Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island

by Sandy Frances Duncan

  “Thank you. I’m learning.”

  “You make something different each evening.”

  He laughed lightly. “More than the evening. The meal takes most of the afternoon. And sometimes the morning to shop.”

  “Who taught you to cook?”

  He grinned. “Me.”

  “From books? Experimenting?”

  “Right now only from books. I’m too new to experiment.”

  “I can’t believe that. When did you start cooking?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  She would have sworn that beneath the mask he’d raised his eyebrows. So she raised hers as well. “You’ll make some woman a good husband, Hank.”

  He shrugged.

  She had to say: “Your name’s not really Hank, is it?”

  He took a bite of fish, then potato. “Why do you ask?”

  “You don’t feel like a Hank.”

  “How do you know how I feel?”

  She felt the back of her neck warm up and hoped the blush wouldn’t spread. “I don’t.” But would like to find out. She took the last bite of trout from the upper side. Then she lifted the tail, pulled the skeleton away from the lower side, and laid it in the frying pan.

  “Beautifully done,” he said.

  “My father taught me.” Would this be the right moment to ask again if she could phone him? “He taught me to fly-fish and catch trout.”

  “I’d like to learn to fish.” He smiled wistfully, or at least his lips did. Or she was projecting it on him.

  “Maybe one day I’ll teach you.”

  “Maybe one day I’ll appreciate that.”

  She had to ask. “Hank or whatever your name is, I would very much like to call my father. Just assure him I’m being well taken care of. I can’t tell him anything about where I am because I don’t have the slightest idea. I’d be off the phone in thirty seconds; if anybody’s listening, no way can they trace the call. Please?”

  He sighed, as if understanding her assessment was correct. But he said, “Susanna. I’d like to. But I’m sorry. I can’t let you.”

  Her eyes teared. She nodded. In that moment she missed her father immensely. She took another bite of fish. Potato. Sipped wine. Did not speak again. More fish. And suddenly she pushed her plate away and ran to the bathroom. She sat on the closed toilet seat and tried to figure out what had just happened to her. His refusal to let her make the phone call? But he’d refused before. Twice. She’d taken that in stride. Something had shifted. In her? Or in him? She didn’t know. She stood and looked at herself in the mirror. Were her eyes a little red? She wet a facecloth and wiped her face. Felt good. She dropped it in the sink and looked at herself. The dress, was that the change? She should take if off, pull on the baggy jeans and shirt, go out and finish her dinner. Would she, dressless, be back to where she’d been before he’d given it to her? Something in her said she couldn’t go back. Or wouldn’t? Her skin had lost its flush. Good. And her nipples were no longer prominent. Good? Oh dear. She should go back to the table. She did.

  He stood. “Are you okay, Susanna?”

  She sat. “Sorry, Hank.”

  “My name isn’t Hank.”

  She stared at him. She laughed lightly. “Of course not.” She looked at her plate. “Will you tell me what it is?”

  “What would you like it to be?”

  She thought. “Charlie? Or Frank?”

  “Okay. I’ll be Frank with you.”

  “Not while you’re wearing that mask.”

  “Yes, well, there have to be exceptions.”

  She ate a bite of trout. “A lovely meal, Frank.”

  “Thank you.” He took a sip of wine. “Susanna. If you really only take thirty seconds to tell your father you’re okay, you can use my phone.”

  “Okay? Truly?”

  “It’s not okay, and you better not ever tell anyone I let you do this. And you have to make your father promise not to mention that you called. Can you promise me?”

  She nodded, hard. “I promise. I promise on everything I believe in.”

  “Good.” He stood. “I’ll be back. Figure out what you’re going to say.” He walked to the door, unlocked it and went out. She could hear the key turn on the other side. What could she say to her father in some code that would give him more information than—Frank?—would hear. She should have thought about this possibility before. She’d never imagined she’d have the chance. Damn!

  She got up from the table. It was a truly beautiful dress. What could she say? She sighed. Maybe simply do as she’d promised. Frank came back in and locked the door. He held up a cell phone. “Tell me the number.” She did. He pressed in the numbers and waited. A voice must have answered. He held out the phone.

  “Dad?”

  “Susanna! Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “First, I’ve only got thirty seconds and you have to absolutely promise you’ll never tell anyone I called. Okay?”

  He started to protest.

  “Don’t waste time arguing. Just promise.”

  He did. She told him she was being well treated, they’d release her after she’d been held for three weeks, eating very well thanks—

  “Twenty-five seconds,” she heard Frank say.

  “I’ve got to go. I’m okay. I’m going to be okay.”

  Frank reached for the phone, took it and killed the connection. “You did fine,” he said. “And just so you know, the phone’s not traceable. It’s a throwaway.”

  She wasn’t disappointed. She’d never expected to be found because of this call. “Thank you, Frank.”

  He dropped the phone into his pocket. “You really will be released after you’ve been here for three weeks.”

