discovered a terrible truth: Her legs did not
want to work. Dizzy and weak, battling a sudden attack of nausea,
Katharine forced herself into motion anyway, her legs heavy and her
feet clumsy as she lurched crouching after Lisa, who was already
darting away towardthe far side of the kitchen. A small laundry room
was located there, and in that laundry room was the back door.
Everything was blurry,
but she was immediately aware of a light-colored ceiling and walls and
knew that she was indoors. Her surroundings were gloomy and gray,
shadowy with the absence of any direct light, althoughthere seemed to
be enough light from some nearby source—a hallway, perhaps?—to allow
her to see shapes, to see him. She was lying on her back on a bed,
narrow and faintly uncomfortable, not her own. She wasn’t lying flat,
though: Her head and upper torso were elevated as the surface beneath
her rose at a slight angle. His head dominated the center of her field
of vision.His face was lean and tanned, topped off by a thatch of
longish dark blond hair that waved back from his forehead. A profusion
of curls flipped out untidily around his nape, but, with the light
source behind him, she could not yet make out any details of his
appearancebeyond that. He leaned closer, peering down at her intently,
blocking her view of the rest of the room. With his shift in position,
the source of the light was no longer directly behind him, and she was
able to see him a little better. He was frowning, she saw, and he wore
glasses with narrow wire frames. The penlight, turned off now, was in
his hand.
“Hi there,” he said as
their eyes met and held. There was definitely some kind of connection
between them, but the harder she tried to latch on to it, the more
elusivethe memory became. Then, after the briefest of pauses in which
he almost seemed to be waiting for something, he turned on the small
lamp near the bed. Blinking in its sudden low-wattage glow, she
realized that she was in a hospital room. It was all there, the heavily
curtained windows limned with grayish light that managed to creep in
around the edges, the dark TV affixed to the wall at the end of the
bed, the banks of medical equipment, none of which, fortunately, seemed
to be attached to her. Oh, wait, there was one narrow tube snaking out
from the inside of her right elbow. Followingit from where it emerged
from beneath a strip of white tape up to the plastic bag half-full of
clear liquid that hung from a shiny metal pole beside the bed, she
realized that she was hooked up to an IV. Not good. Beforeshe had time to think any more about the ramificationsof that, he added, “Remember me?”
Blinking in
consternation, she concentrated as his features came into sharper
focus. What she registered first was an overall impression that here
was a good-lookingguy. His eyes, which narrowed as he watched her, were
medium blue beneath the thin, rectangular lenses that didn’t distort
them in any appreciable way. There were crinkles at the corners of his
eyes, which came partly from the sun but mostly, she thought, from the
intentness with which he was regarding her. They were nice eyes, mild,
intelligent, maybe a little reserved, set off by short, stubby, fair
lashes and unruly slashes of ash-brown brows that formed thick,
straight lines across his forehead. He had high cheekbones, a long,
masculine,slightly off-center nose, a thin-lipped mouth, and an angular
jaw with a stubborn-looking chin. He was tall, maybe six-one, although
it was difficult to judge when she was lying on her back looking up at
him, broad of shoulder, lean of build, probably in his late thirties.
There was the faintest hint of stubble on his chin, more three-o’clock
than five-o’clock shadow. He wore a limp blue oxford-cloth shirt with a
slightly frayed button-downcollar, no tie, open at the throat, with a
white doctor’s coat pulled on over it.
Once she had the name,
everything else fell into place. Of course, he was her next-door
neighbor, the physician. He had lived in the adjoining town house
since—when? Maybe the beginning of the summer. Not that she had seen a
whole lot of him. She couldn’t quite remember specific occasions, but
probably they had introducedthemselves once, then said hi whenever they
happened to cross paths dragging trash cans to the curb and such. Had
they had words at one time? Maybe his trash cans had blocked her
garage, or her cat had walked on his car, or something? A minor dispute
of that nature would account for the tiny flicker of antagonism,if that
was indeed what it was, that had flared up inside her when she had
first set eyes on him. Whatever, it couldn’t have been too serious,
because it was already fading away into the mists of her subconscious.
"Ed,” she murmured,
seeking to mentally cement his name to the growling voice. Instantly
his image appeared in her mind’s eye: short, well-groomed black hair
just starting to go gray; heavy-lidded brown eyes; meaty, triangular
nose; full lips; a perpetually tan face with prominent cheekbones and a
square jaw. He was a hair taller than five-ten, an attractive, muscular
man who liked to work out and had a closet full of expensivedesigner
suits. And, good lord, he sounded like he was used to people asking How high? when he said jump. Well, maybe he was just upset. She concentrated, trying to remember what he’d asked. Oh, yeah.
“Yeah, I know,” he
interrupted. The picture had caused him no end of trouble, too. He’d
been with her in it, of course, with his arm around her, escorting her
up some steps into the house. The magnificent necklace and bracelet and
earrings she had been wearing had rightfully belonged to his wife, who
was not yet his ex, and who had raised hell when she saw the paper.
And, not incidentally, moved out of the house they were still sharing
on a halfway-friendly basis and upped her financialdemands. “What makes
you think they were after jewelry?”
At the thought, panic
assailed her, and that decided the issue right there. Without knowing
more about what was going on than she did, she wasn’t about to trust
herselfto them, no way, nohow. That being the case, she had to get
herself gone, now, whatever it took. Hands unsteady,pulse pounding a
mile a minute, doing her best to ignore the throbbing pain in her head
and the lesser ache in her ribs, she threw back the bedclothes, swung
her feet over the edge of the bed, and stood up.
Only vaguely aware of the
tingling of her skin as goose bumps sprang to life along her too-bare
flesh, she took a moment she very much feared she didn’t have to pause
with one hand on the knob and press her cheek to the cool metal door,
listening intently for any sound from the corridor. Holding her breath,
jittery as a cat in a kennel full of dogs, she forced herself to wait
and listenfor at least a ten-count. To have Ed’s “people” catch her in
the act of fleeing her room would not, she felt, be a good thing.
Better to skitter back to bed and try to delay her release from the
hospital for as long as possibleif that scenario seemed inevitable. But
if she did that, she would to all intents and purposes be putting
herself in their custody—which translated to “at their mercy.” The
thought made her throat contract and her stomach tie itself into a big,
painful knot. Precisely why, she didn’t know, but the fear she felt was
unmistakable.
Taking a deep breath, she
did, stepping out into the beige-walled passage, pushing the IV ahead
of her, wincing at the squeaky clatter of its wheels. It turned out,
she saw with one quick wild glance around, that she was only two doors
away from the end of the hallway— and a red exit sign marking a door
that led, presumably, to the fire stairs. The nurses’ station was
perhaps fifty feet away in the opposite direction, opening off the
middleof the corridor like a giant room without walls. At the nurses’
station, a gray-haired man in scrubs stood with his back to her,
talking with a brown-haired woman in white lab coat as he tapped an
impatient fingeron a manila folder that was spread out in front of them
on the tall blue counter. A black woman in scrubs—presumably the same
one who had taken her blood pressure not long before—pushed a rattling
cart down the opposite end of the corridor. She, too, had her back to
Katharine.
The hospital wasn’t a
building, it was a complex, she saw as she left it. Tall, gleaming
towers of industrial gray steel and glass were linked by a pair of
glassed-in sky-walksmaybe eight stories up. Long, low buildings the
size and general appearance of airplane hangars clusteredat the base of
the towers, and it was through the side of one of these that she
exited. Emerging onto a sidewalk that ran alongside a small, nearly
full parking lot, she stopped, momentarily blinded by the glare of the
sun bouncing off dozens of windshields. Raising her hand to shield her
eyes from the worst of it, she tried to get her bearings. The steady
sound of stop-and-go traffictold her that there was a busy road nearby.
The sky was a beautiful cerulean blue dotted with a handful of white
clouds that looked like fluffy sheep. The sun, round and yellow as a
tennis ball, hung just above the scalloped tree line that marked where
the parking lot ended. The heat was palpable, wrapping itself around
her like a thick, moist blanket. Already, at what she guessed couldn’t
be much past eight a.m., D.C. was sweating.
It didn’t matter. At
least, not right now. Taking a deep breath, she turned a shoulder to
the keypad and proceededon. The entry was a long hall that ran the
length of the first floor, with all the living space to the right and
Dan’s town house beyond the thick dividing wall to the left. The hall
ended in the arched door that opened into the kitchen. The ceiling was
at least twelve feet high, and two small, antique-looking crystal
chandeliers hung from it. About halfway down the hall, a simple,
old-fashionedstaircase that looked original to the building rose to the
second floor, narrowing the hall before it reached the kitchen. The
walls were real plaster, painted creamy white. An expensive-looking
piece of modern art—stripes of horizontal colors in shades of red and
orangeand purple—hung over a wrought-iron, glass-toppedconsole table.
