by Nancy Kress
“On what good authority? Who did you talk to?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Tessa said, and knew how it sounded. She was already under suspicion. This could only make it worse. But the Bureau had resources she did not. They could find Ebenfield.
Maybe.
“I’m sending a car for you,” Maddox said. “Give me your address and stay right there.”
“I can’t do that, John,” Tessa said. She was already turning off the laptop, sliding it into the pocket of Jess’s coat, moving toward the door. “Think—if I had stayed at my house, you wouldn’t even have Ebenfield’s name. I couldn’t have gotten it with you watching suspiciously over my shoulder. And I’ll feed you anything else I discover, I promise. But I’m not coming in.”
“Damn it, that’s an order!”
“But I’m not an agent anymore.” Then she was gone, walking rapidly toward the door, sliding her cell phone into the trash bin on the way out the door, disappearing around the corner of the building into the night.
Short-term moving, she thought, picturing the jovial truck driver who’d given her the ride into Frederick. Now she was running, making good time on the cold deserted streets, sure of at least her next stop.
If not of anything else.
» 28
Allen lay quietly in bed, his face turned to the wall. Waiting. When the door finally opened, he watched the growing line of light slide down his clown wallpaper. Red clown hair, ruffled shirt, big fake hands holding a balloon, baggy pants…the wallpaper was too babyish and anyway Allen hated clowns.
“Allen? Are you asleep?”
He scrunched his eyes shut and blew softly through his nose.
Satisfied, his mother went quietly from the room and closed the door. Allen felt bad, in a way; he could hear from her voice that she’d been crying again. His father wasn’t home because nobody was allowed back into Tyler, and his parents had had a big fight on the phone about that, although Allen couldn’t see that it was Daddy’s fault. The government said. Still, Allen knew he should have stayed up and comforted his mother, like the other times his parents fought, but he just couldn’t. Not this time.
He gave her more achingly long time to take her pills and get to sleep. What if she noticed that the bottle held less pills than it was supposed to? But he guessed that she didn’t notice because she didn’t come back into his room, and eventually he decided she must be asleep by now.
It hurt to walk. When he’d stepped on that shard of glass in the basement, going down to Susie, a piece of it had gone through his sock and into his foot. Allen had locked himself in the bathroom and tried to wash it with soap and warm water, but the soap stung too much. Now his foot was swelling up and the skin around the cut was red, hard, and hot. He forced his foot into a hard-soled slipper, nearly crying out with pain, and kept going. Down the stairs, across the foyer, out the front door.
Outside it was spooky and much colder. Allen was afraid to walk behind the bushes—anything might be in there!—but he made himself do it so he could crawl through the basement window. His mother hadn’t tried to fix the glass. That was the kind of thing his father always did. When Allen dropped onto the dryer he did yell, it hurt his foot so much. Tears sprang into his eyes. But he had to keep going.
Susie was awake inside the filing cabinet, whimpering and barking softly. Good thing he came when he did! He pulled open the drawer and she stumbled out. Allen put his arms around her.
“Susie, Suze—are you okay? Can you see, girl, can you?” The weird, milky film was still in her eyes. But she didn’t seem blind. She whined and licked his face and gave her bark—two short quick yaps—that said she had to go out.
“I can’t take you out, Suze, I can’t. There are mean dogs out there. Come on, girl, come over here.” He led her to a far corner of the cellar. “Go on, Susie, piddle here. It’s okay.”
Susie raised her eyes doubtfully to his.
“I know you don’t like to piddle inside the house, but this time you have to. You have to!”
Susie whined and jiggled her hind legs.
Allen looked desperately around the basement. Nothing he could see, nothing he could…wait!
Hobbling to the pile of boxes filled with Christmas decorations, plus all the wadded tax forms he’d scooped out of the filing cabinet, Allen pulled open box after box until he found the pine garlands his mother put on the mantel every year. They were special garlands, very expensive she said, so soft and springy they looked real. Allen spread them in a little mat on the floor and pushed Susie onto it.
