by Alice Sharpe
“This doesn’t look like a place for sick people, does it?” Paige asked.
“No. Is there a chance you misunderstood Mademoiselle Batiste? Could Carol Ann just be vacationing?”
“I don’t think so, but she did have a really thick accent and my French is rusty at best.”
“When this is all over, let’s go to France. You can brush up on your language skills.”
He said it with a smile, as if it was a joke, but she put a hand on his arm. “And what will you do?”
“I’ll visit the market and buy wonderful food and cook it for you, then I’ll take you to bed and make love to you for hours.”
She fanned her face. “Okay, you’re on. France it is.”
There was still a smattering of snow on the grassy ground around the buildings. They followed the road past an exit earmarked for visitor parking, pulling in behind a delivery truck toward the back of the building. Signs pointed the way to the office, which was located inside the doors of the lodge.
The lobby was enormous, with several offices opening off of it and elevators leading up to a second-story mezzanine. Several people, some in wheelchairs, sat around a circular, freestanding fireplace while a man with a soft-looking red beard read from a thin book using a mellow, soft voice. Many of the listeners seemed to be asleep, but some nodded as though his words held great meaning for them.
“May I help you?”
The inquiry came from a short, freckled young woman with a strawberry blond ponytail and a serious-looking pair of black-framed glasses perched on her button nose. Holding a clipboard, she looked like a child playing receptionist.
“We’re looking for Carol Ann Oates,” John said.
“And you are?”
“Friends.”
“I’m sorry, but we have strict rules here. Absolutely no unannounced or unexpected visitors. I can’t even worry Ms. Oates with your presence. She’s left strict orders to be left alone except by the people on her list.”
“Who’s on her list?” Paige asked.
“I don’t know. No one has ever come to see her so I’ve never looked. Everyone has to make out a list, though.”
“Could you look?” John said. “Maybe we could speak to one of her contacts.”
“Let me just call up her file on the computer.” She moved around the big wood counter and tapped on the computer keys. “Ms. Oates just has one contact and he’s not a local,” she said. “John Cinca.” She wrinkled her nose and added, “I don’t know why but that name seems familiar. Anyway, there’s a phone number here. It looks like we tried to call him two days ago but he didn’t answer his phone. I’ll copy the number for you—”
“Don’t bother,” John interrupted. “I’m John Cinca. I lost my phone.” It was obvious to Paige he expected the diminutive receptionist to point a finger and accuse him of murder right there on the spot.
But how did John get to be the only name on the older woman’s contact list? Natalie had said he’d gone to see a relative in Canada. But they apparently hadn’t been close during his life, so why now all of a sudden?
Paige and John exchanged worried glances. No way to talk things out in front of the receptionist. It would have to wait.
“Do you have proof of your identity?” the receptionist asked.
“I lost my driver’s license in the same accident that got my phone. I do have this, however,” John said as he withdrew his passport he’d taken from the manila envelope and handed it to her. She studied the picture, then John’s face.
“Okay,” she said, handing him back his passport. “But you’ll have to speak to her doctor first. I’ll see if Dr. Ming is in his office.”
After a quick phone call, the receptionist turned back to them. “He said I should send you right over,” she said. “He’s actually with Ms. Oates right now.” She whipped out a piece of pink paper and, using a pen, circled the lodge and a small building across the grounds, tracing the path between them with ink. “She’s in Hawk’s Hollow. Use the back door over there. It makes finding it easier. You can wait for him here, miss.”
Paige had started walking away with John and paused upon hearing the last comment. “I can’t go with him?” she asked, turning.
“I’m sorry. You’re not on the list. You can wait here, though.”
“No, thanks, I’ll wait in the car,” Paige said, turning back to John.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “It’s pretty cold.”
She answered in a soft voice. “This place kind of gives me the willies. I’ll be okay.”
“I shouldn’t be long.”
“Take your time. I’ll work on my project.”
* * *
HE LEFT THROUGH THE BACK door and picked up his pace. Across the way, he saw Paige unlocking the door of her car and scooting inside. It felt weird to be without her.
No time for dawdling. Sooner or later, that receptionist would figure out where she’d heard his name before—like on the news. He wanted to be long gone before then.
The doctor met him on the front porch of Hawk’s Hollow. He was an Asian man of fifty or so, his black hair streaked with gunmetal gray. He, too, wore black-framed glasses. Perhaps that was the compulsory style for any Deer Creek staff member who needed vision correction.
He was dressed casually just like everyone else here. No uniforms, no lab coats, no dangling stethoscopes.
John kept the introduction short and sweet. He was aching to ask the doctor if the man knew why John’s name was on Carol Ann Oates’s list of contacts but was almost certain that would arouse suspicion. So far the man didn’t seem to make any connections to the name John Cinca, and that was good.
“I wasn’t aware your aunt had made allowances for visitors. I’m sure glad she did,” the doctor said.
His aunt. At last, someone he could talk to. “How is she?” John asked.