On the table was a pile of mail and a crystal vase full of gorgeous red
roses. She was sure that their perfume must fill the air, but, courtesy
of her damaged nose, she couldn’t smell it.
The decor was beautiful,
expensive, and in the best of taste, but unfortunately, she felt no
kinship with it. This was not, she felt sure, her taste. Had she
used a decorator?Or had Ed, who owned the place, had it done? Even as
she reached the base of the stairs, though, something still more
unsettling occurred to her.
Who, though? She tried to quiet her galloping
heart by reasoning it out. A housekeeper? The name LouAnn popped into
her mind, along with a picture of a scrawny, fortysomething woman with
short, graying brown hair and a lifetime’s worth of wrinkles already
etched on her face. LouAnn came once a week, on Mondays, she
remembered,pleased with herself. But it was still early in the day, and
what she had seen of the house looked pristine.She didn’t remember much
about LouAnn’s work ethic, but she doubted that, even if the woman
could have been persuaded to come in on Saturday, she could have
accomplished so much in such a short time. So who did that leave? Ed’s
people? She might not remember them, exactly, but she remembered enough
about them to know that they were frighteningly efficient. They might
well have been hard at work restoring order as soon as the police
finished up.
If so, she realized
grimly, she couldn’t remember it. There was lots of black in the heap,
she saw at a glance, and lots of tailored jackets and skirts that she
thought were probably suits. Right now, they weren’t what she needed.
Colorful, silky panties and bras were on top, and she grabbed random
handfuls and thrust them into the bag, feeling no more familiarity with
them than if they were new items she was grabbing off the sale table at
Macy’s. Then she rooted through the equally unfamiliar clothes,
snatching up the simplest things she could find: T-shirts, a couple of
casual skirts, white shorts, a pair of jeans. Weekend clothes.
Everythingelse looked too formal, too pricey. She wore a lot of
designer stuff, Dan had said.
The bathroom was big,
beautiful, all black and white tile to match the bedroom, with a marble
Jacuzzi tub, a toilet that was set off from the rest in its own little
enclosure,and a separate shower stall. She did what she had to do, then
headed straight for the gleaming white porcelain sink. Seeing her
terrifyingly unfamiliar reflectionin the mirror that fronted the
medicine cabinet was still a shock, but she didn’t have time to panic,
so she kept her eyes averted from it as much as possible. She hastily
washed her hands, did her best to wash her face without getting her
nose wet, and brushed her teeth. Then she opened the medicine cabinet
and scooped the contents into the bag wholesale, pausing only to drag a
small brush she found there through her surprisingly stiff-feeling hair
and run a tube of tinted ChapStick over her dry lips. Closing the
cabinet again, though, she couldn’t help it: She had to look in the
mirror. No magicaltransformation had occurred: However impossible it
seemed, she was now a slim, tanned blonde with a bum nose and hair as
straight as broom straw.
“Gotcha.” There was a wealth of satisfaction in
his voice—not a voice she recognized from last night, she
registeredinstantly—as her feet scrabbled on the wet floor to regain
their purchase. Terror washed over her in an icy wave as he used his
choke hold on her throat to haul her upright. She felt his body heat,
the abrasion of his clothes against her skin. He was big, strong, and
probably close to twice her weight, she realized with despair, even as
she gasped for air and her nails tore uselessly into the smooth cloth
of his jacket. Still, she struggled to be free, squirming frantically
and kicking back at his kneecaps with desperateforce. He jerked his
legs back just in time and the blows slammed into his shins, which did
nothing more, as far as she could tell, than hurt her feet.
The arm around her neck
tightened again, suddenly, violently forcing her jaw up and slamming
her head back against his collarbone hard. Her feet went out from under
her a second time, and he grabbed her around the waist to keep her
upright. She barely had time to register that at least his gun was no
longer pressed to her temple when he ducked his head so that his mouth
was near her ear. The cotton hood felt smooth against her cheek and
ear. His breath was warm against her skin. Struggling to breathe with
his arm heavy across her throat, scrabbling to get her feet solidly
back under her once more, she found herself looking at the ceiling, the
wall, the vivid colors of the sunset painting to her left. On her
right, she could see a good-sized portion of the living room as well as
a sliver of the den, which, like the rest of the place, had been
cleaned up. That sliver encompassed the desk, part of the fireplace,
and the area above it where a painting of a sandy beach usually took
pride of place. The only wrong note was that the painting was
missing.In its place, a raw-looking rectangular hole about half the
size of the painting gaped in the plaster. It took her a second, but
then she realized that she was almost certainly looking at the spot
where the safe had been.
“Where do you think
you’re going?” There was a gloating edge to his voice as he regained
his balance first, rushing her, grabbing at her, knocking her to the
floor when she would have eluded him. She hit hard, sprawling facedown,
then, realizing her danger, immediatelytried to roll away, kicking, and
screaming like a steam whistle. To her horror, he succeeded in catching
her right ankle. His hand was warm and terrifyingly strong but, she saw
with a chill of repulsion, was also unnaturallywhite and felt plastic,
inhuman. It was a secondor so before she realized that he was wearing
thin white surgical gloves.
Cursing, he came after
her as she scooted against the base of the built-in island, pushing the
bar stools out of her way, flattening her back against the swirling
wrought iron, grabbing on to the cold metal twists for dear life.
Knocking the bar stools aside with a crash, he ducked beneath the
marble overhang, grabbing at her while she kicked and screamed her
lungs out. His intent, she thought, was to scoop her up bodily and
carry her away before help could reach her. If he succeeded in taking
her out of the town house with him, she was toast, she knew. Terror and
hope combined to give her what felt like superhuman strength as she
clung to the wrought-iron island with both hands and kicked him away
one more time.
From where she stood, she
could see only a double row of brick buildings and a seemingly endless
line of small backyards. They were only one backyard (Dan’s) away from
the cross street, but a tall honeysuckle hedge backed by a
six-foot-high brick wall ran from the far side of Dan’s house to the
garages and beyond, permanentlyproviding privacy from the street. No
one was coming at them from that direction. Looking the other way,
perhaps six fences down, a golden retriever paced. A man in a lawn-care
service uniform mowed grass. Until she spotted him, the roar of his
mower had been all but drowned out by the thundering of her pulse in
her ears. Still farther along, there was another tall brick wall where
the residential section of the street turned commercial, which meant no
one was coming at them from that direction, either. The lineup of
garages cut her and Dan off from the alley, and the town houses blocked
them from the view of anyone on Union Street. They were, in effect,
standing inside a rectangle of brick walls, but still someone could get
to them, someone could cut through the narrow swath of green grass
betweentheir town houses and the quartet of nearly identicaltown houses
next door, someone could sneak through the small backyards, hopping
fences, hiding behindbushes and trees—or someone could turn sniper and
fire on them from a roof, or a window, or just about anywhere.
At least, Katharine
registered, he didn’t seem to be shocked. He appeared, rather, to
actually be thinking the matter over as he drove. Reaching the end of
the alley, the Blazer came to a stop at Wilkes Street. A deliverytruck
rattled past, inches away from the front bumper, followed by a
seemingly endless procession of cars. More vehicles clogged the
opposite side of the street. Pedestrians, including another tour group
with a guide dressed as, if she had to guess, Martha Washington,crowded
the sidewalks. The shops were open, the tours were under way, and the
tourists, on this hot, sunny Saturday, were out in force. Being
surrounded by so much activity should have been reassuring. Instead,
Katharine felt terribly exposed.
“Put it in your purse,”
he said, and she did. Then she closed the vents, shutting off the flow
of icy air that was exactly what she didn’t need. Folding her arms
tightly over her chest for warmth, she dropped her head back against
the seat, closed her eyes, and tried to regain her composure. Dan drove
in silence for a while, and she was grateful for that. The sound of
traffic rushing by outside the window and the vibrations of the vehicle
itselfwere surprisingly soothing. Gradually, her pulse rate slowed and
her breathing steadied and her tense musclesrelaxed. In fact, if she
hadn’t been so acutely aware of the direness of her situation, she
might have succumbedto creeping exhaustion and dozed off. But she
couldn’t. They would be at the airport soon. Then she would be on her
own. If she was going to pull this off, she was going to have to stay
alert. She needed to be smart and strong and able to think fast on her
feet— none of which seemed remotely possible just at present.