“See, girl, grass! Piddle on the grass!”
Susie gazed at him with disdain and whined again.
Allen jiggled her collar a few times, but she wasn’t a toilet and this produced no water. He didn't know what to do. Susie had to piddle—and maybe poop, too—or she’d burst. But where? How?
He stuffed the garlands back into the Christmas box, which was patterned with elves smiling like stupid clowns. By now Allen had to stand on one foot, the other hurt so much. He just slightly touched the toes of his slipper to the floor for balance.
“Come on, Suze.” The dog followed him to the laundry room. Allen closed the door while he swept all the glass into a corner. On the other side of the door Susie barked so loud he was sure somebody would hear. But no one came and he finished sweeping as fast as he could on one foot. Then he let Susie in, lifted her onto the dryer, climbed painfully up himself, and shoved her through the window, keeping a firm grip on her collar.
Immediately she squatted in the bushes, piddled, and pooped.
When she was finished, Allen pulled her by her collar back through the window. But Susie didn’t want to come back in. She squealed and tugged backward against her collar. What if she escaped? A sick dog could bite her, even kill her! Allen gave the collar a frantic pull and Susie tumbled into him through the window, harder and heavier than he expected. He lost his balance and fell off the dryer, and both of them crashed to the floor.
Allen screamed. It hurt. For a second everything went black, but then it got better and he could see again. Susie! The dog lay on her side next to him, whimpering, and when he tried to touch her she growled at him.
“Susie! Is anything broken? Are you all right? Susie…” It was an anguished howl.
Susie inched toward him and licked his hand.
Slowly Allen got to his knees. He couldn’t get any higher. Susie stood, too. From his pocket Allen took another pill and a piece of cheese. After she’d gobbled it down, he struggled, still on his knees, out of the laundry room to the filing cabinet.
But Susie wouldn’t get in. She growled and even snapped when he tried to make her. So he sat by the metal cabinet, the dog on his lap, until she fell asleep, and then he stuffed her back in the bottom drawer. He could hardly do it, his body hurt so much. Every time he breathed, his chest hurt him. He tried to breathe just a little bit, because that was less painful.
Somehow he got back up on the dryer, through the window, and into the house. By then he was crying. Allen burrowed into his bed and pulled the covers over his head, praying desperately to God that his chest would stop hurting, that Susie hadn’t broken any of her old bones, that pretty soon everything would somehow be all right.
» 29
Tessa ran the mile and a half through the dark residential streets of Frederick to her sister’s house on Delmore Lane. She had only a limited time before Maddox thought to send agents to Ellen’s house. Halfway there, she stopped to bend over briefly and breathe. Her stride was off from carrying Salah’s laptop.
Ellen and Jim’s fifties-style split level sat on a side street, shaded by now bare maples, bordered by the flower beds Ellen loved. The house showed only one light, in the living room. Tessa approached from the backyard next door, scanning for possible Bucars. None yet, as far as she could tell. The living room curtains weren’t drawn. From one side she peered carefully into the window.
A teenage girl lolled on the sofa, eating nach
os from a bag and watching television. A babysitter. Better than Tessa had hoped.
Both front and back doors were locked, as were all the windows. But sometimes people weren’t so careful with the second story. It had been warm earlier today—warm enough to leave the backyard littered with toys—and Ellen might have opened windows to air out bedrooms. All that infant vomiting.
In the darkest corner of the backyard, Tessa shrugged out of Jess Langstrom’s jacket, pushed it and the laptop under a bush, and brought a tricycle close to the back wall under a window. Balancing on the bicycle seat, she could just reach the eaves of the house’s lowest, half-underground level. Her feet found the narrow upper window framing and she pulled herself to the roof, panting a bit.
She used to be better at this. At twenty-eight, she’d qualified for elite hostage-rescue training. But thirty-five wasn't twenty-eight and there had been slacker—not slack, but slacker—years in between.