“Terminal. And that’s not something we say lightly around here. Our credo is as long as there’s life, there’s hope. There are many worthwhile alternatives to mainstream medicine. But Carol Ann is very ill, and even she knew when she came to us this time it was to have a place to die on her own terms.”
“Then she’s been here before?”
“Twice. Her disease was diagnosed late last summer and she came immediately. I had great expectations our treatments would work. She went home, but returned after the holidays. Things had gotten worse, but once again, we were hopeful. Then she called a week ago and asked if she could come here one more time. I knew why, and as I said, so did she. I gather she’s alone up in Canada. Never married, as you know. Carol Ann is wealthy, capable and fiercely independent, not the kind to suffer fools kindly.”
“But she didn’t want to die alone,” John said.
Dr. Ming nodded. “While I hope your presence can give your aunt some sense of peace, I have to warn you that she’s in and out of consciousness and on some pretty high-level painkillers, so she’s not always coherent. Lila, her nurse, is in there with her. Someone is always with her. Limit your visit to ten minutes, please.”
He walked down the ramp toward the lodge, his shoulders stooped as though the burden of failing to find a miracle for a patient weighed heavy on him. John took a deep breath and let himself into the darkened room.
A large woman sat in a chair in the corner, knitting needles flashing as she worked on something big enough to cover her lap. She looked up as John entered.
The room was warm and a bit stuffy, the furnishings sparse but expensive. The aroma of fresh flowers in a vase competed with the odor of medications and illness.
The most defining element of the room was the state-of-the-art adjustable bed. The woman tucked under the covers was about the same color as the bleached sheets.
John approached warily, not sure what he would find, half hoping and half dreading that one look at this woman would bring recollection crashing into his head or that she would rise and point a finger and tell him why children screamed accusations in his dreams.
/> Carol Ann Oates wasn’t as old as John had expected. Sixty, maybe a little older. Her hair was dark brown with long gray roots, her features sharp in her thin face. She looked as though she might be an uncompromising woman when she wasn’t hovering near death. For now, she lay very still, the rattling sound of her breathing the only sign she lived.
While her pallor and thinness were alarming, she didn’t seem to be in any pain. John peered at her face in an attempt to see a family resemblance with himself or even with the photograph of the grandparents who had raised him, but he wasn’t even sure those were her parents. He found nothing familiar in her features.
Could his aunt explain where all the money in the bank came from and what had happened to him as a child? “I’ll be back here in ten minutes,” the woman in the corner whispered as she rose and set aside her knitting. “I could use a breath of fresh air.”
John nodded. He was glad not to have to ask questions—if Carol Ann ever woke up—in front of a stranger. Unsure exactly how to proceed, he once again wished Paige were with him. He had a feeling she would instinctively know just how to go about this.
For a second, as he stared out the window, he was back at the little lake behind the motel, standing out on the dock, looking down at Paige, not sure who she was, just knowing she was important to him. He’d nuzzled her neck, inhaling her scent, wanting her desperately.
He closed his eyes as images of their lovemaking washed through him like cleansing rain.
His eyes startled open when a hand clenched his wrist. He jerked, looking down. Carol Ann was awake and staring up at him.
Her eyes were as dark as her dyed hair, piercing in her sallow face. “Charles?” she whispered in a reed-thin voice.
With his free hand, John pulled a chair up close to his aunt’s side and sat down. “Not Charles,” he said gently. “John.”
She concentrated on his face. “Look so alike… You’re the hero…” she mumbled.
She’d contacted him after the incident with the congressman; that must be what the hero thing was about. “Who is Charles?” he asked.
Her fingers shook against his wrist and her thin lips trembled. It was obvious to John she was agitated, and he patted her bony arm to try to comfort her. “It’s okay, you don’t have to think about him if you don’t want to. Can you tell me what you contacted me about? I’ve forgotten but I know it was important.”
Her eyes suddenly focused on his and this time when she spoke, she seemed more lucid. “Did you…did you find them? Cole and Tyler? Did you?”
“Cole and Tyler?” More names?
Tears gathered in her eyes, trickled down her gaunt cheeks.
“So many wasted years,” she said. “My fault.”
“Why is it your fault?”
She shook her head. “So lost…”
This was going nowhere. He had to try to get her to focus. Who were all these people? Was this the drugs talking, or were these other family members?
“Aunt Carol, you contacted me before, remember? After you read about me in the paper, you called. Why did you call?”
Her brow wrinkled in concentration. Finally, she said, “Charles? Is that you?”
Back to names. No more names, he wanted to tell her. “No, it’s me, John. John Cinca, remember?”
She narrowed her eyes as she stared up at him, and then her grip on his wrist finally slacked and her eyes closed. “Daddy disowned you,” she whispered. “Go away.”
He glanced at his watch. The nurse would be back in a few moments. As he struggled to figure out what to do next, a rattling noise like something scratching against the glass came from the window. Settling his aunt’s frail hand on the blanket, he crossed the room. Paige stood outside. She held aloft a small branch that she’d found to touch the glass, as the window was a good four feet above her head.