Katharine looked at him
without replying for a moment.She watched the play of light and shadow
over his face, and was once again struck by how familiar he seemed to
her. He was only a neighbor, and to the best of her knowledge, she’d
had only the most casual of relationshipswith him before today, but the
truth was, her relationship with him didn’t feel casual. It felt
important,and solid, as if he were someone on whom she knew she could
rely. Add in that hint of tension between them that she’d felt when
he’d been looming over her bed when she’d first opened her eyes, and
she suddenly wondered if, sometime in the past, he’d been more than
just a neighbor. Asking him about the details of their acquaintancewas
an option, but if she did that, she would have to admit she didn’t
remember much. She wasn’t sure that, until she had a better sense of
what was going on, revealing her ignorance was a good idea. If someone
was clever, it could, she realized, be used to manipulate her. Anyway,
she was running out of time. They were rushing up on the exit, and once
he let her out at the airport,he would be gone.
There was not, of course,
a single Starbucks to be found in the blocks leading up to the airport.
Dan pulled into a McDonald’s drive-thru lane, ordered coffee,juice, and
breakfast sandwiches for both of them, settled the drinks into the cup
holders between them, then nosed into a parking space so they could
eat. As soon as she got her hands on the coffee, Katharine pulled off
the lid, stirred in a packet of Sweet’N Low, and took an eager sip.
Tomorrow, after she’d
showered and slept and thought, she would be in a much better place,
much stronger physically and, hopefully, mentally, too. If she carried
through with her plan now, there was the possibilitythat she would make
a mistake from sheer exhaustion.It was even possible—and she felt a
thrill of horror at the idea—that Ed might have seen through her lie
about the hotel. He—or someone else, the someonewho was behind one or
both attacks, if it wasn’t Ed—might be one jump ahead of her and
already have people watching the airport. Airports. Metro stations.
Amtrak stations. Bus stations. All public transportation facilities.
With her car missing—and maybe Ed or whoeverhad had something to do
with that, too—public transportation was her only way out of town, and
he would know that.
Her eyes popped open, and
without lifting her head, she turned her gaze toward him. They were
back on the expressway now, heading west on I-66, and traffic was
humming along, heavy as usual. A semi went flying past, and she could
feel the vibration of it shaking the SUV. Through the windows she could
see blue sky bisected by the vapor trail of an airliner. Arlington
National Cemeterywent by on the left, and she realized that she
recognizedthe grassy acres of trees and monuments instantly, even at
speed and from a distance, even before the sign identifying it flashed
into view. Funny that she should know things like where Arlington was,
and that it was possible to hop on the Metro at Reagan National
Airportand disappear, and even that this degree of traffic was normal
for Saturday on this expressway, and yet know practically nothing else.
Complying, she
discovered, wasn’t all that easy. With the best will in the world, she
didn’t seem to be able to make her muscles work. When she simply looked
up at him without doing anything else, he made an impatient sound under
his breath, then leaned in and unfastened her seat belt for her. His
upper arm brushed her breasts, and she was suddenly very aware of the
contact, and of how firm his biceps were. Her brow knit; that tiny jolt
of awareness was impossible to mistake for anything else—and the most
disconcerting thing about it was that it felt so hauntingly familiar.
He was close, so close she could see the texture of his bronzed skin
and each individualhair in the stubble darkening his jaw, and a tiny,
comma-shaped scar near the corner of his left eye. He must have felt
the weight of her gaze, because he glanced at her and their eyes met.
The reassuringly mild blue of his eyes was no longer quite so mild, she
discovered,nor quite so reassuring. Instead, his eyes had taken on a
glint that made them look harder and more purposeful.
With her arms wrapped
around his neck, she had an up-close-and-personal view of his profile.
It wasn’t classic,precisely, but it was handsome and manly, and the
crooked smile struck a chord deep in her memory bank: She’d seen him
smile like that before, she was almost sure, but again, no details
surfaced to back up the feeling.The sun beat down on them, gleaming off
the unruly dark gold waves of his hair, deepening the tired lines
around his eyes and mouth. He was looking tense, and with a little
wake-up call of surprise, she saw that he must be almost as scared and
jumpy as she was. Driving a getaway car for a woman running for her
life was almostcertainly not something he did every day. Getting pulled
into the thick of a murderous (possible) governmentconspiracy likewise
must be new to him. She hadn’t thought of it like that before, but now
that she did, she saw that he was really being a mensch about
everything. More than a mensch, in fact: a hero. Her hero.
That crack she considered
unworthy of a reply. He carried her easily, like she weighed nothing at
all, and she had a moment there when she found herself almost admiring
his strength until she realized she probably didn’t weigh anything, now
that she was a skinny blonde with big jewelry and perfect nails and brain damage.
That last thought was so upsetting that she barely even
registeredanything else until he set her down with something less than
grace on the picnic table’s bench. The molded plastic was surprisingly
comfortable, she discovered. The heat was still palpable, thick and
enervating as the inside of a steam room, but a delicate, lacy
patchwork of shade from the elm spread over the area like a shadowy
doily, sheltering it from the direct rays of the sun, making the
temperature, oh, say, ninety in the shade.
“Okay, so why don’t you
start by explaining to me why you think you’re losing your mind over
floor tiles,” he said, settling in beside her, his long legs just
brushing hers and his forearms resting comfortably on the tabletop.He
spared her only the briefest of glances as he spoke. Instead, his eyes
fixed on the overpass with its ramps that curved down past a background
of leafy forestto the road they’d just left. There was traffic, she
saw, as she followed his gaze, lots of traffic coming off the near ramp
and going up the far ramp and pulling in and out of the surrounding
businesses and zipping along the highway in front of them. But none of
the various vehiclescaught her eye, none of them appeared to be
searching for anyone, and besides, unless someone was right on their
tail, she was pretty sure there was no way anyone was going to be able
to find them in such a busy place. They were the proverbial needle in
the haystack. Realizing that made her feel a tiny bit better. Or at
least safer.
The memory remained
tantalizingly elusive, but she was sure—well, almost sure—it was there.
But the harder she tried to capture it, to assign the words their
proper time and place and context, the more it seemed to slip away. It
was frustrating. No, worse, it was maddening.Vaguely, she heard the
rear driver’s-side door open, but beyond glancing over her shoulder to
make sure it was Dan and not some murderous bad guy who had opened it,
she paid scant attention. Her head dropped back to rest against the
seat as she desperately racked her brain, searching, searching,
searching for the key that would unlock all the hidden details of her
past . . .
She glanced at him,
glanced down at the sandals, and then, as he drove around toward the
front of the store, slipped them on one at a time in a silent act of
agreement.Under the circumstances, with visions of silent
assassinsdancing in her brain, she wasn’t a big fan of staying in the
car alone, either. As she had noted before, the sandals fit. Of course,
they were basically thongs with heels. Tricked-out, expensive-looking
thongs with dangling turquoise beads and supple leather straps, but
nothing that was too exacting as to size.
The sound of the motor
turning over coupled with a rush of tepid air shooting out of the vents
refocused her attention in a hurry. Dan was already sitting next to
her; he had started the Blazer. A growing panic made her heart begin to
race. If she had any doubts about who and what he was, now was the time
to act on them. While they were here, in this well-traveled area, she
had options. Not great options, but options. She could call a taxi. Or
hitch a ride. Or, well, if one of those two didn’t pan out, she could
probably think of something else. But once the Blazer was on the road
again, she realized, her choices dried up. Dan would once again be the
only game in town. And by his own admission, he was taking her to a
cabin—a cabin that was probably out in the back of beyond . . .
She saw instantly—because
it was the only building in sight—that he was referring to a small,
one-story log cabin with a rusty-looking metal roof supported by four
narrow wooden posts that overhung a low-slung porch. It was set in a
grassy clearing that, because of the positionof the sun, was half
sunny, half in shade, with the cabin being split down the middle
between the two. Besidethe single step leading up to the porch, a
gnarled mountain laurel, its dark green foliage heavy with
purpleblooms, grew. There was an outbuilding that could have been a
small garage a little way behind the house. The yard was overgrown and
dotted with dandelions, and, like the house, gave off an air of general
neglect. It was obvious at a glance that the place was infrequentlyused.
She did, by following him
into the kitchen. Her head hurt, her legs felt wobbly, and she was so
tired she could barely think, but still she thought it was a good idea
to get the lay of the land, so to speak. The kitchen was small,
ugly—green laminate counters atop mustard-yellowcabinets, harvest-gold
refrigerator and stove that looked decades old, faux wood linoleum
floor—and dark. He dropped the duffel bag on the floor, deposited the
groceries on the small rectangular wooden table that, along with two
chairs, took up most of the floor space in the middle of the room, then
pulled open the thin white curtains above the sink.
