Truth and Consequences

by Sarah Madison

  I explained my theory, that it must have something to do with the screen images, or scrolling down the pages. I pointed out that it wasn’t limited to checking out my past browser history, that I had trouble with social media sites too. She just let me talk until I ran out of words.

  “You’ve never considered the possibility that there’s something about your immediate past you’d rather not know?”

  “No.” That was stupid. We were straying into voodoo territory.

  “Do you trust John?”

  I hesitated just a fraction of a second too long. “With my life.”

  Regina smiled at me, a little sadly. “That much goes without saying. What about your heart, Lee? Do you trust him with that too?”

  I thought about the mystery surrounding the missing artifact, and the feeling he was keeping something big from me. I thought about how he had yet to tell Jean about knowing who killed Rachel, and his idea that keeping something from the person he loved would protect them in the end. I looked this woman in the eye. I knew her only as a result of a series of specific circumstances, and she was someone I’d never be sharing my deepest thoughts and concerns with otherwise. She knew I had to shield John. Even if it were only from a negative opinion. She didn’t know him like I did.

  “Yes. With all my heart.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I COULDN’T wait to shake the proverbial dust off my feet. Regina’s suite had a private exit into another hallway, presumably so patients wouldn’t run into each other. I bolted down the corridor like a kid let out of school early. As I made my way to the elevators, I switched my phone on and called Jean to come pick me up. The whole meet-with-the-therapist thing made me squirrelly. It felt like being diagnosed with a broken leg, years after the original injury, and having the surgeons tell you the only way they can make you walk normally again is to rebreak the leg and start over. No, thanks. I’m doing just fine with my gimpy leg the way it is. At least it’s functional.

  There wasn’t much on the second floor. Mostly suites like Regina’s, though there was a small waiting area by the bank of elevators. As I approached it, a man who’d been reading a set it aside and arrived at the elevator just as I got there. Another man, who’d come in on a tangent from down the hall, pressed the button. The doors opened, and an orderly with a woman in a wheelchair got out. Everyone waited patiently for the elevator to empty. Magazine Man got in behind the new arrival, who helpfully held the door open with one hand and gave me a smile. I grimaced and snapped my fingers, spinning on my heel and heading back in the opposite direction.

  “You coming or not?” Helpful Guy called after me.

  “Sorry, I left my phone down the hall.” I waved him off with a little laugh, walking backward as I did so, shaking my head with a smile until the doors closed in front of them.

  As soon as the doors closed, I bolted back to the elevators and leaned on the “Up” button on the next one over.

  I might not have noticed it if Magazine Man hadn’t been a little too quick to beat me to the elevator. I might have gotten in with them, deep in my own thoughts and worrying about my therapy appointment. If Magazine Man had been on his own, I might have put it down to my overactive imagination. But he triggered alarm bells, and I paid attention to Helpful Guy as a result. Not only was he the man who’d been watching me with a quizzical expression through the glass of the vending machine, but when he held open the elevator door, I could see a thin scar that stood out whitely on his wrist.

  It was my old friend, the mugger from the shopping center. And if I didn’t miss my guess, Magazine Man had been his partner then too. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.

  Since the two men were stuck in the elevator for the time being, I thought about my next move. I could have made a dash for the stairs, as I was only on the second floor, but there was a good chance I would meet those two clowns in the lobby. Heading up was the only logical choice. While I waited impatiently for the elevator, I called Jean.

  The doors opened to a full lift. I got in just as Jean answered her phone. “Jean? Have you left the house yet?” With a show of fingers to the frowning man at the controls, I indicated that I wanted the fifth floor.

  “Just getting ready to leave. Is there something wrong?”

  Sharp, these Flynns. I liked that about them. “Yes. Remember our friends from outside the kitchen supply store? Well, they’re here at the hospital.”

  “No. Are you sure?” Jean didn't even hesitate. “What do you want me to do? Call the police?”

  I noticed several of the other passengers on the elevator eyeing me curiously. “We don’t have enough to go on, unfortunately. I want you to stay at the house, though. Call a friend to come keep you company. I’ll phone a cab.” I was formulating a plan.

  “I am perfectly capable of defending myself, Lee. I can come and get you.” Her acerbic tone was exactly what I expected from her.

  “I know you are, love. It’s leaving the house empty that I’m worried about. I can’t explain right now, but I don’t think they’ll try anything with people there, so the more the merrier.”

  “My book club is coming over later this evening.” She spoke slowly, obviously thinking hard. “I could ask a few of them to come over early to help set up.”

  “That’s the ticket. I’ll bring refreshments.” I smiled reassuringly at a woman who was sidling away from me as though I were a jewel thief or something.

  I ended the call and texted John. Would-be muggers showed up at hospital today. Something I need to know?

  The elevator stopped at the fifth floor. A single passenger exited, and I got out with him. I went to the directory and checked to see where the maternity ward was located. When I found it, I took the next available elevator up to that floor. As expected, it was fairly busy, and there were large parties of visitors. I waited by the elevators for a likely group to merge into and called a cab to meet me downstairs. While I waited, I pulled up the website for WWBT Channel 12 on my smartphone. As expected, there was no Christy Wells listed as a reporter. An ambitious gofer, maybe?

