Zeitgeist

by Grace Jelsnik

  Grant joined her. “Damn. Look at what he’s done to himself. Why’s he unconscious?”

  “He fell and knocked himself out.” Fiona moved closer, not so close Whitley could reach her but close enough that, if she leaned far to her left, she could peer into the bathroom. A sheet of water covered the tile floor. “The toilet overflowed. He must have plugged it. Ugh. That’s why he was swearing. Then he slipped in the water.” Her gaze traveled to the toilet, to the plastic wedding groom floating on top. “Whoops.”

  “Whoops what?” Grant moved to stand beside her, peering over her shoulder. “Oh.”

  Fiona stepped back and looked down at her brother. She could kill him now, shoot him in the back, like he deserved. No one could trace her to the gun. No one would think to trace her to the gun. As far as everyone knew, she was dead. Moving as though in a dream, she removed the gun from her waistband, startled when Grant’s hand closed around her wrist. Anger rose, and she glared up at him. “He deserves it.”

  The compassionate look was back in the blue eyes. “He does. But not at your hands. You’re not a cold-blooded killer. You’re not like him, and shooting him will play right into the NSO’s hands, turning your father’s company over to a bunch of racists and bigots.”

  She wrested her hand from his grip, stepping back and hating him for being right. “What now, then?”

  “Back to our project. We’ll wait until he comes to.”

  Tucking her gun away, she swiveled on her heel and left. When she reached the chifferobe, she turned back toward him, prepared to tell him what he could do with his morality.

  And saw Whitley right behind Grant, his face beet red and engorged with rage.

  “You,” he said, his voice rich with loathing and his blue eyes gleaming with what she now knew to be insanity.

  Grant’s eyes widened, and he slewed sideways while wheeling around. Whitley lunged at her, and Fiona felt not fear but elation. This was her moment. She didn’t need a gun. She didn’t need to shoot her brother. Stepping into his assault, she drove her right fist into his solar plexus, delighting in the sound of his breath leaving him in one sour exhalation. Dancing backward, she plowed her left fist into his extended jaw, driving him up and back. After another solid punch, this one following through with his backward motion and landing on the other side of his jaw, her brother stumbled backward and sat on the floor.

  After wiping away a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth and staring at the smear on his fingers, he raised a malevolent face to her. Then, incredibly, he smiled. He wanted this fight as much as she did, maybe more. Bracing his hands on the floor, he began struggling to his feet.

  He was crazy, which threw the odds in his favor. She may fight as taught, with a mind clear of anger and focused on the task, but her brother wouldn’t. Whitley would concentrate only on the end result. He wouldn’t stop until one of them was dead, and if he once got a piece of her, it would all be over. They would lose, and people would die.

  “Come on!” Grant shouted, clutching her elbow.

  She whirled on him, her anger at Whitley and the circumstances at first clogging her mind. At a whisper of motion behind her, reason rose, and she sprinted into the chifferobe cubbyhole, waiting for Grant to join her. He raced inside, grabbing the bathrobe tie and yanking the cabinet toward him. When Whitley grasped the furniture from the other side and began wrestling it toward him, Grant planted his feet and leaned back, putting all his weight into the strip of terry cloth.

  Six inches. That’s how wide was the slice between the chifferobe and the wall. That’s all they needed to latch it in place. Fiona placed her hands above Grant’s on the sash, adding her strength to his, and the two of them gained precious inches, finally slamming the piece into place and hearing the latch click. She leaned back against it, weak from both anger and fear.

  Thuds began resounding throughout the tiny space. Whitley was slamming against it from the other side. Given the inch-wide lip of wood abutting the wall around the chifferobe, he could slam all he wanted, but he wouldn’t break through.

  “What are you doing?” she yelled at Grant, who was leaning over their chairs.

  “I’m grabbing the monitors and my laptop.”

  A fist materialized beside her, and she gave an involuntary squeal while jumping away. Whitley was using his fists to break through the closet side.

  “Don’t wait!” Grant shouted while shoving the two monitors into his pockets. “Go!”

