“Process complete,” the computer said, as the icon spiraled down and disappeared from the screen. He unplugged it and handed it to Sara. Outside, the sky had gone black. “Sorry I took so long.”
She shifted her hands on his shoulders, found the tense spots, and started kneading into the knots. “Sorry I can’t be more help with that. I’m not much with computers.”
Groaning at her touch, Zach suppressed a chuckle as he thought about her shorting the Auto-nav in his Mitsu and forcing it to reboot. “That’s okay. It gives me something to do besides pace while your dad tries to contact DeWitt. I guess I lack patience.”
“Sometimes patience sucks.” She pressed deeper into the muscles at the base of his neck.
He let out a low moan as her fingers found a particularly tight spot. His head rolled back to rest against her abdomen. He could feel her heart beating through the muscles under her shirt. “Is that so? Any idea where we’ll be crashing tonight?” The gossamer-thin bra and the red panties he’d glimpsed that morning flashed through his mind and he allowed himself a small smile. “Not that last night in the pink palace wasn’t the perfect end to the perfect day, but—ouch!” He tried to pull away as her fingers clenched his shoulder muscles, but she squeezed harder, holding him where he was.
“Ow, ow, ow.” He shrank from her grip.
“My Mom put sheets on the couch for you, smooth-talker,” she said. She used the same throaty whisper she’d used yesterday morning when she’d leaned toward him and snapped her card down on his desk. “We’re safe here, but as I said, Jack—”
“Would have a stroke. Yes, I know. When this is over…”
She nudged his head forward with her body. “Focus.”
“Yeah.” He leaned forward in the chair, and noticed her fingers still on his shoulders. “Computer, unmount disc—Backup.” When the icon disappeared, he unplugged his crystal drive and laid it on the hard copies. “I just hope this works.”
“It has to. We can’t keep this up forever,” she said, turning to leave.
Zach sighed as he stood and followed her. “I know.”
In the living room, Miranda sat reading on one of two couches. Zach sat down at one end of the other. Sara curled up opposite him, tucking her feet under her, and laid her head on one of the pillows.
Miranda looked up from her ebook reader. “How’re you doing?”
Sara shifted toward Miranda. “Not too bad lying down. The Tylenol-threes help. I just wish the dizziness would go away.”
“It will, in a day or two. Your father stepped outside to check the security cameras.” Miranda turned her attention to Zach. “He got through to his DeWitt. I’m afraid Jack was a little cryptic.” She absently brushed a stray strand of hair from her face. It was the same gesture he had seen Sara use.
The door to the laundry room opened and Sara’s father stepped into the dining area. “The cameras are pointed right, and the motion detectors are working.”
“Cameras with motion detectors?” Zach asked.
“The feed from the cameras is accessible from any screen in the house, or an iLink,” Goode said, with a grin. “The cameras have auto-sensing motion detectors. Servomotors turn them toward any movement. Proximity alarms alert the police if anyone the biometric program doesn’t recognize comes within ten feet of one of the cameras.” He sat on the couch next to Miranda and handed Zach a tablet. On the screen were views of the house and yard from a dozen angles.
“Pretty sophisticated security system for a residence, isn’t it?” Zach asked, and handed the tablet to Goode.
Goode frowned. “Not if you’re a retired detective. Lotta bad people out there. Some of them I put away at one time or another.” He glanced at Sara and Miranda. “Can’t be too careful.”
He nodded. “Did it catch us last night—I mean when we got here?”
“Sure did. The way you two stumbled around, holding each other up, you looked like you’d had one hell of an evening.” He chuckled. “Seen people in the morgue in better shape than you two last night.”
“Better erase the disc,” Sara said, stirring on the couch.
“Thought I’d keep that one for posterity.”
Miranda rolled her eyes and Zach covered his mouth with a hand to avoid being caught in a smile at them.
Zach cleared his throat. “Miranda said you got through to your reporter contact, DeWitt.”
