by Fiona Brand
With a carefully constructed routine built up from childhood, filled with nightly rituals that impressed upon her mind that her life was normal and there was nothing to fear from sleep.
Bayard took the snapshot from her fingers and tossed it on the coffee table with the others. “Never look at photos of criminals at night. Trust me, you’ll never sleep.”
“What if I can’t sleep anyway?”
He picked up a remote and flicked a switch. An obscenely large wide-screen TV flared to life.
Question answered: watch football.
He flicked through a couple of channels, found the one he wanted, grabbed her hand and pulled her down on the couch with him. He propped his bare feet on a leather ottoman, offered her space if she wanted it, and groaned when the Cardinals’ quarterback was sacked and the Steelers’ defensive back came up with the ball.
After ten minutes of watching the ebb and flow of the game, two touchdowns and a major ruckus about an offside call, she forgot about her bare legs and finally relaxed, amazed at how happy she felt watching twenty-two men go to war over a piece of pigskin that would fit inside a bread box. Fifteen minutes in, Bayard offered her a warm beer, and a half share in a box of saltines— all he could find in the pantry.
The halftime whistle blew and the intermission replays started, along with blow-by-blow dissections of the major plays. Sara curled her legs up on the couch and settled in. Bayard slid her a sideways look. “By the way, you look good in my shirt.”
Fifteen
Sunlight flooded through the tall bank of windows in her bedroom, dazzling her. The small clinking sound that had woken her came again. Bayard was sitting on the window seat, dressed in black pants and a soft, black T-shirt that molded his broad shoulders and chest—with the addition of a jacket, ready for work, she realized. A tray of aromatic coffee was on the seat beside him, the knapsack and the manila envelope were on the floor.
She pushed upright, taking a fistful of snowy linen with her. The shirt covered her like a shroud, but the soft fabric clung where it touched and she wasn’t about to trust its opaqueness in the sunlight. A button had come adrift in the night. She decided to ignore it. He would be lucky to see more than a faint shadow of cleavage. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“How did you sleep?”
“Like a log. Thank you.” After watching football for an hour and a half and sipping her way through the beer, she had barely been able to keep her eyes open. When her head had started to nod, she had left Bayard to it and gone to bed. She had slept so deeply, she couldn’t remember dreaming. She had even forgotten to tie her wrist, for which she was now profoundly grateful.
Bayard added sugar to one of the mugs, stirred and handed her the hot drink.
Like the white mansion, the bedspread and filmy curtains, the mug was stylishly white. She sipped, her mind for a brief moment blank to everything but the sheer pleasure of rich, mellow coffee freshly brewed. When she opened her eyes, Bayard was watching her.
She took another sip, steeling herself against the urge to blush like a schoolgirl. “What does it feel like living in a movie set?”
Amusement gleamed in his dark eyes. “You’ll have to ask my mother. I don’t live here.”
“So what’s your place like? Black leather, glass, chrome?”
This time his mouth twitched. “Chérie, you won’t ever catch a man like that.”
The lazy use of the French endearment, the faintly edged exchange sent a shaft of heat through her. “Maybe I don’t want one.”
“So I hear. Although you never struck me as a coward.”
She overcame the urge to enquire who exactly had slipped him that piece of gossip. It had probably been his mother. Mariel Bayard had moved out of Shreveport several years ago, but she visited often. On average, Sara had lunch with her two or three times a year. The last time had been less than a month ago. “I’m not a coward. Just…unmotivated.”
The silence stretched while she sipped her coffee, which she noted was hot, which meant Bayard hadn’t been in the room long. The thought that he had been watching her sleep made her feel decidedly uncomfortable.
He opened one of the deep sash windows and propped one shoulder against a broad white sill. A warm breeze wafted through the opening, bringing a hint of the scorching heat to come and laced with the scent of freshly mown hay.
