Still, she whispered, “Thank you.” She wasn’t sure whether she meant it for the man ahead of her in the secret passageway or for some celestial being looking down on her from up above, but she knew one thing for sure: she’d gotten lucky with Celeste.
The aide and her boyfriend, however, hadn’t been lucky at all. Their blood would remain on Sydney’s hands.
She heard the catch of metal on leather as Sharpe holstered his weapon and tried to work the heavy, mechanized chair free and drag it out into the main room.
“You’ve got to put the transmission in Neutral,” she said, stepping forward and reaching past him to work the controls in the darkness.
In the close quarters, she had to squeeze tightly against him to reach the mechanism. They wound up pressed together, with her shoulder and arm against his torso and her leg touching his from hip to ankle. It was impossible not to notice that they lined up perfectly in all the right spots, and that he was warm and strong and incredibly male.
It might’ve been partly relief at finding Celeste, might’ve been the sensation of finally being home after so long, but the giddy rush of excitement seemed to come, not from the circumstances, but from the man. But when she found herself wanting to lean into him and stay there, she made herself pull away instead.
“There.” Her voice came out high and breathy, and she forced it level before continuing, “You should be able to move it now.”
She backed out of the passageway as Sharpe wheeled Celeste out of the darkness and into the light.
As he did so, her eyelids flickered.
“We’ll want the paramedics in here, Grace,” he said quietly to the short, dark-haired woman who’d been one of the two agents manning the phone trace.
Grace nodded and headed outside, but Sydney couldn’t wait. She knelt down beside Celeste’s chair and took one of her sister’s cool hands, rubbing it between her own. “Celeste, hon? You in there? Knock, knock?”
It was their sad little inside joke, because Celeste was always “in there.” Sometimes, though, she couldn’t get out past the shell of her own body.
Singer’s syndrome was a progressive debilitating neuropathy, which as far as Sydney could tell was a fancy way of saying that Celeste’s mind was sharp as ever but her body was giving out on her day by day, as plaques of a faulty neural protein—the one containing the expanded trinucleotide repeat—built up along her nerve fibers. The more it accumulated, the harder it was for Celeste’s brain to get neural impulses to her extremities.
She could still hold a pen on her good days. On the bad days, she had to rely on her chair, which could be operated by a press-and-puff joystick affixed at mouth-level.
At least that had been the situation when Sydney left. Now, as Celeste’s eyelids fluttered open and her sky-blue eyes locked on her sister, Sydney wondered whether she’d deteriorated even further and faster than they’d both feared she would. Her hand remained cool and lax in Sydney’s, and she didn’t react right away, just sat there, eyes dreamy.
Then, as if she’d bumped up against a live wire, Celeste gasped, yanked upright in her chair and grabbed onto Sydney’s hand.
Yet still, she didn’t speak.
“Thank God.” Sydney exhaled a long, relieved breath and leaned in to gather her sister close. “I was so worried.” The words were completely inadequate, but what else could she say just then?
“Danielle and Jay are dead, aren’t they?” Celeste whispered, voice trembling.
“Yes, they are. Thank God you made it into the hidey-hole.”
“I just…” Celeste’s eyes filled. “Your last email warned me to watch out, that something bad might happen.”
Sharpe cleared his throat.
“Celeste, honey,” Sydney said. “This is Agent Sharpe of the FBI. He needs to ask you some questions.”
“Did you see the killer?” he asked quietly. Behind him, several other agents and police officers were hard at work on the crime scene.
Celeste shook her head. “No. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Sydney responded immediately. “If he’d seen you…” She trailed off and swallowed hard, then pressed her cheek against Celeste’s and repeated in a whisper, “Don’t be sorry. Ever.”
Celeste leaned into the embrace, but her voice was stronger and a little reproving when she said, “I’m not going to say I told you so.”
“Then I’ll say it,” Sydney replied. “You told me so.”
Celeste had wanted her to turn down the job on Rocky Cliff Island. They had argued back and forth for nearly a week before Sydney left, and the parting had been more bitter than sweet.
