by Patrick Lee
Karl checked the peephole, saw that the hallway was clear, and left the room. He passed by the elevator bank, opting for the stairwell—elevators were a no-no, of course. Five flights down, he put his face to the little window in the door that accessed the lobby. It was empty except for two girls at the front desk, thirty feet away.
Walking out in front of them was not ideal, but protocol allowed it given that there was no easier option. He pushed the door open and stepped out. As he had expected, both girls glanced up at the opening door, expressions casual and then perplexed, trading looks now. As Karl passed directly in front of them, their eyes stayed on the door, falling shut far behind him with a light thud.
“Um . . . okay,” the older girl said.
The other shook her head and went back to her half-finished sudoku puzzle.
Karl could leave by the main exit, right in front of them, but because he had another choice this time—it would take less than a minute to reach the back door, around the corner and down the hall—protocol demanded that he take it. Really, the rules governing the use of the suit boiled down to three words: don’t fuck around.
He reached the rear exit and, quite alone, shoved it open and strode into the chilly New York morning.
Traffic on the Grand Central Parkway was heavy enough to merit caution, even at this hour. He waited for his chance, then sprinted across all five eastbound lanes at once. A moment later he’d crossed the other half, scaled the fence, and was out on the open sweep of LaGuardia, the terminals and airliners silhouetted against the red eastern sky like an alien fortress.
He walked across Runway Four, two access roads, and rounded the Central Terminal Building to the nearest entrance to Concourse D.
Outside the sliding door, he waited; its electric eye could no more see him than could the sleepy rent-a-cop standing a few feet to the side. No matter—caution would have demanded that he wait for someone else to trigger the door anyway. Airports were no places to start getting overconfident. No places to fuck around.
He waited only thirty seconds before a weary-looking businessman got out of a cab and lumbered through the entrance. He followed the man inside, broke left and made his way past the sparse lines of early travelers at the baggage check. From here on in, everything was easy. The security checkpoint, a farce even without the suit, was reduced to something like a kindergarten obstacle course. He stepped onto the raised barrier that boxed in the metal detector lanes on the left, and simply walked past the entire charade, stepping back down to the floor twenty feet beyond.
The concourse itself would have presented a challenge had it been busier. Crowds, even moderate ones, were a logistical nightmare; people would walk right into him if he wasn’t careful. At this hour, however, the wide, open passageway was mostly empty, save for the clot around Gate D7 far ahead, his destination.
When he reached it, he paused for a long while, studying the layout of the crowd. Where to stand? Not here, certainly. People would be coming and going in both directions, and the movements of those already camped here would be unpredictable. Worse, two little kids were chasing each other around, their mother, absorbed in a paperback, giving them only an occasional half-assed admonition to sit down.
The prime spot was obvious: right beside the jetway door, beyond the attendant’s stand. Karl skirted the crowd at a comfortable distance, ducked the stanchion barrier, and took his place. It wouldn’t be long; the 737 was already docked outside. Beyond it, the city skyline jutted into the still dim morning like a row of teeth.
The attendant went to his microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, Cayman Airways flight 935, nonstop service to Georgetown on Grand Cayman, is now boarding rows one through five. Rows one through five.”
Another attendant opened the door, and the moment she stepped away from it, Karl moved past her and into the cool air of the jetway, moving fast now to stay well ahead of the first passengers. He paused briefly at the door to the plane, where a stewardess blocked the way. She glanced through him down the jetway, saw nobody coming just yet, and ducked back in to speak to one of her coworkers. Karl slid past her and went to the back of the plane.
On a 737, depending on its configuration, the best place to ride out the flight was almost always the aft concession storage. The tiny room was empty for much of the flight, and even when a crew member came in to take or return a cart, evasion was a simple matter of ducking into the nook beside the ice bin.
Getting off the plane, of course, would be even easier than getting on.
Karl sat at the edge of the shade, five feet from the naked girl sunning herself by the pool.
