The Queen pbf-5

by Steven James

  “I won’t,” I said, although I was aware I was promising something that was beyond my control.

  As anxious as I was to get going, I could tell that right now I needed to be here for her, at least for a minute or two. “I didn’t mean to make light of anything.”

  At last she stepped away and quickly brushed her hand across her face to dry her eyes. “Yeah, I know.” She tweaked her hair back. Tried to smile.

  “I’m serious.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, because I just need you to-”

  “Don’t overdo it,” she said. “It’ll get weird.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m just… I’m glad you’re still here.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “But I have to say, jumping into a river in subzero weather? That is way off the screen. Even for you.” Her gaze drifted toward my feet. “So, frostbite?” she said uneasily. “Any toes missing or anything?”

  “Still intact.”

  “Good. ’Cause that would have totally creeped me out.”

  Pat, you need to get going.

  I turned to Sean. “Thanks for bringing her over.”

  “No problem. It’s good to see you on your feet.” He handed me a bundle of manila envelopes. “The papers you gave me yesterday at the sawmill.”

  Donnie’s personnel files and time cards. “I appreciate it.”

  A second passed.

  How to do this.

  I turned to Tessa again. “Listen, I’m really glad to see you, but-”

  “I said that’s enough.” She spoke softly, and I noticed that she was eyeing the young man working behind the counter. I hadn’t really noticed before, but he was in his midtwenties, with ruffled hair, dark, deep-set eyes, and a cute, sly sort of grin. He’d been checking her out too and abruptly averted eye contact when he saw me look at him.

  Tessa always goes for the older guys and doesn’t always show prudence when it comes to vetting dates, boyfriends, on-the-spot crushes.

  “Come here.” I led her to the room beside the lobby, and when we were alone and the guy at the counter was out of sight and wouldn’t distract her, I said, “I need to go somewhere for a little bit. It’s very important, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  She looked at me quizzically. “I just got here and-by the way, were you limping just now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I turned my ankle a little yesterday. It’s no big deal. So, I’m just saying-”

  “You’re leaving.”

  “Yes. This isn’t about us. This is-this was from before.”

  “Then why did I even come?” She didn’t sound angry, just confused. “Why’d I have to go and ride a snowmobile all the way over here in this weather if you were just gonna leave as soon as I got here?”

  Obviously I hadn’t even known she was on her way, but that wasn’t really something I needed to point out at the moment.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I repeated. The words were true enough, but I was also aware that if I did head out with Alexei to look for the Pickron killers, I might be gone for hours.

  “This has to do with the case?”

  “Yes.”

  She scrutinized me. “Agent Vanderveld’s here, right? So have him check it out.” She knew I’d been working with Jake on the Reiser case in Merrill, so it wasn’t a master feat of deduction to guess that he was here.

  “This time it has to be me.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Really.” Ice had crept into her voice, and I was getting disoriented by our conversation’s penduluming swing of emotions. “Just a minute ago you were telling me how glad you were to see me and now you’re just taking off.”

  “This doesn’t have to do with you.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “Tessa-”

  “You almost died and I would have been alone.”

  “I wish I could stay here, right now, with you, but I have to-look, we’ll talk through everything later, okay?”

  She started for the lobby. “Right.”

  “Hang on a sec.”

  She spun. “What? I just agreed with you.”

  “Trust me on this. Okay?”

  “Trust you?”

  “You can stay here with Sean and Amber.”

  “End of discussion, right? Is that it?”

  “Don’t be like this, Tessa.”

  She turned on her heels and swept out of the room, and I followed, ready to confront her again, but then I saw that Lien-hua had entered the lobby. Her eyes flicked from Tessa to me to Tessa.

  “Hey, Tessa,” she said.

  “Lien-hua. I didn’t know you were here.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Tessa strode to the far side of the lobby and then stared, arms folded, out the window. The guy behind the counter looked toward her, then glanced my way and quickly went back to texting someone on his iPhone.

  Oh, boy.

  Salvage this and then get out of here.

  Sean and Lien-hua said nothing, and I realized they’d never met. I quickly introduced them. “Sean, this is Lien-hua; Lien-hua, Sean.” They shook hands amiably, but their attention was obviously still on me and Tessa.

  “Sean,” I said, “I need to borrow your sled.”

  “It’s Amber’s,” he told me needlessly.

  “Right.”

  He must have been able to tell I was anxious to leave because he didn’t argue, just handed me his helmet. “Nothing impulsive, okay? It’s the only snowmobile we have left.”

  “I promise.”

  I gave Lien-hua the personnel files and time cards that Sean had brought with him. “Take a close look at the date Donnie started working at the sawmill,” I said. “And check to see if and when he clocked out on the day of the murders and if he received any phone calls that day at the mill prior to leaving.”

  When I mentioned the phone calls, Sean reached into his pocket. “Oh yeah. Almost forgot.”

  He passed my cell to me, but I realized that Alexei had Lien-hua’s number, not mine, so I would need to keep hers in case he texted me again.

