by Lee, Rachel
Anna, her left arm in a sling, and Nancy were also present in Tebbins’s room. Nancy had demanded that Newman confiscate some chairs from a couple of empty rooms so that she and Anna could sit against the wall. And when Newman had suggested they had no place there, Anna had gotten fired up.
“I belong here,” she told Newman icily. “It’s my heart he wants to cut out, and I have every right to know what you’re going to do about it.”
“Let her stay,” Tebbins said. He still didn’t sound quite like his old self. His moustache was gone, having given way at some point during his treatment. His upper lip was pale from lack of sun, almost like a vestige of a moustache.
The head of the bed was raised so he could see them all, but his movements were still languid and an IV inhibited them even more. He looked deflated somehow, as if his essence had been reduced.
But his dark eyes were still sharp, and his tongue equally sharp. “Fill me in,” he said to Anna. “Exactly what did he say to you?”
“Basically that he has to offer my living heart in order to put an end to the curse.”
“So he does believe in the curse.”
“Yes, he does. Apparently his family was killed in the refinery explosion in Mexico. Anyway, he seems to think he’s trying to save a lot of other lives by taking mine.”
“Hardly an original motivation.” Tebbins lifted his right arm, the one free of tubes and tape, and attempted to stroke his missing moustache. The movement made him wince. “But still we know very little about him.”
“We know nothing about him,” Gil said. “He’s been covering his tracks for a long time. Being as invisible as he could be while still pursuing some kind of life.”
“So he’s planned this for a long time.”
“So it would seem.”
“And now we need to draw him out somehow.”
Gil couldn’t help it; he looked at Anna. Her eyes widened a shade. Then she spoke.
“You need bait,” she said. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
He nodded, his heart heavy with reluctance.
Tebbins tutted. “That won’t do at all.”
Nancy’s objection was even more adamant. “There is no way you’re going to dangle my sister in front of that sicko like a piece of meat on a hook. No way.”
“I quite agree,” Gil said. “No way. The problem is… until we catch him, Anna’s still the bait on the hook any way you look at it. He’s still after her. What we need to do is make it happen in a controlled situation.”
“The department will shit a brick,” Newman said. “I won’t allow it.”
Tebbins barely glanced at him. “Be silent unless you’ve got something to offer other than an objection.”
Newman was silent, but he didn’t look as if he’d spoken his last.
Gil spoke. “I don’t like the idea either. In fact, I hate it. I’ve been trying to find a way around it for four days now. But it remains, we can’t find a trace of Barro. Not a trace. He’s exactly the kind of guy who could disappear in a crowd and never be seen again. We can’t find any frequent contacts or friends he might turn to. No family. No favorite hangouts, other than the museum. Everybody seems to know him but not know him, if you know what I mean. He doesn’t even have a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. It’s like he’s there but he’s not.”
Even Newman had to give a reluctant nod to that. “We’ve checked every avenue. No car, no credit cards. There’s been no activity on his bank account since Friday when he withdrew everything except a hundred dollars. He was ready to go into hiding. And he could be anywhere.”
“Exactly.” Gil looked at Tebbins. “We have to draw him out. Because if we don’t, he could stalk Anna for weeks or months. Even years. However long it takes for him to feel safe enough to act again. And we both know we can’t guarantee her safety for that long.”
Tebbins sighed and closed his eyes.
“Give me another plan,” Gil said. “I’ll jump at it. The last thing I want is to put these women in jeopardy.”
“We’re already in jeopardy,” Anna said. “I’ll do it.”
“No.” Nancy’s tone was sharp. “l’ll do it. I’m in better shape right now, and I can pass for you without any trouble at all. I can even do your voice.”
Gil was ashamed of the relief he felt when Nancy volunteered. Ashamed that Anna meant so much to him that he was more willing to risk her sister. Ashamed because he knew that Anna would be horrified if she even guessed.
Tebbins opened his eyes again. “I don’t have another plan,” he admitted reluctantly. “And you’re right. The Lundgrens are at risk until we catch Barro. However long it takes. If he really believes in the curse, he’s not going to drop it just because it got difficult.”
“No,” Gil agreed. “It started to get difficult the day I chased him. Nothing’s been going right for him since.”
Tebbins nodded slowly. His right hand moved futilely toward his mouth, but he stopped it mid-movement. “We still need a method of drawing him out,” he said. “Bait or no bait, we have to be able to get to him somehow, and convince him to come out of hiding.”
“Which means,” Gil said, “that we need to use his own beliefs against him. We need to make him think the curse is turning against him.”
“Yes,” said Tebbins, and his dark eyes were suddenly sparkling. “Yes, indeed.”
“There’s just one problem,” Newman said from the corner where he was sulking. “You have to be able to communicate with him. How the hell are you going to do that when you don’t know where he is?”
Gil shrugged. “Oh, I think Reed Howell might be just the mouthpiece we need.”
“Yes, he would,” Anna agreed. “And he owes me, after printing all those insinuating stories about my father.”
Newman didn’t like the idea. “You can’t lie to the press. You’ll give the department a black eye.”
“Nobody,” said Tebbins, “said a word about lying.”