  Or maybe not.

  When a happy group of visitors boarded the elevator for the lobby, I joined them. On the way down, the theme for The A-Team played on my phone. One of guys in the elevator turned and grinned at me as I answered it.

  “Are you okay?” John asked without preamble. I could hear the sharpness in his voice, like discovering a pocketknife you’d neglected to close all the way.

  “For now,” I said, keeping it deliberately casual and giving my fellow A-Team fan a little smile in return.

  “Okay, look. There’s stuff you need to know, but I can’t go into this on the phone. You wouldn’t believe me anyway.” He added the second bit almost to himself.

  I took my cue. “What wouldn’t I believe?”

  That seemed to bring him back to the problem at hand. “Not now. Not over the phone. I’ll come home as soon as possible. In the meantime, don’t go anywhere by yourself. Don’t go anywhere, in fact. It’s complicated, but I can explain.”

  “Oh, this is going to be good.” I paused briefly and then laid out my one-two punch. “There was a reporter nosing around on Saturday while you were out playing golf.” I knew my phrasing would get to him. It’s not like he wanted to play golf. “Funny thing is, I’ve looked her up, and she doesn’t seem to exist. Another funny thing is that my journal seems to be missing. You wouldn’t know where it is, by any chance? I thought Phoenix seemed a little freaked out when we got back Saturday morning, but I put it down to us being gone overnight.”

  He was silent so long I thought the call had been dropped. “John?”

  It was only then I could hear him breathing through his nose, like one of those broncos behind the gate at a rodeo. “I’ll come home as soon as possible,” he finally ground out. “Go back to the house. Stay there.”

  His strong, silent act was really starting to piss me off. “You have any idea why someone would want to—”

>   “Lee, you know there are some things that can’t be discussed over the phone. This is one of them.”

  A faint bell went off in my head. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with our guests at the hotel the other day, would it?”

  “I don’t know. Not for sure, at any rate.” He paused, and I could practically feel his indecision. “Maybe. Probably. In the meantime, watch your back.”

  “You too.” It suddenly dawned on me that if he knew something I didn’t, then he was probably wearing a far bigger target than I was. Maybe it was the cast that made these jokers think I was vulnerable.

  The snort that came over the phone was more weary than derisive. “No one’s going to sneak up on me. You take care of yourself—and my mother too.”

  He rang off as the elevator doors opened and discharged us into the lobby. I didn’t see any signs of my stalkers, so I walked briskly out into the bright sunshine to meet my cab. “Take me to the FBI headquarters,” I told the driver and gave him the local address on Parham Road.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I DIDN’T waste my time going into the main complex to search the database for my followers. I went there for one reason only—to check a car out of the motor pool. It only made sense for me to have transportation of my own and not rely on Jean all the time. Besides, I felt as though I’d jiggled a strand in a complex web, and the spider at the center was on the move. Time enough to figure out who these guys were once I got some answers from John.

  The guy manning the car pool studied my badge briefly and then signed over a car without further comment or question.

  I walked to the lot and got into the car. It wasn’t as nice as the snazzy sports car I’d rented the other night, but it felt familiar and right.

  Twenty minutes later, I was on my way back to Jean’s. Earlier, I promised her I’d bake some treats for her book club gathering that evening, but I had to cheat and buy something. I stopped by a high-end bakery and bought cheese straws and an assortment of cookies. I needed to focus for the remainder of the afternoon, and I discovered a long time before that baking and online research aren’t the best combination, even for someone with my attention to detail.

  Jean met me at the door and took the boxes of baked goods that I was awkwardly carrying with one hand. “Is everything okay?” she asked quietly as she shut the door behind me.

  “For the moment.” I’d noticed the other cars out front. “Did some of your friends come over?”

  She nodded. “Betty and Hazel are here now. The others will be coming over later.”

  “I’ve got to go downstairs and check a few things. Then I might need to go out. Make sure you keep them here with you. I’ve spoken to John. He’s going to come home as soon as he can.”

  “What’s going on, Lee? Are you sure the men at the hospital were the same ones in the parking lot? I know this is what you do for a living, but they were wearing ski masks.”

  I explained about the scar on one guy’s wrist. She frowned and shook her head. “What do these men want with you?”

  It was a weird conversation to have in Jean’s sunny living room, holding pastel cardboard boxes that emitted the mouth-watering odors of sugar and cinnamon. “I wish I knew. I’m going to find out, though.”

  I went with her to the kitchen, where she introduced me to her friends. I apologized for bringing store-bought treats instead of making them myself, as any proper Southern lady would have done. Not that I was a Southern lady, but I said the right things, just the same. I spoke the lingo. I was one of them. Her friends, bright-eyed with curiosity, didn’t want me to leave the party.