He replaced his empty mug on the tray, irresistibly drawing her eye. Like a punch in the stomach, the old attraction hit her full force. Bayard might have a high-flying career in the intelligence community, but with the sunlight glancing off tanned biceps and the breeze molding the T-shirt to his torso he looked male, earthy and borderline dangerous. He obviously kept himself fit, despite the fact that he no longer played football.
Bayard crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve made some calls. You were right. Delgado is Lopez’s man. He uses a number of aliases. He flew out of San Diego under one identity, then used another to rent the car. I’ve informed Rousseau. They’ve already put an APB out on him.”
She sipped her coffee and let the rich bite of it take her mind off the fact that if she hadn’t gotten out of the apartment when she did, Delgado would have shot her.
“We’re checking onACE and the newspaper ads and we’ve got a cryptanalyst working on the codes.”
“You have a cryptology department?”
His mouth twitched. “We are the secret service.”
She refused to let him charm her. “I need to talk to the cryptanalyst.”
“Derrin’s a professional. He’ll have the codebook.There’s no need for you to get any more involved than you have been.”
“The messages are double coded for security.” She hesitated. “There’s a cipher involved. It’s not noted down in the codebook.”
She set the coffee down and slid out of bed. She really needed to use the bathroom, and she badly needed to be dressed. The shirt came to midthigh and the length of leg revealed wasn’t anything that couldn’t be seen on a city street, but climbing out of bed with Bayard in the bedroom, her legs felt naked.
His gaze sharpened. “Where did you get the cipher?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.” She grabbed a pair of jeans. First she had to figure out what to say.
I remembered it.
I don’t know how I know it, I just do.
The bathroom was as airy and spacious as the bedroom, with marbles tiles, a sunken bath and a walk-in shower. She took her time, washing her hands and face and drying off on one of the fluffy towels. She rewound her hair into a tighter knot and stared at her taut features for long seconds. There was no way she could lie to Bayard. He was an intelligence expert; he would slice her story to pieces in seconds. Taking a deep breath, she pulled on the jeans, fastened them then walked back out to the bedroom.
Bayard hadn’t moved. “If the cipher isn’t part of the codebook, then how did you know to use it?” he asked softly. “I know you studied cryptology, but I didn’t think you were an expert.”
“I’m not.” The fact that he knew anything at all about what she had studied surprised her. On both hands she could count the times she had seen Bayard since she had gone to college. She knew he had kept in touch with Steve, but he seldom, if ever, came back to Shreveport—especially since his mother spent most of the year in Florida. “I studied mostly pre-World War stuff—the Zodiac Alphabet, the Vigenère and St. Cyr Ciphers, the Louis XIV Cipher. Whoever is publishing the codes is using a codebook and the St. Cyr cipher, which makes sense. If he had used an Enigma cipher, whoever is on the receiving end would also need an Enigma machine and the correct settings in order to feed the enciphered message through and get the clear.”
His expression didn’t change. “Then the clear would have to be decoded.” He lifted the flap on the knapsack, pulled out the codebook and examined it. “A naval code?”
“No. One that was used by ground forces.”
That got his attention. During the Second World War, most of
the code breaking effort had been directed at naval codes. It had been crucial to gain accurate intelligence about the German navy’s movements because their U-boats had effectively ruled the English Channel, hampering the Allies’ ability to conduct a war in Europe by blocking off their main supply route. No food and ammunition meant no war.
“You said you don’t have a written record of the cipher?”
“That’s correct.”
“Then how did you know to use it?”
She shrugged, avoiding his gaze. Bayard’s methodical questioning made her feel as if she was being cross-examined in a court of law. Suddenly the leap between the career in law he had walked away from and what he was doing now didn’t seem so huge. “I tried it, and it worked. Run it by your expert if you don’t believe me.”
He replaced the codebook, picked up the envelope and tipped the snapshots out on the window seat. He had studied them at her hotel. Before they had left Shreveport, he’d had the photos scanned and emailed to his office in D.C. One was clearly of Heinrich Reichmann, but he had yet to make any comment or accept her statement that the small blond girl in the shot was Helene.