  “Thank you for that, too.” She shivered. She put her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. She breathed, “Thank you.” She trembled. She held him to her. His arm went around her waist and drew her closer. For maybe a minute they held each other. She pulled her face from him and touched his cheek. Stroked it at the mask. What a strange combination. She raised her mouth to his and kissed it. Half human, half alien, no sense or word for it. He kissed her back tenderly, no rush from him, as gentle as he was in the other parts of this strange life he’d been sharing with her. A warm and prolonged kiss, which ended as by mutual consent. They continued to hold each other.

  He said, “I’m sorry. I overstepped.”

  “I started it.”

  “Yes. You did. And I think I’d better clear these dishes and go.”

  “What if I think you should stay?”

  “I—I can’t, Susanna.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I’m your jailer, dammit!”

  “And I’m your prisoner. But we can still be friends, can’t we?”

  “This could become more than friends.”

  “Is that what you feel?”

  “I’m beginning—beginning to think it is. No.” He released her and stepped back. “I’m not being truthful. I’ve been thinking it for a while. The last week.”

  A weakness in her legs threatened to let her body drop. She grasped his arm to support herself. Jailer and captive, what a twosome. She looked up at his face, what she could see of it. His chin seemed to twitch. Falling for a guy with a partial face. She had to think about all this. “You’re right. You should go. But you’re coming back. Something’s happening, Frank. Something good. We’ll figure out what.”

  He took her hand from his arm and held it tightly. He kissed the top of her head. “If you’d like to try, so would I.” He let go of her hand, gathered the dishes and pans onto the cart and wheeled it to the door. He unlocked, pushed the cart through, turned. “I’ll see you at breakfast.” He stepped out, started to shut the door, turned again, stuck his head back in. “You look lovely in that dress.”

  She said, “Thank you,” but not till after the door had closed.

  Jeremiah having said he wanted a burger had kindled a taste for one in Noel, so they found a plac
e where they sold half a dozen varieties. Seated, Kyra said, “I wonder how hard it is for Peter not to have Jeremiah living with him.”

  “Yeah, I wondered the same thing.”

  They talked little over their burgers—Kyra’s with melted Swiss cheese and wasabi sauce, Noel’s layered with bacon—chewing and ruminating their own thoughts. They left the bistro at 7:25 and drove to the campus, parking in front of Rossini’s house.

  Rossini welcomed them. “Just got back myself. Please, come in.”

  They entered. Ahead, a hallway leading to an elegant wooden staircase with a heavy newel post at the bottom step. Rooms on either side. To the right, what seemed to be a sitting room or study, and to the left a large drawing room. It was there Rossini ushered them.

  The room had an elegance to it that made Noel feel out of place. Three areas where groups could sit: a low table and some high-backed chairs in deep red, a couch and two easy chairs around a coffee table, and a window seat looking out at a garden, extra chairs facing the seat covered with throw cushions. Three display tables along various walls holding treasures: tin soldiers set up in military preparedness on one, cut crystal bowls and vases on another, free-style ceramics on a third, all on doilies in a range of sizes. “Lovely room,” said Kyra.

  “None of it’s mine. When I stepped into the house for the first time, all this was here. I’m not much of a decorator.” He smiled. “I tend to get very busy. Please—” he pointed to the red chairs and low table, “let’s have a seat.”

  Kyra and Noel did. Remarkably comfortable, Noel thought, for such a straight back. He looked up at Rossini. “So, Professor, how can we help you?”

  “I was going to ask if you’d like a drink. Tea, or something stronger?”

  Both declined. The beer and burger still sat heavily in Kyra’s stomach, and she knew Noel would be looking forward to a drink in their house after this interview. “Please tell us about your problem.”

  He pulled back a chair and sat. “Up to half an hour ago, it would have been simpler. You see, my daughter’s been kidnapped.”

  Noel leaned forward. “You’re certain?”

  “I am.”

  “That’s horrible,” said Kyra.

  “Yes. It is.”

  “But something changed half an hour ago?”

  He nodded. “She’s still kidnapped. But I just talked to her for the first time in over two weeks. She called. I had to promise not to mention her call. But you have to know she’s definitely still alive. And she says she’s being well taken care of.”

  “You believe her?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  “Okay,” said Noel. “Back up. You said she was with friends. In Oregon. Hiking.”

  He nodded. “It’s the story I tell. The kidnappers made it clear I mustn’t speak with anyone about this.”

  “But you’re telling us.”

  “I am. I have to do something.”

  “Okay,” said Kyra. “Begin at the beginning.”

  “Yes.” He seemed to be pulling himself together, though he hadn’t looked troubled before. “The beginning.” He let out a large puff of breath. “Two weeks ago day before yesterday, I came home in the evening, about 9:30, and Susanna’s car wasn’t here. Nothing unusual about that; she goes out most evenings. When I went to bed, around 11:00, she still wasn’t home. Sometimes she’s back by then, more often it’ll be later. And sometimes she’s out all night.”

  Kyra leaned forward. “Steady boyfriend?”

  “No, not this summer. She’s a very independent young lady.”

  “You mean she has several beaus.”