Suddenly she found
herself observing what looked like a shabby office. The details were
hazy, but she knew it was night, and the room she was looking into was
dark except for a small amount of light filtering in through what she
knew was a door to her left, although she couldn’t see it; a wall
protruding into the room blocked her view. Her vision sharpened,
focused, and she realizedthat she was in the scene, too, in a second
room that was connected to the first by an old-fashioned wooden door
that stood open. She was sitting in a hard, wooden chair facing that
open door. She was actually tied to the chair, tied hand and foot, and
gagged, too.
That voice again. Oh,
God, she knew that voice, knew it well, but the context was impossible
to dredge up. Sucking in air, she cast a quick, furtive glance around,
trying to get her bearings, trying to get a handle on what was
happening. It was clearly night. She could see the darkness of the
world outside through a sliver between the imperfectly drawn curtains.
There was a steady drumming sound, insistent and rhythmic, that in her
agitationshe was only just now becoming aware of. It must be raining.
The sound was rain hitting a tin roof.
Her gut was screaming in favor of the not.
Uncurling herself from the cramped position she was in, sore muscles
protesting every move, she clambered off the bed. Closing the door—it
didn’t have a lock— she pulled jeans and a bra from the duffel bag. She
dressed quickly—the jeans were a little long, a little tight, but, once
she rolled them up at the ankles, doable; the bra was nude stretch
nylon that, because of the natureof the material, molded itself
effortlessly to her perky what-she-guessed-were-B-cups—even as she
tried to come up with a plan. Trading the white T-shirt for a plain
black one (the harder to see in the dark), she gave the kitten-heeled
sandals a jaundiced look—if she had to run, they would be worse than
useless—and left them off. Anyway, under the circumstances, walking
around the cabin in her bare feet would probably seem more natural.
Then she opened the purse, extracted her driver’s license, credit
cards, and cash, and stuffed them into her back pocket. Running a brush
through her hair, she smoothed a slick of tinted, strawberry-flavored
lip balm over her dry lips and stuck the tube in her front pocket.
Carpe diem—seize the day.
Even as the words popped into her mind, her heart started to pound.
This was it: her chance. Casting another assessing glance at Dan, she
went for it, moving stealthily toward the coffee table, her bare feet
soundless on the tightly woven cords of the rug. Pulse racing,
practically holding her breath lest he should look around and spot her,
she picked up the keys carefully, so carefully that they wouldn’t
jingle and betray her. The noise from the TV provided a cover; so, too,
did the patter of the rain and his efforts in the kitchen. Holding the
keys tightly in her fist, she moved away, all the while shooting
lightning glances in Dan’s direction. He continued to stir the soup,
oblivious.
It was only a few steps
to the door. Reaching it, she cast a nervous glance over her shoulder
to find Dan, still at the stove, pouring milk from the carton into the
soup. With her heart now thumping so loudly that its thudding in her
ears was all she could hear, she took a deep breath and went for it,
turning the knob, so quietly,pulling open the door inch by careful
inch, praying that it wouldn’t creak, and then when the opening was
wide enough, slipping through it out into the cool, damp darkness of
the porch.
She ran like a spooked
rabbit anyway. The Blazer was parked no more than thirty feet away.
Heart pounding, pulse racing, every nerve ending she possessed
terrifyinglyattuned to the house she was leaving behind, she tiptoed to
the edge of the porch and then bolted, flying off the porch into
darkness that would have been absoluteexcept for the light filtering
out through the tightly closed living-room curtains, running through
the driving rain, her bare feet slipping and sliding over the
already-soaked-to-flatness grass. She was wet to the skin almost
immediately. Warm, drenching water ran down her face, got into her
mouth, her eyes, which she had to blink to keep clear. She had the keys
in her hand, pointing them at the car, punching the button that she
knew, from the tiny beep and flare of light that accompanied the urgent
jabbing movement of her thumb, had already unlocked the door, when all
hell broke loose behind her.
Panting with the urgent
need to hurry, hands shaking,she tried again, more carefully. This time
the key went in. Almost bouncing in the seat with apprehension,she
stepped on the accelerator—not too hard, becauseshe didn’t want to risk
flooding the engine—and turned the key. The Blazer roared to life. The
headlights,which must have been set to automatic, came on, their
brightness terrifying as they cut through the darkness,unmistakably
blazing her location to the world. They illuminated rain, trees, half a
dozen sets of small animal eyes shining at her from the undergrowth . .
.
Jerking the keys from the
ignition, she pushed the door open and scrambled out into the steamy
night. The muddy gravel beneath her feet felt warm and squishy. In the
typical fashion of summer showers, the rain was easing off now—now that
it was too late to do her any good, she reflected bitterly. A few fat
drops hit her in the face; more plopped into standing puddles that
formed gleaming black pools on the road. The moon, a silvery crescent,
peeked out from beneath the blanket of thick, gray clouds, unexpectedly
illuminating everything—including herself and the Blazer. Of course.
Closing—not slamming, on the off-chance that Dan was deaf, blind, and
stupid and was thus somehow not aware of the Blazer’s location and
fate—the door, she punched the lock button on the key ring.
With that in mind, she
ignored the weakness in her legs and the light-headedness that made
thinking a chore and the various aches and pains that should have
slowed her down, and determinedly kept on chugging over the thick, wet
carpet of fallen leaves that covered the ground. There beneath the
trees, only a few fine drops reached her, and those, she suspected,
were falling from the canopy. Mist rose from the ground, ephemeral as a
chiffon veil, as stray beams of moonlight filtering down through the
trees shone through it. The air was thick and humid, and she was sure
the earthy smell of damp vegetation must be strong, although she caught
only the merest whiff of it. The soprano piping of tree frogs mixed
with the whirring of insects to form an incessant background chorus.
Small pairs of eyes, luminescentas stars, gleamed down at her from high
up in the trees.
“Oh, no, you don’t.”
Lunging upward, he grabbed at her, his fingers scrabbling at the back
of her T-shirt and then hooking in the waistband of her too-snug jeans,
yanking her back, yanking her down. Then, when she hit on her stomach
and instinctively rolled, he heaved himselfup and over her, shoving her
onto her back. Before she could move, he came down on top of her with
all the subtlety of a truckload of wet cement. Her breath expelledwith
an emphatic ooph. “You’re not going anywhere.”
By this time her eyes
were closed, squinched shut as she tried her best to block out the
memory—no, the dream. But it didn’t feel like a dream, it felt real,
and therein lay the problem: She was hideously, horribly afraid that
somehow, some way, it was real. Or at least it had once been real. She
could feel him looking down at her, but she didn’t open her eyes. The
images were way too close, way too vivid, and she was having to work
way too hard to push them away. Her heart pounded, her pulse raced, and
her stomach had long since curled itself into a pretzel. She was even a
little nauseated.
He let go of her wrists
at last, sliding his hands up along her palms to clasp hers, stretching
her out, keeping her trapped beneath him while still pressing those
soft little kisses to her mouth. She didn’t turn her face away, didn’t
resist or reject him—didn’t want to, even though with the tiny part of
her brain that was still rational, she knew she should. Instead, her
fingers twined with his and her body arched up under his and her eyes
closed. She burned with wanting him. Her heart beat in slow, thick
thuds. Her body tightened with quivering anticipation. But still she
tried to keep her head, keep some kind of control, reminding herself
that she was lost in some nefariousgame that she didn’t understand, and
he was part of it, too, she was almost sure. And he was probably
dangerousand she certainly didn’t trust him and . . .
The knock on her door was
sharp and imperative. Calmly she rose from the chair by the window,
picked up her purse and the duffel bag, and crossed the small suite to
the door. After a quick, careful look through the peephole, she opened
the door and smiled at the two men waiting for her in the
green-carpeted hallway. It was a good feeling to realize that she
remembered them now. They were CIA case officers who, unlike most of
those in the bloated Agency hierarchy, reported directly to Ed and
acted, basically, as his errand boys. Her relationshipwith them was
professional rather than friendly—she thought they might disapprove of
the fact that she was sleeping with the boss—but she’d seen them on the
average of several times a week for the past two years. Tom Starkey was
closest to the door and, apparently,was the one who had done the
knocking. In his early thirties, he was about six feet tall,
broad-shoulderedand fit in a navy blue suit, white shirt, and red tie,
with a square-jawed, handsome face, a buzz cut that looked like it
would be medium brown if it ever grew long enough to actually have a
color, and a faint bulge beneath his jacket that, Katharine knew, was
the shoulder-holstered pistol that he was never without. A couple of
steps behind him stood George Bennett, maybe five years older and half
an inch taller, with darker brown hair and a paler complexion but
otherwiselooking enough like Starkey to be his brother. It was the
suits, Katharine thought, that made them look so much alike. Bennett
was wearing a navy blue one, too, and a white shirt, although his tie
had subtle stripes. Short-haired, well-built men in suits tended to
lose their individuality if you saw enough of them.