The window was the kind that lifted from the bottom. He inched it up.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, heartbeat tripling as he took in the spooked expression on her face.
“He’s here,” she whispered frantically.
“Who?”
“Korenev. I saw him drive up.”
“Did he see you?”
“We were parked behind that truck. I don’t think he saw the car. He couldn’t have or he would have come after me.”
“Are you sure it’s him?”
“In that van, are you kidding? Anyway, he parked a few spots away and limped into the lodge. He was wearing a different disguise this time, but it was him, all right. I moved the car close by. Hurry, you have to come right now.”
He started to lower the window. “I’ll be right out.”
“If you go out the front way, someone will see you. Come through the window. Just hurry.”
John turned back into the room, taking one lingering look at his aunt. She hadn’t wanted to die alone, something he understood on a gut level in a way he probably hadn’t before losing his memory. He doubted he’d ever see her again, and that loss joined all the others gnawing at him. She’d been his one good chance of understanding, and he wished he could stay here with her, keeping a silent and unseen vigil until the end.
“John?” Paige whispered. “I hear voices coming from the sidewalk. Hurry. Please.”
“Goodbye, Aunt Carol Ann,” he said, but she was asleep and didn’t react. Turning, he drew the sash the rest of the way up and climbed through the window, dropping to the ground in a heap and scrambling to his feet. Paige caught his hand and they ran across the grounds.
She had parked behind another cottage and they all but dived into the car, but they drove off in a sedate manner, as though they weren’t trying to outrun a killer, trying to appear innocent and leisurely when their pulses alone could power a rocket to the moon.
* * *
“I HALF EXPECTED THE WOMAN at the counter to alert the police, but how did Korenev find us?” John demanded.
Paige had been wondering the same thing.
“Turn left, we need to get off the main road. Hell, we need to disappear.”
“How do we do that?” Paige asked, turning left onto a smaller road.
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe when he ransacked your place he found something that led him to Carol Ann.”
“Maybe, but how did he know she was in Montana?”
“Okay, maybe he called Mademoiselle Batiste, who mentioned having spoken to us.”
John shook his head. “Maybe, but it seems really remote. The woman told you she wouldn’t talk to a man about my aunt’s whereabouts.”
Paige slid him a glance. “Your aunt?”
“Yeah. I have an aunt, or will for a while. She’s terminal.”
“I’m sorry. Did you learn anything from her?”
“No. She thought I was someone named Charles or Cole or Tyler—she was a little out of it. Damn, Paige, how did Korenev know where we were?”
“He’s been one step ahead or one step behind all the way,” she said.
“But those steps were based on logical conclusions to be drawn from what you told him, what he heard on the radio or what he knew about me. This is different.”
“It’s like he followed us here,” she said, “but if that was the case, he could have attacked us at the motel.”
“Maybe it took him a while to get that leg fixed up. Wait a second. Pull the car over.”
They had just rounded a turn and were now skirting Seeley Lake, which spread to their left. The right side of the road was heavily forested. “Where?”
“Anywhere.”
“But there’s no cover here. If he comes around that corner, he’ll see us.”
“I don’t think it matters. I think he sees us all the time. Pull over. Hurry.”
Paige pulled onto the verge. John was out of the car before it fully stopped. She stayed behind the wheel with the engine running, her gaze glued to the rearview mirror. John walked around the car, pausing every few inches to lean down and feel around. She finally rolled down
her window to ask what he was doing.
“John?”
As he approached her window, he opened his hand to reveal two small black boxes affixed to a magnetic strip.
“What are those?”
“Tracking devices. Korenev must have planted them on your car outside my warehouse while we were preoccupied looking at photographs or something. Before he broke down the front gate, you know, just in case we weren’t inside or got away. One was fixed to the undercarriage behind the back bumper, the other one up under the same wheel well where you put your spare key as a matter of fact.”
“But two?”
“He probably figured we’d stop looking once we uncovered one of them. That’s how he found us. He couldn’t walk into the hospital with a gunshot wound because they’d report it, so he’d have to take the time to find someone to help him who wouldn’t talk. He just took his time getting his leg fixed and then followed the yellow brick road right to our doorstep.”
“Could there be more?”
“Not where he could have easily stuck them. I’d say probably not.” He threw both devices over the top of the car into the forest. “Let’s get as far away from here as we can,” he said as he scooted back inside. “Drive fast.”
“Where do we go now?” Paige asked.
“Missoula has the closest international airport?”
“I think so. Why?”
“You said there were important papers in those boxes you brought from your apartment,” he said. “Does that include your passport?”
“Yes, why? Oh, wait, I get it. We’re going to Kanistan. Will you be able to get on an airplane? Won’t they have your name or something? If you do get out of the country, will you be able to get back in?”
“The answers to your questions are I don’t know, I don’t know and I don’t know. But I also don’t know where else to go from here. If I get caught, I get caught.”
“You’re turning into a fatalist.”