The homecoming was proving far worse.
Grace stuck her head around the corner to report, “The paramedics are here.”
Celeste submitted to a quick vitals check, then waved them off. “I’m as fine as I get.” She looked at Sharpe. “Besides, I have a feeling your Fed here wants to ask me some questions.”
“He’s not my Fed,” Sydney said, and damned the flush that touched her cheeks.
Sharpe didn’t crouch down to talk to Celeste, which gained him points in Sydney’s eyes. Instead, he dropped into a nearby chair so he and Celeste were eye level with each other before he said, “Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”
Celeste glanced at Sydney and raised an eyebrow in a look of, How much should I tell him?
“He’s okay,” Sydney said. “Tell him everything you remember about what just happened.”
In other words, Don’t say anything about Rocky Cliff Island or the emailed computer programs.
Sharpe glanced at Sydney and scowled faintly. “I guess that will have to do. For now.” Then he turned to Celeste. “Please backtrack as far as you’re willing to go, and walk me through last night and early this morning. Tell me whatever you remember about the attacks. I’m recording this, okay?” He held up a PDA, and at her nod, keyed it to record.
She described her normal bedtime routine, then waking up and hearing strange noises, and thinking that Danielle’s boyfriend was trying to sneak out before she woke up again. “I heard what sounded like silenced gunshots, you know, like they sound on TV,” Celeste said. “I tried my cell phone but it wasn’t working, like it was jammed or something. Right about then I figured out it was a break-in, and I got myself strapped into my wheels.” She tried to pat the armrest and managed little more than a feeble flip of her hand.
That told Sydney that she was getting low on energy. She touched her sister’s hand. “You should rest.”
“I’m fine,” Celeste snapped.
Trying not to feel the sting of a reunion that wasn’t anything like she imagined, Sydney pulled her hand back and said softly, “I’m just trying to help.”
“So am I.” Celeste turned back to Sharpe and continued, “I wheeled myself out into the hall and used the stair lift to get downstairs. Thank God they didn’t hear me.”
“They?” He hadn’t moved, but Sydney sensed his attention shift, focusing more precisely. “Are you sure there was more than one?”
“Positive. I saw—” Celeste broke off and swallowed. “I saw them leaning over something in the kitchen. I saw blood…and I went the other way.”
Sydney could see her sister’s frustration growing, her anger at a body that let her down over and over. And though Sydney knew it wasn’t her fault she was healthy and her sister was ill, guilt stung anyway.
When a tear trickled down Celeste’s cheek, Sydney announced, “That’s it. We’re done for now.”
“No, we’re not,” Celeste snapped. “Look, Syd, I know you’re trying to help, but you’re just getting in the poor guy’s way.” Sharpe looked mildly surprised to be called a poor guy, but kept his mouth shut as Celeste continued, “Either stop fussing and let me finish, or go sit upstairs or something.”
“You’re tired,” Sydney said softly. “You know how you get cranky when your energy runs low.”
Celeste narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, and I
get cranky when you treat me like a toddler, too. I’m wheelchair-bound, not a vegetable. Give me some credit for knowing when to say when.” As Sydney’s mouth dropped open, she smiled a little. “You’ve been gone nearly a year, Syd. Surprise.” She turned back to Sharpe. “I know for sure there were at least two of them, but I only saw them from the back, and nothing really stood out. Dark clothes, dark caps, medium builds. One was shorter than the other. The one—” She broke off and swallowed hard. “The one with the gun was wearing gloves. I didn’t see the other guy’s hands. It was all so quick. When I realized what they’d done, all I could think to do was hide in the secret passageway. I knew they’d hear me if I tried to go out the front, and it was so late…” She trailed off. “I just…hid.”
“Best thing you could’ve done,” Sharpe said, without on ounce of coddling or softness in his voice. “The only way for you to help is to help us catch them, and you’ve got to be alive to do that.”
Sydney knew that his blunt words probably meant more to her sister than a hundred reassurances from her.
