She reached back for his hand. “You do. I like that. It makes me feel safe. You wouldn’t try to make me do anything, if I didn’t want to.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
She was quiet for a moment, and they sat holding hands, waiting for their food. The burgers arrived before the feel of the moment had ended. She let go of his hand and devoured the burger. Harry’s was thick and juicy. The french fries were large, and there was a garnish of bright red candied apple. Between bites and with mouths full, they talked of what they liked—jazz, Jacuzzis, the beach, roaring fires, and cottages in the mountains. There were things they needed to do together, places they wanted to go. He told her about watching the ships go by from the window of their room, how the smoke stacks were often higher than the room and the sailors would wave from the superstructure.
Harry got their check, paid, and they left the restaurant. He zipped up his jacket from habit. The cold did not bother him. Instead, it was a burning ache in his chest that commanded his attention. Touching Kara-Ree only made it worse.
They headed to the hotel, walking slower than on the way there. She managed to walk even closer to him, her hip pressed into him and moving with his thigh.
The atrium lobby of the hotel was filled with people wearing name tags. Harry wound his way through them, hardly noticing. They had to wait for an elevator, yet it seemed to take no time at all to get there, and when it arrived, they packed in with a crowd of people. Ree stood in front of him, pressed close. She sneezed.
In the room, they both unloaded their old and new clothes into the bureau, and seeing his notes from his conversation with the reporter, Harry worried about Ree and her sneezes. Looking at her arranging her clothes, he decided to call the doctor again. Maybe something more had been learned about this disease.
“This is Dr. Rendon,” the voice answered, sounding harried.
“This is Harry Adams, again. I—”
“Could you give me a phone number. We’re swamped with calls right now. Another man has died.”
“Oh,” Harry said. “I didn’t know. Have you—”
“Look, I’ve got to get off the phone, and listen, if you know where that girl is, you’d better call the police. She’s wanted in a murder case.”
“What?”
“Call the police. Now, I’m sorry, but I’ll have to—”
“No,” Harry interrupted. “I’ll call you back.” He felt the blood drain from his face. His body went cold. Murder?
Ree was sitting with her back to him, looking out the window.
“He said you’re wanted for murder,” Harry said and dropped the receiver on the hook. The room grew still. A light on the wall began to blink, indicating that a ship was soon to pass. Ree’s face tightened; her jaws bulged.
“I didn’t do anything,” she said.
He studied her face. She looked directly at him, her eyes unwavering. “I found a dead body in my apartment when I went back there. I ran. I don’t know who did it. No one else was there.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
She shrugged. “I was frightened.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugged again.
“You must have known that they’d be looking for you. Hell, a dead body. Christ, and you probably left fresh fingerprints all over. We need to call the police.”
“No, we’ll never find the people that are chasing us.”
He stared at her.
“And they could find me in jail. They might kill me.”
Harry looked down. If she was wanted for murder, if he didn’t tell the police, he would be an accessory. But could she be right? People had died in jail before, and they would certainly know where she was, and could he really call the police? Was she lying?
“Just wait until we find where Susie hid the data disk or whatever it was she stole. That’s all I’m asking, Harry.”
He took a deep breath. “I need to go out for a walk. I’ll think about it.” Abruptly, he got up and went toward the door. What was he doing? He could be arrested.
“Are you coming back?” Her voice was soft and small.
“Yes,” he said without turning around to look at her. He could sense her gaze on his back as the door closed. He felt crushed. Moments before his heart had been pounding with joy. He had found love. And now?
Fourteen
The sky darkened. Clouds blew up the river, throwing shadows on the small storefront buildings that lined the business section. The wind had grown blustery. Harry pulled his coat tighter and shivered.
He walked the same streets he and Ree had walked only moments before. A car beeped at him as he crossed an intersection without looking. The driver hung his arm out the window and shook his fist. Harry ignored the gesture.
Just in front of him, a man wearing a three-piece gray suit dashed across the street and entered a clothing store. The window of the store displayed silver bracelets, necklaces, and blouses. As the door closed, Harry could see the shopkeeper on the phone.
He could do it. He could go in and call the police. Tell them he knew where a wanted criminal was. He could put an end to this running, one escape after another, the constant wondering if the person behind him was following him. He paused in midstep and then walked on down the sidewalk. The store and its phone disappeared behind him.
Ree said she had not done it. She didn’t know who did it. He believed her with all his heart. What could she tell the police? What if they didn’t protect her?
He would have turned her in for nothing. She could be hurt. This killing in her apartment had to be connected with Susie and Denny. If he could find the stolen information on the superconductor, he might also learn who had committed the murder and be able to give that information to the police, to O’Heartlan. The idea sounded good.
What was the penalty for accessory to murder? He stared at the sidewalk, avoided the cracks. Why was Ree so afraid of the police? She had been that way ever since he’d known her. He paused. He hadn’t known her that long. But he knew her. Maybe it was the drugs and being a nude dancer. He could remember how he’d felt about the police back when he’d smoked marijuana—paranoid, always jerking his head around when a car drove past.