By far the most interesting aspect of wearing the suit was the ability to study people when they thought they were alone. Until the first time he’d found himself in that position, it had never occurred to him what a unique perspective it could be. Ordinarily, you could never be with someone who was alone, simply by definition. You could set up a hidden camera, but it wasn’t the same as being there.
Nobody ever showed outward signs of anxiety when by themselves. No one ever fidgeted, or blushed, or moved awkwardly. What a strange thing to find: everybody was cool when there was no one around to judge them.
The girl was twenty-three and heartbreakingly beautiful. Olive skin. No tan lines. Deep brown eyes and sun-faded hair. She was five-foot-two and probably not a hundred pounds soaking wet. Five minutes ago she had in fact been soaking wet. Karl had watched her remove her clothes and dive into the pool. Now the Caribbean sun had almost completely dried her. He watched the last little collection of moisture droplets evaporate from her skin in the dry heat.
Her name was Lauren Cook. Karl had learned that fact along with everything else he’d learned about her father, Ellis Cook.
Lauren had the house to herself at the moment, all fifteen thousand square feet of it, overlooking Bodden Bay and the wide, blue Caribbean to the south. There were security personnel, of course, manning the entrances and ready to storm the place at the first cry for help. They were American, and professional; Karl had taken a close look at each of them and concluded that they were ex-something impressive, a hell of a lot more impressive than cops. The house’s fortifications were rounded out with thermal cameras and motion detectors, all of which might as well have been hollow decoys where Karl was concerned.
A yellow cabbage butterfly landed on Lauren’s thigh. She flinched and waved her hand at it, then saw what it was and smiled, watching it corkscrew away. It flew behind Karl and, by chance, dragged Lauren’s line of sight directly to meet his eyes for just a heartbeat. He felt a chill pass through him, meeting her innocent gaze. Then she sank back into her lounger and closed her eyes again.
Beyond her, the two-story house more than filled Karl’s frame of vision, extending seventy feet both to his left and right. Several of the second floor windows were open above the balcony, which was easy to climb to. Karl had already done so, had already walked the rooms of the house, inspected cabinets and drawers in Ellis’s bedroom, and formed his plan. It was very straightforward, no room for mistakes. Don’t fuck around.
A few minutes later Lauren rose, gathered her clothes and went inside, locking the patio door behind her. Karl went to the poolside rail and gazed down at the manicured lawns, and the yachts riding at anchor in the harbor beyond. He felt bad for the girl; she didn’t deserve what was coming. Though he had yet to see her interact with another soul, she had kind features and was probably a nice kid.
Well, it wasn’t a nice world.
Twilight over the bay. Haze had rolled in during the afternoon, and now the horizon was a blur between pink water and purple sky. Only the brightest stars shone through.
Karl watched Ellis enter the bedroom. The man walked past all three sets of balcony doors, wide open to the sea, without shooting so much as a glance through them. Why live here, then, Karl wondered.
Ellis went to his computer, switched it on, and paced while it powered up.
At the back corner of the desk
were two framed photos: Lauren, and Ellis’s wife. Karl had seen no evidence of the wife’s presence in this house. The information provided by his superiors had indicated trouble in the marriage.
Karl reached deep inside the overlap of the suit and took hold of what he’d found in Ellis’s nightstand.
Icons bloomed on the computer screen.
Ellis sat in his chair.
Karl drew the chrome-plated .45, put it to Ellis’s temple and fired.
Immediately came shouts from security outside the house. Screams, too, from Lauren’s room. Seconds left to finish the job.
Karl lifted Ellis’s hand, wrapped the man’s fingers around the pistol grip, and fired again, this time into the framed photo of Mrs. Cook. Powder burns now assured, he let both the hand and the pistol fall free. Not two seconds later the bedroom door broke in, almost off its hinges, and four security men were in the room, MP5s shouldered and covering all angles.
“Room clear.”
