by M. C. Sutton
Up in their suite, he found Emma standing at the window. “Well, that was diplomatic,” he said as he pulled off his tie and jacket and threw them on the bed.
“Just be glad I didn’t punch him.”
“Now that would have been something worth getting dressed up for.”
He joined her at the window. She stood with her arms crossed, staring at the lightning flashes in the distance. Though her face was back to its normal color, he knew she was still upset.
“What do you say we order some room service?” said Jon.
“Actually, I think I’m just going to bed. It’s been a long day.”
“Suit yourself.” He picked up the phone on the bedside table.
She stopped just inside the bathroom door and grinned. “Want to come help me out of this dress instead?”
“Absolutely.” He smiled and set the phone down.
It had been a really long month.
Afterward, Jon stared up at the blank white ceiling above their bed, his arm draped across his forehead, listening to the rain against the windowpane. Eventually he rolled onto his side and leaned up on one elbow to see if Emma had fallen asleep yet. She lay on her back, her eyes closed, her breathing soft and steady. He brushed her hair from her face and kissed her gently before crawling out of bed.
He dressed as quietly as he could in the dark. His plan had been to wait until she fell asleep and then order room service, but the longer he lay there, the more he thought about what Bennett said at dinner, and the less he felt like eating. Jon wasn’t even sure why he kept thinking about it. Normally he had no trouble brushing off what other people said. But for some reason it had gotten under his skin, and he couldn’t seem to shake it. He had to get up and do something.
A few laps in the pool sounded like a good idea.
As he searched through their bag for a pair of shorts, Jon came across the bottle of Ambien he’d secretly stashed in one of the inside pockets. He glanced back at Emma, realizing he’d missed his chance to give her one for the night. Jon relocated the bottle to his toiletry bag, hoping she wouldn’t need it, then found his shorts and slipped quietly out the door.
The halls were empty, except for the guys in FBI jackets posted on each level. Jon opted to take the stairs instead of the elevator, hoping they would make it easier for him to avoid security.
He was wrong.
“Sir!” A bald guy with glasses stopped him just outside the stairwell on the first floor. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“No, I’m just heading for the pool,” Jon answered.
The guy raised an eyebrow. “Sir, can I see your name badge please? The one you were given when you checked in with security.”
Jon sighed. “I don’t have it with me, it’s up in my room. Besides, this place is like Fort Knox. Do you really think I’d have gotten in here if I wasn’t supposed to be?”
“Can you at least tell me your name then?” the man said, crossing his arms.
“Grant. Jonathan Grant. I’m Dr. Grant’s husband.”
“Oh, Captain Grant.” The man slipped his hands into his pockets. “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place? I’m Assistant Director William Tanner of the FBI. I’m in charge of security during the convention. Vice President Allred warned me that I should keep an eye on you two. Well, on Dr. Grant mostly.”
“For her sake, or yours?” Jon asked.
“A little of both.”
“Does that mean I can go now?”
“Honestly, sir, we’ve received some reports of suspicious activity. I’m not exactly sure it’s safe to be wandering around the hotel after dark.”
“I’ll take my chances,” said Jon, brushing past him.
“Sir,” Tanner called down the hall. “We’re just here to protect you.”
Jon stopped and turned around. “Look, Assistant Director Tanner, I’m just a pilot. I don’t think I’m the person you should be worried about. You want to protect someone? My wife is upstairs asleep.”
He left AD Tanner standing in the hall staring after him.
As Jon stepped into one of the changing rooms by the pool to put on his swim trunks, he felt guilty for being so short with the FBI guy. He was right, after all. They were just here to protect everyone. The truth was, his snippiness had nothing to do with the inconvenience of extra security. It was what Bennett had said that bothered him, a lot more than Jon liked to admit. No—not what he said, but what he hadn’t said. The guy had a knack for dancing around what he really meant.
A lot of good men and women were lost in that war? Yes, Bennett, I know. I was there. When you were still chasing freshmen around your dorm room, I was there.
He rested his forehead against the wall, angry at himself for thinking about it. It had been so long since he’d even had to.
Once he finished changing, he dove straight into the deep end of the pool, ignoring the cold. At the other end, he flipped beneath the water and kicked his legs hard off the wall. Jon soon lost track of how many laps he’d done. Instead of relieving his frustration, though, it only made it worse.
Some might say needlessly? “Needlessly” wasn’t the word for it. Those people had been sent to die in a political war. A war over control and lies. They were told they were going to end a dangerous conflict and lift the oil embargo. But the war was never really about any of that. That embargo had been put into place because production had declined, and no one wanted to admit it. The war wasn’t about saving lives. It was about saving face.
Breathing hard and shaking from anger as much as exertion, he held himself up on the edge of the pool, resting his head on his arms. Maybe that wasn’t what Bennett meant at all. Maybe he was referring to something more… specific. Emma was right. Bennett had done his homework. But exactly how much did he know? How much could he know?
When you finally return after having been left for dead by your own government in a jail cell in east Africa for over a year, people don’t exactly ask you a bunch of questions about your experience. Jon had never explained to anyone, not even Emma, the responsibility he felt for what had happened to his squadron. The guilt of knowing he was the only one who came back.
