Next to the door leading down to a small stone cellar, Matt found a box of firewood and starter sticks, and it didn’t take long before a small fire was going in the ancient hearth. He sat down in one of the old rocking chairs and watched the flames dance their fiery ballet as the heat finally penetrated his clothes and warmed the room. He probably would have continued to sit there watching the fire and enjoying the peace of the moment except his stomach rumbled, and he was rudely reminded of his good intentions.
Matt hauled himself to his feet and took stock of the room and decided coffee was his first objective and was thankful at least one modern gadget was available. A cup of hot, steaming coffee had never tasted so good, and Matt was on his second as he finished his inspection of the cupboards. Must be eighty years old at least, he decided as he opened the small icebox which ran on propane. This belongs in the Smithsonian.
Digging through its contents, he found eggs, mushrooms, and onions, and was surprised when the taste of an omelet struggled to the surface of his memory. Heavy iron frying pan in one hand and a tub of butter in the other, he stopped in his tracks and wondered out loud, “How can I remember things like the Smithsonian and not even know my name?” Did I go there? It’s somewhere on the east coast I know, not sure where, but why does it sound so familiar? He could picture different objects like the antique appliances in this room. Antiques. What was it about antiques that rang some hidden bell inside? Frozen, he stood mid-thought trying to focus on a vague image that taunted him as it played a childish game of peek-a-boo behind the haze in his mind. A hint of memory there one moment, but gone the next, tantalizing him, frustrating him.
Elizabeth walked in behind him and found him standing in the middle of the room, staring out the window, pan and butter forgotten in his hands.
“Matt, are you alright?” Turning around swiftly, he put too much weight on the newly mended leg and nearly crumpled to the floor when the pain shot up to his thigh.
“Arrghh, guess I shouldn’t have done that,” he said through clenched teeth.
“No, I suppose not,” she agreed, pulling out one of the wooden chairs for him, “here sit down. What are you doing up so early anyway?”
“I wanted to surprise you both and have a nice breakfast waiting for you, but I guess I haven’t gotten far yet. But I did have a remarkable thought just now. I think I live on the east coast, maybe somewhere warm too. I’m not sure if it’s the pills I’m still on, but I sense I’m used to warm, humid air, at least it feels that way. I remember being near the ocean but not sure exactly where.”
Elizabeth smiled and hoped she would have good news from Ben today, and she could give this nice young man something more to remember. “That’s great, but why don’t you sit for a few minutes and let your leg rest. Franny will have both our heads if we mess up her kitchen. We’ll leave her something to fix. I’ll get the eggs going before she gets up,” she added. “It makes me nervous her bending over the stove as she does. We’ll have her make some of her buttery cinnamon toast, believe me, it’s wonderful. She will light up like a Christmas tree if you ask her to fix it for you.”
Matt couldn’t fight the urge he wanted to belong there, even if he knew better. This, he thought for about the tenth time in two days, is what family feels like. He must have one like it somewhere, and the desire to find his home was becoming more urgent each day.
Elizabeth hurried through her breakfast and left Matt and Franny to clean up the dishes. Worry about the twins kept her from sleeping most of the night, and by morning she was jittery and anxious, ready to head to town to call Ben.
She sped as fast as she dared down the dirt packed road, past the small rocky outcrops, farms, and herds of wooly sheep. Elizabeth summoned her considerable common sense around her. The twins were not invincible; she knew, but they were level-headed. Ben had kept his promise to her, and their father, that he made many years before. He kept the girls out of harm’s way. Their assignments were mostly intelligence gathering, and even when she grilled them as only a mother could do; she discovered no rationale to worry about their profession. Normally logic would have convinced Elizabeth it was only her imagination which fueled her speed toward town, but since Lauren had been killed, her apprehension for her children had also kicked into a higher gear.
The lobby of the small hotel was empty, and there was no trouble getting an empty phone box. Counting the hours of the time difference in her head, she knew it would be very early in Washington. She hoped she could reach Ben at his home.
