by Eric Bernt
Her fears were not allayed. “How were you able to identify me?”
“You are the only one who has this number. On the day he retired, your father gave me this phone. This is the first call I’ve ever received on it.”
His explanation sounded not only plausible but exactly like something her father would have done. She breathed a little easier. “What should I call you?”
“Hogan.”
She tried to remember if her father had ever introduced her to someone with that name, but couldn’t remember anyone. “Okay, Hogan, what now?”
He paused to make sure the significance of what he was about to say came through clearly. “Once the Alpha Reset Protocol is initiated, there is no turning back. Is that clear?”
She was relieved to hear him use the phrase Alpha Reset Protocol and responded without hesitation. “Yes, it’s clear.”
He spoke with absolute clarity. “Intending no offense, let me make sure you understand the gravity of the situation. Right now, it’s like you have entered the launch codes and your finger is on the button, but you have not pressed it yet. The only person who knows any of this is me. You can still turn back and go about your life as you have been, as will I. But once you press that button, there is no going back. Forces will be marshaled, and a battle will commence, which will become all-out war. So please, for both our sakes, take a moment before you confirm that you want to proceed.”
Caitlin did as he requested. She then responded with conviction, “I confirm I want to proceed.”
He hesitated briefly, as if this was not the reply he was hoping for and he was only reluctantly willing to accept. “Make your way to the address your father left for you. Call me when you get there.” He hung up.
She started to drive, following the directions Google Maps was providing on her burner phone toward I-495 West, then texted a message to a number she had committed to memory long ago. The message read: It’s raining elephants in Tucson.
CHAPTER 18
I-495 WEST
OUTSIDE FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA
June 1, 3:47 p.m.
Caitlin was proud of her husband. Peter McCloskey had risen steadily through the financial ranks over a twenty-year career. After graduating from George Washington with a degree in accounting, he started off professional life as a CPA, then moved into purchasing, debt management, and accounts receivable before becoming controller of the grinding-wheel concern he was still employed by. When the CFO who’d hired him was forced to retire for health reasons several years later, Peter was handed the job, and he had been shining in the position ever since.
Caitlin knew that today was an important day for him. He was presenting the annual financial report to the company’s board of directors. Peter used to get so nervous before such meetings that he wouldn’t eat the entire day until coming home afterward, but that hadn’t happened in almost a decade. He’d been through great years with the company, as well as outright terrible ones. This year was somewhere in the middle, as most of them were.
Caitlin tried to imagine how far he’d gotten into his presentation to the board when her text was received. She couldn’t decide which would be better for him: if he hadn’t started yet, or had already finished. Worst would be if he was right in the middle of his PowerPoint presentation, which included several dozen slides. She tried to picture the faces on his board of directors as he marched out without warning. And then a horrible thought occurred to her: What if the text hadn’t gone through? No, she thought, they had already ruled out that possibility. He had tested his phone reception along his entire route to work, and in every room of the company’s offices.
What if he didn’t read the text? Or even worse, ignored it? No, she told herself, Peter wouldn’t do that. Her contact information in his phone included not only a unique ringtone (courtesy of John Mayer), but a distinctive vibration pattern for her texts. It was a heartbeat. He would be able to feel when she was trying to reach him. And because of a conversation they’d had several months ago, he understood the potential urgency a text from her could represent.
Initially, Peter had thought she was playing a practical joke on him. You want me to what? But she had made certain he understood the seriousness of her instructions. She had stated in no uncertain terms that if she ever sent him a message that included the phrase raining elephants in Tucson, Peter was to immediately stop whatever he was doing, pick up their children, and take them to Potomac Airfield, where she would have a private aircraft waiting for them.
She made him promise that he would follow her instructions exactly and without hesitation. It was a moment that had fundamentally altered their relationship. Although he had given his word, his trust in her was rattled. The fear she saw in his face was something that Caitlin would never forget. It was the first time she could remember Peter ever looking afraid of her. Over the years, he had shared his suspicions about the foundation she worked for, but she had always assuaged his concerns convincingly.
The problem with getting caught in one lie is that it sets up a line of further questions like a row of dominoes. Peter had demanded to know what else she had lied to him about. Was everything a lie? No, she had assured him, it wasn’t. She loved him dearly and told him she was probably just being overly cautious.
As it turned out, she wasn’t.
Caitlin glanced down at her phone as it started to ring. She placed it in a cradle mounted on the dashboard. It was Peter calling. He was Skyping her—whenever possible, they preferred to see each other when talking on the phone. She clicked the button to answer the call, and his face appeared on her phone. It was clear that he was also driving, which gave her a sense of relief. “You’re on the road. Good.”
“What number is this?”
“It’s a backup,” she answered, eyeballing him that he should have known it was a burner phone.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” He conveyed grave concern on the verge of panic.
Reminded that Peter was unpracticed in this type of situation, she responded with unnatural calm and reassurance. “Peter, I can’t talk right now. But I’ll call you as soon as I can. I promise.” She glanced toward the screen so that he could see her eyes. She was trying to communicate that phone conversations weren’t a good idea right now, but she had no idea if he understood. In any event, she now knew that he had received her text and was making good on his promise. For the moment, that was all she needed to know.
