by Rebecca York
Every small thing was mind-blowing because fixing a meal was so normal, when her whole life had been a nightmare for months. While the onion, pepper and ham were cooking, he cracked six eggs into a bowl and scrambled them.
The cheese was already shredded and in a plastic package which he opened by tearing the top, then sealing it again with a hidden strip. She watched everything, determined to learn how this place worked.
Instead of flipping the big omelet, he put the cheese on top when the eggs were almost done, then put on a lid to finish the cooking.
In no time they were sitting across from each other at the wooden table.
“You said nobody smokes. But I saw beer in your refrigerator.”
“You want some?”
“No, but you go ahead. Do you have any tea?”
“I think I can find herbal tea. Some of the Decorah guys drink it.”
“Why?”
“Long story. I’ll tell you when you know them better.”
“Grant and Mack?”
“No, some of the other agents.”
When he got up, she said, “I didn’t mean for you to go to any trouble.”
“No trouble.” He found a box of assorted herbal tea bags in a cabinet and let her choose.
She picked cranberry. He put the tea bag in a mug and added water. Then he put it in a rectangular appliance hanging over the stove. A minute later, he took out a steaming mug.
“That’s the microwave thing?”
“Yes. And you have to be careful because the container you put in comes out hot. Also, food heats according to how much there is. A little takes a short time. Something larger takes longer. It’s better for warming food than for actually cooking.”
She listened carefully, taking in another lesson.
“I don’t even know what you did for a living.”
“I was a junior high school English teacher.”
“It’s called middle school now. That’s still a career you can have—although you’ll need to get used to doing grades and other stuff with a computer. And probably the breakdown in grammar skills will make you weep.”
“But I have no teaching credentials here.”
“Frank and I talked about that. Decorah Security will have to give you a new identity.”
“How?”
“We find someone who died as a baby, and you pretend you’re her.”
“Is that legal?”
“No. But it works. You’ll need a driver’s license, a library card, a social security number. All kinds of stuff.” He dragged in a breath and let it out. “It’s going to be confusing, but no worse than an immigrant coming here from a third world country.”
“Which is?”
“A country that’s not modernized, and the standard of living is low. Newcomers have to learn all kinds of stuff.”
“Okay,” she answered, but she felt way out of her depth.
“I know it’s all hard to take in.”
“We can go back to bed, and you can make me forget about it. And then you can clue me in to more hard reality in the morning.”
“Good idea.” They both stood.
“I should help you do the dishes.”
“I have a dishwasher.”
“I know there were people who did back in my time. But we didn’t have one on the farm.” On the last word, her voice broke, and she felt her eyes fill with tears.
Rushing around the table, he reached for her, gathered her to him and sat down, lowering her into his lap.
As her body shook, he stroked her tenderly, pressing her face to his shoulder.
“I’m getting you all wet,” she said between sobs.
“It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”
“I mentioned the farm, and it made me think about my family.”
“I figured.”
“It just struck me that I’m never going to see them again.” She gulped as she struggled for control of her emotions.
“Do you want me to take you back?”
“Could you?”
“I don’t know.”
She swallowed. “I think it was hard to get me here—judging from the reaction of the people at Decorah.”
“Yes.”
She raised her face, dashing away the tears on her cheeks with the side of her hand. “You said you might be able to take me back. What if we could go back and stop Hayward?”
“What do you mean?”
“Find out when he started kidnapping women. Stop him from doing it.”
“I don’t know. That sounds like a hard job.”
She knew he was right, and she wasn’t going to spoil this first evening with him by pressing the issue.
Chapter 17
They cleaned up the kitchen together, then returned to the bedroom where they made love again. It was better than the first time because now Alice didn’t need to be shy. And instead of waiting until the last second to enter her, Jonah did it much sooner, then tantalized her with long slow strokes until she was frantic to climax.
“Jonah. Please.”
“You need to come?” he asked, his voice teasing.
“Is that what it’s called?” she asked. Grasping his butt, she pulled him close and forced the issue.
She was limp with satisfaction, as she lay next to him, but couldn’t help thinking about her idea—of stopping Hayward. Something about it felt dangerous. But she was too tired to figure out why.
oOo
In the morning, she woke with a start, expecting to find herself in her cell. Instead, she was with Jonah, and she breathed out a little sigh of relief as she moved closer to him.
“You okay?” he murmured.
“I guess this isn’t all a dream,” she whispered.
“Not at all.” He reached for her hand and knitted his fingers with hers.
“It’s real,” she whispered.
“Oh, yeah.” He rolled so he could sling a leg over hers and brush her hair back from her face.
She felt herself responding to the sexual invitation and had to say, “We ran out of condoms.”
“There are plenty of other fun ways to come. Like what we did that first time.” To illustrate, he slid his hand up her thigh.