  She needed no further prompting, racing up the spiral staircase, around and around like a fly up a coil of ribbon, pausing on occasion to make certain Grant followed. When she neared the top and could still hear Whitley slamming and kicking and pounding the chifferobe, she looked down at the top of Grant’s head. The sounds were emerging from the receiver in his pockets. The noise faded and then halted. Worried more by the absence of sound than she had been by the thuds, she stopped, cocking her head and listening to a door opening. Whitley had given up on the chifferobe.

  “He’s left his room.” Fiona launched herself into Grant’s bedroom, running to the door, closing it, and locking it. Turning back, she passed Grant, whose head was now emerging from the stairwell, and rushed to the dormer window, raising it high and sliding one leg over the sill. She waited until she saw him step into the room. “Close the trapdoor behind you.”

  He wheeled, closing the trapdoor, yanking the rug over it, and running to the window. “Why not go through the doors like a regular person?”

  “This is the only way out. He’s coming up the stairs.” As though to validate her words, the receivers emitted a faint “Fiona!” and the sound of pounding feet. She lowered herself to her knees on the narrow strip of roof beneath the window sill.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “The crazy person would be the one waiting for Whitley to catch him. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t prevent me from killing him and let him catch us. Either I shoot him, or we run.” Walking on her knees, Fiona crept to the side, grasping the drainage pipe and sliding down it to the loggia roof. She stood, hands on her hips, staring up at him. “Come on! And don’t forget to close the window behind you.”

  After tossing her his laptop, Grant slung a leg over the windowsill.

  Chapter 25

  The sun was setting, elongating and bleeding chunky black shadows into porous strips of lacy gauze draped across the darkening east-facing lawns. In another ten to fifteen minutes, he’d need to move the car. A vehicle parked curbside in this type of neighborhood, one populated with, if not wealthy, certainly well-to-do residents, tended to attract attention at nighttime.

  “It’s time to head back to the hotel, Charlie,” Brandon suggested from beside him. “The chickens have gone to roost, and this neighborhood is well-patrolled at night.”

  “He’s in there.” They’d followed Delaney from the airport, watching a friend drive him around the back of the house and, later, watching the friend drive away. For the past hour, Charlie had vacillated between watching and acting. Should he go in and rattle Whitley’s cage, reminding him he hadn’t given up on his search for the woman Delaney thought was Valencia McDermott but was in fact his sister, Fiona? The last time he’d spoken to him, over three years ago, he’d seen a belligerent bully who’d enjoyed playing the role of bereaved son and brother.

  The lie, however, had been visible in the pale blue eyes.

  Oh, yes. Delaney had wept. His voice had trembled. His shoulders had drooped. The eyes, however, had glowed with triumph.

  “Yes, he’s in there. And we’re out here. And in a minute—what in the hell’s that?” Brandon lowered his head, angling it to the side to peer upward through the windshield.

  Charlie followed the direction of his gaze and stiffened. A dark form, a woman, had raised the dormer window and was descending onto the roof shelf beneath it. Dropping to her knees, she sidled to the downspout and grasped it with both hands, sliding backwards and lowering herself to the porch roof. Standing with fe
et spread wide, she lifted her face to the window, bracing her hands on her hips and then raising them to catch something lobbed at her from above.

  “That’s Fiona. So this is where she went to ground this time, bearding the lion in his den,” Charlie mused.

  “Not exactly bearding. You don’t sneak out after a bearding. You walk out with your head held high. This looks like escaping to me. What’s she doing now?”

  “She’s talking to someone. Whispering, I would guess. There. The other person is coming out now. Can it be Whitley?”

  “That’s illogical, Charlie. Whitley wouldn’t have to sneak out of his own house. That’s Hester Stanhope.”

  “No, it’s a man. He’s out of the window now.”

  “Hester Stanhope is a man. Grant Haldeman. Claire thinks he’s Fiona’s stalker.”

  “If so, she’s complicit in his stalking. Watch her coax him into joining her. See? That’s an inviting gesture.”