“Ben, thank goodness you’re up,” she said as she heard his familiar voice on the line. “I’m sorry to be calling so early, and I know I have been worrying needlessly, but please tell me you have found the girls.” The pause at the other end of the line made tingles go marching up her spine, and the knot she was trying to ignore in her stomach wrenched itself in a tighter grip.
“I didn’t want to call you just yet,” Ben began. “Now Elizabeth, I don’t want you to read more into this than there is, but I have no conclusive answer for you. Two teams are looking for them, and we should have some news soon. We know where they were headed, and my agents just reported in an hour ago, they found the girl’s intended destination. The fact the girls aren’t there doesn’t naturally imply anything yet.”
“Yet,” she repeated back at him.
One nice thing about Elizabeth, Ben knew, he didn’t have to sugar coat his words. She was level-headed enough to handle the truth, but there was no sense worrying her with the total truth. He already decided to share with her only the details she absolutely needed to hear.
“I’ve already told you most of it, but several months ago a no-account guy died in Las Vegas, and Kate and Lilly were looking for his grave. We believe he was in possession of some valuable information and hoped the girls could retrieve it without too much effort. The girls should have been able to dig up the information we wanted, excuse the pun, and be back in Washington by Monday. There was some confusion about which cemetery had the body, but we know we have found the correct one. It could have taken us a while to locate the guy, but monitoring the local police reports, we discovered a grave which was vandalized, and by checking records, we knew it was our boy’s. Kate and Lilly would have had it exhumed by the cemetery management, and we know that didn’t happen, so our guess now is someone beat them to the site, and the girls are following, trying to recover what was taken from the grave. If this is the case, and they didn’t call for backup, I’m going to personally have their heads handed to them as soon as I find them.”
Elizabeth listened to his words, but more intently to Ben’s voice. He was holding back, she could tell, and knew he would only tell her so much. “Okay,” she exhaled slowly, “I appreciate the update, but I’ve already decided I’m going to get a flight out today, and I should be there by tomorrow morning.”
“What good do you think you are going to do here?” Ben asked, his voice steely, a rebuttal already in his head. “We have trained field agents out there looking for them, with assistance from all possible government agencies at their disposal.”
“Yes, I know, but I can’t sit here ... thousands of miles across the Atlantic and worry,” Elizabeth added. The timbre of her voice convinced Ben, and he knew it was useless to try to discourage her trip.
“Alright,” he softened, “but what about your houseguest? Is he up to taking care of himself or at least defending himself from Franny’s attention?”
“He’ll be alright while I’m gone, but since you brought him up, what are your thoughts on letting him know his identity? Little things are coming back to him, but if he had some facts, it might trigger a lot more.”
“I’ve given it some thought,” Ben said, “and I don’t wish to subject him to more uncertainty than necessary, but I would like to hold off a little longer. Since you are coming here, we can discuss it further, and I promise we’ll go over my reasons in more depth. Then it will be up to you to decide when the time is right when you go back.
”
Ben conceded the battle about her impromptu trip to Washington much more readily than she anticipated, which told her she was right. He was more concerned about the girls than he would admit. Her call completed, she made flight reservations for later in the day. She wouldn’t be leaving for hours, but she needed to get back to the cottage, pack a bag, offer some excuse to Matt and Franny, and make the hundred-mile drive to Cardiff Airport to catch a connecting flight out of Birmingham.
Matt’s reaction to her upcoming trip was instantaneous, “I’ll go with you,” he beamed, ready to go. “It doesn’t matter where I land; I won’t be any trouble for you. You can leave me to my own means. I’ll figure out where I’m going when I get there. I will head straight to the nearest police department and throw myself on their mercy. If you pay my fare, I’ll get it back to you I promise, and everything else I owe you too.” Matt was giddy, the thought of going to the States invigorated him, and he practically babbled in his excitement. He knew he would figure out where he belonged if he could just get over there. Her excuse of an unexpected business matter necessitating a brief return to the States was accepted readily by both Matt and Franny. But his enthusiasm was shot down immediately as he caught sight of Elizabeth’s face.