When he had left her relaxed and satisfied, she asked, “And I can do that for you?”
“Uh huh.”
“How?”
“You can wrap your hand around my cock.”
“On the farm, that’s a rooster.”
“Not here.” He folded her fingers around his shaft, showing her how to pump up and down.
“Another new word for my English teacher’s dictionary?” she said as she learned what he liked. It felt intimate to do it, and she loved watching his face as his passion built, and his hips began to thrust.
Afterwards, she cuddled against him for long moments, then said, “Is it going to sound weird if I tell you I want to go for a run?”
He grinned. “Not after the way you’ve been spending your days. And I run almost every morning. How far do you want to go?”
“I don’t know. I used a treadmill, but I couldn’t tell the mileage.”
“I’ll take you on a route I like, and when you think you’ve done about half of your usual, we’ll turn around.”
He let her set the pace, running easily alongside. It turned out that the trip out and back was five miles.
“Wow!” she said. “Five miles. I didn’t know I could go that far.”
“And you’re not even winded. You could have done more. You’ve got stamina.”
They came in and showered together, which delayed their leaving for the office.
“And we stop at a drugstore on the way,” she insisted.
He shook his head. “I’m afraid your picture of a drugstore is going to change radically.”
They drove in the car he usually used, a Honda with all kinds of features she’d never seen before—like an ignition that didn’t require a key, headrests and a warning that forced you to use a se
at belt.
And he was right about the drugstore. It was as large as a supermarket in her day, and had aisle after aisle of health and personal care products she didn’t recognize. Plus other shelves were full of things she might have expected to find in a five and dime. Expect there were no nickel and dime items. The prices made her jaw drop in shock.
“How can anyone afford this stuff?” she asked as they left with their purchase in a white plastic bag.
“Well, salaries are higher—although they haven’t kept pace with the cost of living. A lot of middle-class jobs have gone overseas where labor is cheaper.”
“You’ll have to explain that to me.”
“People in countries like Vietnam don’t make as much as Americans, so the goods shipped from there are cheaper.”
“Wait a minute. Vietnam? Wasn’t that a Communist country—and we were sending troops there?”
“Not anymore.”
“What about the Russians?”
“That’s complicated.”
“Are we still in a Cold War with them?”
“The short answer is “no.” We can sit down and talk about geopolitics later.”
When they arrived at the office, Frank was already there.
“I was hoping you’d come in,” he said to Alice.
“Why?”
“I wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“And I wanted to talk to you about an idea I had.”
“Then let’s all get comfortable.”
They retired to one of the staff lounges. Jonah and Alice sat together on the couch. Frank took one of the easy chairs opposite.
“You look like things are working out,” he remarked as he noted their relaxed appearance.
Jonah grinned. Alice felt her face redden a little and wished she could stop reacting like a nervous virgin.
Because she was embarrassed about Frank’s imagining their night together, she jumped right in, “I want to talk about stopping . . . Hayward.”
His gaze sharpened. “Explain what you mean.”
“What if we could find out when he took his first victim and . . . kill him first?”
“You’re talking about murder?”
She raised her chin. “Technically, yes, I guess. But we’d wait until he was capturing the first woman. That would be proof of what he was going to do. Then it would be . . . legitimate to stop him, wouldn’t it?”
“That sounds right, but we’d better nail some stuff down before you go any further.”
The tone of Frank’s voice put her on alert.
“What?” they both asked.
“When Jonah came to you at the estate, he was like a ‘ghost.’ He wasn’t solid. He couldn’t touch anything.”
“But at the end, he got to be himself.”
“Did he?” Frank asked.
“I haven’t written up a report of last night yet—but yeah, I did it.”
“What happened to change you?” Frank asked.
“It was when Hayward charged into the house to kill Alice. In that moment, I knew I had to stop him. And the only way I could do it was to turn into flesh and blood.”
“You think you can do it again?” Frank asked. “When you’re not in the middle of an emergency.”
“I guess I’d have to find out.”
“And take Alice with you?”
He hesitated. “That may not be necessary.”
Frank looked like he might argue. Instead, he said, “Let’s assume you can go as yourself—not a ghost—and show up to stop Hayward’s taking the first victim.”
Jonah nodded.
Frank turned to Alice. “You say there were five other women.”
“That’s what he told me.”
“We’d have to figure out who they were.”
“All of them or just the first one?” Alice asked.
“All,” Frank answered. “Because we’d need to know how they fit into the timeline. What if it was someone important who could change history by not getting killed?”
Alice shook her head. “I came to you all excited about this. Now I see I didn’t think it through.”
“But it might be okay. We’d have to do a lot of research. And there’s one more important point,” Frank said. “You’d have a big decision.”
“About what?”
“You told Jonah that Hayward made it look like you died in a rock fall.”
“Yes.”