  “Beaus.” Rossini sounded a grim little chuckle. “A quaint way of saying she enjoys sex and sleeps around. Often in the morning she’ll come in after I’m already at the lab. Also, recently I’ve been at the lab much of the night. So I didn’t think about her absence. I came home for lunch and she still wasn’t back. I felt a little concern but let it go. Then at the office, my secretary buzzed me and told me I had a call. Unusual, since my number is hard to find and Phoebe protects me from a lot of university bureaucracy. Usually she’ll take a message, but the man on the line said he was calling about Susanna, so she put him through. He said simply, ‘We have your daughter.’ Then he told me he’d exchange Susanna for all the hardware and software relating to the Project I’m working on.”

  “Which is?”

  “All you need to know is that, generally, it concerns protein molecules and certain algorithms. Sets of mathematical directions to figure out a function, a kind of finite list of instructions for how to make something work.”

  “Like what?”

  Rossini glanced from Kyra to Noel, and back. “I now have a problem. Only a very few people know the answer to that. Only the ones who need to know.” He interlaced his fingers. “If you take on my problem, then you might need to know. If not, you don’t. Will you try to find and rescue Susanna for me?”

  Kyra glanced Noel, who said, “We need to know other things as well. Why did you wait more than two weeks to look for help finding her?”

  “I didn’t want additional help. I contacted the Sheriff almost right away, although the man on the phone told me to tell no one.”

  “Almost right away?”

  “I wasn’t thinking. I lost myself in a kind of automaton state. Susanna was gone; I had to get her back. I did what they said, brought several batches of the molecules and the hardware and the printed-out algorithms to Bellingham and put them in a large post office box there and left the key in an envelope at a designated place and came back here.”

  “So you gave them everything they wanted but they haven’t released Susanna.”

  “We have to wait three weeks.” He spoke quietly. “It’s a process. It takes three weeks to work. I hoped that in three weeks the Sheriff’s office would find her.”

  Noel said, “Then maybe you don’t need us. Maybe Susanna’ll be back soon.”

  “It’s not that simple. I provided them with incorrect algorithms. The hardware won’t work.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “That I gave them the wrong algorithms or that it can’t work? Yes to both.”

  “If you gave them the right algorithms, do you think they’d release her?”

  “Ms. Rachel, I have no idea.”

  “So you want us to locate her. How are we supposed to know where to start?”

  Rossini clasped his hands. “If I could tell you that, I wouldn’t have to hire you, would I?”

  Noel glanced over at Kyra, catching her eye. She nodded and stood. “Professor Rossini, would you give us a few minutes?”

  “Of course.” He too stood. “I’ll be in the kitchen.” He left them alone.

  Kyra sat again. “What are you thinking?”

  “Needle in a haystack. He doesn’t seem awfully upset.”

  “Lot of inner turmoil, it looked to me like.”

  “We going to help him?”

  “We could give it a few days.”

  “Find a woman who could be anywhere in a situation we know nothing about on an island that’s strange to us?”

  She grinned. “That’s what we’re good at. Islands, right?”

  “You really want to take this on.”

  “Never dealt with a kidnapping before.”

  “Right. We try one of everything.”

  “We stay on till Rossini’s three weeks are up. When the kidnapper discovers he’s got bad algorithms, he’ll make contact again. If we haven’t tracked him down before then, that might be the moment to grab him.” She stood and moved toward the kitchen.

  Noel followed. “And we get to know what we need to know.”

  Larry Rossini sat at the kitchen table. He’d never been less sure of anything. But he had no choice. Tell two complete outsiders about the Project he was bringing to reality? Had brought an early incarnation into existence, tested it, caught a sense of the huge amount of work still to be done—tell them all this? The choice: give away
a Project that had been his sole passion for the last decade and half, or try to get his daughter back by other means. At least he now knew she was still alive. In the darkest moment in the last couple of weeks, he told himself that if Susanna had been one of his passions over that time, maybe now she would still be in the house. His choice: his little girl, hardly little any more, or the Project? If the detectives said they’d work on finding her and failed, he’d give the kidnapper his goddamn Project. At least that way he’d get her back. He hoped, he hoped. Maybe the choice was out of his hands now; maybe the kidnapper would take his revenge—there must be more than one, surely?—take their revenge and harm Susanna—No, don’t think like that, he’d get her back—

  “Professor Rossini?”

  He stood up quickly. The woman.

  “We’ll try to find your daughter.”

  “Oh thank you, thank you.” He reached out his hand. “I’m greatly relieved.”

  “We’re at a real disadvantage here.” This from Noel. “She’s been gone two weeks plus, so the trail’s pretty cold. The Sheriff and his people haven’t found a trace of her. And you haven’t let the general public know that she’s missing. We’ll do the best we can, but we’re fairly dubious as to how much help we can be. You still want us to go ahead?”

  What else could he do? Franklin all but said they’ll fail to find Susanna. Was their time a waste of time? What choice? “Yes. Please. I do.” He paused. “There’s one thing first. I have to ask you both to sign a Nondisclosure Certificate.”

  “Why?”

  “My work in the hands of enemies could be extremely dangerous.”

  Noel and Kyra’s glances locked. Kyra said, “We’ll sign it, but you can trust us not to speak of your work. Nondisclosure is inherent in how we work.”

  “Good. Thank you.”