In minutes they were on
the freeway heading into D.C. Looking toward the city, what Katharine
saw was an ocean of gray: wave upon wave of concrete and steel. The
skyline for as far as she could see was a staggered grid of buildings.
Although it was not yet noon on Sunday,and Washington tended to be a
churchgoing town (politicians, with voters to please back home, were
big on public worship), traffic was heavy as usual, primarily because
of all the tourists. As they crossed over the Anacostia River,
Katharine looked down at its glassy green surface to see that the boats
were out in force: small sailboats, colorful as songbirds, tacking in a
zigzag pattern to catch any available breeze; cabin cruisers
zippingalong under their own power, trailing white ripples of wake;
barges loaded with cargo, chugging steadily upstream.The sky was bright
Tiffany blue. The clouds were white and feathery. The only trace of
last night’s rain was the rise in the humidity. The heat was positively
swampy, Katharine thought as Starkey pulled into an underground parking
garage beneath one of the anonymoushigh-rise apartment buildings that
were a feature of the central part of the city, found a spot, and
parked. But she didn’t have long to experience it. They walked a few
yards to an elevator, which whisked them skyward.They got out on the
twelfth floor. It was a narrow, thickly carpeted corridor lined with
widely spaced doors. When they reached the third door on the left,
Starkey produced a key, unlocked it, and swung it open, gesturing to
Katharine to precede him inside.
Despite her determination
not to, she was just about to doze off in the armchair when the door to
the bedroomwas thrust forcefully open. Startled wide awake, she sat up
abruptly as Ed, natty as always in a charcoal-graydesigner suit, white
shirt, and black tie, his black hair slicked carefully back, strode
into the bedroom, stopped short at the sight of her, and planted his
fists on his hips, a furious expression on his face.
Katharine nodded, and he
slid a proprietary hand beneathher bare elbow. It was overwarm and a
little sweaty, and when he rubbed the pad of his thumb caressinglyover
her silky inner arm, her skin crawled. Still, she didn’t pull away, and
his hand stayed where it was as he escorted her out the door and along
the shadowywalk to the Mercedes, which was parked at the curb. Starkey
and Bennett followed silently. It was a beautiful, warm summer night,
with the star-studded sky and the fingernail moon reflected in the
black waters of the Potomac. The ornate, historically correct
streetlamp on the corner gave off a gaseous yellow glow. The soft
murmur of the river was punctuated by the slap of small waves against
the riverbank as a lighted dinner boat loaded down with tourists
disappeared upstream. Strains of music and the sounds of revelry from
the boat were still barely audible. All the nearby businesses were
closed, which meant there was very little traffic. Only a few
pedestrians strolled the sidewalks, most of them on the other side of
the street as they branched out from the restaurants around Waterfront
Park, which glowed faintly white in the distance from the strands of
Christmas-tree lights that marked its entrance.
The TV was on. She could
hear it. She could even see its reflection in the glass fronting the
sunset painting in the entry hall. The reflection wasn’t clear enough
to allow her to make sure Starkey and Bennett were plopped on the couch
in front of it, but she had to assumethey were. Holding her breath,
heart tripping like a drunken frat boy, her stomach tightening with
every step, she made it all the way down to the entry hall and sidled
around the newel post, her eyes glued to the living-room door. The TV
was loud; they were watching a baseball game. That was good. With every
nerve endingshe possessed on high alert, and the sounds of a TV crowd
cheering for God-knew-what filling her ears, she crept toward the
kitchen, her bare feet soundless on the hardwood floor. She saw at a
glance that the kitchen was empty, and scuttled across it like a crab
on hot sand. Slipping through the laundry room, her heart in her throat
now, she risked a quick glance back over her shoulder—nothing—and eased
open the back door. Every click and squeak was as excruciating as a
shout.
At that moment, Katharine
crested the rise and was, briefly, out of sight. The Beltway on-ramp
was close, she knew. The discreet sign with its accompanying arrow at
the side of the road made that clear. Wistfully, she thought about just
ignoring the Mercedes behind her, pulling onto the expressway, and
roaring west, as far as Saint Louis, maybe, or even California. Forget
this nightmare: She could start a whole new life.
But she knew Ed would
never let her go. Not like this. If she went, she would have to have
enough time to get well away, and then she would have to hide. The
thing to do, then, was outsmart him. She would continue to act all
huffy and fed up with the lack of privacy—not that it was much of a
stretch—and in the meantime she would go pick up Muffy and see if,
maybe, Cindy wanted to visit for a while. Like several hours. Maybe
even order in pizza and watch a movie or something. The thing was,
tomorrow was Wednesday. A workday. Under the circumstances, she
had taken the week off, but Ed was still going in, and when he was
working he was in the office every weekday morning by seven. Probably
he wouldn’t want to stay up as long as she was planning to stay out.
Hiss or no hiss, Muffy
wasn’t getting away. Luckily, the cat showed no propensity to actually
attack. It made like a dust mop with claws, staying belly to the floor
and trying to dig in for traction as Katharine grabbed hold with her
other hand, too, and pulled the cat toward her. Keeping one set of
fingers locked around the collar just in case, Katharine inched her way
back out from under the bed, pulling Muffy, who dragged her claws over
the wood every inch of the way, with her. Finally, they were both out
from under the bed, and, grimacing at the necessity,she picked the cat
up.
Instead, just at the edge
of town, so close to people that she could see the golden arches of
McDonald’s right down the road, the sedan turned into a used-car lot
just ahead. Big Jim’s Pre-owned Cars was spelled out in giant
neon letters arching over the entrance. The neon wasn’t lit, which
Katharine presumed meant the lot was closed. It was, after all, nearly
eleven by then. But big halogen lights glowed down on the rows of cars,
each of which, as far as she could tell, had its price painted in white
on the windshield. The term junkers came to mind as her gaze ran over some of them, but that wasn’t what was worrying her.
She pulled into the car
lot, and at Starkey’s direction followed the sedan past the small,
trailer-like sales officetoward the rear. The wheels bounced over
uneven pavement that, once the sales lot was passed, turned to gravel.
A squat brick building sat in the shadows at the far end of the lot,
with an open field ending in a line of scraggly trees stretching behind
it. More trees formed a narrow strip of woods on either side of the
building, which had three big white garage doors and a smaller,
people-sized door in front and, over them, in more unlit neon letters,
a huge sign that read Service.
She did, turned off the
car, and got out, standing there all alone for a moment, her heels
sinking into the gravel as she took a deep, she hoped calming, breath
and cast discreet looks in all directions. Despite this place’s
locationon the outskirts of town, from where she stood there was
nothing to be seen except dark fields and trees behindand to the sides
of the building, and, in front of it, the deserted used-car lot. They
were totally isolated, a speck of nothing beneath the vast dark sky.
By then, Starkey and
Hendricks were getting out of the car. Another short-haired man in a
suit exited the dark sedan just as the Mercedes, tires crunching,
pulled in beside them. Katharine spared the Mercedes no more than a
glance as Bennett cut the engine and got out, too. Instead, she took
another long, assessing look at the building. It was box-like and
unremarkable, a nothing place, like hundreds of thousands of other
box-likebrick buildings the world over. The faintest hint of white
light showed under the garage doors. Someone was definitely inside—Ed,
most likely, and probably other people, too.
Nobody answered. For
everyone but Hendricks, the mood seemed to be growing more tense by the
second. They were all walking down the stairs now, their feet making
hollow clanging noises on the metal treads, which had no risers, so the
concrete floor at the bottom was clearly visible with every step.
Katharine was in the lead, moving with care because the stairs were
steep and her legs were jelly, with Starkey, who had been forced to let
go of her arm because of the narrowness of the stairwell,right behind
her. Bennett and Hendricks followed in that order, with the newcomer
bringing up the rear. The stairwell was fully enclosed, with doors at
both the top and bottom. The outside wall of concrete blocks was cool
and slightly damp—she knew because she rested her hand against it as
she descended, since there was no handrail; the inside wall was metal
sheeting. Only a singlebulb hanging from a cord at the top of the
stairs providedillumination; its position caused their own elongated
shadows to precede them. The air in the stairwellwas stagnant and
smelled faintly of mildew.
But she couldn’t, she was
on autopilot, the terror and horror of the last few hours amped up a
thousandfold by the new terror and horror of seeing bloody murder
committed right in front of her eyes, by the rawness and extremity of
her fear for her own life. In the front seat, she saw Lutz slump over
out of sight, his blood spraying the dashboard and windshield. Her bare
feet hit rough, warm pavement, and the night sky tilted crazily
overheadas she stumbled forward, out of the car. Muffy’s crate, which
was on her lap, slid toward the ground and would have crashed into it
if she hadn’t retained the presence of mind to grab the handle as it
fell. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two black-garbed men push
the bodies of her erstwhile tormentors farther inside the car as they,
too, jumped into the vehicle. It stopped moving,and she guessed that
the man who was now in the driver’s seat had stepped on the brake.