That had been one of the reasons why he’d quit. He hated that feeling. Back then, the police had been the enemy. Now he worked with them, had friends among them. Now he had that same feeling of paranoia, but it wasn’t the police. It was…it was—who? Damn them. The maniac in the wheelchair, Felder’s friends. They all should be in jail.
Still, to Kara-Ree, the police must seem the enemy, not protectors. She certainly acted that way. Her eyes always widened when he spoke of going to the police, and she would always plead for him to wait, not call them. Another idea came to him, and he started pacing down the sidewalk. There were no other pedestrians and few cars, no one to avoid. He increased his pace.
He was a reporter working on a story. Couldn’t he claim he was keeping his source confidential? Besides, they needed to find out who had stolen the data on superconductors. They were close, too close to stop. Ree had said there was someone in Savannah. The contact might be the answer.
He slowed down. That wasn’t the reason at all. He wanted to believe her. He wanted to do what she wanted. He loved her. He didn’t give a damn about superconductors.
The sudden realization of the depth of his emotion overwhelmed him, and he stopped again, staring mindlessly at an azalea bush. Its buds were wrapped winter tight in green. A slight lip of white showed at the edges. One of the blooms had opened, mistaking a brief warm spell for spring. Its insides were a lush pink. He looked up and found himself in a residential neighborhood. More azaleas lined the street fronts of the stately two- and three-story houses.
Behind him, he could see the taller buildings of downtown, and he started walking back; he then increased hi
s pace to a fast jog. He was panting for breath when he finally reached the hotel. The conventioneers had scattered. The lobby was deserted. Through the windows in the bar, he saw the last lights of the sunset flickering red and gold on the now steely gray of the river surface. He raced for the elevator, rushing past the startled check-in clerk and the information lady.
Ree sat in the room on the bed with her black-covered legs curled underneath her. She looked as if she hadn’t moved since he left. Her head had been down when he entered. Now her eyes widened. She stared at him.
The room was dark. Lights from the docks came on and shone off the water, rippling with the waves, mixing with the warm sunset hues.
“I’ll wait till we’ve learned a little more,” he said and stepped closer to her. It wasn’t what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her he loved her.
“Maybe they’ll find the murderer without me,” she said.
“Maybe, or maybe when we discover the disk and start dealing with the people who want it, we’ll find some information that would really help the police.”
She sat there on the bed, the rumpled cover underneath her. The bedspread was kneaded up beside her. He stood a few feet away. Their eyes were each locked on the other. The only sound was the slight hum of the heater, the far-off horn of a ferry, warning the world that a ship had arrived.
“Thank you, Harry,” she finally said.
She raised her hands to him, and he came forward, wrapped his arms around her, and nestled her face tight against his stomach. She looked up at him. There were tears in her eyes. He brushed strands of dark, silky hair away from her face.
The hair was wet. “I just don’t want to be involved with the police,” she said, her words mumbled into him. “Both of my lives will crash together. What I’ve been and what I can be will become the same, and I couldn’t stand that.” She buried her face in his stomach. He held her tight, not caring what her reasons were. She pulled his face down to meet hers. His lips touched hers; his tongue met hers, tasting, winding, curling together. She broke away, and her hands went to his shirt and pulled it loose from his pants. He felt the coolness of her fingers touching his stomach as she unbuttoned the bottom buttons, opened his shirt, and set her lips to his skin. Fire shot up his body. His penis stiffened, and her hands brushed lightly against it, sending another quiver up his body. She unbuttoned the rest of the shirt and drew it down his shoulders, let it drop to the floor in a pile.
She painted circles on his stomach with her tongue while her hands loosened his belt. When she leaned back to study him, her nipples stuck out rigidly through her T-shirt, dark circular stains on the white cotton fabric. Her musky perfume filled the air and bit at his nostrils. She reached up to kiss him again, and her kisses traveled down his neck; her teeth sunk into his shoulder, and a chill shot up his back and exploded in his mind.
The first time went quickly in hot passion.
The second slowed, with each fascinated by the other, with each exploring the other with tongue and finger and lips and hair and every way that love may touch. After that came comfort, soft holding, small words of love, the slow buildup of passion and its rapid release, and then finally, sleep in each other’s arms. Harry slept soundly for the first time in days.
The room was small, taken up in great part by the bed. One light was all that lit the square surroundings, the four white walls. It was a familiar room. It was an agent’s room or a cop’s room, where hours were spent and nothing ever happened.
The knock on the door was soft and repeated twice in a staccato cadence. Ferenzi stood, stretched, pulled the pistol from his shoulder holster, and then went to the door, opening it as far as the chain would allow and standing back to the side, out of the way of possible gunfire.
“It’s me, Foster,” came the voice from outside the door. Recognizing him, Ferenzi closed the door, unfastened the chain, and then cracked open the door again. He did not put down his gun until Foster had come in and shut the door.
“So what have you learned.” Ferenzi relocked the door, holstered his gun, and sat down on a wood-armed chair at the small round table beside the bed. He had positioned the chair as far from Foster as possible. The man might have the virus. Who knew how it spread?