The roof gave onto no windows, but there was one just around the corner, at the house’s front. More dangerously visible, but necessary. Tessa reached around and felt with her fingers. The window wasn’t locked.
Careless, Ellen, careless. I could be a thief.
She shoved the window open, hoping no neighbors called the cops, and pulled hard at the screen. It came away in her hand. Dropping it to the shrubbery below, Tessa oozed around the corner of the house and through the opening.
Two children lay asleep in the room, the baby in his crib and Tessa’s three-year-old niece, Sally, in a toddler bed. The little girl didn’t stir.
Carefully Tessa opened the door and crept down the half-flight of stairs. She couldn’t see the living room from the hallway, which was good because it meant the babysitter couldn’t see her. But light from the living room faded after she turned the corner and eased down the second half-flight, and she reached the basement level in darkness. Two rooms here, a large space land-mined with toys and child-sized furniture and, beyond, Jim’s study.
It had to be there. It had to be.
Inside the study she closed the door and risked the light. Jim was not a methodical man. But even so, this was the logical place, and not among the piles of papers and books and rolled-up architectural drawings. Tessa opened the desk drawers, one after another, rifling efficiently through each. In the lower right drawer, she struck pay dirt.
Halfway back up the stairs, and the phone rang. The babysitter leapt off the couch and raced for the kitchen, on the other side of the hallway.
Tessa had no time. She slipped silently into the miniscule powder room, not daring to close the door, and pressed herself against the wall.
“Hello?” the girl said eagerly. “Blakely residence, Emily speaking!… Oh, hello, Mrs. Blakely.”
Despite herself, Tessa grinned. The girl’s disappointment was so unhidden, so artless. She’d been expecting some acned Romeo and instead had gotten Ellen.
“No, nobody’s called, Mrs. Blakely, not your sister or anybody… The kids are all fine. They’re asleep…okay. Bye.” She dragged back to the living room.
And then started up the stairs.
Tessa caught her breath. She’d left the window in the kids’ room open, planning to be only a moment, knowing that cold air seldom broke the sound sleep of the very young. Now Emily would see the window and the missing screen and, if she had half the sense she was born with, call the cops. Tessa bolted for the kitchen door.
Hand on the knob, however, she decided to risk waiting. Maybe the girl wouldn’t notice the open window behind its filmy curtains, wouldn’t go far enough into the room to feel the cold air coming in. Or maybe she’d think it had been open all along. There was probably a phone in Jim and Ellen’s bedroom, but Emily wouldn’t use that one. Babysitters didn’t trespass into the master bedroom. She’d come back downstairs, use the kitchen phone to call 911…
Tessa slipped behind the open powder-room door and waited.
Emily came back downstairs, went into the living room, and resumed watching TV.
Ellen should get a more observant babysitter. Well, eventually Tessa might be able to tell her sister that.
When she was sure Emily was settled, Tessa crept back upstairs and out the window, awkwardly closing it behind her. She couldn’t do anything about the screen, but screens fell out all the time. She hoped. Lightly she got to the ground, retrieved coat and laptop, and began running again. Not bad—the first of Maddox’s agents hadn’t shown up.
She caught another hitch on Route 15. This trucker was headed north but north was all right to leave Frederick. He could leave her at the big truck stop just before the Pennsylvania line, and she’d easily be able to pick up an anonymous ride back to Baltimore and BWI.
“I gotta have more coffee,” the trucker said fifteen minutes later. They were the first words he’d spoken. Tessa didn’t know why such silent types picked up riders at all, but they usually did. Perhaps they just wanted another body in the cab, mute evidence that they were not the only breathing life in a world of moving metal.
She said, “If you find a Starbucks, I’ll treat.”
He snorted. “I don’t need no designer coffee."
“Listen…do you have a cell phone?"
He glanced at her suspiciously. “Yeah, why? You need to call somebody?”