“Get rid of them and the
car,” her captor ordered, his hand still tight on her arm, keeping her
on her feet, keeping her knees from collapsing and smacking into the
ground, even as he pulled her away from the car. Another scream was
tearing out of her throat of its own accord when she recognized the
voice, recognized him, saw that it was Dan, no, Nick, yes, yes, Nick. Thank God for Nick.
Still, his profile was
limned against the darkness outsidethe window, and she recognized the
curve of his brow, the line of his nose, the jut of his chin. The hair
was wrong, long and wavy where always before it had been cut ruthlessly
short, but everything else was right: the breadth of his shoulders, the
lean, muscular strength of his torso, the powerful length of his legs.
His hands were curled around the steering wheel, and she recognizedthe
broad palms and long fingers, too.
“I know,” he interrupted,
real pain for her in his voice. The Blazer was climbing now, emerging
from the darkness into a burst of light, and she saw the big
halogenexpressway lights at the top of the entrance ramp and realized
that they were curving onto the Beltway, heading toward Maryland. “We
had eavesdropping deviceson, we heard everything. It nearly killed me
listeningto it, but there was no way to get in. It’s a secured Agency
site. You’d practically have to have a nuclear bomb. Anyway, with
Hendricks and Lutz there, I knew they were going to bring you out. The
kind of dirty work they do, they have a specialized facility.”
It was probably twenty
minutes later by the time she stepped out of the shower. The hot water
had done its work: She was as clean as it was possible to be, and she
felt limp and absolutely boneless. The strong scent of the Irish Spring
soap—clearly he was partial to that brand—she had used lingered in the
air even as she wrapped herself in a towel. A beach towel, big and
orange,with a picture of a foaming can of Miller Lite on it. There were
about a dozen identical ones stuffed haphazardlyinto the small linen
closet, and she could only suppose that they had been running a special
at Big Lots when Nick had gone shopping. In any case, there was enough
terry cloth in that one towel to wrap it around herself twice over,
and, with the ends tucked in, to cover her from her armpits to just
above her knees. When she stopped in front of the sink to brush her
teeth for the third time since she’d been in there—Nick had
thoughtfully stocked the medicine cabinet with a handful of new
toothbrushes and two tubes of toothpaste,and she wondered if he’d
thought he was buying for an army—she was already nicely dry. She had
put her hair up so it wouldn’t get wet, and she was just pulling out
the single bobby pin—clearly a leftover from a previous tenant—she had
found in the linen closet when she noticed in the mirror over the sink
that there were a couple of tiny spots staining the bandage on her nose.
The pain was so bad that
she was dizzy with it. It felt like it was tearing her head apart,
ripping her brain in two. Her head spun. Her pulse drummed in her ears.
She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth in an effort to fight it,
curling up close against him, drawing her knees up against his side,
pushing her face into the warm curve between his neck and shoulder,
clinging like a barnacle to a rock. She lay against him like that,
tense, unmoving, battling the pain while he murmured a mixture of
curses and reassurances into her hair and held her close. Slowly,
slowly, the pain receded. Graduallyher body relaxed, and finally she
took a deep breath, inhaling his comforting, familiar smell.
“My father’s in—” prison,
she started to say, but beforeshe could finish, a surge of memory hit
her like a torrent of water spilling through a broken dam. A
lightning-fast mental picture of her father grinning impishlyat her
made her heart lurch. She could see him plain as anything, stocky and
not overly tall, wearing his trademark short-sleeved white shirt, red
tie, and dark slacks, his thick, gray hair curly as lamb’s wool, his
jovial, blunt-featured face wreathed in smiles. He had met her on the
threshold of his Baltimore financial servicesfirm that day, hugged her,
and then stood back to show her what was freshly painted in tall gilt
script on the frosted glass in the top half of the front door: Michael T. Hill and Daughter, LLC.
She’d been fresh out of the University of Maryland, armed with an
accountingdegree, and this was her first day on the job as his
full-time—rather than summer or after-school— employee. She had meant
to work for him for just a littlewhile, to help him out and get some
experience under her belt. But adding her organizational ability and
work ethic to his talent for finding and charming clients proved a
potent formula. The firm thrived and grew, and four years later she was
still there, working flat out, a lot of twelve-hour days, a lot of
weekends, a lot of holidays, whatever it took to get the job done. A
couple of relationships fell by the wayside—she didn’t really have the
time to devote to them—but at its apex, Hill, LLC (she had talked her
father into shortening the name) had sixteen employees and an annual
billing of more than a million dollars. They were on their way.
Then one golden summer
evening the wolf appeared at the door, in the form of Special Agent
Nick Houston, FBI. Of course, she hadn’t known that he was the wolf at
the time. She hadn’t known he was an FBI agent, either.She’d thought he
was a client, because that was what her father told her. The first time
she had set eyes on Nick was early on a Saturday evening some two years
ago. She had been at the office for about an hour, totally alone in the
empty building as she worked to finishup a corporate audit that had to
be completed by that Monday morning before going to meet some clients
at a nearby Morton’s for dinner. Seated in her private office with the
door closed, frowning over some figures that didn’t want to add up, she
heard noises in her father’s adjoining private office, which, since he
took weekends off as religiously as some people went to church, was
unusual. When she went to investigate, she discovered her father, who
usually spent his Saturdays playing golf, seated at his desk in front
of his computer—which was equally unusual, because he barely knew how
to work it—with a handsome stranger standing behind him, looking over
his shoulder at the screen. Her father wore his golf clothes: a bright
yellow polo shirt and madras slacks. The other
guy—mid-thirties,close-cropped blond hair, tall, lean build—was dressed
in gray dress pants and a navy blazer, white shirt, and gray striped
tie. Practically the Fed uniform, but, of course, at the time she
hadn’t known enough about Alphabet Soup World to even begin to suspect.
“Nick,” he said, smiling
at her, and she had smiled back, both because he was a smokin’-hot guy
and, she assumed, a client, although her father’s demeanor still made
her wonder what was up with that. But when she taxed him on it, once
they were alone, he steadfastly insistedthat Nick was simply a new,
potentially very big, account, and told her that as a firm they should
do everything they could to keep him happy.
After that, Nick was
around a lot, at the office and, later, as weeks turned into months,
out of it. He never worked with her or any of the associates; instead,
her fatherkept him as his exclusive client, which, again, was unusual.
But her father brushed off her questions, and— as she saw later, with
the useless wisdom of hindsight— she was too intrigued by the guy’s
good looks and easy charm to probe too hard.
It was a Thursday, a
perfectly ordinary Thursday in late January, one of those cold, gray,
slushy days when nobody wants to be outside. Wrapped up tight in her
camel wool coat, with galoshes on her feet and her high heels in her
hand, she was the last one out of the office, although not by much. Her
father had stayed later than usual, leaving only some fifteen minutes
before. It was full night at almost seven p.m., and she remembered
thinking how tired she was and wondering whether, if she stopped by her
father’s house on the way home, she would find Nick there. He’d been in
her father’s office earlier, but he had left before she had a chance to
do more than wave and smile at him through the open door.
It was embarrassing to
admit even to herself, but she really, really wanted to spend some time
with Nick, and that’s what she was thinking about when she left the
building via the side door, which opened onto the parkinglot that they
shared with a couple of other businesses.The wind was blowing a few
sparkly crystals of snow around, and the macadam was shiny-wet and
ringed with the previous day’s snow. The smell of wood smoke hung in
the air. There was no one, absolutely no one, in sight. She hurried
through the dark parking lot with her shoulders hunched against the
cold. She had almostreached her car—which she was careful to park under
one of the two security lights, since it was almost always dark when
she left work—when she happened to notice that her father’s gray BMW
was still in the lot. Surprised, frowning, she changed course and went
over to check it out.
