Death Watch

by Elizabeth Forrest

  She took both, tossed back a swig from the beer, and handed it back to him, foam swirled inside the neck. She laid the baggie across her jeans. The denim was scuffed and dirty where she’d gone down. After a moment, she said, “This is no good.”

  She flipped the recliner upright, got out of it, and reached for her zipper.

  Carter watched, baffled.

  Mac paused. “Turn around.”

  “What?”

  “I’m taking my pants off so I can put the pack on my knee. So turn around and go get me a robe or bath towel or something.”

  “Right.” He nodded and headed in the general direction of the bedroom and bathroom. While he was in there, he straightened that up, as well. Seat down, lid up, sink cleared.

  He came back, tossing her a bath towel from across the room. She settled it across her lap, but not before he got a glimpse of her long legs and slender, firm thighs. Mac leaned the recliner back again, ice pack in place.

  She laid her forearm over her eyes. He pulled up a dinette chair and nursed his beer.

  After long moments of silence, she peeked an eye at him. “Aren’t you supposed to ask me if I want to talk?”

  He flexed his lips a little as if he would, then shook his head.

  She turned her face toward him. The bruising had retreated to shadows which looked as if perhaps she’d been playing with her mother’s makeup and had smeared it about. She had been attractive. She would be more so when those shadows disappeared completely. “You’re a reporter. You have to talk.”

  He shrugged. “This is not an interview.”

  “Oh.” She lifted her arm from her brow. She sighed. “I can’t believe it’s over.”

  “Believe it.”

  “But I—” McKenzie stopped. Her eyes glistened. “I loved my dad once. But there’s nothing here,” and she thumped her chest. “Nothing. I cry for my damn dog and I can’t cry for him. Or Jack.”

  “But you are.”

  She sniffled. “No.”

  “I’ve been around a lot of stories in the last twenty years.” He picked up the beer bottle, rolled the chilled glass between his palms. “I’ve seen people mourn in every conceivable way. Some yell. Some scream. Some tear their sleeves from their clothes. I’ve seen them smear ashes on their faces. Heard the women in the Middle East wail.” He took a drink. “I’ve seen them stand with blank faces, immobile, voiceless to express the grief inside of them.” He thought of Georg Bauer. “I’ve even seen them laugh.”

  “And where does that put me?”

  He brought his chair a little closer. “I’d say you’re right up there with those who’ve been through too much to cry right away. Like someone in a war zone.” He put his hand out, gently smoothed a fringe of hair from her forehead. “You can’t get tears from a stone.”

  “A stone,” she repeated. She took the beer from him and drank again. “Do you think I’ll cry later?”

  “Probably. When it’s right for you. Because, McKenzie, when you came home, you must have been thinking of the life you’d have together. You’ll cry for that lost hope. As far as Jack goes, the good and the bad, he stole that from you. When you’re ready, you’ll weep for everyone.”

  The corners of her mouth turned up slightly. “Now you sound like a reporter.”

  “Can’t help it. I’m a sentimentalist.” He did not take his hand away from her face. She turned to his palm, as if seeking the warmth, and cradled her face into it, molding his hand to her shape.

  “I don’t remember when I lost my way,” she murmured.

  “Most of us don’t. But you’re found now.”

  “Am I?”

  “Oh, yes. Never doubt it. I’ve got you.” The tears be-gan, soft and warm, on his hand. She started to cry in earnest, the tears spilling from her as if flood gates had opened.

  “This is no good,” he said. He stood up and lifted her from the chair, then sat down and pulled her into his lap, and held her as he would a child, pillowing her face on his shoulder.

  She sobbed until she could sob no more.

  He found a couple of paper napkins from the pizza company stuffed down the side of the chair. They looked relatively clean and unused, so he gave them to her so she could dry her face and nose. Then she sagged back onto his chest and he listened to, felt, the slow steady beat of her heart. The faint perfume of her skin tantalized him. He studied the arch of her eyebrows, the color of dark honey like her hair. There were light and dark hairs, and even one or two of reddish cast. No one is ever just one thing, one color. We are all mixtures, he thought.

  She blew her nose a last time and then gave a shaky laugh. “What would we ever do without pizza?”

  “Darned if I know.”

  One or two last tears sparkled as they dropped onto her cheeks. Mac said, “Kiss them away.”

  He had long since felt himself stirring, but she startled him.

  “What?”

  “Like this,” and she pulled his face closer and her lips, like gentle butterflies, journeyed across his cheekbones. Then she let him go.

  He looked into her eyes. “Why?”

  “I don’t want to be stone,” she answered. “Anymore.”