“I am so sorry,” she said, sitting down next to him on the sofa, her hand on his arm. “I would love to have you go with me, and I agree being over there would help you find yourself faster, but you have no passport, no identification. We couldn’t even get you a ticket out of here without some I.D. Even if we could get you out of Wales, all U.S. airport security is extremely tight, and you wouldn’t be allowed to enter the States. Perhaps if we had more time, we could obtain letters or documentation from the police or the doctors, but that could take days, maybe weeks. Even then, I don’t know if it would be accepted on the U.S. side.”
The letdown was physically painful. Matt felt his chest constrict as he recognized the truth of what she said.
“But” she tried to brighten the moment, “I will do whatever I can while I am there to find a resource for you. I am going to see an old friend of mine, and he will help me, I’m certain. Although we are happy to have you with us here, and you are welcome as long as you wish or need to stay, I understand how frustrating this must be for you. You have handled this whole ordeal remarkably well, and I promise to do whatever I can to help you get home.”
Elizabeth’s sincerity touched a raw nerve in Matt, and he looked away from her. Now and then something about the way she looked grabbed at his heart and he wanted to hold her, touch her, and caress her face with his hands. When she sat close to him like now, his emotions boiled over, and the confusion was like torture. She was near twice his age, but he had a disturbing urge to blurt out he loved her, knowing that wasn’t quite right. He was so close, why couldn’t he grasp what it meant? What was it about her that made him feel happy, sad, relieved, and lost, all at the same time?
He pulled his arm away from her hand and sat looking at the floor. The headache, which was a constant companion throbbed a little harder behind his left ear. It frequently whispered to him, “take care, don’t think so hard, be content in the moment, or I will take control.”
“You’re right, I wasn’t thinking,” he admitted, swallowing his disappointment. “What time does your flight leave?”
“Four-fifteen, but it is quite a drive to the airport on these old roads, I don’t have much time to prepare. Franny, could you make a list of anything you think you will need for a few days and I will make a quick trip to the market before I go.”
Franny was up and hobbling to the kitchen in a blink, her mind going a mile a minute. I will have him all to myself, I will. Ahh, the delicacies I will fix for a healthy appetite like his. Yes, I will take very good care of this young man. Old Franny will make him happy he stayed behind.
Chapter Nineteen
“It’s been at least forty-eight hours,” Kate spoke in the darkness. “At least two full days since we woke up, trapped in this hot, airless tomb.” Besides the thirst and hunger which plagued them, their doubts about being rescued caused them discomfort.
“I know, I figured about the same,” Lilly responded. “I don’t know about you, but it gets harder to stay optimistic as each hour passes.”
“Well, we know Ben will have launched a search party by now.” Kate offered. “He knew who we were after, and the agency only needs to follow the same trail we took. Certainly, by the time they discover Eddy’s grave, they would know we were in trouble, right?”
“Right,” Lilly answered.
“And,” Kate continued. “We’ve hashed this over for two days now. What’s the first thing Ben would have decided when he heard we hadn’t called in to report? We know he would have searched the cemeteries until he found the same one we did. Granted, it took us several tries to find the right one, but Ben would pull out all the stops, and he has considerable resources on his side. It’s been nearly seventy-two hours since we last called in. Ben would have acted days ago. There is, however, the nagging thought he wouldn’t assume we are still within the cemetery grounds. Or there is the possibility our attackers drove our car miles away and abandoned it, to throw off the trail.”
“I’m trying to stay more optimistic about that,” Lilly said. “Especially since they didn’t kill us. Maybe they were just grave robbers who wanted us out of the way. They may have been amateurs and left a sloppy trail.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I suspect because they left us here, entombed in the hot Nevada desert, they are not only experts but well trained in cruelty.”