Foster shrugged. He was dressed in a gray business suit. His hair was short and sandy brown. His eyes looked brown. He was of fair height and hefty weight. He took the chair opposite Ferenzi and sat. The movement was graceful. Sitting, he did not appear relaxed. He did look healthy. His nondescript appearance fit with the room. “There’s absolutely nothing on that Latino that killed Felder. We don’t even really know that he did kill Felder. What we do know is that he runs a computer consulting firm. On the surface, it looks successful. We dug a little, and it looks like the firm is on the edge of bankruptcy, and the Latino has sunk everything into it, even the second mortgage to his house. He hasn’t been paid for the job Felder did for the physicist, Dr. Frost. He can’t afford to lose any more money.”
“Maybe,” Ferenzi said and leaned forward, “he got into drugs to try to raise the cash to keep it going.”
“No. We’d have found out. The guy may be getting money from somewhere, but it’s not drugs. He has no contacts. No one knows him, and he’s not from South America either, like you thought. He was raised in Little Rock. Somebody would have known him; he’d have been on a list somewhere if he were transporting drugs from the source. They might not have proof, but they’d have his name. I checked with Cee, too. Nothing.”
“What’s the possibility you’re wrong?”
“Very little, but it’s possible. I think it’s a dead end. The guy may be doing something illegal, but it isn’t running dope. On the other hand, we learned that Gaines—”
“She the one who had the dope at her apartment?” Ferenzi interrupted.
“Yeah, the dead ad exec. Gaines worked her way through college dancing at one of the clubs. She could have easily been connected to the first dancer that died and to the one you had followed, too.”
“So where does that leave us?”
Foster shrugged again. “Don’t know. The drug we picked up at Gaines’s apartment was cocaine and very pure.”
Ferenzi waited for a moment for Foster to continue. Foster stared at the table. Irritated, Ferenzi scowled. “Gold. Have they identified anything else in the drug?”
“According to the lab boys, there may be a virus in it, but it takes a lot more time to identify a virus than a drug.”
“OK, well let me know on that one.” Ferenzi leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He sat forward suddenly, jarring the table. Foster did not flinch.
“So Gaines gets a hold of the drug,” Ferenzi said, “shares it with her old dancing buddy and all her friends, sells a little, and people start dying? Or maybe, the dancer sells it to Gaines. That still leaves the dancer as the likely contact with terrorists. Maybe this Felder wasn’t involved in it?”
The room went silent. Foster studied his fingernails. He pulled a small knife out of his pocket and began cleaning them. Ferenzi’s face tensed and then relaxed. “Either way, the only lead we currently have is the Abu woman. Pull her and bring her here. We can’t wait any longer. There’s too much pressure building up in the media. They could cancel the games. If they did that, it would be too late, no matter what we find out. We need answers now. With luck, I can go to the games committee and work through them to get some real help from the agency. We’ll have done our job.”
“What do you want done to her?”
Ferenzi glared at Foster. “Who?”
“The Abu woman.”
“Find out who the terrorists are who are backing this thing, and find out if there was any other distribution of the drug. Don’t kill her yet. We may need to produce her as evidence to the agency. In the meantime, have people checking the streets. See if there’s any more of this ‘very pure’ cocaine out there.
That might lead us somewhere.”
Foster yawned. “Will do.”
It was dark outside, and the health department should have been empty. It wasn’t. People scurried between offices. Phones rang. Dozens of investigators on the six teams that had been formed were even now calling hospitals, talking to doctors, clerks, nurses, anyone who would talk.
Dr. Thomas Rendon, formerly a general practitioner in Ty Ty, Georgia, thought fondly of the fountain in the middle of that venerable small town. Below the Georgia gnat line, it might still be warm in Ty Ty. It was warm in his office now, and he tried to loosen his shirt more and found as he had found several times before that it was as loose as it was going to get. Exasperated, he brushed the hair out of his eyes.
The screen in front of him hadn’t changed. His computer friends had found that the hidden file on the ad exec’s diskette did indeed contain a list of names and addresses. A string search had revealed that all the names of the dead, including the latest, were in the file. Trouble was, some of the other names turned out to be street names, instead of people. Was the file coded? If so, where was the code? He decided it would have been somewhere where she could have gotten at it easily. Unless of course, she had memorized it. He’d tried a couple of easy manipulations, and none of them worked.
He leaned back in his chair. It gave a familiar squeak. Just an hour ago, he’d been over at Piedmont Hospital staring at a man with tubes running out of his nose. The man’s name was on the list, as long as you didn’t mind his first name being the street name under someone else’s name and his last name being associated with a different first name and address. They’d matched the man’s address in the hospital file. On the list it was under a different name. Damn.
Rendon was sure the list was coded, and if they could break the code, they’d have a list of people to screen, instead of one half-dead patient whose chances of living were rated little better than fifty-fifty. Where would the woman have kept the formula to decode her lists? They’d gotten permission again and searched her apartment—again to no avail. He’d gone down to the morgue and looked through her effects—nothing. Now he had a pile of her mail, sitting beside the computer screen. The telephone bill had several calls to New York City and a few to Savannah. The calls to New York had been to a hotel room. No one answered the number in Savannah.
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