“I did. I used a burner phone so it can’t be traced by DHS. I told him I was acting as a source and to be available tomorrow morning for a call that could make his career.” He eyed Miranda. “And no, I did not use Zach’s name.”
“Was that enough?” Sara asked.
“It was plenty,” Goode said. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“When we call, I’ll get off the Interstate. As soon as I do, Zach, you’ll call him. I’ll make a U-turn and get back on 275. If DHS catches the call and pings the ’Link, they’ll think we’re on a surface street.”
“What’re the chances DHS is involved?” Zach asked.
Sara shrugged. “Johnson is cautious, and I haven’t heard anything, but you never know. Murphy might even pull something off the books. Better to be careful.”
Miranda closed the cover of her ebook reader and stood, taking her husband’s hand in hers. “Come on, my love, it’s bedtime.” She eyed Zach and Sara. “Don’t stay up too late. You two have a busy day tomorrow.”
“Yes, Mom.” Sara said without opening her eyes.
Miranda tugged Goode toward their room.
When they were alone, Zach leaned against the couch’s back, letting his head rest on a soft afghan draped over the surface. As grateful as he was, letting these people—these strangers—risk so much for him was insane, except he had no where else to turn. He rolled his head to where Sara lay curled up on the couch with her eyes closed and hated the spot saving him had put her in. He watched the way the light caught her, sure he’d never seen anyone as beautiful as she was.
After a few moments, she opened her eyes and moved her head to get a better angle on him. He shifted gears, hoping he’d covered his longing in time. “You’re wondering if this will work,” she said.
Part of him questioned whether his effort had been too slow. “I’m wondering if it will be enough. I’m wondering what I did in a former life to rate you and your family helping me like this.” He blew out a breath. “I’m wondering if I’ll be alive for my next birthday.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Sorry. I’m wondering if I’ll get the chance to put things right with my brother.”
She stretched out on the couch, and slipped her feet between his back and the cushion. “What is it between you and him? Your file said you two hadn’t talked in years, but it didn’t say why.”
“He’s afraid. When he and Beth got together and started talking about having children, I was still in grad school. I was working on the test.” He rolled his eyes and shook his head once. “The test that has brought everyone so much happiness. We haven’t had a close relationship since my mother…” He let the rest go. She’d already read his file and it had to be in there. “We drifted even further apart when he realized what my thesis was about.”
“Why wouldn’t he want to…?” she trailed off as realization swept over her face. “That’s so sad.”
He chuckled once, but there was no mirth behind it. “Best part? Beth snuck samples of their DNA to me without telling him, before she got pregnant. She hugged me and cried when I gave her the results. Their kids are safe from it. They don’t carry the gene, I do. I asked her not to tell Dave. I wanted him to…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I wanted him to do. Forgive me on his own, I guess.”
She stared at him. “But if you have the gene…?”
“It’s not expressed in me. That’s the part that’s so ironic. Carrying the gene doesn’t mean that much. There’s a possible chemical marker in the blood a pair of researchers in Europe found last year, based on my research. Now we think there’s an expres
sion enzyme that turns the gene on, but it’s all so new, no one knows for sure.”
“So even if Stiles has the gene—”
“He may not have the expression enzyme. Or he may, hell, I don’t have a clue, and I invented the test. That’s why all this gene crap with Stiles is so screwed up. We really just don’t know enough to use this information to make decisions that can affect people’s lives—at least not the way he’s proposing.”
She nodded her understanding, and said, “So, all the public opinion he’s whipping up is just fear-mongering to get votes. And you…”
“Just have to be mindful of who I think about having children with.” He sat up and turned toward her, excited to talk about the work he’d spent nearly a decade on. “It’s like Tay Sachs Disease. If you’re an Ashkenazi Jew, you just have to be a little more careful is all. The exact inheritance pattern for psychopathy isn’t even completely known. I’ve been so careful all my life because I was as afraid as Dave is. Fear is a terrible thing.” He laughed. “Ever heard of Robert Hare?”
She shook her head.