  He did as she asked him. He kissed her lips last, felt her mouth swell and open to him, their kiss long and hard and passionate. When he leaned back for air, he said, “There are some situations in which being as hard as rock is preferable.”

  McKenzie laughed. She ran a hand through her hair, combing it and letting it cascade down onto her shoulders. “Tell me.”

  “I think,” he replied, bringing her face back down to his. “This can be considered one of them.”

  She laughed again and when their lips met a second time, it was with a shock, a tingling, an acknowledgment of something happening or going to happen between the two of them. Her mouth tasted faintly of the beer they had shared, and sweet and warm. She tasted him as eagerly as he did her and when they finished that kiss, deep and dark and wet, she leaned her head against his shoulder.

  Although he did not feel that way, he knew events could still be stopped. “I didn’t bring you here for this.”

  “I know.” Her voice buzzed against his skin. “I’d lost my way, and you came and called for me. Listened to me. Brought Joyce to me. Treated me—”

  “No different than I treat anybody else,” he interrupted.

  “No? Well, then, I understand why people spill their guts to you. Why you’re a good reporter.”

  “This is going beyond research and an interview.”

  “You’re damn straight.” McKenzie turned in the chair, laying herself atop him, full length. He could feel the heat of her bare legs as they entwined his. She reached both hands behind his neck, capturing him and when they kissed a third time, it was with every square inch of their bodies, nerves afire.

  He came up gasping. “ ... too old. Too old for this kind of activity.”

  McKenzie looked at him in astonishment. “You?”

  “No. The chair, the chair.” Even as he protested, the recliner opened up another notch and they were practically prone. When she’d finished laughing, he was able to convince her to move to the bedroom.

  He didn’t remember undressing. Lying close, she kissed his scars and he kissed hers, incredibly tenderly, knowing she must still be aching and bruised. She whispered soft words in his ear that he almost, but didn’t quite hear, but it was enough to catch the tone of her voice. He discovered caressing the backs of her thighs brought her nipples to hard, firm points and that she liked it when he cupped both breasts at the same time and trailed kisses down the curve of her throat.

  She ran her fingers over his flanks. He winced out of habit when she hit his lower ribs on the left side.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t hurt.”

  She rolled him over slightly and kneaded the tender area. “What happened?”

  “I broke a couple of ribs playing football in high school. I didn’t even notice it fo
r weeks, it happened at the end of the season. By the time I had it x-rayed, the ribs had healed crooked.”

  “Poor ribs,” Mac sympathized. She kissed them. “Poor Carter.” She trailed her lips downward and across the flat of his stomach.

  She moaned when he slipped his hand down to the soft bush of her pubes and massaged her gently, stirring the moist heat of her body. He did not think he could last when she grasped his cock, giving him light, feathery strokes, his skin becoming fiery sensitive with each and every touch.

  And when she finally began kissing him again, each kiss a stroke of lovemaking on its own, and they touched chest to chest, he found himself unable to hold back any longer. “McKenzie,” he began softly.

  “Now,” she responded, opening her legs and guiding him inside her.

  She was tight and warm and moist. Every stroke sent a thrill through him and he tried to pace himself, but she grabbed his buttocks, kneading her fingers into him, pulling him close, answering by arching her back. Heat ran along their silken skin. Sweat pooled in the small of his back, kissed their stomachs lightly, added fuel to their heat.

  The strokes came faster and faster. He couldn’t hold back, she didn’t want him to, and she came first. He could feel her go rigid as she cried, barely audibly, “Oh!” And she stopped his thrusting for a moment, but it did not matter. He was already deep and answered her orgasm with his own.

  She moved her hands back to his shoulders and crushed him to her breasts, and began crying again, softly, ever so softly.

  Before they drifted off to sleep, McKenzie smiled into his eyes. She turned on her side, spooning, and wrapped his left arm about her shoulder as if he were the blanket. She was asleep almost before he realized it. He lay very still, not wanting to disturb her, thinking. Then he, too, drifted off.

  McKenzie started awake. “What’s that?”

  Her jolting movement woke him. The room had plunged into the total darkness of evening and he rubbed his eyes against the blindness. He listened.

  “It’s the computer.”

  He took the top sheet with him, wrapped it about his waist, and went in the other room. McKenzie trailed after him. She wore his shirt which almost, but not quite, came down to the tops of her thighs.

  “What is it?”

  He looked at the machine. It had come alive, though the monitor was off—it was possible Dolan had left it on. But the hard drive was working, chattering to itself, and it shouldn’t have been. He flipped the monitor switch and the screen came to life.

  He stared for a moment, trying to comprehend what was happening. Then, he answered her. “Someone’s trying to access my computer.”

  Like Dolan had done to CyberImago.