It was her father who
told her the truth, late that night, after they had returned to his
house and Nick had called somebody—another shadowy government
doctor—who had come, patched Mike up, and left again. Mike was lying in
his bed, propped up on pillows because breathingwas difficult with his
injured ribs. Holding her hand, he wept as he confessed that he was
using the firm to launder funds for the Mob, channeling “dirty money”
offshore and from there investing it in legitimate businessesand
financial vehicles so that the earnings would appear legal. Crime boss
Phillip Manucci was one of Hill, LLC’s biggest clients, although his
dealings with the firm were known only to her father. Manucci was the
target of Nick’s investigation, and he had simply followedthe money to
Mike Hill. The investigation was almostover, and it looked like it was
going to bring down the entire Baltimore-and-D.C.-based faction of the
Mob along with a dozen or more basically unrelated businesses that
were, nevertheless, part of the web Manucci had spun to mask his crimes.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” her
father said, clutching her hand as she sat on the edge of his bed, his
usually cheerfulface crumpled with worry and grief. “Money was real
tight. I had you to raise, put through college. It started so small—I
needed a loan to keep the business going, and Manucci was the only one
willing to give me the money. Then he asked me for advice. What was I
going to do, turn him down? Let me tell you, you don’t turn down
Phillip Manucci and live to tell the tale. Then it just mushroomed from
there. Soon there was no way out. I was in too deep. By the time Nick
showed up, I’d been laundering money for Manucci for years. Once the
FBI found me, I knew I didn’t have a choice. Like Nick said, if I
cooperate with him I’ll spend a few years in prison. If I don’t, when
Manucci gets wind of the investigation—and he will get wind of it,
sooner or later—he’ll kill me without a second thought. And even if I
was prepared to face that, now he’s threatened you.” His eyes closed,
and he heaved a great shaking sigh as tears leaked out from under his
closed lids. “I’ve made a hell of a mess of it, Jen.”
“Okay, I guess I can’t
blame you for that, either. Look, a lot of the stuff that’s happened I
didn’t foresee. We were going to pull Katharine out while Barnes was
out of town, and if things had gone down like they were supposed to,
you wouldn’t have had any contact with him at all. You were just
supposed to kind of hold her place for a week or so while she testified
before the secretgrand jury that’s been convened so we could get an
indictment against Barnes to wrap this thing up. With an investigation
of this magnitude, as high-level as Barnes is and as much dirt as he
has on everybody in town, we had to make sure that he didn’t get the
slightesthint that we were working to bring him down.
Obviously,something went wrong and he did get wind of it. But believe
me, I never thought, when I brought you into this, that you would get
hurt. It kills me that you got hurt.” He took her hand, and she didn’t
resist, althoughpart of her wanted to. His jaw tightened as he looked
down at the small, round burns on her arm. When he met her gaze again,
his expression was stark. “When I heard you scream tonight down in that
damned bunker and I couldn’t get to you, I almost lost my mind.”
“There’s a point.” He
gave her a small, rueful grimace.“And you’re going to make me spell it
out, aren’t you? Fair enough. Here goes.” He hesitated, and for a
moment she thought he was going to reach for her again and tensed in
automatic rejection. But he didn’t, instead thrusting his hands into
the front pockets of his pants and regarding her steadily. “From the
first moment I saw you when you came walking barefoot into Mike’s
office, I was attracted to you. The more I was around you, the more I
got to know the person you were inside the beautiful, sexy
package”—here she narrowed her eyes at him warningly just to let him
know that she was immune to his flattery—“the more I was attracted. But
there wasn’t anything I could do about it, because I was working a case
that involved your father, and anything personal between you and me
would be a huge conflict of interest. That night on Mike’s couch when
you begged me to fix things so he wouldn’t have to go to prison, I
almost lost it. You were tearing my heart out, and at the same time I
wanted you so bad I—well, let’s just say I wanted you bad. But I walked
away because I had a job to do. And I stayed away, for the same reason,
even though through all those months I couldn’t get you out of my mind.”
Her eyes were now
clinging to his, no longer narrowedwith suspicion but rounded with hope
and vulnerability,and as soon as she realized it she immediately
scowled in reaction. His mouth twisted in wry acknowledgmentof her
change of expression as he continued: “I knew Mike wasn’t a bad guy,
and I knew how close the two of you were. I kept looking for an angle
to help you both, and when I came across Katharine Lawrence and saw how
much she looked like you, I found it. She’d been acting as an informant
for us for months, and we only needed about a week of testimony from
her withoutBarnes suspecting anything was up to wrap things up, but
that was a very dangerous week for our investigation.I thought the best
thing to do was put somebody in her place while she testified, so that
Barnes wouldn’t even begin to suspect what was up. That somebody was
you. I used your physical resemblance to her to give you what you
wanted, which was your father out of prison, and I used it to get back
in with you. And the reason why I did it is because I’m crazy about
you.”
As his words sank in,
silence spun out between them, vibrating with an increasing tension
that was almost palpable.Her heart, she realized, was beating really
fast. There was a big knot in her stomach, and somewhere along the line
she had completely forgotten to breathe. Exhaling slowly so that he
wouldn’t notice, she frowned a little as she searched his face. His jaw
was hard, his mouth unsmiling. His eyes were narrowed, with a
restlessgleam to them as he watched her. He looked tall and dangerous
and impossibly sexy standing there in front of her in the silent,
shadowy bedroom, and her body responded to him the way her body always
did.
For a moment he didn’t
move, while her mouth plied his and her tongue slid between his lips
and she pressed herself with abandon against every hard, muscular inch
of him. His mouth was hot and tasted faintly of coffee, just like it
had the last time she had kissed him, and as she registered that her
heart slammed in her chest and her pulse pounded in her ears and her
insides went hay-wire.Then he drew in a deep, shuddering breath and
kissed her back. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he pulled her even
tighter against him and slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her with
a hunger that made her dizzy. His lips were firm and dry, and his
tongue was hot and wet, and the kiss itself was so excitingthat she
trembled. His body was bigger than hers, far more muscular,
thrillingly, unmistakably masculine. She clung to him, kissing him with
the pent-up desire of thousands of daydreams, and when finally he
lifted his head she made a husky little sound of protest.
“I think that’s my line,”
he said, and kissed her again, so thoroughly that she was bedazzled,
absolutely lost in lust, clinging to him, kissing him back greedily.
Her head spun, her heart pounded, and her legs trembled. She rocked
against him, sliding her fingers into his newly long hair, kissing him
as if she would die if she didn’t, wanting to make him as hot as he was
making her.
Here her thought
processes faltered entirely as she realized that he was just standing
there beside the bed, staring down at her naked body with eyes that
burned her everywhere they touched. She was a nice toasty-goldencolor,
she saw, glancing down at herself a little self-consciously, and thin,
much thinner than she was used to being, but then that just gave her
curves of a differentscale, made her waist tinier and her hips narrower
and her legs amazingly slender and long. Her breasts were smaller,
too—she had an instant of regret for the usual lush fullness of her
breasts—but they were still firm and perky, the nipples dark and erect
as they swelled up toward him. From the diamond-hard glint in his eyes
as they moved over her, he liked everything he saw, and the thought
made her go all shivery inside.
“Darlin’, two seconds and
you’re mine,” he said, and finished stripping with swift, single-minded
efficiency, ridding himself of pants and boxers and shoes and socks in
scarcely more than the blink of an eye, clearly a man focused on a
goal. Which meant she didn’t have a lot of time to admire the view, but
still she saw that his torso was the classic vee shape, wide through
the chest and narrow through the waist and hips, with tight, toned abs
and long, powerful-looking legs. He didn’t have a lot of body hair, but
what he did have was dark brown and formed a wedge in the middle of his
chest before arrowingdown to—well, she followed that trail with her
eyes and caught her breath.
Then he was gone. She
heard him walk down the hall and through the living room, heard the
door open and close, heard the faint click of the lock. Then it
occurred to her that this was a wonderful opportunity to get dressed.
She thought of the pants and T-shirt she had discarded in the bathroom,
realized that if the rest of her had been covered with blood they
probably had been, too, and shuddered. Wait—Nick had said he had bought
her some things—did he mean clothes? Openingthe closet door, she found
a Macy’s bag on the floor. In the Macy’s bag were two sets of silky
underwear and bras, two pairs of khaki shorts, two T-shirts, and a pair
of flip-flops. Choosing a flimsy white panty and bra, a pair of khaki
shorts, and a navy T-shirt, she took them into the bathroom with her.
She had just finished washing and putting on her new underwear and was
in the process of pulling up the shorts when she heard Nick come back
into the apartment.
Jenna looked at the
building he indicated—it was anotherboxy apartment building very
similar to the one they were in that faced the next street over, so
that what she was looking at was its square brick back—nodded, and took
off running toward it. It wasn’t far, perhaps two hundred yards, but,
with the security light above the door and the more distant glow of the
lights from variousparking lots, she felt hideously exposed as she
darted through shadows and shifting patches of illumination.The uneven
terrain made footing tricky. The small slap of her flip-flops hitting
the ground sounded hideously loud in her ears. A sideways glance showed
her the parking lot in which they had left Nick’s car. She couldn’t see
the Blazer itself—the angle wasn’t right for that—but, ominously, she
could see three big, black Suburbans parked in a neat row right at the
edge of the lot. They hadn’t been there earlier, and just spotting them
made her heart pound like a kettledrum.