Stop it, Jon. Just stop it. He lifted his head and wiped the water from his face. Maybe he was reading too much into it. After all, Bennett didn’t say anything about the war that hadn’t already been said over and over again. Nothing that he couldn’t have read about in the news. The guy was clearly trying to rile them up. Are you really going to let a sleazeball like Bennett provoke you over something that happened ten years ago?
Jon pulled himself out of the pool and sat on the edge, his feet in the water. He thought about Emma, his beautiful wife, asleep in their room, and what Tanner had said to him in the hallway. There was a reason why he didn’t want her coming to Dallas alone, and why he asked Richard to check on the kids while they were gone. Jon was just as apprehensive about this convention as Emma. Something didn’t feel right.
“What am I even doing down here?” he muttered aloud. He should never have left Emma upstairs alone for this long, especially after what Tanner told him. But anger and bitterness had clouded his mind. Bennett had gotten to him, and Jon wondered how someone as levelheaded as himself could have let it happen.
Then he remembered what he saw on Bennett’s forehead.
Jon grabbed a towel from one of the racks along the wall and headed back to the changing room. He dried off and dressed as fast as he could. Just as he was about to open the door, he heard voices.
One of them sounded an awful lot like Bennett.
A woman giggled. “I don’t exactly think you brought me down here to talk about the pipelines, did you?”
Steadying his breathing, Jon peered out through the slats of the wooden door. Dr. Korvaire stood by the pool with a man, his back turned to the changing rooms. She held a wine glass. He held a bottle.
“My dear Dr. Korvaire, I can assure you my intentions are purely,” the man said, pouring her
a glass of wine, “professional.”
She took a sip.
“Of course, you do know the importance your research has on our plans. Surely you can understand my insistence on your continued cooperation?”
She wrapped his tie around her fingers. “Well, as much as I’ve enjoyed cooperating with you, surely you can understand that I am bound by the interpretations of the research. I can only support what I can prove.”
“Of course. Well, Doctor, as you say, it is indeed a matter of interpretation. Perhaps you will allow me the opportunity to alter your perception,” he said, pulling her closer to kiss her. He began to unbutton her blouse.
Jon rolled his eyes and stepped away from the door. Great. Any chance he’d had of nonchalantly slipping away had just gone out the window. This could take a while.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, grateful that the rain pounding against the windows drowned out everything but Korvaire’s incessant giggling and the occasional splash from the jacuzzi. Eventually he tuned them out altogether.
With a sharp crack of lightning, the lights went out.
Dr. Korvaire screamed, and glass shattered. There was a scuffling of metal chairs against the concrete pool deck, some of which sounded close to the changing room door. Jon stood, his heartbeat quickening.
Then all was quiet.
Jon sucked in rapid breaths. He felt for the door in the darkness and tried turning the knob. It didn’t move. He jiggled the handle and pushed hard against the door. Something was blocking it. He stepped back from the door, swung his leg hard, and shattered the wooden frame in one kick.
A chair flew across the deck as the door burst open. Korvaire’s companion must have known Jon was there. Or at least, he’d known someone was there.
The pool was dark, but the skylights above provided enough light for Jon to catch sight of the tail of a suit jacket disappearing into the hotel. Jon started to run after him, then stopped.
Where was Korvaire?
His gaze came to rest on the half-naked figure of a woman floating motionless in the deep end.
Jon turned back toward the hallway, then hesitated.
What the hell is wrong with you, Jon? Go after him! If that really is Bennett, you can end this. All of this. You can have him arrested and thrown out of the convention, Emma can do her presentation, and you can both just go home. All of this will be over. No more Bennett, no more threat.
Jon looked back at the pool. But what if Korvaire’s not dead?
“Damn it.”
He ran to the pool and dove into the water. In one brisk stroke, he popped to the surface, Korvaire in his arms, and rolled her onto the deck. He pulled himself up next to her and put an ear to her mouth.
She wasn’t breathing.
“Anna, can you hear me?” he yelled. Not expecting a response, he balled his fists over her chest to start compressions. Jon counted out thirty quick thrusts then tilted her chin back, pressing his lips to hers and forcing two rescue breaths into her lungs.
Nothing happened.
“Come on!” He started over. “One… two… three… four…” He pressed his fists into her chest over and over. “Five… six… Come on, Anna. Come on!”
Her body jerked lifelessly with each compression, blood trickling slowly down the side of her ghost-white face from a gash on her forehead. Jon finished the last few compressions, then leaned over her for more rescue breaths.
Halfway through the second breath she sputtered, and water erupted from her mouth.
Jon rolled her onto her side as she coughed the water out of her lungs. He took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes toward the darkness of the hallway. At least he’d managed to save someone tonight.
Even if it wasn’t his wife.
CHAPTER 7
EMMA LAY DOZING BENEATH THE comforting weight of the bedspread, only faintly aware of the tap of rain against the window and the gentle warmth of Jon kissing her on the forehead before getting out of bed. She opened her eyes for a moment when a flash of lightning filled the dark room. As she started to drift off again, she heard the rustling of Jon getting dressed, then the latch of the door as he closed it behind him.