Celeste sniffed, nodded and finished, “I’d just gotten the door shut behind me—there’s another lever on the inside that locks the mechanism—when I heard footsteps going upstairs, then some banging, like they were looking for me. I just…stayed there. I heard the front door slam, like, five minutes later, but I was too scared to move. After a while, I must have dozed off.”
Browned out was more like it, Sydney thought, but she didn’t want Celeste to feel like she was hovering.
Over the past eleven months she’d missed her sister like crazy. They’d never been apart for more than a few weeks at a time before, and she’d pictured their reunion like one big party, had figured that after she was home everything would go back to normal.
But that was before she figured out what Tiberius really wanted from her, and how far he was willing to go to get it.
“What happens now?” Celeste asked.
“There’s an agent on his way named Hugo Thorn-ridge,” Sharpe said. “He’s going to take care of you.”
Sydney drew a breath to speak, but Celeste silenced her with a look before saying, “Take care of me how, exactly?”
“He’s a registered nurse with medic training.” The agent paused. “He’s also a sniper-trained sharpshooter, has a black belt in one of the martial arts and throws a hell of a punch in a bar fight.” A touch of a smile suggested there was a story there. “He’ll help you monitor your health, and he’ll be in charge of your safety.”
“You’re putting me in witness protection,” Celeste said. It wasn’t a question.
He shook his head. “Not exactly. WITSEC is a formal program, complete with paperwork and processing. We don’t have time for that, and frankly I’m not sure it’s as secure as it needs to be when dealing with someone like Tiberius. You and Hugo are going underground. He’ll check in with me regularly, and leave updates on your position when he deems prudent, but other than that, you two will be totally off the grid.”
Sydney made a sad, pained noise. Danielle and Jay were dead. Celeste was going to be running for her life. All because she’d gone to work for Tiberius.
“Hey, Syd.” Celeste made a faint motion with her hand. “You didn’t do this. Tiberius did.”
Sydney stifled a sob and took Celeste’s hand, pressing it to her cheek. But she didn’t say anything, because they both knew the truth was that Tiberius hadn’t been acting alone. She had played along with him for far too long, and now she, her sister and the people around them were paying the price for her mistakes.
So much for a joyous reunion, where she brought back a cure for her sister and money for them both to live on abroad, then phoned in an anonymous tip on Tiberius and his island of horrors.
Instead, she’d returned home to two more innocent victims and a sister she barely recognized.
While Celeste and Sharpe spoke briefly, Sydney stared at her sister. She still looked the same. Her straight, midbrown hair was bobbed at her shoulders and her face was a slightly thinner rearrangement of Sydney’s own features, with the exception of blue eyes instead of brown. Her arms and legs were far too thin, due to the wasting effects of the disease, and for the most part the only motion came from her mouth and eyes, with an occasional laborious hand gesture for emphasis. There was nothing really stand-out different about her.
She was the same. Yet she wasn’t. She’d gotten herself out of bed and hidden, outsmarting a pair of trained killers. And she’d snapped at Sydney not once but twice, when before she would’ve agreed that yes, she was tired. Yes, she should rest and not get overexcited.
Did I hold her back? Sydney wondered now. Did I make it too easy for her to be sick?
“Sydney,” Sharpe said, his voice sharp enough to indicate he was repeating himself. “You with us?”
“Sorry.” She shook her head, trying to clear it. But how could she possibly clear everything that was inside her skull at this point? It was all tangled up together in one big messy knot: the joy of finding Celeste unharmed; the hurt of seeing that she was doing okay—if not better—on her own; the pain of two more people dying because of her… “It’s all too much,” she whispered.
It wasn’t until Celeste squeezed her hand that she realized they were still sitting close together, that she finally had her sister by her side once again.
Then Celeste said, “Hugo’s here. We need to say goodbye now.”
“But—” Sydney stopped herself and bowed her head to hide the tears. “I know.”
A big man appeared in the front doorway, filling it from one side to the other. He had short blond hair and pleasantly regular features, with a glint of humor in his light blue eyes. Wearing cargo pants held up by a web belt, combat boots and a khaki T-shirt stretched across his wide chest, he practically screamed ex-military, and instantly made Sydney feel better about Celeste going into hiding.