Dodging around a child’s
half-full wading pool, which she had nearly, and disastrously, missed
seeing in her preoccupation with the Suburbans, she made it around the
corner of the building and stopped, panting, to wait for Nick. He was
right behind her, gun in one hand, Muffy, eyes narrowed and tail
waving, under his arm.
Sticking to the shadows
as much as possible, they ran across that street, through another
backyard, along the back of a long row of buildings that might have
been town houses, then across another street and through another set of
backyards. Her heart pounded and her pulse raced, first from fear and
then from fear mixed with exhaustion. Her legs started getting shaky.
She had trouble catching her breath. Finally, she got a stitch in her
side. If she hadn’t known, as surely as she knew anything, that the
search was on for them, she wouldn’t have been able to keep going. At
last, just when she thought she was going to have to stop, Nick stopped
instead.
Muffy was heavy and hairy
and didn’t look at all happy with the situation, but she seemed to
recognize the seedy, run-down nature of the neighborhood just as surely
as Jenna did, and have enough sense to know that she didn’t want any
part of it. Neither did Jenna, actually,but there they both were
anyway, with no choice in the matter at all. Casting nervous glances
around— there were no security lights in this parking lot, and the only
illumination came from the full moon overhead and the quick slash of
headlights from a passing car— she saw nothing but a warren of brick
buildings with only a few lighted windows, none nearby. They were in
the midst of a large apartment complex. This was one of many parking
lots. If anyone besides Nick, who was peering through the windshield of
a car not too far away, was around, she couldn’t see them in the dark.
“They’re CIA. They can
find anything,” Jenna said. The thought made her shiver, and she cast
another worriedlook around. They were nearing the on-ramp for the
Beltway, and the overhead lights illuminated the insideof the car. As a
result, she felt hideously exposed. There was more traffic, lots of
vehicles, in fact, as they merged onto the expressway, but none of them
seemed particularly threatening. Still, when an eighteen-wheelerzoomed
past, rattling the old car right down to the frame, she jumped a little.
Taking a deep breath,
drawing in a lungful of the earthy scent of the surrounding woods and a
slightly burning smell that, she thought, had to be the car, she waited
as Nick got out, thrust his gun into the back waistband of his pants,
and fished Muffy out of the backseat. She smiled at Nick—which was much
more reasonable than smiling at Baker, after all—who smiled back at
her, which made her heart beat faster and her stomach go all fluttery.
Then she smiled at Muffy, who lashed her tail and looked grumpy. As
they walked across the grass and climbed the steps to a small
concreteporch that led to the back door of the house, the night seemed
extra-beautiful. The moon was a softly glowing white globe in a
midnight velvet sky. The stars were glittering diamonds adorning the
velvet. The light spilling from the back windows of the house was a
lovely golden yellow. Even the deep shadows ringing the trees seemed to
dance with joy.
The pain got worse, but
she ignored it, concentrating. At first the memory was as amorphous as
a cloud, but then, slowly, it took on shape and weight and color. She
had been here in this house on that night, lying sleepless in the
bedroom she’d been using, already heartily sick of learning to be
Katharine but determined to see the thing through, both for her
father’s sake and to a lesser degree because—yes, be honest here—because Nick stopped by to check on her progress every day, and she was secretly pretty wild about Nick.
Nick made a rueful face
at her. “See, we didn’t know what the first attack was about, but we
were pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that Barnes was
blackmailing just about everybody under the sun. At the time, I figured
that he’d probably stashed some of the stuff he had on people in the
town house’s safe, which Katharine had no idea was there, and somebody
had come for it. But now . . .” His voice trailed off, but then he
seemed to give himself a mental shake and went on. “Anyway, since you
were going to be playing the role of innocent Katharine, who wasn’t an
FBI informant, and since we couldn’t simply cover up the break-in and
murder at the town house because the local police were already on the
scene, we had to program you with an explanationfor the attack that
didn’t involve Barnes’s blackmail gig but that would still be
believable enough to you so that you could report it to Barnes, the
police, whoever, with a straight face. We’d seen that Post photo
of you—I mean Katharine—wearing all that jewelry, so we decided to use
that. As for the supposed ‘inheritance,’ that was the money we paid
Katharine to act as an informant. Just in case Barnes started checking
her bank accounts, we gave you an explanation you could use.”
Jenna looked at the
speaker, a blond woman clad in a pale green silky robe and slippers who
had just walked up to stand behind Mary in the doorway, and her heart
sped up as she experienced the weird sensationof looking at her own
double. This, clearly, was Katharine Lawrence. The resemblance was
uncanny— except, and it was almost unnoticeable, for the small
difference in their noses. Unable to help herself, Jenna stared. After
a quick, patently uninterested glance, Katharine did not stare back.
The fact that she had a doppelgänger clearly wasn’t news to her. Of
course, she had probably been involved all along. Who else would have
been able to provide such intimate, and accurate, information about
Katharine Lawrence’s life, down to the location of the front door key
under the mat and the picture of the Kappa Delts, which Jenna now
rememberedseeing?
In the living room, which
was a replica of the town-houseliving room, gray walls, charcoal couch,
glass-toppedtables and all, Katharine sank down on the couch, ignoring
the trio that watched her from the doorway. On TV, Letterman was
interviewing Drew Barrymore. Nick gave Katharine a grim look, then
walked over to the coffeetable, picked the remote right up off the top
of Rose Gardens of the South, and turned the TV off.
With a single glance back
at her, Nick started down the stairs, still leading with his gun, still
holding her hand. Her heart was thumping so hard now that it felt like
a living creature trying to beat its way out of her chest. Every tiny
creak of the stairs, every small scufflingsound from their shoes on the
wood risers, made her breath catch. Her scalp prickled with tension.
Her knees shook. Nick kept his back to the wall, and she tried to
follow suit. She could tell from the way his head was moving that he
was carefully scanning the area they were descending into. About
halfway down, their heads cleared the upstairs landing and they were
able to see more than just the rectangle of hallway directly beneath
them: a tiny slice of the living room, the dark wooden floor that
stretched to the front door and, going the other way, to the kitchen.
“Keep your head down,” Nick screamed, putting himself between her and the living-room doorway and snapping off two quick shots—bam! bam!—at
the shooter. Jenna got a quick glimpse of a man dressed all in black
with a black watch cap on his head, leaping from one side of the
living-room doorway to the other, moving so fast that he was scarcely
more than a dark blur. There was a cry—had the man been hit?—and then
in response to a gesture from Nick, she was racing straight toward the
front door with Nick right behind her, running for her life, fueled by
a tremendous burst of adrenaline that rushed through her veins like
speed. A glance showed her that Nick was watching their backs, covering
their exit, trying desperately to see everything at once. Out of the
corner of her eye she got a glimpse of most of the living room, and
there was Mary, too, sprawled on the floor several feet from Katharine.
She was unmoving, but Jenna couldn’t see her face and it was impossible
to tell if she was dead.
One week later, Nick was
at home, in the small second bedroom he used as an office, sprinkling
food into the fishbowl. He’d had to move it, because Bill and Ted had a
pair of new housemates. They were fine with Jenna— actually, they
seemed to like her almost as much as Nick himself did—but they didn’t
seem to think much of the cat. Muffy, who’d been adopted by Jenna in
the aftermathof Katharine’s death—Mary, fortunately, had
survived—didn’t seem to get the whole idea that since the fish had been
there first, they should be treated with respect. Until Nick had wised
up and moved them to his office, which had a door that he kept
carefully closed, Muffy had passed her days sitting on the kitchen
counter by the fishbowl, eyeing Bill and Ted with covetouseyes.
He eased his jacket
on—his shoulder was still in a sling—and as he did so the small framed
photo that sat on his desk beside the fishbowl caught his eye. The shot
was maybe thirty years old, and it showed him as a gap-toothedkid with
his ponytailed big sister standing behindhim, her arms wrapped around
his thin shoulders, her chin resting on the top of his blond head. They
were both smiling into the camera, happy that day. Nick looked at
Allie, the big sister who had loved and motheredhim until she couldn’t
anymore, and carefully tucked that image of her deep inside his heart.
Then he turned and walked out of the office, carefully closing the door
behind him. Next week he would be back at work, and life would start to
get back to normal, or as normal as it was possible to get with the
addition of three new family members. Call it the new normal. Anyway,he
would be busy putting together a case against Keith and wrapping up the
case against Barnes and fillingout paperwork and working his ass off to
catch bad guys and doing the hundred and one things that he
typicallydid.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA