by Tim Green
She hugged him even tighter and continued to cry. She was horrified. She was crushed. But despite her sorrow, with Cody holding her she felt somehow safer than she ever had in her life. Zimmer had warned Cody that it would be best if Madison didn't come, but she had insisted.
From out of nowhere, Cody heard his wife's name. He turned his head to see Zimmer standing near the door talking with a handsome young man who was built like a linebacker
"I've got her in the car outside," the young man said, answering Zimmei's pointed question almost reluctantly. "We wanted a chance to talk to her. I realize your jurisdiction here, detective, but we may be talking about the difference between catching and not catching a ruthless criminal, an agent of our own who can elude the locals in ways you never imagined."
Zimmer took exception to the young agent's condescension, so it was with pleasure he said, "Well, even us locals can't lose him now. Your big agent is on a slab down at the county morgue."
Britain removed his glasses and stared incredulously with his sky-blue eyes at the detective, saying, "Are you sure?"
"I am," Zimmer said flatly. "So if you don't mind, I'll take custody of Mrs. Grey. We have reason to believe that she is deeply involved in all this, although I'm not exactly sure what all this is...."
Zimmer briefly filled the agent in on what had happened.
Britain replaced his glasses and said, "Come on, but we'll still want to question her with you."
"That's fine, Agent Britain," Zimmer said dryly, "I'm sure you can teach us how to interrogate a suspect...."
Britain didn't even notice the jab.
"Madison, I'll be right back," Cody said to Madison, passing her to a uniformed officer.
"I'm coming with you," Madison said, pulling away from the officer.
Together they followed Zimmer and Britain into the elevator. No one said a word as they descended to the ground floor. The cop and the agent weren't giving out any information to each other until they had a chance to sort everything through and get to know one another a little better.
Britain led them out the lobby and started briskly toward the street. When he got to the curb, he pulled his gun abruptly and started to run toward the New Yorker, which sat in the beam of a streetlight with its trunk popped open.
Zimmer followed, and Cody did his best to keep up. Cody and Madison got to the car and cleared the trunk in time to see Britain yank open the front passenger side door. A man in a suit was slumped forward in the seat, his head twisted at an awkward angle and resting against the dash. His forehead was missing, and the windshield was cracked and splattered with blood and flecks of bone and brains. The back of the man's white dress collar was crimson from the blood that ran out of a hole in the back of his head, where the 7mm slug had entered before it exited along with the front portion of his skull.
Zimmer was looking around frantically, and Cody looked away from the gruesome sight to follow his gaze. He saw the same thing as Zimmer: a dark, balmy October night in Austin, Texas, and the trees that lined the street, shrouded in darkness and blowing gently in the breeze. An occasional piece of paper flipped along pell-mell in the gloom. Nowhere at all was there any sign of Jenny, the woman who had not long ago been his wife.
"I'll catch her," Cody and Madison heard Britain say. "She won't get far."
The young agent's jaw was set and his face was grim. His partner's blood was still wet on his hands. "Even if she gets out of the country, wherever she goes, I'll find her."
EPILOGUE:
On Emerald Island in the Fiji Islands there are two hotels. One is for people who like to see the sun rise, the other is for those who like to watch it set. The east side is the more sedate setting, it tends more toward older people and families. The west side is a haven for jet-setting young people, mostly from Australia and South America. The island is nothing more than the very tip of a small volcanic mountain. Its tremendous conical height, however, is entirely verdant, and thus the name Emerald Island. There is only one treacherous road that could get a person from one side of the island to the other, and there are very few cars with which to make the journey. Emerald Island is a vacation spot for only the very rich. And they usually know which side they prefer, and they stay there.
On one particular afternoon, a blonde American tortured the gearbox of an open jeep in order to make the unusual trek from one side to the other. He had done it before. He was looking for someone. He rounded a bend in the perilous descent, and he could see it, the Grand Beach Hotel. It was nestled into a nook of white sand and lush vegetation formed by the protective barrier of an ancient finger of lava that extended out toward the ocean before it hooked lovingly back toward the land. The hotel rose like a gem out of the jungle. It was a large, white stucco structure with towering gables topped by steep-pitched ceramic tile roofs. The design was European. It was intricate and exquisite.