Two broke formation, one to the master bath and another to the enormous closet.
“Bathroom clear.”
“Closet clear.”
Karl chose the broadest stretch of the wall, far out of the way, and simply stood. Outside in the hallway, other security men were holding Lauren back as she screamed and demanded answers. The men in the room spoke over headsets with other teams outside, locking down the grounds, though a certain calm had descended in their eyes. They could see what had happened.
Watching from the perimeter of the chaos, Karl felt his cell phone vibrate. He was expected to answer under all but the most unforgiving circumstances. These qualified.
Ten minutes later, in the lull between the security response and the arrival of local police, Karl went to the balcony, slipped over the rail and dropped to the patio. He saw two security officers just inside the living room—one of them a woman—sitting with Lauren, holding on to her and speaking softly.
He went to the far end of the patio, where a six-foot drop put him on a gentle slope to the beach.
A quarter mile up the shore road he found an empty bench, and sat. He took out his cell phone and, as expected, found a text message.
RETURN TO AIRPORT, NUL CURRENT JOB IF NECESSARY. TAKE UNITED 820 TO CHICAGO, THEN UNITED 71 TO FAIRBANKS, AK. WEAPONS/INSTRUCTIONS WILL BE WAITING IN YELLOW LAND ROVER W/GREENPEACE STICKER, LONG-TERM PARKING D. THIS WILL BE DIRECT AGGRESSION AGAINST TANGENT PERSONNEL.
CHAPTER TEN
Even after the sound of the helicopter faded, Travis watched the ridgeline through the cedar boughs for ten minutes. The way ahead, visible from this rise, stood bare and shadowless for more than two miles. Getting caught in the open would be suicide.
The going had been as rough as he’d expected. Five times now, in just over twelve hours, the chopper had come hunting the valleys for them, making slow and methodical passes or simply stopping to hover for minutes on end. Concealment had been sparse but always reachable within the short warning time provided by the incoming rotors, echoing among the peaks.
They’d reached these cedars by the breadth of a wish, Travis setting Paige deep beneath the branches and pulling his own limbs under just as the aircraft rounded the nearest bend in the valley.
Now the silence felt sturdy again. As sturdy as it was going to get, at least.
Paige had drifted off—had barely been awake to begin with, in fact, even when the drumbeat of the blades had passed within a hundred feet. She was in bad shape and getting worse by the hour. The skin around the fissure in her upper arm had grown angry red, and the infected tissue inside appeared to have tripled its presence since Travis had first seen it. Most frightening of all, the veins visible in her forearm had distended and darkened, at least some aspect of the infection spreading that far. And that was only where he could see it. Where else was it branching to?
His first-aid kit might as well have been a make-believe set for a toddler playing nurse. It had nothing that could deal with this injury, though he’d tried the spray can of bactine anyway, with her assent. The only clear result had been searing pain, which she’d tried her best to hide from him. She’d failed—you could only blink away so many tears.
By the time they’d ditched the ATV in the river—after skirting the bank for miles to find a stretch of rapids foamy enough to conceal it—Paige was running a high temperature and unable to stay conscious for any real amount of time. So Travis had dumped his eighty-pound backpack into the rapids as well—keeping only the smallest water pouch—and carried her.
It was harder than he’d supposed it would be. She weighed maybe forty pounds more than the pack, and she hadn’t been designed by North Face to distribute the load to his frame. Uphill distances became leg-press workouts. Downhill was worse, every step compressing his ankle and threatening to roll it over into a sprain. Which, in a roundabout way, he realized, would amount to a fatal injury. For both of them.
It helped to consider what Paige had gone through these past three days. All his discomfort was a shin-bump against a coffee table by comparison.
He lifted her carefully now from beneath the cedar. Her eyes opened for a second but didn’t focus on him. He wanted to believe that her catatonia was mostly a result of the drug and the sleep deprivation, but had to accept that the infection’s role was considerable, and growing. Her forehead beaded like a windshield in rain.