  “No, that’s not inviting, not at all. That’s threatening. She’s telling him not to follow her.”

  “Why, then, is she standing there while he does exactly that?” Charlie winced when, after closing the window, the man rolled off the shelf and landed on the porch roof beside the woman.

  “That had to hurt. He’s up. Good. Now, to watch them—Damn, he’s clumsy! I can’t look anymore. Tell me when it’s over.”

  “Big, ex-Marine can’t watch a man fall from a porch roof to the ground below?”

  “It wasn’t the falling so much as the way he took the entire gutter with him. That had to hurt like hell. Much to her relief, I imagine.”

  “No, look at that.” After tossing a gray rectangle to the ground, Fiona had again dropped to her knees, sliding backward off the porch roof, clinging by her fingers to the edge and jumping lightly to the ground. “She’s helping him stand. She looks worried.”

  “You’re right. If he’s a stalker, she’s assisting him. He’s injured. Look at the way he’s limping. They’re headed around the side of the house, into the back yard.”

  Charlie started the car. “We can catch them on the other side.”

  * * *

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Fiona didn’t like the way Grant was walking. He could have, may have, broken something in the fall.

  “I’m fine. You go on without me. I’ll catch up.” His voice was thin and tight.

  “No. If you aren’t fit to stalk me, I’m staying right here.”

  “Follow. You mean follow, not stalk.”

  “Right. What you just said.”

  “Go. I’m fine. I’m with you.”

  She led the way to the suitcases. “I can carry three suitcases and the backpack. If you can grab the metal one, I can brace one suitcase on top of Linda’s wheeled one.”

  “I’m fine,” he wheezed.

  “You’re not fine.”

  After thrusting his laptop beneath one arm, he grabbed the two largest suitcases, one in each hand. “This one time, let me lead and you follow.” He sounded angry. He had no reason to be angry. It wasn’t as though she’d pushed him off the roof. She wondered whether he was upset about the way she’d stepped in and fought Whitley, instead of fainting and letting the two men go at it. He hadn’t struck her as a man who had to prove himself through brute force.

  He was a romance novelist, for crying out loud!

  “You picked a fine time to assert yourself, in that I’m the one who knows this neighborhood. You’re going the wrong way.” After slinging the backpack over her shoulder, Fiona picked up Linda’s metal case and grabbed the handle of the wheeled traveler. “This way.” She thought she heard him curse before shifting directions and following her to the alley and, down it, to the street.

  When she heard a thud and him cursing again, she turned back. “What are you doing on the ground?”

  “What do you think I’m doing on the ground? I tripped. It happens when fleeing at night with a wrenched knee.”

  “Well, you might want to consider rising. We have a long walk ahead of us, and the ground isn’t going to transport you to our car.”

  She turned away, for the first time noticing the long, black car parked alongside the curb ahead of them, the streetlamp laying ribbons of light along the rounded edges of glistening fenders. The front passenger door opened, and a man stepped out, a large man, a man larger than a human had a right to be, tall, bulky, black, and mean-looking.

  Stepping to the rear passenger door, he flung it open. “Get in.”

  She’d had her fill of men for the night. First, Whitley’s admission of pedophiliac tendencies. Then Grant’s sudden assertiveness. And now this thug thought he could kidnap her and Grant by simply telling them to get in a car? Oh, she’d get in all right. Over his dead body.

  Maintaining her forward progress, she released the suitcases and shrugged off the backpack when she reached striking distance. Assuming a fighter’s stance, she spun, launching the roundhouse kick that only last week earned her rare praise from her taekwondo instructor.

  And she took out Grant, who, thinking to save her, had dropped his suitcases and stepped in between her and a man a full six inches taller than he. Hitting Grant with her calf, she could do nothing but watch while his feet rose from the ground and, eyes wide, he flew backward, landing with a grunt on the lawn.