The man pulled the jeep into a small turnaround that was almost completely shaded from the afternoon sun by the wild, overgrown palm trees. The door he went into took him to the back side of the hotel lobby. Most of the guests arrived from the ocean side, where a seaplane would land and take off several times a day from the lagoon. When the man at the desk looked up and saw him, he smiled nervously. The blonde American stood out in his lightweight gray flannel business suit. The man at the desk wasn't certain if interrupting the guest this man was looking for would be welcome or not. He had people to answer to, and it never went over well if a hotel guest was disturbed in any way. The American, he knew, was here to see one of Grand Beach's more frequent guests. She was a South African heiress who tipped extravagantly and would come and go at a moment's notice, sometimes staying for a month, other times for just a day.
Rumor had it she traveled the globe collecting men like trophies. There were usually men with her, one, or sometimes even two. If she arrived alone, the staff would get edgy. She was a huntress, and if she didn't bring her prey with her, she found it somewhere on the island. Occasionally she would even venture to the other side. A year ago, one of the waiters, a handsome man from Taiwan with a broad back and long black hair that he tied in a ponytail, had taken up with her. When she left, he tried to follow. No one had seen or heard from him since. She, however, had returned alone a month later.
On this particular trip she had also come alone.
"Where is she?" the tall American asked. He was wearing sunglasses that he seemed to prefer not to take off.
The man at the desk quietly said, "The south beach."
The American nodded solemnly and handed him a twenty-dollar bill before walking out through an intricate maze of winding paths that led to various tropical pools and, ultimately, the beach. There was a large cabana built just inside a line of palm trees where the sand began in earnest. It was here that liveried waiters hustled to and from guests who sat on the sand and around pools, bringing them everything from cold bottles of beer to champagne and chilled lobster tails, sometimes setting formal tables complete with linen and silver under some secluded cluster of palms that a romantic couple had decided to call home for an afternoon. The south beach was the most secluded area on this side of the island where you could still receive service from the hotel. To get there you had to walk about half a mile and cross a footbridge that traversed a stream feeding the lagoon. It was more of a place to go if you wanted to be alone, so the guests from the Grand Beach Hotel were rarely found there.
The American followed the winding path that went south. He took off his jacket and swung it casually over his shoulder. When he reached the south beach, he could see that a waiter was just scurrying away from her, leaving a silver ice bucket and a bottle of champagne. There was a small bamboo table beside her lounge chair. She sat facing the crashing surf. In the distance were a cluster of uninhabited volcanic islands. The beach was empty. It was a glorious sight, and sitting there with her back to him in her white bathing suit, stretched out on the chair, she looked the picture of paradise. Her hair fell to her shoulders a
nd was the color of late summer wheat. Her body was long and tan.
He took his shoes and socks off and left them neatly at the end of the path. He wondered if she would try to run. The waiter, a short fellow with a pageboy haircut, scrambled past him with a smile, hit the path, and disappeared into the jungle. Now they were really alone.
When he was halfway across the beach he realized that on the small table the waiter had left two champagne glasses instead of one. He wondered if she somehow knew he was coming and was going to simply surrender herself to him, or if there was someone else. He looked around warily. It wasn't something he had expected, another person, but it certainly was possible When he reached her, he stepped dramatically in front of her and looked down at her, a beautiful figure lying in his shadow. She tried to screen the glare of the sun to see him better.
"What do you want?" she said.
"I want you," he told her, taking off his sunglasses so she could see his face more clearly.
She sat straight up now and got into his shadow so she could see his face. It was very familiar. It was an unforgettable face, strong and determined, with piercing blue eyes that some would say were almost as beautiful as her own.
"I know," she said. "But I'm staying... . Would you like a glass of champagne?"
"No," he said, taking an official document from the inside breast pocket of his jacket. 'You'd better look at this before you say anything more."
He held the document out to her. She casually took a sip of champagne before taking it from him and opening it.
"How did you get this?" she asked with a worried look on her face.
"Don't worry," he told her. "I didn't have to give up everything. I flew here right from Reno. That's why the suit. Everything was completed, well, it was this morning when I left. I did what you said. I gave her the houses in Malibu and Aspen, but the chalet in Zermatt is mine ... and half the money. Now, come with me. I want to leave this place."