He slipped his wallet from his pocket and pulled a much-folded piece of lined notebook paper from it. He unfolded the paper and stared for a quick moment at the hand-written items it contained. The memories of his mother and his anxiety that he’d grow up in-and-out of institutions like she had clutched at his throat. Zach’s hand trembled as he passed it to her. “He was a psychiatrist. Fifty or sixty years ago, he came up with a list of the twenty traits psychopaths tend to exhibit. Before my test, they used it for diagnosis and for prognosis. If a patient had a high enough number of the traits, they were diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.”
Sara sat up and narrowed her eyes at him. “They just counted behavior traits?”
He nodded. “It was more complicated than that, but it was the best they had. Anyway, I memorized all twenty, and I’ve based my behavior, hell, my whole life on being the opposite of everything on that list since I was fourteen.” He took a deep breath and blew it out. Finally telling someone was like the eureka moment of finally understanding a problem after struggling with it for weeks or months.
“This makes perfect sense,” she said as she read. “Your code name during meetings was The Mad Monk. We just didn’t have all the pieces for the behavior to make sense.”
“Then you’ll love this bit. Remember I said my mother was a librarian? I found an old book in the library from eighty years ago explaining psychopathic behavior as humanity’s next level of evolution. It called them Indigo Children.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope,” he said. “That’s me. The Indigo Man. Isn’t that a laugh?”
“It’s… I don’t know.” Sara shook her head.
“I know.” He relaxed. “I just hope once this information about Stiles is out, I don’t have to sneak into a foreign country. You wouldn’t know anybody who can make a good fake I.D., would you?”
She chuckled. “No, but I’m sure my dad does.”
“Well, let’s just hope I don’t need one.” He watched her as she read over the items on the list, imagining her older, with a few streaks of gray in her hair and little laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. He found he liked the image and wanted to be there to see it.
When she finished, she met his gaze. “I wonder who you really are, underneath all this.”
“Sometimes I wonder myself.”
She folded the paper. “Can I keep this for a while? I want to think about it.”
“Sure,” he said with a shrug to cover a little twist in his gut. “I memorized them years ago.”
Their eyes remained locked for an extra moment and he almost leaned toward her—started to, but the second he tensed, she unfolded her legs and stood. “Better get some rest. Long day tomorrow.” She shot him a quick smile and started toward her room.
Alone on the couch, Zach levered himself flat, ignoring the sharp ache from his chest. He sighed and wondered if he’d missed a moment he’d regret for the rest of his life. Too many moments had slipped away in his life, and he regretted every one.
CHAPTER 18
The aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the house. A sheet covered Zach where he lay on the couch. Blunt-edged, faded thoughts rolled around in his head. When he stretched, barbed wires of pain scraped through his chest. Wincing from the effort, he rolled onto his side and opened his sleep-gummed eyes to Sara’s parents’ comfortable living room.
Miranda stepped from the kitchen and smiled. “Good morning. As soon as Sara’s out of the bathroom, it’s your turn. Are scrambled eggs and bacon all right?”
He inhaled slowly, checking for pain. “Actually, coffee is plenty for me, thanks. I’m not much of a breakfast person and I’m a little anxious to get this over with.” Zach eased into a sitting position and rubbed his palms over his face.
She returned a moment later with a steaming cup of coffee and a bottle of aspirin. She placed them on the coffee table in front of Zach. “Sleep okay?”
Shaking the cobwebs from his thoughts, he realized she was waiting for his answer. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you. Pretty good, considering.” He took the cup by the handle and sipped, sighing as the hot liquid flowed over his tongue and into his belly.
“The label says two,” she said, spilling four tablets onto Zach’s palm, “but we can make an exception just this once.”
The bathroom door opened. Sara walked across the hall and into her room as he watched from the corner of his eye. Her hair was in its usual topknot and a dark green towel wound around her torso. The way she moved, from the set of her shoulders to her graceful steps, held his attention until she disappeared into her room. Suddenly self-conscious, he glanced at Miranda, and caught the tail end of her smile as she turned back to the kitchen.