She ended the call and continued toward the address her father had left for her.
CHAPTER 19
BACK OF A DELIVERY VAN
LOCATION UNKNOWN
June 1, 3:51 p.m.
Eddie’s eyes blinked open. He did not know where he was. Which scared him. Without moving his head, he glanced around. He was lying on his side in the back of a van. It was white inside and seemed to be fairly new. He could hear the road passing beneath the vehicle. They were traveling fast—faster than the cars around them moving in the same direction. Eddie guessed this meant they were on a freeway. But he didn’t know which one. Or where they were going. Which was upsetting. His hands flinched. If they hadn’t been handcuffed behind his back, he would have probably started slapping himself.
His cheek hurt where he had hit himself so many times earlier. It was far more than his daily average, and more than he knew he should have. He wasn’t supposed to slap himself, both because his doctors had always told him, his whole life, that this was a behavior they wanted to help him curtail and because it was painful.
His wrists also throbbed because they were cuffed tightly behind his back. He did not like the feeling of the metal digging into his wrists. He could not see the cuffs, but he imagined what they looked like from the television shows he had seen over the years in Harmony House. Policemen handcuff criminals. Criminals are bad people. Does that mean I have become a bad person?
The pain made him temporarily more angry than scared. “Where am I?” The two men in the front of the van did not answer
him. They were separated from Eddie by metal mesh. He spoke louder. “I know you can hear me! Where are you taking me?”
The driver glanced over his shoulder. “You’ll find out when we get there.”
“How will I find out?”
“There will be a big sign that says, ‘Welcome, Eddie!’” he answered sarcastically.
Eddie made his BUZZER sound. “Not true. There will not be a big sign.”
“How do you know that?” the driver asked.
“I know because I can tell when people lie, and you just did.”
“Tell me if I’m lying now.” He glanced at his associate. “If you don’t shut up, my friend is going to zap you with his baton again.”
Eddie was confused. On one hand, the man had told him to say something, which required Eddie to speak. But then he said if he spoke, the other man was going to hurt him again, and he didn’t want that. Eddie opened his mouth to respond, then decided not to say anything at all. He shook his head as if to answer, No, you are not lying now.
The associate held up the stun baton he’d previously used on Eddie. “You sure you don’t want some more of this?”
“No, I do not! I never wanted any of that in the first place.”
“Then shut your mouth.” He said it sharply, in a tone that reminded Eddie of his father when he would get angry at him as a child. Eddie now responded the way he used to back then: he opened his mouth as widely as he could, but did not make a sound. It was an act of silent rebellion. Which meant they hadn’t broken him yet. But he was sure scared.
His mind began to flit about at rocket speed in an unconscious attempt to hide from that fear. What time is it? What highway are we on? What direction are we going? How much longer will we be driving? Are we driving the speed limit? Would a police officer notice if we were driving too fast? Does the driver have a proper license? When will they take me back to Harmony House? Where is Skylar? Does she know I am no longer at Harmony House? Is she okay? When will my next meal be? Will that meal be served by strangers? Will that meal include purple food? Will the strangers force me to eat the purple food if there is any being served?
He certainly hoped not, because he found food the color of bruises disturbing. Just the thought of it was unsettling, and he was already unsettled enough. Fortunately, most meals at Harmony House didn’t include any grapes or plums or blueberries or eggplant or cabbage, so Eddie had not had to confront purple foods with much frequency over the last decade.
He didn’t like the feeling he got in the pit of his stomach when thinking about purple foods, so he decided to think about something that gave him a better feeling. And the first thing that came to his mind was Skylar. He closed his eyes to help him picture her. In the short time he had known her, he had studied her face more closely than that of any other person he’d ever known. Just looking at her made him feel good, which most observers would have found curious, because during his conversations with Skylar, he spent most of the time looking elsewhere. Eye contact, even with his favorite person in the world, was an incredible challenge for him.
As a child, Eddie had wondered why it was so much harder for him to look at people than it was for most others. He remembered reading that eyes were considered windows to the soul, and because he wasn’t clear on what the soul was, or if he even had one, he didn’t like people seeing what was inside him. It made him feel exposed, and that made him feel uncomfortable, which was never a good thing. He didn’t understand how those not on the autism spectrum could feel comfortable enough with this sensation of looking others directly in the eye. Perhaps it was because they each had some invisible shield that protected their soul from inspection. He had asked where he could get one of those shields, but none of his doctors or nurses had ever given him a remotely satisfactory answer.
Eddie then thought about the time he had studied Skylar’s face most closely. It was during their train ride from Secaucus to Philadelphia, only a week ago. She had fallen asleep right next to him. When Skylar’s eyes were closed, Eddie had taken the opportunity to inspect her every pore—or, at least, most of them. He wanted to memorize her features because she was the mother figure he had always hoped for. Skylar looked quite like the only image Eddie had of his birth mother. He imagined that his mother would have made him feel just like Skylar did. Warm. And safe. And cared for.