He singled out the photo of Helene. “We have one blurred photo of Reichmann dating back to the 1940s, an archival shot taken when he assumed command of his SS unit. That information is classified and has never been released to the press. We don’t have any images of Helene.”
She could feel his gaze on her again, calm but relentless, like water wearing away stone.
“So how,” he asked softly, “do you know what Heinrich and Helene look like, if you haven’t ever seen them?”
Such a good question.
Bayard was clinical, logical. He liked the quantifiable. So did she. Unfortunately, neither of them were going to get it this time. “I don’t know how,” she said bluntly, “but I have…memories of them.”
“Are you telling me that you have memories of people you’ve never seen?”
He didn’t believe her. Well, she had never expected that he, or anyone else, would. The only person on the planet who had understood had been her father, and he was gone.
“Has this got something to do with what happened to you as a kid?” Tension drew her up even more tightly. “What do you mean?”
“The nightmares. The sleepwalking. Come on, Sara. It wasn’t common knowledge, but we were neighbors. I knew.”
She stared out at the view. Her parents had talked to professionals about her “condition.” Obviously, at some point, her mother had confided her problems to Mariel Bayard.
She could feel herself tightening up, closing off. Having people know she was different, maybe even view her as mentally ill, was like being naked in public. When she was a child, doctors and teachers had stared at her as if she was an object. For some weird reason, they hadn’t wanted to meet her gaze, as if in doing so they would somehow connect themselves too closely with a “sick” person.
Highly paid professionals hadn’t been able to understand what she had been going through, or find a neat, scientific reason for the phenomena listed in their textbooks. Psychic experiences didn’t exist, therefore she had to be mentally abnormal.
“What, exactly, did my mother say?”
She knew for certain it hadn’t been her father. He had not only understood what was happening, he had kept a lid on her condition as much as he could. But her mother had neither understood nor accepted Ben Fischer’s view.
He shrugged. “She was worried when you started talking German in your sleep.”
She stared at the hard contours of his face. “And what did you think?”
“I was a kid. I thought speaking a foreign language was cool. Now?” He lifted his shoulders. “You were seven years old. I don’t pretend to understand what was going on.”
But he suspected she was weird and unstable in some way. “All I’m doing is supplying information. If it doesn’t pan out, ignore it.”
She shoved a loose strand of hair behind her ear and began straightening the bed, although she knew that Amalie, Mariel’s housekeeper, would probably strip it down anyway.
“I don’t think you’re weird. I just need to understand what’s going on.”
“Then do some reading, Bayard, broaden your understanding—”
“I already have.”
His phone buzzed, breaking the taut silence. He turned away, facing the sunlit vista of acres of uncut hay shimmering in the breeze as he took the call.
Sara let out a breath. She stared at the strong line of his back, the darkly tanned skin of his arms. Bayard had always been formidable, even as a child. Faintly arrogant and declarative, used to having what he wanted. The friendship with Steve had worked because they had been alike in many ways: strong, mentally brilliant and competitive. But she and Bayard had never been a comfortable fit.
The choice of metaphor sent a jolt of heat through her. Thinking about Bayard naked and on top was a pastime she’d banned years ago.
He slipped the phone in his pocket. “Delgado’s been sighted in Shreveport. A car matching the description of the one you saw outside your apartment is parked down on the waterfront. I need to go. There’s no food in the fridge, but Amalie will be in at nine. She’ll cook you breakfast if you want it.”
She shook her head. “I can look after myself. I’m going for a walk.” She needed time to think, to find her balance in the silent beauty of the fields.
He frowned. “I’d prefer it if you stayed here.”
“I’ll only be gone a couple of hours and I’ll have my cell phone on me. Don’t worry, I won’t go to Dad’s place.”