“So as far as the world is concerned, you’re supposed to be dead—under thousands of tons of rock.”
“Yes.”
“But if Hayward never captured you, you’d have kept on with your normal life.”
She nodded, wondering where this was going.
“If you kept on with your life, you would not have met Jonah.”
She felt her heart stop, then start up again in double time. Oh Lord, she’d been so anxious to save the murder victims that she hadn’t considered a lot of important points. And this was the most critical. She swung toward the man beside her, knowing in that instant how much he meant to her. “I . . . have to meet him.”
“Then we’d have to go back and make the fake accident happen,” he said, his voice calm and reassuring.
“Oh God. What if it doesn’t work?” Her head was spinning now.
“You’ll be stuck in your old life,” Frank said. “I think you won’t even know Jonah existed. And of course, there’d be no chance of your meeting because he wasn’t born until decades later.”
The devastated look of strain on Jonah’s face made her want to weep. Instead she threw herself into his arms, holding him with all her might.
But as she clung to him, she knew she had no alternative. The moment she’d thought of saving those women, the course had been set. If she didn’t carry out her plan, she was as good as killing them.
Chapter 18
Alice had come to see Frank because she’d wanted to convince him they could thwart a serial killer. The Decorah chief had outlined some of the obstacles they’d have to face—before dealing the ultimate soul-crushing blow.
Her happiness was at stake. And not just hers. She could see from Jonah’s face that the prospect of losing her was unthinkable.
Yet she could also see he was the kind of man who wasn’t going to let five women die—if he could help it.
He gave her a dark look. “I don’t know what chance we have of pulling it off, but this mission isn’t as easy as my homing in on your voice over the radio.”
She nodded, waiting for him to put up more obstacles.
“We don’t even know who these women are yet. But when we find out, we’ll have to go back to a specific day and time—and hope we have enough information to succeed.”
She could feel her throat closing, but she managed to say, “Then we’ll have to do a lot of research to figure out who they are and when they were taken.”
Jonah said, “I guess our first step is to see the office IT specialist, Teddy Granada. Don’t be put off by him. He looks like he’s been wearing the same clothes for weeks, but he knows his way around the Internet like a monkey in a banyan forest.”
Alice turned to Frank. “Thank you for agreeing to try.”
“I can agree, but it’s only gonna happen if Jonah can pull it off.”
She gave him an apologetic look. “I put a lot on you. In more ways than one.”
“And what if I disappoint you?”
“I’ll know that you tried your hardest.”
He answered with a tight nod before taking her down the hall to a room full of computers and other equipment and introduced Teddy.
They grabbed chairs and got into the facts of the case.
“We’re assuming the women all supposedly died in accidents, but really they were abducted and held by a serial killer before he forced them to participate in a game where he hunted and killed them.”
Teddy made a low noise. “Nice guy.”
“Our search should start with newspaper accounts of women who went mi
ssing and were never found,” Jonah said. “And presumed dead.”
“I guess it’s possible he could have skipped the accident part with some of them—if he thought he could get away with it,” Alice added.
“How many women?” Teddy asked.
“Five,” Alice answered.
The IT specialist picked at a hangnail. “That’s a lot of victims to locate from that long ago.”
“I know. Sorry.”
“Let me see what I can turn up.”
After the session, Jonah said, “We don’t have to work every minute.”
“I guess that’s right.”
“Let’s go out and have some fun.”
She blinked. “Just like that?”
“Right. You’re entitled.”
She nodded, because anything would be fine with her, if she spent the time with Jonah.
He thought for a few moments. “You’d probably like the Baltimore Inner Harbor. It was a sleazy port area until it got redeveloped as a big tourist attraction. There are boats moored along the quay, an aquarium, shopping pavilions, restaurants. We can wander around and have some lunch.”
They ate at a seafood restaurant on the waterfront, then spent the afternoon taking in the sights.
As they sat on a park bench facing the old sailing ship, the USS Constellation, she said, “Tell me about Frank.”
“What do you want to know?”
“He’s unusual.”
“Like how?”
“He’s insightful. And I get the feeling he’s hooked into some kind of . . .” she shrugged. “I don’t know. Paranormal pipeline most people can’t access.”
“Interesting you think so. Let me give you a little background. He returned from one of the Iraq wars with half a leg missing.”
“The Iraq wars?”
He gave her a quick explanation.
“Okay. Back to Frank. I couldn’t tell about the leg.”
“Most people can’t. I think something happened to him over there or when he was at the Naval Medical Center recovering. Something he doesn’t talk about.”
“So you don’t think I’m right?”
“No I do. I think it’s something he has to keep secret.”
“Why?”
“Because none of us knows exactly where he lives or what he does when he’s not at the office—or at conferences looking for new recruits. But one thing you can see, he looks a lot younger than his age.”