“Sort of. Does your cell phone have data service on your calling plan?”
“Have what?”
“I mean, can you access the Internet from your cell phone?”
He peered at her. “Girlie, what do you think this is, a fucking war room? I got calls on my calling plan, period.”
“There’s a Starbucks!”
He sighed and pulled onto the exit. Tessa bought him a double mocha latte and a cheese Danish. She opened the laptop—still some battery left—and accessed her email account through the Web. Jess would have told Maddox that Tessa took a laptop with her. Maddox might communicate with her this way—and vice-versa.
But her one new message was not from Maddox.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: dogs
Nice try, Tessa. Ruzbihan wasn’t helpful enough, you couldn’t reach Aisha, and so you’re preparing for the worst. What did you take from your sister’s house? Not a gun, you already have one. My guess is a passport. The two of you look so much alike—and “Ellen Blakely” wouldn’t be on a no-fly list, would she? But we’re partners in this, you and I, you know that. I can’t let you back out now. It wouldn’t be fair. Not after all that Salah and I meant to each other. And where are you trying to go? To Aisha? You’re right; she knows a lot. But not enough.
Check out 1 Kings 21:23.
Fondly,
Richard
He had been there. In the video arcade, listening to her call Ruzbihan, trying to call Aisha. He had been there, close enough to listen, and she hadn’t noticed him, hadn’t been looking… He had to have followed her from Tyler, followed KESSEL SHORT-TERM MOVING. And followed her run through the darkness to Ellen’s house…
Despite her training, Tessa shuddered. She had never been undercover, had always worked counter-terrorism from the open. But she should have noticed him, among the masses of kids seething around the arcade. She hadn’t been wary enough, hadn’t expected to be followed except possibly by Maddox’s men.
She didn’t even know what Ebenfield looked like.
“Anything good on that contraption?” said the silent trucker.
“No,” she said numbly. “Nothing good at all.”
INTERIM
At midnight he sat in a dingy motel room north of Route 70. In the ashtray beside his laptop there burned a stick of incense, a smoky and pungent smell, not altogether pleasant. But he needed it. It distracted from that other smell, the necessary but terrible one, the price he had to pay. There was always a price. The incense was also supposed to help with the itching, at least that’s what they’d said in Mogumbutuno, but the man hadn’t found that to be true. Not everything
they said was true.
The laptop screen showed no reply to his email.
That was all right. She’d reply when she was ready. He’d lost her after Frederick, lost her physically, but that was all right, too. There was no way she could truly escape him. No way any of them could. He was owed this.
The man leaned forward to relight the incense, which had gone out. When he did so, he caught a glimpse of his own face reflected in the computer screen. He closed the laptop so quickly that the sound echoed in the small room.
Soon.
SUNDAY
» 30
Cami woke before dawn, still lying on the gurney in the hospital corridor. The lights hadn’t been turned up yet and the hallway had that night hush, broken only by the soft pinging of monitors and the even softer breathing of other patients on other gurneys. In the distance Cami, whose hearing seemed preternaturally sharp, picked up the footsteps of rubber-soled nurses’ shoes, fading even as she listened.
And then another sound: a child whimpering.
Slowly Cami sat up. Her head felt clear and nothing hurt. Her leg was in a heavy cast, which suggested a serious fracture. For the first time she could recall the attack: Captain springing at her, her own reflexive kick and scream, the powerful jaws closing on her leg even as she stared, unable to either look away or stop screaming, and Mr. Anselm’s bloody body. Then people behind her, shouts, a gunshot. Then nothing.
I went into shock, she thought, and felt obscurely ashamed. She was a nurse, after all.
A fracture would not keep her in the hospital very long. It might be followed by long physical therapy—Cami knew just how much that could involve—but that she was still here suggested other possibilities. Were they monitoring her for infection? Or did this dog plague lead to something in humans that could…she didn’t know. Maybe nobody knew yet.