by Fiona Brand
An owl hooted. She started, almost dropping the book, and the curious moment of déjà vu passed, although the puzzling phrase lingered. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen a telegram except those slipped into her parents’ old wedding album. They had become obsolete decades ago.
Taking a deep breath to steady nerves that had no earthly reason to be shot, she checked her watch. It was almost nine. With the half hour drive into town, it was long past the time she should have left, and besides, she had what she had come for.
Shoving all of the items back into the knapsack, she hitched one strap over her shoulder, picked up her handbag and descended out of the attic. After closing windows and switching off lights, she stepped onto the front porch and pulled the door closed behind her. The night was pitch-black, the temperature a few degrees cooler than earlier. Heavy clouds had blotted out the faint light of the moon and stars.
Feeling in the dark for the railing, she made her way down the steps. On impulse, she dug in the knapsack and pulled out the flashlight. When she flicked it on, there was no response, not that she had expected one. At a guess, those particular batteries had been dead for almost twenty-five years.
As she negotiated the overgrown path, she could just make out her pale silver car on the drive. She retrieved her keys from her handbag and depressed the locking mechanism. The car beeped and small sidelights flashed, relieving the smothering darkness. As she set the knapsack and her handbag on the backseat and slid behind the wheel, Sara was abruptly glad she’d decided against living in the house.
The last thing she needed was to sit alone at night in an isolated country house, turning slowly into a comfortably well-off, overorga-nized, lonely spinster.
Five
An hour later, after eating takeout, then showering and changing into soft track pants and a camisole, Sara sat down and began to sift through the week’s papers. She had two national tabloids and the local paper delivered, enough editorial to see her through the week and fill her evenings.
Her gaze caught on an advertisement in the world news section of one of the tabloids and she frowned. This was where she’d seen that particular arrangement of letters in the code book, not in the puzzle section, but in an advertisement, and not once, but several times.
The ad was for a photographic restoration service. The letters ACE leaped out at her.
She stared at the advertisement, then transferred her gaze to the knapsack, which she’d placed on the coffee table. The camera inside hadn’t contained any film. If there had been a film, someone had taken it out, but she didn’t think that it had been her father. Ben Fischer had been meticulous. If he had gotten the film developed, she would have found the prints and the negatives when she had sorted through the family photos. If there had been something sensitive or unpleasant about the photos, he would have stored both the photos and the negatives with the other items that had been hidden in the attic. Anyway, from the way the camera and the knapsack had been stuffed in the hidey-hole in the attic, she had the distinct impression that Ben Fischer hadn’t taken the time to do anything but hide the items.
Maybe there was no missing film—but the idea that there could be was tantalizing, and the letters Todd had scrawled on the side of the film box added to the likelihood.
It was possible Todd had sent the film off to the ACE photographic service. It looked as though they specialized in restoring photographs, but it was possible they also did—or had once done—processing. After almost twenty-five years it was a stretch to expect that any processing firm would have retained prints of work that had never been paid for and collected. The negatives, if they had reached ACE at all, would most likely have been destroyed by now.
Putting the newspaper down, she walked out to the kitchen and made coffee. Carrying her mug back into the sitting room, she switched the television on and flicked through the channels until she found a popular current-affairs program. A few minutes later, unable to concentrate on the disintegrating politics of the Middle East, she set the mug down and picked up the phone, which was sitting on a side table. She stared at the ad. It had been published in both of the tabloids, which meant the firm must be on a sound financial footing to afford the advertising bills. It was a Washington, D.C., number.
She hesitated for long minutes. Steve had told her to keep her nose out of the whole affair. She knew how dangerous the situation was, or had been. Alex Lopez was still on the loose, but the thought that he could be a threat to her in Shreveport was remote. And what harm could there be in ringing to enquire about a lost roll of film? At this time of night, she didn’t expect to reach a person, just an answering service. She would leave a message and wait to see if they called back.
She dialed and, when she got a disconnect signal, replaced the receiver. She checked the number and dialed again, just in case she had hit a wrong number. When the disconnect tone beeped in her ear again, she gave up. It was possible the number had been misprinted. Whatever. For the moment that avenue was gone.
Rummaging in her purse, she took out her cell phone, found Steve’s number, then hesitated, staring at a cheerful grouping of photographs on an armoire. There were old-fashioned shots of her parents, and Uncle Todd and Aunt Eleanor before they’d had children. Baby shots of both her and Steve. Steve at age eight, proudly hoisting the first fish he had ever caught; herself playing the piano, her head turning as she grinned, caught in a beam of sunlight shafting through French doors. The shot created an impression of time caught and held, as if that moment still lived.
But if she had learned one thing it was that she couldn’t turn back the clock. She wasn’t a child anymore, and neither was Steve. Both his parents and hers had died and now, with the exception of some distant cousins in Albuquerque, they were all that was left of the Fischer family.
She dialed Steve’s number. She wasn’t supposed to know it. He had broken the rules giving it to her, but she had agreed to use it in emergencies only, and on the proviso that she didn’t keep any records of the call on her phone.