Skylar’s interest in him had piqued his curiosity about her. He couldn’t read about Skylar the way she had about him, what with the boxes upon boxes of notes kept by his many doctors over the years, which she had pored over. So his study of her had to be visual, at least for now. The color of her skin (lightly tanned but fair). The number of freckles she had on both cheeks (they were asymmetrical; the left side had three more). The length of her eyelashes (approximately one-half inch, on average). He was quite certain her lashes were longer than his own. They were also not covered in as much makeup as those of the other female doctors he had encountered over the years in Harmony House, which was something he liked. Eddie found makeup confusing; he didn’t understand why anyone, but mostly women, would wear it. The synthetic colors seemed to exaggerate certain features, but exaggerating was very close to lying, and lying was bad except in certain circumstances which Skylar had only recently helped him to understand.
On that train ride to Philadelphia, Eddie also discovered that Skylar had several different colors of hair: while most of it was blonde, some of her hairs were darker than others, and an even smaller number were gray. He knew that people started getting gray hairs as they got older. Nurse Gloria had told him years ago that he should never mention them to any woman, nor increasing baldness to any man. Eddie didn’t understand why this was so important—it was only hair, after all—but the veteran nurse seemed to command the respect of her peers and the entire medical staff, so he had accepted her statement as fact.
Eddie had noted several other features about Skylar: She had a small scar on the left side of her chin. Her hands were small compared to those of most of the other women he had known, but her fingers were long. Her nails were short and always had white painted on the ends. Years ago, he had learned that this style of manicure was called French tips, but nobody he asked could explain to him why, so it was added to his Book of Questions, among the thousands of other puzzles Eddie hoped to have answered one day.
Lying in the back of the van, Eddie realized how much more comfortable he now felt as he thought about Skylar. He felt warmer, like he was wrapped in an imaginary blanket. And it wasn’t just a sensation of heightened temperature; he no longer felt so alone or scared. Just the thought of her reassured him. He was now breathing more slowly and deeply, which were meditation techniques he had read about. And while he did not know how to meditate, he did know how to think about Skylar, so that was what he continued to do.
CHAPTER 20
KELMAN NURSING AND REHAB CENTER
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
June 1, 3:53 p.m.
Stenson parked his Chrysler 300C next to Caitlin’s Subaru in the nursing home parking lot. He placed his hand on the hood of her car, checking to see how long it had been there. The metal was cool. He glanced in the window. Her iPhone was visible next to the gear selector. That isn’t a good sign, he thought. But he had to make sure.
He approached Quentin, the front desk clerk, who seemed to recognize him from his previous handful of visits. Quentin greeted him with “Well, isn’t Lawrence the popular one today?”
“Excuse me?”
“Our residents don’t get many visitors. Just one in a day is a big deal for them, but two is something they’ll be talking about all week.”
Stenson smiled politely. “Do you know if his daughter is still here?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. But go ahead to his room. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.”
Stenson walked down the hall and poked his head into his former mentor’s room. “Lawrence, may I come in?” There was no response. “Caitlin, are you still here?” He entered quietly
to find Lawrence asleep in his easy chair, which faced toward the windows. There was no sign of his daughter. Stenson sat on the footstool, tapping Lawrence lightly on the shoulder. He spoke softly, just above a whisper. “Lawrence. Hey, old friend, I’m sorry to wake you.”
Caitlin’s father opened his eyes, smiling when he saw who had awakened him. “I know you, don’t I?”
“You do. My name is Robert Stenson, but my friends call me Bob.”
“I am your friend, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are.” It had become increasingly difficult for Stenson to see his former mentor in this condition, but given the circumstances, particularly so today.
“I suppose that is why you are here. Because we are friends.”
“It is,” Stenson lied. He moved closer so he could look Lawrence squarely in the eyes. “I need to ask you something.”
“This sounds serious.” The old man clasped his hands in his lap to stop them from shaking.
“I need to know what you and Caitlin discussed.”
“She’s my daughter, you know. Caitlin. Such a sweet girl. She just came to visit.”
“I do know. What did you two talk about?” His words were becoming more abrupt, which wasn’t lost on Lawrence.
The old man seemed to be considering his response carefully. “Well, Bob, that is none of your damn business,” he replied with a smile. “That is between a father and his daughter.”
Stenson could no longer restrain himself. “Tell me!” He immediately regretted losing his temper, especially when he saw his former mentor’s confused response.
Lawrence struggled to find the words to respond. He seemed frightened. And then frustrated. One of the orderlies poked his head in, asking if everything was all right. Lawrence barked, “Get out!” with surprising intensity. As the orderly backed out of the room, Lawrence turned to his visitor and said nothing. He just stared.
Stenson couldn’t tell if Lawrence was baiting him or simply not present. The younger Lawrence, when he was in his prime and in command of the American Heritage Foundation, had used silence in conversation better than anyone Stenson had ever known. The former director used to wield it like a weapon and had broken several people with it in Stenson’s presence.