Kate had no memory from her time with Matt of Eddy or his Bible. Neither was ever mentioned, so she guessed Matt did not know of Eddy. But CIA intelligence had tied Phil to a jihad faction working in Philadelphia searching for information on a weapon. Ben suspected the same jihad group was responsible for their Aunt Lauren’s death. The CIA didn’t know what was in Eddy’s Bible, but Kate was beginning to believe the jihads did. Kate feared the Bible contained the sought-after recipe for mass death. And if it did, their attackers were certainly capable of taking great pleasure knowing the girls would die slowly without any hope of rescue. And that plan seemed to be taking shape in the hot, airless tomb.
They were quickly dehydrating in the Nevada heat. Even though it was spring, the outside temperature was probably past ninety. They wouldn’t last much longer without water. The crack at the top allowed them to get more air, and when either girl felt faint or light-headed, they would pull themselves up, tilt their head sideways and breathe deeply through the narrow slit. No more than an inch in height, it allowed them to survive. Unfortunately, as the air in the tomb grew heavier with carbon dioxide, the necessity for trips to the ceiling became more frequent, and sleep became a danger.
“Come on, Kate,” Lilly ordered her sister, “get up here, you’ve been sitting there too long.”
“No, I can’t ... I’m so tired,” came the reply. “My head hurts just to move.”
“So does mine,” Lilly insisted. Lilly's hands were cut and raw, as were Kate’s, as she tried to hoist her sister to an upright position. Both girls had followed the rough, jagged walls within the tomb with their fingers, trying to discern any cracks or openings they may have missed. The slit above the door, their only source of air, at least kept them alive. The box was less than five feet high and not more than eight or nine feet square. There were no coffins in the vault as the space was empty. “Well, eventually someone will find us,” Lilly quipped. “This vault will be needed by its owner and won’t they be surprised to find us squatters here when they open the door.”
“Oh yeah, too bad we’ll miss the fun. But,” Kate added, “the good news is, I can cross estate planning off my To-Do list.” Her humor was returning. “And I for one am glad if I have to go, at least I know you won’t be rifling my closet and stealing all my CD’s when I’m gone.”
“What do you mean rifle your closet?” Lilly retorted in mock anger. “Who stol
e some of my best shirts and my favorite little black dress before your assignment in Philadelphia?”
“I didn’t steal your clothes,” Kate answered in kind, “besides you never wore them anyway. I only borrowed a few things, and you got them back no worse for wear. And who are you to talk, when we were kids, who took all of my old Nancy Drew books Dad gave me. You knew how I loved them. Every time you went through them, you turned the covers in, and they were never put back where they belonged.”
“That’s because you are such a fussy nitpicker, they don’t have to be in alphabetical order, you know.” Both girls had to laugh at themselves. Their old arguments strengthened the bond between them. It eased the tension but made both of them scramble back up to get more air.
Just the mention of Philadelphia and the memory of the Matt Errington assignment hurt Kate. It was months since she left him behind, and although it was her job, she cared for him more than she could admit to anyone. The Philadelphia assignment was the only one in her nine years on the job she regretted. It should never have ended as it did. Matt was the greatest guy she ever met, and she knew he loved her. Remembering the way he held her touched her soul. Memories of their time together made her smile in the dark—thoughts she couldn’t share, even with Lilly.
It was a good time in her life, in spite of it being an arranged relationship and the fact she had been using him for work. Not since she was a little girl in her father’s lap did she feel so loved and treasured as she did with Matt. A single tear slid down her cheek, and she let it fall, not bothering to wipe it away. It was too late now she knew, to regret that terribly important bit of unfinished business in her life, he probably moved on and forgot her, but how she wished she could go back to his little apartment, pick up where they left off and not have to explain her deception to him.
Death & Other Lies Page 15