Steve picked up almost immediately. The first thing he wanted to know was if anything had gone wrong. Swallowing a rush of emotion at just hearing his voice, she told him about the knapsack and its contents.
“You recognized the underwater camera?”
“Yes.” She had only used it once, but she wasn’t likely to forget. That day in the pool had been one of the last times she had seen Todd alive.
“In that case, Bayard should definitely see it. We wondered what had happened to the camera. Monteith got the film. I found the negatives and the prints he’d had developed. I assumed Monteith had tossed the camera.”
Monteith had been Admiral Monteith, the naval officer who had ordered the controversial mission. In order to protect himself, Monteith had hidden conclusive evidence that the divers and the charter boat operator, who had located the wreck of the Nordika, had been murdered.
“Damn…” Steve’s voice had faded to a mumble, as if he was holding the phone away from his face.
She could hear his wife, Taylor, in the background, his murmured, “It’s okay, honey.”
He came back on the line. “I want Dad’s things, but Bayard’s going to need to see them first. He’s not with the FBI anymore. He’s working with Saunders at the ODNI, but I know he still has the case.”
“I’ve got his home number. He gave it to me at Dad’s funeral.”
He gave her Bayard’s office and cell phone numbers, just in case she couldn’t reach him at home. She wrote the numbers down, then repeated them back. The ODNI was the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversaw the entire intelligence community. Bayard had previously been a highflier in the FBI. She had no doubt that his move had been upward.
“Any problems?”
Sara’s fingers tightened on the receiver, the invisible threads that held them together as a family suddenly pulling almost painfully tight.
The urge to tell him about the unsettling momen
t of déjà vu was briefly powerful enough that she almost gave in to it. Two solid reasons stopped her. As a close family member, Steve knew about her past problems. He had always been protective and sympathetic, but she doubted he would buy into either her past-life memories or the paranoia. Secondly, she was reluctant to upset him with any further links to a past that had already consumed enough of his life. After years of living a solitary existence hunting his father’s killers, he finally had a chance at a normal life, and he was happy. “No, no problems. How’s the baby project?”
She could almost feel his grin. “You’d better talk to Taylor.”
Taylor came on the line. Sara hadn’t had much time to get to know Steve’s wife, but in the short time they had spent together she and Taylor had hit it off. The ordeal Taylor had endured when she had been targeted by Lopez and the cabal, followed by the discovery of the mass grave at Juarez, then the memorial service for Todd Fischer, had cut through the normal friendship preliminaries.
“Three months to go. Did Steve tell you it’s a girl? He’s over the moon.”
Taylor’s happiness was palpable, and for a moment Sara was swept into the warm heart of the small family that was forming. A familiar ache started at the back of her throat. She had felt it when her mother had died, then when her dad had gently slipped away. Then again, ridiculously, at Steve and Taylor’s wedding.
She had always loved her family, loved being a part of the belonging and the warmth. She hadn’t experienced any kind of maternal urge yet—she had never gotten close enough to any of her boyfriends to even start thinking about commitment, let alone having a child. The crush on Bayard, like a lot of the wilder, more intense teenage feelings she’d seen her friends go through, seemed to have passed her by. But that didn’t mean she didn’t eventually want children of her own, and a husband. She had just never met anyone she had wanted enough to marry.
Steve came back on. They had just moved into a house in Michigan. Instead of the sea, they had lake views, but he wasn’t complaining. He finally had what he wanted, and both he and Taylor were blissfully happy.
When she finally hung up, the sense of separation was acute.
Fingers shaking, she set the phone down on the table. She was having trouble breathing and she was ridiculously close to tears. The emotions had come out of nowhere, hitting her like a fist in the chest.
She rang Bayard’s home number. It rang once, then clicked through to an answering service. She waited for the prerecorded message but there was just a muted beep, then a hollow sound as if a tape was running.
Frowning, she waited several seconds, just in case there had been a mistake and the recorded message cut in late. When it was evident there was no recorded message, she left a brief message, stating that she had found possessions belonging to Todd Fischer that he needed to see, including a book and a camera, then quietly set the receiver down.
She had goose bumps all down her arms and the back of her neck was tingling, which was ridiculous. She was certain she had rung the correct number. She hadn’t heard Bayard’s voice as she had expected to, but that in itself wasn’t alarming. She had been talking to a machine but she couldn’t shake the weird sense that someone was present, listening.
Suddenly, she wished she hadn’t made the call.
Six
Bayard had been almost asleep when the phone rang once, then stopped. Lifting the receiver on his bedside table, he listened. When he heard the dial tone, he flicked on the bedside lamp and checked his answering service. No message had been left.
Reaching for his cell phone, he dialed Bridges, who was a telecommunications expert.
Bridges picked up immediately. Marc could hear the television in the background. “Don’t you have a life?”
Bridges grunted. “I’ve got the same one you’ve got. What’s happening?”
“My phone’s been compromised.”
“I’ll be there in twenty.”
* * *
Juan Chavez peeled off his headset, picked up the cell phone on the desk beside him and hit speed dial.