She looked up at him. “Please tell me that you’re Hugo.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Celeste murmured from beside her, and Sydney stifled a grin, feeling a little lift beneath her heart at the realization that somehow, somewhere, she’d gotten back a part of the sister she remembered.
“That’d be me.” He looked at Celeste and raised a golden eyebrow. “You ready to boogie?”
“Yes, please.” Her face clouded. “I’d like to get out of here.”
Sydney felt a pang at the realization that they’d probably never share their pretty little house again. Not only would she need to sell it to cover the legal bills she was no doubt racking up by the second, but she also couldn’t imagine either of them wanting to live there after two people had died so horribly in the kitchen.
“Hey, sis.” Celeste used her faltering strength to tug on her hand. “Take care of yourself.”
“You, too.” Sydney bent and hugged her sister, harder than she probably should have, but needing to prove to herself that they were both there, that they were both okay, for the moment at least.
Hugo had pulled a specially outfitted van up very close to the door, since the garage was roped off with crime scene tape. He draped a pair of Kevlar vests over Celeste for the short trip out in the open.
The precautions reassured Sydney. At the same time they made her want to throw up.
“Tell me she’ll be okay,” she said to the man she sensed standing directly behind her.
“Hugo’s one of the best,” Sharpe said. “If anyone can keep her off Tiberius’s radar, he can.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
He said nothing, though she didn’t know if it was because he didn’t want her thanks, or if his mind was already elsewhere, moving on to the next topic, the next fight.
She turned to him, battling the almost overwhelming compulsion to lean on him, just for a moment, and absorb some of the strength he seemed to wear like a second skin. “What happens now?”
He glanced down at her. “We’re going to put you in a safe house under full guard. At that point I w
ill have fulfilled my part of the bargain by getting you and your sister protected to the best of my ability. Then it’s going to be your turn.” His voice went low, but not in the slightest bit soft. “You’re going to tell us how to fight Tiberius and keep him from taking down CODIS.”
SEVERAL HUNDRED MILES away, sitting in the elegant kitchen of a renovated Vermont farmhouse that was owned under the little-used alias Kyle Cross, Tiberius slapped the phone shut with a bitter oath.
The thick-maned redhead sitting at the other end of the long breakfast bar, still wearing one of the skin-tight flight suits she favored when piloting Tiberius’s chopper, looked up from buffing a chip out of one of her nails. “Problem, darling?”
“Nothing that can’t be dealt with,” he responded, feeling a measure of calm at the knowledge of just how true those words were. His guards might have let Sydney Westlake escape from the island—and they’d be punished for the lapse—and the contractors he’d hired in Maryland might’ve screwed up the sister’s capture, ditto on the retribution, but that didn’t mean he was entirely without options.
He tapped the computer screen of his high-tech phone, bringing up an encrypted list, and keyed in the code required to translate the names, revealing a list of key FBI personnel that he’d either found useful in the past, or who had weaknesses he knew he could exploit. A quick comparison between that list and the names he’d gotten for John Sharpe’s major crimes team, followed by a brief phone call, and he had himself a new employee.
Sydney wasn’t going to know what hit her.
CHAPTER SIX
SYDNEY SPENT THE NEXT four days in a safe house outside D.C., downloading her brain into huge databases and modeling programs run by two of Sharpe’s people—pretty, soft-spoken Grace Mears and quirky, geeky Jimmy Oliverra.
There was no sign of Sharpe. He didn’t visit, didn’t call. He might as well have taken Celeste away himself, because she hadn’t heard a peep from either of them.
Telling herself he didn’t owe her an accounting of his whereabouts, Sydney forced herself to focus on the laptop screen, which showed a satellite photo of Rocky Cliff Island. It was near dusk on day four, and she was losing her edge. She was sick of the safe house, sick of being cooped up, sick of going over the same information again and again, until it was all starting to blur together in her head.
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