  I gave her my phone. “I’ll get yours back to you as soon as I can.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have an errand to run.” Then I said to Sean, “Amber’s in room 104. Can you guys keep an eye on Tessa?”

  “Absolutely.”

  After reading Amber’s note this morning, I wondered when she was going to tell Sean about leaving him. I hoped she’d have the good sense to wait until Tessa and I were out of town.

  Go, Pat. You need to move.

  “I have to go, Raven,” I called. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  She was quiet.

  “Tessa.”

  She didn’t turn. “Sure.”

  Wonderful.

  “Lien-hua.” I motioned toward the door. “Can you come here a sec?”

  We stepped outside, and I held out my hand. “I need your gun.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Mine’s in a snowbank by the Chippewa-”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I can’t-”

  Her hands went to her hips. “Are you going to the ELF site by yourself?”

  “No, it’s just… Please…” For the second time in two minutes I said it: “You have to trust me.”

  “Trust you.”

  “Yes. You trust me, don’t you?”

  The hesitation in her reply made me think of last night when she’d walked in on me and Amber, but then she took off her holster and her Glock and handed them to me. “Be careful and call me if you need me. Don’t shut me out.”

  “That’s the last thing I’d ever want to do.”

  I wanted so badly to hold her, feel her arms encircling me, gain strength from her embrace, the scent of her presence, but I knew things were still tenuous between us. Instead, I placed
my hand gently on her arm. “You’re the person who matters more to me than anyone else.” As I said the words I realized they were true to an extent I’d never even been aware of before. Yes, I cared fiercely for Tessa, loved her in a protective, parental way, but with Lien-hua I had to acknowledge that my feelings were the deepest, most intimate kind. “You know that, right?”

  “Yes.” The answer didn’t come as promptly as I would’ve hoped, but there was no uncertainty in it.

  After a moment’s debate I gave her a light kiss on the cheek and whispered, “I love you.”

  “You too,” she said softly.

  And in her words I found a shot of courage and a renewed sense of hope that we were going to work things out after all.

  She turned and went back into the lobby, and as the door opened I heard Jake’s voice. “Where’s he going?”

  “Out,” she answered.

  Then it swung shut, and I limped down the path to the snowmobile to go meet Alexei Chekov in the basement of the hospital I’d been in yesterday, recovering from trying to save the man he’d thrown into the Chippewa River.

  I only hoped I would be more successful saving Kayla than I’d been when I tried to save Bryan Ellory.

  56

  On the computer screen in front of her, Solstice monitored the progress of three of her mercenaries.

  Forty minutes ago Tempest, Eclipse, and Typhoon had skied toward the east entrance to the national forest, where they were now preparing to take down the telephone lines that led into the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

  Meanwhile, in the corner of the room, Cane and his two Eco-Tech hard-liners were reviewing the speech he was going to record after the team had taken over the station. Seated at a table beside them, Gale and Equator were online, keeping tabs on the JWICS chatter through Terry’s back doors. Nothing so far on subs or the ELF station. Cirrus was analyzing the base schematics, calculating the most effective placement for the TATP ordnance.

  Solstice had thought the team members might be troubled about Clifton White’s or Tsunami’s demise, but everyone seemed to accept that the mission took precedence over any personal attachments. In fact, Solstice had a feeling that seeing her decisive response to incompetence and insubordination had served a solidifying effect on their loyalty.

  Or maybe it was all about the money to them after all. The best and most reliable motivator on earth-a bigger bottom line.

  The three operatives in the forest all wore cameras attached to their headsets, and now, through the video signal relayed to her computer, Solstice saw that Tempest was ascending a telephone pole.

  A few residential customers would be affected by the downed telephone lines, and she was confident that soon enough the scattered users would contact the phone company on their cell phones, and the disruption in service would be reasonably blamed on the storm.

  The staff at the ELF base would no doubt use their satellite uplink to get an update on the disruption in landline service and have no immediate cause for concern.

  With the roads as bad as they were, no phone companies would be able to send crews out until tomorrow at the earliest. And by then it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  Solstice felt her pocket, fondled the passport she was carrying for Ariose Heaton, another of her identities. Waiting out the storm wouldn’t be difficult. Flying out of the regional airport in Rhinelander, an airport without facial recognition software, would be no trouble. And then, in two days, she would be reunited with Terry in Mali, a country without extradition treaties with the US, and they would have enough money to hide away for the rest of their lives.

  Unless, of course, they decided to engage in a little mischief now and then along the way.

  That thought brought a smile.

  “How long?” she asked into her mic.

  “We’ve run into a few issues,” Eclipse replied. “Nothing serious. We should be done by three.”

  Perfect.

  “All right. We’ll meet you at the maintenance building at 3:30.”

  Tessa wasn’t exactly into hanging out with Sean and Amber, but she’d never met her stepaunt before, and even though the circumstances were sort of awkward, she seemed nice enough and Tessa tried to concentrate on being here, talking with her, but she was still upset about her conversation with Patrick, and that was sort of swallowing up her attention.