  Rotating back toward the thug, Fiona settled into her boxer’s stance, her feet square and dancing, her fists held loosely before her, her shoulders dodging from side to side, her chin ducked. She was ready. She could take this one, too. She’d prepared for this. Fiona moved in on him, briefly taken aback by the look on his face. He was laughing. “You think this is funny?”

  “No, no, please don’t hit me,” he protested through his laughter, holding his hands at shoulder height, palms facing her while he backed away.

  “Fiona.” That was the driver speaking. He knew her name. She darted a quick glance to the side, seeing a man facing her through the open back door, his right arm draped along the front seat of the car. He looked familiar, but only the lower half of his face was visible beneath the car’s roof. “It’s Charlie. Please don’t hurt Brandon, and please get in the vehicle. Your friend, too, if he’s conscious.”

  She maintained her stance, her eyes sidling from him to the thug. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “I told you. We both want the same thing. Would I kill you and destroy my only chance of getting your brother? Would I take a chance on the bomb you mentioned going off and killing innocents? Get in. Please. We’re starting to attract attention.”

  She shot a glance toward the house looming above Grant’s prone form. The lights were going on inside. She looked back at the behemoth of a man facing her. “Try anything I find in the least bit suspicious, and I’ll take you down.”

  “I won’t.” Again, his voice trembled with laughter.

  “You can put our suitcases in the trunk, but don’t forget I have my eye on you.”

  Now his shoulders were shaking, and the expression on his face looked like that of a man who’d just swallowed a golf ball, with eyes round and cheeks bulging. She stood to the side, far to the side, letting him pass, and then turned to Grant, who was now sitting on the ground, his legs extended before him, his expression dazed. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Where do I begin?” he asked. “I think you broke my ear. Is it possible to break an ear?”

  “That’s not what I mean. What were you thinking, racing past me to assault a man twice your size?” She held out a hand to help him rise.

  “I was protecting you. Men do that. Protect women. That’s the way it works.” His voice was brusque, with each word bitten off as an individual exclamation. Ignoring her extended hand, he struggled to his feet.

  She’d guessed right. That’s what he was upset about, that she’d fought Whitley. Or was it that she’d fought Whitley and won? “Did I look like I needed protection?”

  He swayed before straightening. “Whether or not you needed prote
ction isn’t the point.”

  Ignoring the gasp of rapidly exhaled air behind her and the thunk of the trunk lid closing, Fiona gave Grant a skeptical look. “I’ve had my quota of brutes for the night.”

  “Get in, dammit,” Charlie commanded.

  Fiona and Grant had barely seated themselves when Charlie put the car in gear and pulled away. Twisting around in her seat, she glanced through the rear window and saw Whitley standing on the sidewalk, barefoot, with a red satin robe hanging open over his black satin pajama bottoms, looking like Satan himself. He shook his fist at them, and she could see his mouth working. Lights went on in another house.

  “That was close,” Charlie commented.

  “Where are you taking us?”

  “To our hotel suite.”

  “Do you think he got our license plate number?”

  “Probably not, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “Why not?”

  The black man shifted around in his seat. “Because the plates don’t belong to this car. We were doing a little surveillance when we saw you climbing out the window. My name’s Brandon, by the way.” He twisted farther so he could see Grant, who was seated directly behind him. “I’m a fan, Hester.”

  Fiona fought a smile while glancing at Grant and seeing his face redden through the grass stains. Brandon’s face said serious, but his words suggested he was having sport with the novelist.

  “Thanks,” Grant replied, his voice clipped.

  “No, seriously. I picked up a hardback copy of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax when I learned we’d be seeing you. That one’s my favorite. I liked Exult O Shores and Ring O Bells, too, but I thought the characters fell a little flat.”

  Even his titles were wordy clichés, Fiona thought but didn’t say. He’d had a bad night.

  Chapter 26

  Linda’s cousin eased the car into the slot next to a similar black sedan, calling to mind the two black cars Fiona had seen on the Worthing road Monday morning, two days ago. These wouldn’t be the same two vehicles, but they appeared to have rented the same make and model. “You missed us by five, maybe ten minutes on Monday,” she commented while stepping out.