He left the cedar stand and got moving, pushing the pace faster now than at any time before. The open space ahead was the physical distillation of anxiety itself. He imagined that this was how agoraphobics felt in shopping malls. Like prey.
There was no reason to think the chopper might be friendly. Had Paige’s people somehow located the wreck, they’d have shown up in greater numbers: fighters overhead, and multiple helicopters offloading personnel along every ridge for miles. It would have been the confident presence of a force on its home soil.
This lone chopper was more like a prowler in someone’s house.
Ahead, the valley curved gradually, revealing that the open space continued farther than he’d seen at first. He’d hiked this route on his way in, but couldn’t recall the specific layout of tree cover.
He recognized the high, rocky crest on which he’d seen the Dall sheep, his first night in the park. At that time he’d been a few miles east of it, on the Coldfoot side; he was far west of it now, still deep in the range. Adding up the rough distances, and considering his speed—slower than he’d traveled with just the pack, despite the urgency pushing him now—he put Coldfoot at least another twenty hours away.
He wouldn’t sleep, of course. Paige would live or die based on how soon she received treatment for the infection. Hours would count.
As he walked, he thought of what she’d told him in the clearing.
Tangent. The Breach. The Whisper.
He had in his pocket the piece of clear plastic he’d retrieved from the dead ATV riders. The Whisper’s key. What exactly would the Whisper do, when its key was applied? Paige’s words came back to him:
We didn’t build this thing.
We as in people.
The implications were hard to get his mind around, and not because he didn’t believe her. Just the opposite.
Paige interrupted his thoughts, murmuring something in her sleep. No words—just a scared sound, miserable and pleading. It lasted only a few seconds, and then she was quiet again, though Travis felt the tension in her muscles linger, and saw her eyes flitting back and forth behind their closed lids. He wondered how long it would be before she could dream anything other than nightmares.
“You’re safe,” he said quietly. “They’re gone.”
He didn’t expect it to work, but it did. She relaxed almost at once, into what passed for dreamless sleep.
Mostly, he tried not to look at her.
Tried not to notice her eyelashes, or the way her bangs fell on her forehead, or the nearly invisible traces of long-lost freckles across the bridge of her nose. Tried not to think of how, in spite
of his muscles burning as if battery acid were flowing through them instead of blood, this was the best he’d felt in a decade and a half.
She was something. No escaping it.
In a way, she was everything. Everything that his future would never contain. A year out of prison, he hadn’t even humored the idea of dating again. He’d spent fifteen years learning not to think about what he was missing. He’d gotten pretty good at it, too, and his freedom had brought little reason to change that perspective. His body might not be constrained behind razor-wire borders any longer, but his chances with a woman like Paige sure as hell were.
It wasn’t that he’d be alone forever. There were ways to take the edge off his past, and he was working on them. He’d been doing construction in Fairbanks for most of the year he’d been there, on a contractor’s crew. Working hard at it, and working smart, paying attention to the business side of the job. And saving his money. He’d be in a position to head up his own crew before too long, starting with medium-sized projects, mostly additions. If he played it right, he’d be putting up new homes on spec within five years, and eventually—maybe another five years after that—the homes would be high-end. Somewhere along that arc, with a solid career to speak for him and with prison far enough behind, he’d find someone who’d give him a chance.
But not someone like Paige. Not even close. And that was fine, as long as he didn’t think about it.
So he tried not to look at her.
But mostly he failed.
The open span, which turned out to be over three miles long, terminated at a grove of alders where three smaller valleys converged from high above. He’d gone a quarter mile beyond the grove, into more open space, when he heard the chopper again. No chance of getting back to the alders in time. He tried for them anyway.
He was a hundred yards shy, moving faster than good judgment counseled on the rough ground, with the rotors like drumsticks on sheet metal and the chopper seconds from breaking into view, when he took the misstep he’d been dreading.