“No, we don’t want to lie,” Gil agreed. “We just need to shade a little.” He paced over to the window and looked down at the parking lot, which was falling into the shadow of the building as the sun settled firmly in the west.
“We know he believes in the curse. We know he thinks he’s saving himself and others by trying to kill Anna. He spoke of offering her heart and… what was it he said, Anna?”
“There’s a belief that the sacrificial victim becomes godlike. It was quite an honor, actually. He seemed to be offering that as an inducement.”
“So basically he thinks the gods are on his side,” Gil said. “What if we convince him otherwise?”
“He’d panic,” Anna said flatly. “He’s half-panicked now, I think, convinced that if he doesn’t offer my heart, the curse will get him.”
“So… we convince him the curse wants him, not you.”
“Easier said than done.”
“I don’t know,” Tebbins said musingly. “It might not be as difficult as it sounds.” Suddenly he smiled. “No, it won’t be difficult at all.”
Several days later, Anna, Nancy and Gil gathered around Anna’s television to watch the evening news. Reed Howell’s paper, the Sentinel, was owned by a media conglomerate that also owned a local TV station. Reed had wanted the exclusive from Anna, but he’d also demanded some video clips he could use to put a brief story on the evening news before the full story hit the morning paper. Gil and Tebbins had talked it over and agreed. Two swings at Barro were better than none.
They had, however, insisted that Anna not speak on camera, primarily because it wasn’t Anna being filmed, but Nancy. Gil had worried that if they gave Barro too good a look at her, he might catch on, and one of the main ideas he wanted to convey was that Anna was having a “miraculous” recovery.
So they watched as Nancy sat at Anna’s desk, pretending to work while Howell did a voice-over. At one point the camera zoomed in to show just a small bandage on Nancy’s arm.
“It’s eerie,” Anna sa
id when the segment was over. Nancy clicked off the TV.
“What is?” her sister asked.
“I think of us as being identical until I watch you pretend to be me. It’s eerie how much you have to change.”
Gil spoke. He was sitting on the couch beside Anna, a fact which everyone had avoided commenting on. “You move very differently. And you have different voices.”
Nancy looked at him. “The question is, did I pass?”
“You passed,” Gil said firmly. “If he sees it, he’ll be sure it’s Anna.”
Lance saw it. He’d taken a room in a run-down house not too far from campus in a bad neighborhood. Nobody cared who he was or when he came and went. It was enough he’d paid a hundred dollars cash to get the room for a week.
It wasn’t much of a room. Roach-ridden, filthy, with bare wood floors that hadn’t been cleaned in a lifetime. He crashed on a battered bit of stuffing that had once been a mattress and spent all his time trying to figure out how he was going to get to Anna now.
Finally, frustrated and despairing, he walked to a nearby bar and ordered a beer.
In time to see the evening news.
Anna’s face floated before him on the TV at one end of the bar, riveting him. Over the din of the other patrons, he could barely hear Reed Howell’s voice talking about how Anna had made a miraculous recovery, and how the police were certain they were close to capturing him. His face, from his university ID card, flashed on the screen, causing him to start, but then he reminded himself that no one would recognize him. Not only was he supremely ordinary-looking, but the photo had never resembled him at all. Nobody turned to look at him.
Reed went on about how Anna was returning to work, that she wasn’t afraid because the museum had all kinds of security, and now that the police knew how Barro had beaten it, he wouldn’t be able to do so again. And he finished up by saying that while Lance Barro thought he was serving the gods, it was apparent that the gods were on Anna Lundgren’s side.
Lance didn’t even finish his beer. Shoving himself away from the bar, he got up and hurried out into the warm evening, needing to be as far away as he possibly could.
The gods were on her side?
The thought infuriated him. The hubris of it infuriated him. He was the servant of the jaguar, not her. He was the one devoting his life and strength to returning the dagger to its rightful place.
But he knew a niggle of fear, too. He had shot Tebbins. He had stabbed Anna. Badly. He’d seen the blood. She couldn’t possibly be healed by now, unless divine intervention had assisted her in her recovery. And Tebbins had survived.
Something was very, very wrong. What if Howell was right? What if the gods were on Anna’s side? What if Lance had messed up so badly that the jaguar god had withdrawn his favor?
He had to redeem himself, and soon. Very soon. Throughout the night he paced the streets, trying to figure out how to do it. How to do it without failing. Without a single slip.
He couldn’t afford to fail again.
Anna absolutely refused to allow Nancy to replace her at the museum.
“For God’s sake,” Nancy demanded, “why not? You’re badly hurt. You don’t have the strength to do this.”
“I have plenty of strength, and I’ll be damned if I let you go into this tiger’s mouth in my place.”
Nancy waved a dismissing hand. “The place is going to be crawling with cops. He won’t be able to breathe without getting caught.”
“Exactly,” Anna said, looking at her with fiery eyes. “So I can do it.”
Both Tebbins and Gil had been shunted to the side in this discussion. Tebbins, freshly out of the hospital, was looking rather peaked as he sat in a corner of Anna’s living room. Gil was standing near the front window, watching the street as the morning sun brightened it. The two surveillance cars were gone, a calculated risk. The cops were now inside with them. Waiting.