  The machine was displaying its directory of its hard disk files and software. The lines scrolled by so quickly, he could scarcely read them.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone’s accessing my computer by modem.” He could hear the faint atonal whine of that accessory, as well. If Dolan were here, he would know exactly what was happening.

  The hard disk whirled, then whirled again. It stopped, then started a third time. As though someone were trying to get something from it, could not, and kept trying in frustration.

  Someone trying to read his files.

  But he kept nothing other than operational software on the hard disk. His files were on floppies, and there was nothing in the disk drive. Whoever was searching did so in vain.

  He stabbed a finger down at the escape button, temporarily freezing the screen.

  SEARCH FILE: SUSAN CRAIG.

  The good doctor certainly knew more about computers then he did. Carter stood in hesitation another second as the screen wiped clean, then the directory tree began to scroll by rapidly once more.

  “It’s Dr. Craig, isn’t it?”

  “I think so.”

  Mac rubbed her temple wearily. “What does she want from me?”

  “You?”

  “She’s never going to let me go.” Mac slipped her arms around his waist, an intimate gesture, but there was more the need for solace in it than passion like that which they had just cooled. “I can’t remember it all....”

  “Joyce told me she found you sedated.”

  “Before that. I saw her with Ibrahim Walker. He looked so ... he was frightened of her. The stroke changed him, I know, but ... I saw his eyes.”

  Did she know Ibie Walker had suffered a second stroke and even now lay on the brink of death? He turned round in her embrace. “Mac, when was that?”

  “Yesterday. Today ...” she frowned heavily. “Today he was in the lab with Dr. Craig. I saw him.” She stopped as a sorrowful expression replaced one of concentration. “She was running a program. He ... I saw him ... he tried to fight it. I saw him reacting, and she just stood there, watching. So quiet.”

  “Are you sure? Ibie Walker was fairly severely incapacitated.”

  Mac blinked slowly. “He moaned. He jerked as if trying to get away and then—he slumped over.”

  “And what did Dr. Craig do?”

  “Nothing. For the longest time. I don’t think she intended to do anything. So I blurted out that I was there, and then she started CPR and told me to call a Code Blue for the lab and ...” Mac put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God, Carter. Did I see her try to kill him? And why didn’t I do anything?”

  “You did do something.” And so had Craig. Why Ibie? Was it because he carried most of the votes against her Fernandina project? Would she have eliminated him if Mac hadn’t been there? Or had she been running an illegal program on him, and had the elderly man just collapsed on her? What had he and Mac stumbled into?

  “Get dressed,” he ordered Mac. She looked over his shoulder.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  He’d been too complacent after the death of Mac’s husband. He’d sent faxes and pointed fingers, but he had no way of knowing when or if the Bureau would act on them. If Susan Craig or someone on her behalf was breaking into his system, they were still active.

  They were still trouble. Perhaps far more trouble than he had guessed.

  He left the computer running, knowing that the hacker would not find anything, and dressed rapidly. McKenzie met him at the closed front door.

  “Where do we go?”

  “Anywhere,” he answered, “but here.” He pulled the door open.

  Something quick and massive hit him in the chest with bone-cracking strength. A great dark roaring opened in his mind as he fell forward. His attacker put a shoulder in his gut, hoisting him off the floor in a fireman’s hold and then throwing him across the threshold. He knew he hit the floor, and that was all for a moment or two, and he lay there blinking.

  He got to the door handle of the open door and used it to pull himself up, to get on his feet. He palmed the light switch, hand shaking, aching with every breath he attempted to take.

  “Mac! Mac!”

  He looked around the apartment in desperation.

  She was gone.

  Chapter 35

  A heavy, sweet, and sticky smell hung on the air. It sickened him as he staggered to the phone. He intended to call in the cavalry—Moreno, Sofer, Franklin— whoever it took to get McKenzie back. But the phone vibrated in his hand as he reached for it, the ring sharp and clear until he snatched it up.

  Dolan said, “Our friends just went up in smoke.”

  The smell on the air made his ears pound. Carter answered dully, “What?”

  “I’m watching the late news—”

  Carter checked the clock readout across the room. “Very late news,” he got out.

  “Whatever. CyberImago went up earlier tonight, and about an hour ago, Susan Craig’s private residence burst into flames. The fire department is calling it a total loss, and of suspicious origin.”

  “What?”

  “Interested?”

  “What’s the buzz?”

  “A former psychiatric pati
ent came back for revenge and torched both addresses. Some schizo.”

  “Name?”

  “Not being released. Word is it’s Stephen Hotchkiss. Craig’s been treating him for depression and something labeled as ‘sexual perversion.’ Hotchkiss isn’t just any poor schmoo—he’s a political up and comer on the school board.