He took another long sip of coffee and slowly worked his way to standing. Halfway to the bathroom, Goode stepped out of the master bedroom. He wore a tee shirt and jeans again today, and carried a small canvas bag.
“Mornin’,” Goode said. His smile reached all the way to his dark brown eyes.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Jack.” Goode stopped, barring Zach from stepping into the hall.
Zach cocked his head. “Sorry?”
“Jack. You can call me Jack, remember?”
Nodding, Zach said, “Yes, sir, I mean, Jack. Sorry.”
Goode’s face softened. “Tell me, what do you do for fun?”
“Fun? I don’t—” He stood, rooted to the floor, remembering yesterday’s innocent opening question.
“Fun. You know, the thing you’re supposed to do when you’re not at work.”
“I… I mean. That is, I—”
The ends of Goode’s lips pulled up slightly. “It’s not a trick question, man.” A twinkle flickered in his eyes.
“Run. I mean, I run, for relaxation.”
Goode’s face contorted into a contemplative look as he nodded. “How far? I’m just curious.”
Zach relaxed. “Usually five or six miles. Three or four times a week. It gets me outside.”
Goode frowned. “I lift weights and swim. And go a couple of rounds with Ran in the back yard every now and then to keep in shape. Or at least I did ’til four months ago.” He rolled his right shoulder. “Pulled a friggin’ rotator cuff.” He gestured in the direction of the kitchen. “She’s got me doing yoga till it’s rehabbed.” He rolled his eyes. “Yoga. Can you believe it? Next, she’ll have me on my toes in a tutu.” He stepped around Zach and tapped him on the arm. “Get showered and dressed. You two need to get this done while the news feeds are still hot for your story.”
“Anything new?”
“Just the thing on the feeds accusing you of clubbing kittens on your vacations.”
Zach cocked his head, hoping Goode was joking, half afraid he was serious.
“It was a joke. Lighten up a little.”
Goode passed by, continued through the living room, and headed into the kitchen.
Miranda’s quiet laugh floated through the air, followed by what Zach imagined was the sound of a hand lightly slapping an arm. He remembered to breathe and headed for the bathroom.
***
Murphy piloted his rental car through the beach’s usual morning traffic half a mile behind Hayes and Boone. His personal mini tablet was connected to the dash. Its special app pinged every time the micro RFID GPS chip he’d hidden inside Stiles’s get-well music box passed a transceiver, and those were buried in the traffic infrastructure all over the county. Hayes and Boone had given Stiles the stink-eye over being sent on a delivery errand, but in the end, they’d agreed to do it, just as he’d predicted they would.
Hayes and Boone had avoided him like he was contagious at the morning briefing, and he’d ignored them. He’d begged off a couple of hours to go answer the local cops’ questions, and pick up his rental car, and time was tight. Because of the previous night’s fiasco, Johnson had assigned him to perimeter. Johnson refused to report Marshall’s behavior as a direct threat to Stiles until he knew more. Murphy considered Johnson a foot-dragging federal bureaucrat.
Murphy checked the tablet. They were still headed north—still on the beach. Murphy slowed before he started onto the four-lane bridge leading from Sand Key north toward Clearwater Beach. No need to crowd them. Once he had the location, he would wait until Hayes and Boone started back. Then he could use the RFID transmitter in the tablet to find the chip’s location and go have a nice quiet talk with Gopher Girl and her mom and pop. Once this thing with Marshall was finished, Stiles was going to be president. Murphy held no illusions about politicians and loyalty. He’d managed to collect enough dirt on the esteemed congressman that it would be in everyone’s best interest to keep Murphy happy. Visions of a supervisory field posting danced in his imagination.
He pulled the rental onto the shoulder and stopped in the shade under a stand of palms, a few dozen feet from the sand and water. As he sat and watched the sailboats and jet skis on Clearwater Bay, he twisted the silencer onto the barrel of his backup piece, a Beretta M96A. His thoughts swirled around his life, spent in other places full of sand and palms, doing things for the OCIS and his country he could never tell anyone about.
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