Nobody had slept very well the previous night. The story was in the newspaper that morning, teased on the front page, above the fold. They all figured that if Barro had missed the newscast, he was sure to see the paper.
The question was, where was he going to strike? And when? Everyone, Gil included, felt that he would probably choose to come after Anna at the museum, after closing, when she would stay late, ostensibly to catch up on her work. There would be more opportunities for him to hide himself there, or so he would think. What he wouldn’t know was the number of Tampa police officers who would be there, ready to spring on anything that moved.
But the house was a risk, too. One of the sisters would be here, under police guard.
“Both of you,” Gil said, “are going to be in jeopardy. I can’t make that clear enough. Anna, there’s no way you have enough strength yet to put in a full day at the museum and then hang around there this evening. No way.”
“Exactly,” Nancy said. “Don’t be a goose, Anna. I’ll go to work for you. At least here you can sleep when you need to and be comfortable.”
“Everyone will know it’s not me! You don’t know my job. You don’t know the people.”
Tebbins sighed. “She has a point.”
“I can go to work late,” Anna suggested. “It won’t matter. After what I’ve been through, not even he would expect me to be there on time. So I’ll go in late, and work late. He’s not going to pull anything in broad daylight anyway, not when there’ll be so many people around.”
“If you’re going to go in late,” Nancy said stubbornly, “I can do it. I can cover for that long.”
Tebbins spoke. “Are you two always so argumentative?”
Neither woman answered him, not that he seemed to expect it.
And the problem still wasn’t solved, Gil thought, looking out at the street again. They were on the horns of a very real dilemma, one which, he realized, would have been a whole hell of a lot easier if Anna hadn’t had a twin.
“They both go to the museum,” he said finally. “There’s no other way to do it. From what Anna says of his motivation, he might be after both of them.”
“Having both of them together might compound our problems,” Tebbins argued. “Not only would we have two people to watch, but he might be put off making his move if he thinks he has to go up against both of them at the same time.”
“I know.” Gil turned from the window. “But I don’t see that we have any choice. The last thing we want to do now is give him two separate targets to go after.”
* * *
The afternoon shift changeover in security at the museum went off as usual. The only difference was that the men wearing the uniforms of the security contractor were Tampa police officers. Another group of officers trickled in wearing plainclothes, appearing to be museum visitors.
Officers were concealed in the security equipment room, to ensure that Barro didn’t get a chance to disrupt the systems. Others were stationed in offices near exterior doors to prevent anyone from coming and going without being seen.
Little by little they sifted into their places of concealment, waiting for the museum to close.
Anna and Nancy holed up in her office. Anna was looking pale but plowed determinedly on through the paperwork on her desk. Nancy scanned some of Anna’s journals, filling the time.
Little by little the museum grew quieter. Outside the windows, night settled over the world. Finally, Anna got up and closed the blinds.
They were locked in for the night.
By midnight Anna was dozing in her chair, and Nancy’s nervous pacing had given way to nibbling at hangnails. Gil rubbed his tired eyes. There was nothing more to do tonight except drive everyone to exhaustion. It was time to go home and try again tomorrow.
The problem, he knew, was that this waiting game took a toll on diligence and attentiveness. Time was on Barro’s side. With every night that they went through this routine, the human security would weaken.
He shook Anna gently. “I’m going to call it for the night,” he said when her eyes focused. “We all n
eed rest.”
She nodded sleepily. Even Nancy seemed too drained to object. As they packed up, he picked up his walkie-talkie.
“We’re moving. Switch to transit assignments. Nominal overnight watch, so everything looks normal.”
Most of the undercover guards headed out to their cars, some going off shift, others preparing to escort Anna and Nancy back to their house.
The new shift, a group of officers pulled from both the Tampa PD and the Sheriff’s Department, took their assignments in the lobby. The shift supervisor, a corporal from the TPD, looked with distaste at a rookie the sheriff had sent. Nobody’d even bothered to tell him to wear plainclothes.
“How long you been on the job, son?”
“Six weeks.”
The supervisor sighed. “Well, okay, then. You take the equipment room.” It was the least troublesome assignment, and the safest place for everyone to stash a rookie. Behind a locked door, he couldn’t get into too much trouble.
And Lance Barro, wearing a deputy’s uniform, walked into the one room in the museum that he most wanted to enter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It was ten o’clock the next night. Anna was sagging over her desk, looking even more exhausted than the night before. Nancy had given up on the journals and was playing solitaire at one end of the desk.
Gil was in danger of pacing a hole in the industrial carpeting. “Who wants coffee?” he asked.
“Coffee?” Anna said.
“Hey, this place is full of cops. You don’t imagine we can survive without it. I’ll bet there are doughnuts, too.”
Anna smiled wearily.
“Sounds good,” Nancy said. “Anna?”
Anna nodded. “Thanks.”
“How do you like it?”
“Black,” the sisters answered in one voice.
“Makes my life easy.” He smiled, hoping the expression looked natural. He didn’t want them picking up on his nerves. “Lock the door behind me.”