  “Don’t apologize, honey. This makes a nice change from Little Debbies.” Hazel cracked a lid on one of the boxes and smiled.

  “I would never serve Little Debbies, and you know it.” Jean put on a show of being insulted.

  “Oreos, then.” Hazel’s smile got even wider. “We were just having coffee, Lee. Do sit down and tell us more about being an FBI agent.”

  “I’d love to, but I have some work I need to do right now. Perhaps this evening, at the book club gathering? What are you reading?”

  “Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey,” Betty volunteered quietly. “You probably haven’t heard of it. Much too tame for a young man like you.”

  “On the contrary, I get enough excitement at work. I love a good British murder mystery, and Tey is one of my favorite authors. Let me just get this task out of the way, and I’d be happy to sit in on your meeting. That is, if you’ll have me.”

  The general consensus was enthusiastic. I had the feeling I was going to be treated like a guest speaker, but that was okay. I made my escape to the basement.

  The first thing I did was take a long, slow look around. Nothing appeared to have been moved since I left that morning, aside from finding the soap on the bathroom floor. I put that down to Phoenix playing with it again. She had a thing for the tiny bars of soap that hotels provided, and Lord knows, John and I had a collection of them.

  Unlike the morning when John and I returned from our night out, the cats seemed relaxed, despite the sounds of people moving upstairs. In hindsight, I should have figured it out sooner. Someone had been in the house while everyone was gone Friday night. I could be forgiven for having had my mind on other things at the time, though.

  I pulled the laptop out of its bag and fired it up. Would they have taken the laptop if I hadn’t brought it with me to the hotel? Probably, though that would definitely have been hard to explain away—so maybe not. I typed in the password and brought up my browser. I nibbled on a thumbnail for a moment and started typing. Migraines or not, I needed to know what I’d been looking for over the last six months. There had to be some reason those jokers were following me.

  When I pulled up my search history, the first thing that caught my eye was the number of times I’d looked for information regarding the artifacts. Gritting my teeth against a probable future migraine, I took a couple of ibuprofen and sat down to examine every link related to the boxes. The next hour went by in a haze of intense concentration. It was a bit like working out a five-hundred-piece puzzle, as I followed links back to their sources and discovered that my hunt for the artifacts had been going on in one form or another for almost as long as John and I had been together.

  That realization was a punch in the gut. Obviously these artifacts meant something more to me than something John picked up from his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly the appearance of Drover and Harris at our hotel made a little more sense. The boxes were important enough that I’d been looking for answers for a while. It was also important enough to bring our colleagues out on the weekend. Hell, they could have talked to John at any time at the Richmond office. Why had they felt the need to track us down on our off time? To catch us off our guard? But why?

  I didn’t have any answers, and it was making me crazy.

  It reminded me of the mysterious text on my phone and the number I didn’t recognize. My assailants had used similar wording during the mugging attempt. I made a call to the Bureau to identify the caller, but the number turned out to belong to a burner phone. Another dead end.

  Once I waded through everything that wasn’t connected with “our” artifacts, the pickings were pretty slim. I could only find a picture of the artifact that was in our possession the night Cunningham attacked me. It was a badly lit documentation shot taken within the Smithsonian, before the object was transferred to Nancy’s museum. There was nothing but a physical description of the one that had disappeared from the Weir in San Francisco. I followed related links on wild tangents, but finally I had to conclude that I knew very little more than when I started. There was simply nothing to indicate any value—either historically or to a collector.

  I was just about to go upstairs to see if the rest of the book club had arrived when I got an IM from Jane.

  Haven’t heard from you lately. You doing okay?

  I thought for a moment. Not too bad. As well as can be expected. Busy.

&
nbsp; I thought you were on medical leave?

  I grinned at that. No rest for the wicked. Been doing some research and have hit a dead end. Frustrated.

  Can I help?

  I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. Tempting as it was, I didn’t know what can of worms I might be opening. Something wasn’t right about the artifacts, and I didn’t want Jane involved. Sorry. Work-related. Sensitive material. Appreciate the offer, though. Surprised I’m finding so little information, to be honest.

  Maybe you’re being too literal.

  I stared at the blinking cursor for a moment. What do you mean?

  I got a smiley face.

  You’re looking up something work-related that is sensitive material. I bet you’re only checking the obvious sources. Official channels and all that. Have you thought about checking out the conspiracy theorists?

  I sighed as I typed my reply. I need facts, not opinions. The nut jobs aren’t going to be any help.

  You know what they say: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you.

  I hated to admit it, but she had a point. With the appearance of my wannabe muggers at the hospital, we were straying into tin-foil-hat-wearing territory. You might be onto something with that. I’ll look into it—thanks!

  With that, I closed the IM window and revised my search parameters. This time I was looking for any reference to the artifacts. I searched by location, by description, with the words “runes” and “glyphs.” I ended up with much more material to wade through, most of which was fictional, and a lot that had to do with World of Warcraft. Did you know there are 908,000 pages for societies that believe in UFOs? The vast majority of them have actually built religions around this belief.