A small sound had him swinging around in his seat. He terminated the call, a shudder going through him at the swiftness and silence of Lopez’s arrival. He hadn’t heard a vehicle pulling into the garage, which meant Alex had either parked out on the road, or he had been here already. Given that they had hit Corcoran that afternoon, he was going with the second option. Normally, Alex gave the order and stepped away from the process, letting him take care of the details.
But these killings were different, not related to drugs or any other aspect of business. To Juan, killing federal agents made no sense. They couldn’t kill the entire justice system, and they couldn’t stop it. All Alex would do was make life more difficult for them and, perhaps, finally accomplish his own death.
The thought of Alex’s death was something Juan refused to let himself consider for more than a fleeting second. If he did, he was afraid it would show on his face and, despite the fact that Alex was his cousin, he wasn’t stupid enough to rely on family ties to save his skin. Alex was distinctly different from the entire Chavez clan. If he didn’t see Alex’s father, Marco Chavez, in his cousin’s features, he would doubt his paternity. But Chavez he was. And despite the fact that Juan and his brother, Benito, were family, Alex would kill either of them as quickly and coldly as he had shot and killed his own father.
He turned back to the laptop. “He made one call to Sara Fischer, and she tried to call him just a few minutes ago.”
His fingers moved over the keyboard as he pulled up a window and hit the play button on the conversations that had been intercepted and recorded. Bayard wouldn’t know that Sara Fischer hadn’t received his call, and vice versa.
Alex listened without expression, his gaze showing no trace of the excitement that had infected Juan when he had realized exactly who it was Bayard had called.
Juan had done all the research. Sara Fischer was thirty-four, a librarian based in Shreveport. She was also Steve Fischer’s cousin. Fischer had been a major thorn in Lopez’s side and, along with Bayard, had made a huge dent in his organization.
Lopez’s expression didn’t alter. “Put a tap on Sara Fischer’s phone.”
“You want me to put a tail on her?”
“I’ll see to it. Replay the call.”
The sense of chill deepened as Juan hit the replay button and listened to Bayard’s deep, even voice. Alex’s expression remained impassive, but Juan could detect the predatory glitter in his eyes, the sharp attention to every nuance—an almost animalistic seeking for some sign of weakness in his enemy.
He experienced a familiar sinking sensation. He had shot Powdrell. The hit on Corcoran had been high risk and opportunistic, and Lopez himself had carried it out. “You want me to set Bayard up?”
Lopez’s gaze bored into his and for a brief moment Juan’s breath seized in his throat at the possibility that he actually did want to take this as far as killing Bayard.
“Not yet,” he said softly.
A split second later, Lopez was gone, melting into the shadows of the hallway like a wraith. The smooth, gliding way he moved, the air of cold purpose, sent a trickle of unease through Juan.
Bayard was powerful, focused and prewarned. If Lopez really did want to kill him, he should have done it first and gone after his soldiers later.
To Juan, none of this made sense. Marco had been a ruthless and brutal leader. Alex was no less, but his desires bordered on the psychotic. To kill Helene Reichmann, the head of the cabal and a dangerous opponent who sought to kill Lopez himself, was understandable; it was a survival issue. Picking off federal agents and going after Bayard was not. Governments changed, and so did their personnel, but the agencies themselves didn’t disappear. Creating a media storm that would live long in the memory of the agency itself was tantamount to suicide. They would be hunted relentlessly.
In his opinion Bayard would move on, eventually. All they had to do was stay quiet, ope
rate in a low-key way that wouldn’t attract any undue attention. They could survive Bayard. If they went after him directly, they were all dead.
Lopez stepped out onto the street, extracted a key from his pocket and unlocked his car. The locks made a discreet thunking sound, but no lights flashed. Sliding into the driver’s seat, he watched as a four-wheel-drive truck pulled into a space outside Bayard’s apartment building. If he hadn’t already recognized the license plate, the flash of blond hair would have identified the visitor: Bridges.
Picking up his phone, he called Juan. “Get out, now. Bayard’s found the wire.”
Juan’s reply was brief. They had always known tapping Bayard’s phone was a risk, and a one-time deal. They wouldn’t get another opportunity. Pulling out from the curb, Lopez headed for his hotel. Thirty minutes later, he was packed, checked out and on his way to Dulles. While he waited for his flight, he studied the story on the second page of the newspaper.
Bayard’s message to Sara Fischer had been brief, just a request to call him and his number, Sara’s call had been far more interesting. She had found items belonging to Todd Fischer, including a book. Bayard hadn’t got the message, this time. When he finally did, it would be too late.
Lopez intended to get to Shreveport before him.
Seven
After trying to watch a sitcom for the better part of an hour, Sara checked the locks on the apartment and went to bed.
An hour of tossing and turning later, she turned on the bedside light and reached for a novel. Her head felt heavy, her eyes grainy. She had sleeping pills, but she was reluctant to take one. The battle to relax into sleep was in her mind and therefore controllable. Annoyed as she was at still being wide-awake when she needed to be asleep, she hated the thought of being dependent on any drug.
She stared at the lines of print, forcing herself to concentrate on the story line. Gradually, the novel worked its magic and she became hooked on the story and began to relax.