She continued to lie there under the softness of the sheets, somewhere between wakefulness and sleep. At some point, she became conscious of an increase in the intensity of the storm outside. She rolled over, away from the window, but with each flash of lightning against the white walls, the room became brighter. Eventually, the sound of the storm subsided, but strangely, the lightning didn’t fade with it. It continued to light up the room. Feeling there was no way she would be able to sleep, she opened her eyes.
Emma no longer lay in the comfortable bed of their suite. She had no idea where she was, and yet this field was calmly familiar to her—in the same way that a fleeting memory, played repeatedly in the mind, becomes familiar. She stood upon the edge of consciousness, neither seeing nor knowing anything past the rolling hills before her.
As the fog of dissonance began to fall away, she felt a part of herself slipping with it, replaced by something much like it and yet altogether different. Something more ancient, more weighted, more worn.
And then, like so many times before, came the pain. It burned from deep inside her like an old wound that festered but never quite healed. A heartache, deeper and more permeating than anything she had ever known, as if something had been ripped from her very being, never again to be recovered nor comforted.
She sensed him before she saw him coming. He strolled across the open field toward her, as she somehow knew he had done before. The wind blew stronger.
“Lienna…”
She didn’t turn to face him, but felt his eyes upon her. Those crystal-blue eyes she had seen so many times. She continued to look out over the meadow, her lips pursed tightly as he stopped beside her.
After a silence that seemed almost an eternity, he spoke.
“You have been told, then?”
Even without looking at him, she could feel the tenderness he held for her, could feel his intensity. She knew that whatever she said to him now would determine the course of what was to come.
She nodded.
“Li?” he whispered. He stepped closer and took hold of her arm.
She instinctively turned to face him. In the shimmering light of the setting sun, his features were even more beautiful. Jet-black hair, olive skin, and those eyes as deeply blue and ominous as an icy sea that overtakes you, washing away all perception until you finally allow yourself to sink, cold and apathetic.
She looked away.
He drew closer to her and brushed a lock of hair from her face. He held his hand there, beneath her chin. She shivered at the icy chill of his touch.
“Come with me.” His words were a breath upon the wind. As if fate itself rested upon one sentence, upon one answer, spoken softly under a waning sun, on an obscure hillside, in a distant and forgotten place.
She somehow conjured the strength to calm her quivering lip and meet his eyes.
Those deep, eerily beautiful eyes. Behind them was greatness, strength—but also, she knew, the cold flame of darkness.
And it was into the darkness that she would not cross.
“Torren, I cannot go with you.”
She could feel his spirit shatter as he released her. A foreboding crept into her chest and rested itself alongside the burn of sorrow. He stepped away and looked toward the setting sun.
Again, the silence.
A chill accompanied the darkness that crept across the countryside. Did the rising moon bring the icy cold of indifference? Or was it him, her dearest childhood companion, whose heart now ached with hers? Whose heart now ached for her?
“Ren, you don’t have to do this. It isn’t too late.”
As he looked out across the darkening hillside, his words came now without the sweetness with which he’d always regarded her. They came, instead, as a dark serpent in the night, who cares not for his prey but only for himself, and
the desperate hunger that nature requires he feed. “You were to be mine, you know. It had been decided.”
“Torren.” She closed her eyes and breathed in the mist that rolled across the hillside. “I will not betray my father.”
He turned to face her. The darkness shrouded him, seeming to pulse from within him. “He is a fool. And you are a fool for following him.”
It was then that he walked away from her, away from all that they had ever known, disappearing past the edge of the vastness, and beyond.
The lingering bite of his piercing blue eyes, now cold and hardened, overwhelmed her. She dropped to her knees upon the unforgiving hillside and wept.
Then Emma screamed.
And woke up.
The storm raged beyond the window, her heart pounding as hard as the rain against the glass. The room was completely dark, save for the flashes of lightning and the bit of moonlight that managed to break through the clouds. She tried switching on the lamp on the bedside table, but nothing happened. Was the power out?
Emma sat up, her head still swimming with the images from her dream. It was all so clear. More than any of the things she had seen before. Her body shook uncontrollably, protesting the shock of snapping from one vivid reality to the next. Still enveloped by the bitter pain and cold, she rested her head on her knees and cried. In great, racking sobs.
No. She wrapped her arms around her head as her tears soaked the sheets. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
She faintly recalled Jon leaving earlier, probably to find something to eat. At that moment, she wanted him more than anything in the world, and she wasn’t about to just sit there and wait for him to come back.
A wave of nausea washed over her as she stood. She stumbled to the bathroom to be sick.
If the power was out, she would need a flashlight. Most hotels had a few scattered around, in drawers and underneath cabinets, thanks to the frequent blackouts. She found one in the drawer of the bedside table, dressed, and went to find Jon.
The atrium was empty. Where in the world is all the security? The restaurant was already closed, but a light shone faintly from the kitchen inside. She knew Jon had the ability to charm his way around the rules when he wanted something. Maybe he’d convinced someone to make him dinner.