Grand Beach held some unpleasant memories for Paul DuMont. More than once he'd snuck away from his wife on the other side of the island, only to find Jenny bedded down with someone else. Some ugly scenes had ensued.
"I'm glad," she said, letting him drop to his knees in the sand and kiss her on the mouth. His constant reappearance in her dreams made her think she just might love him. Besides being distractingly handsome, he was a subtle cross between Striker and Cody. She would many him now, now that he had done as she had told him, divorced his wife without losing everything he had in the process. Besides his looks, he was smart and cultured, like Striker. He had some of Cody's naivetl and the same jealous hot temper. And his wife, or ex- wife, was so rich that her family would probably disown her for losing half her fortune to a man who had run off with another woman. But that was okay, because she was that other woman. Jenny had toyed with Paul DuMont now for over two years, seeing him sometimes when he was staying on the other side of the island with his family, other times in Zenmatt, Switzerland, where he and his wife would go skiing in the winter or the spring. Never in the United States, though. Jenny had never gone back to the States. She never would.
She got out of Texas slightly ahead of the large-scale manhunt they'd formed to catch her. Fortunately, she already had a new passport and identity from Striker. It was a simple matter of cutting her hair and dying it to match the doctored Dutch passport of one Greta Hammerstam. She'd rented a car outside Austin with a card Striker had given her. Then she drove to Laredo, where she had hooked up with a trucker who agreed to let her ride in his sleeper cabin across the border into Mexico for a thousand dollars. It was the first time the trucker ever heard of someone trying to sneak into Mexico. Jenny wasn't taking any chances. From there she went to Monterey, where she got a flight to Paris. Shipping the plutonium had been as simple as a curbside check-in. In Paris she used her coin to contact Jamir.
From Paris, she wasn't quite sure where it was she'd been flown but she thought it was an island somewhere in the Aegean. Jamir was hospitable and greatly pleased to see her, for sexual as well as business reasons. She delivered the pit to him, completing the transaction that Striker began, keeping the nine million dollars in cash for herself. Despite the pleasure of her company, Jamir, like she, had many things in life to do. Jamir had advised her how to elude the long-reaching arm of the CIA. He'd seen to it that she was given new documents, this time from South Africa, and introduced her to a discreet speech therapist as well as to equally discreet and competent doctors who had changed her appearance, while still leaving her beautiful. Within six months, the old Jenny Grey was gone forever. That was four and a half years ago.
In the interim she had searched for a man with whom to share her life. She didn't know if the one before her was the one she would stay with forever. That seemed too long a time to even think about, but she would certainly marry him now. A marriage with Paul would only increase her wealth, and that was something that did interest her lately. Her money was generating almost a million dollars a year in interest, but she had no problem spending that. Recently she had grown to want more, and Paul DuMont was the man who could give her more, as well as satisfy so many of her other needs.
Jenny had become so busy in her pursuit of men and money that there were times she would go for days without thinking of Cody Grey. She'd run into the son of an American real estate developer in the French Riviera about six months ago who claimed to be friends with Jason Storm, the Outlaws quarterback. Jenny was able to learn from the developer's son only that Cody had remarried and that he was supposedly teaching school somewhere and coaching high-school football. The young man thought Cody also had a couple of children, but he wasn't certain about any of it.
If she thought about Cody at all, it was usually late at night, right before she slept, when her mental guard was down. She'd think about his quiet way of looking at her and smiling, the way he did in the good times. In fact, those were the only times she could recollect with him, the good ones. Occasionally she would fantasize about going back to him to take him with her. She thought now, with all the money she had, they could definitely be happy together. Looking back at all the men she'd had, even Striker, she realized that not one of them had been as much of a man as Cody Grey.
Even with all she had, she found herself thinking of Cody. She wondered what had made her unhappy with him in the first place. She supposed it was the direction he had been heading--kids, teaching, little leagues, PTA. Those were things she just didn't want and couldn't understand. There was one other thing that bothered her even more than the fact that she no longer had Cody. In fact, it haunted her. It always would. She had everything now that she'd always dreamed of then. But now she dreamed of him.