  She wasn’t mad at him, more shaken by hearing he’d almost drowned. More this weird kind of loneliness and longing to connect. She even found herself wanting to tell him about the shrink, about how terrible she still felt about killing the man last summer, about the prescription for the sleeping pills-just lay everything out in the open, let Patrick listen, offer whatever help he could, be the dad he obviously wanted to be.

  Later, when he gets back.

  Now, she was in Amber’s room-the one she would’ve had if she’d made it to the motel last night. Sean sat somewhat obtrusively in the corner and Amber was trying a little too hard to negotiate a conversation between the three of them, but with Sean being sorta quiet and Tessa being so distracted, it wasn’t going too well, and finally Amber suggested a bit too brightly that they see if there was anything on TV.

  “Okay,” Tessa said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  Amber clicked on the remote, and their discussion, which had never really gotten off the ground in the first place, ended. A sports wrap-up show came on, and even though, as far as Tessa could tell, none of them really had any interest in it, they all sat quietly and stared at the screen.

  I arrived at the hospital and parked the snowmobile beside the main entrance. Shed the helmet. Set it on the seat.

  Seven minutes until my meeting with Alexei Chekov.

  The road in front of the hospital had been plowed, and I figured that transportation to the only medical care facility for miles had to be one of the county’s top priorities. Maybe that’s why Alexei wanted to meet here-he knew it’d be the one place in the region that would have clear roads in front of it, guaranteed access.

  It seemed like a good reason to me, one he would have thought of.

  Before going inside I wanted as much information about Chekov as I could get, and as far as I knew, there was only one person alive in the area besides me who’d actually spoken with him: State Trooper Reggie Wayland, the man whose wrist bones Alexei had shattered yesterday afternoon.

  I figured he’d be in the hospital himself, and though I could ask for him at the front desk, a dozen cars were parked in the windswept parking lot, so instead of walking in yet, I phoned the front desk and took the opportunity to walk the lot, memorizing the plates.

  Surprisingly, the receptionist told me that Wayland had already checked out. When I called his home, his wife answered, and when I explained who I was, she told me that he still couldn’t grip anything but that, yes, yes of course, she would hold the phone for him.

  “Talk me through what happened,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

  Quickly and succinctly, Wayland detailed how Alexei had attacked him, even described the weapon he’d used. Wayland had a sharp memory, and I was glad.

  We hung up and I tapped at my phone, going online to the Federal Digital Database. I entered the plate numbers for each of the cars in the parking lot, and seconds later found out that none of them were registered to Kayla Tatum.

  Chekov might have switched vehicles again.

  I returned to the hospital’s entrance.

  It seemed obvious that Alexei had abducted Kayla, but as I’ve learned in the past, things are not always what they appear to be. Once again I was reminded of what my mentor, Dr. Calvin Werjonic, used to say: “Truth often hides in the crevices of the evident.” It was possible that Kayla wasn’t Alexei’s captive but his partner. He might not have killed the Pickrons, but I didn’t want to discount-as unlikely as it was-the possibility that she might have.

  As the automatic doors whooshed open in front of me, sucking in a double curl of twirling snow, I pulled up Ka
yla’s DMV photo on Lien-hua’s cell. A middle-aged receptionist sitting at a small booth in the lobby looked over the top of her glasses at me as I entered.

  “Some weather we’re havin’ out there,” she said with a strong Wisconsin accent.

  “Yes. I’m looking for-”

  “D’you drive?”

  “Snowmobile.” I held up my credentials. “Listen, I’m looking for the lower level.”

  She gave the ID only a cursory look. Her eyes jumped past me to the glass doors. “I hear the roads are gettin’ worse.”

  “Please, the lower level?”

  Finally, she gestured vaguely to her left. “Elevators are over there. By the bathrooms.”

  Elevators announce your arrival, and people can be ready for you when the doors slide open, but if you use the stairs, you retain, at least for a few extra seconds, the element of surprise.

  “I’m looking for the stairwell.”

  With a somewhat disgruntled look, she motioned in the other direction. “End of the hall, past the chapel, turn left. Stairs’ll be on your right.”

  “Thank you.” I showed her the photo of Kayla Tatum. “Have you seen this woman come through here? Maybe with a man about six feet tall? A stocky guy, might have been wearing a blue parka?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Been here since 7:00.” Then, looking toward the doors again, she added, “On the news they’re saying more snow’s coming tonight, but it’s supposed to warm up and maybe hit ten degrees-a heat wave, y’know.”

  I couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be a joke or not.

  “Thanks.” I turned to go.

  “’Course with the windchill,” she said still contemplating the weather, “it’s gonna feel a lot colder.”

  As I left, I noticed her eyes following me all the way across the lobby until I was past the vending machines.

  At the end of the hall, I unholstered Lien-hua’s Glock, pressed open the door.

  And entered the stairwell.

  57

  I descended the stairs.

  My senses were dialed up the way I like it.

  Sharp.

  Focused.

  At the base of the steps I slowly opened the door and saw a long, bone-white hallway stretching before me the length of the hospital where it ended in a T.