She picked up one of the pillows that had slid off the bed. When she straightened, he was right behind her.
“Why don’t you leave your hair loose?”
She felt a faint sting as he tugged out pins. She whirled, annoyed with his games. His hands landed at her waist and her breath stopped in her throat. “Don’t.”
They had only kissed once, twice if she counted the dream, but she could still remember the response that had jerked through her—both times. She stepped free, automatically twisting and pinning her hair.
Bayard caught a loose strand and let it slide through his fingers. “I’m not walking away this time.”
She watched as he slipped the photos into the envelope and shouldered the knapsack. Minutes later, she heard the crunch of tires on gravel as he left.
A week ago she would have run without hesitation, but something had changed. She had changed. Sometime over the space of the past week she had finally accepted the memories for what they were, a part of that past life. Her experiences were neither good nor bad, they simply “were.”
She changed out of his shirt and slipped on a cotton tank, not bothering with a bra, because it was already hot enough that a light sheen of perspiration was coating her skin and she intended to swim in the river anyway. She packed her clothes and tidied the room, placing the paperback on the bedside table.
When she’d checked that she hadn’t left anything in the bathroom, she carried the suitcase out onto the landing, folded Bayard’s shirt and went in search of his room, which was easy to find, because his bed wasn’t made.
She studied the room, which, unlike the rest of the house hadn’t been on the receiving end of Mariel’s themed decorating. The walls were blue and still covered with sporting posters, the bedspread a dark chocolate color. The drapes were patterned in blue and gold. A shelf held school sporting trophies, and there was still a study desk with a lamp positioned against one wall.
She placed the shirt beside his shaving kit, which was sitting on the bed. The room smelled subtly of Bayard, making her stomach tighten and her nerves hum. He had said he wasn’t walking away this time.
For Bayard, that was tantamount to a blunt statement of intent.
Sixteen
Marc walked into the Shreveport Police Station just before ten, and was shown through to Pete Rousseau’s office.
Courtesy of a fax from his
office in D.C. and a raft of information on Delgado and his connections with the Chavez cartel, Rousseau had agreed to share information about both the Sawyer and Fischer cases. The detective was polite, but wary. Marc understood the reaction. With the Lopez case, local and federal jurisdictions had always been an issue, but current legislation allowing wide-ranging powers for the investigation of organized crime gave him the muscle he needed. Rousseau was also aware that Marc could pull rank if he wanted.
Rousseau took him through the notes on Sara’s file. Marc frowned when he read about the attack at the library. Sara had mentioned that Delgado was stalking her; she hadn’t said that he’d held a gun to her throat. Her account was confirmed by statements from a number of LSU students. Delgado was a professional hit man, but on this occasion, his method hadn’t been clinical. He had chosen to get up close and personal rather than shoot from a distance, probably because he had made the mistake of underestimating Sara. He had no doubt thought that because she was a librarian, she would be a pushover, and had blown the job. But if those kids hadn’t intervened, Sara would have been executed in the parking lot.
Rousseau slid Janine Sawyer’s file across the desk. The gunman had fired twice into her chest, killing her almost instantly. Sawyer was older, but from a distance, dressed in homogenous business clothes, she could easily be mistaken for Sara.
The phone rang. Rousseau picked up the call. Seconds later he hung up and reached for his sport coat. “Looks like they just found Delgado. He’s floating in the river just south of the Cities. He’s been shot—two in the chest, one in the head. Looks like your boys are going to be looking for a new hit man.”
Outside the air-conditioned paradise of the Bayard mansion, the air was hot enough to shimmer in the distance. The sun beat down, burning into Sara’s bare shoulders and arms, and the light was harsh enough that dark glasses were a necessity. As she walked across manicured lawns and stepped through a white picket gate into the wilderness of vast hay fields, the smell of grass spun her back to long, lazy summers spent running barefoot and wild. She and Steve and Bayard had climbed trees, built huts and swum in the water hole just below her parents’ house.