Cause for Alarm

by Erica Spindler

  Obviously not. Four weeks ago he had received an invitation to Kate and Richard's annual New Year's Eve party, along with a chatty, happy-sounding letter from Kate.

  Both had affected him like salt ground into an open wound. Even though he could now probably buy and sell Richard Ryan several times over. Even though he had proved to Kate and the rest of the world that his faith in himself and his talent hadn't been self-indulgent foolishness.

  He supposed that was what really grated. That they were happy. That maybe she had done the right thing for her. That he had been a lovestruck, naive fool.

  As he did every year, he responded to their invitation by making sure his publicist sent the couple his most recent promotional materials, news of his successes, updates on signings, personal appearances and so forth.

  It was the only contact he'd had with them in years, and only because he took such perverse pleasure in rubbing their noses in his success. He understood Richard well enough to know that his onetime buddy's phenomenal success drove him crazy. As far as Richard was concerned, there could only ever be one king of the hill-and it had to be Richard Patrick Ryan.

  Luke gave himself a shake. Kate and Richard were a part of his past. He was over his anger, his disillusionment. He was. The Ryans and their happiness had lost their power to hurt him.

  "Luke Dallas?"

  Luke swung back around. A man stood just behind him, hands stuffed into the pockets of his corduroy jacket, gaze intently on Luke's. "That's me."

  "Tom Morris sent me."

  Condor. Luke motioned to the seat across from him. "I'm glad you could make it."

  The man sat, his gaze still assessing Luke. Luke allowed him his scrutiny, using the time to do his own study. Condor looked nothing like Luke's fictional assassin. He possessed a kind of everyman face, with no visually outstanding features. He resembled a dozen other guys out there, medium brown hair and brown eyes, medium height, square jaw.

  A nice face. Pleasant. Innocuous. He could be anybody's neighbor. Brother. Son.

  Luke cocked his head. He found something almost disarming about the man. He had a lazy way about him, an easiness that suggested inattention.

  That impression ended the moment you looked Condor directly in the eyes. The man was keen. Intelligent. He missed nothing, no detail, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential. Of that Luke was certain.

  "I like your books," the man said finally. "Last Dance kept me on the edge of my seat."

  "Thank you."

  "Let's take a walk."

  Luke paid for his beer and the two men exited the bar. The night was cold; the neighborhood dicey. Luke figured he didn't have to be too concerned about thugs, considering the company he was keeping.

  Luke hunched deeper into his bomber jacket. "Are you armed?"

  His lips lifted. "Would your character be?"

  "Yes."

  "With what?"

  "A.22 caliber semiautomatic. Secondhand."

  "There are many ways for a man to be armed." He looked at Luke, then away. "A gun's not always the best way. Depends on the situation."

  "Or the job."

  "I'm not on the job tonight."

  Luke inclined his head. "Morris told you I wanted to talk? That I wanted to interview you?"

  "Your new character's a guy like me."

  "Yes." They turned onto the block behind the bar.

  "Hero or villain?"

  "Both. An antihero. This book is the first of a series like the Alex Lawson books."

  "So, I'm not going to get whacked at the end?"

  Luke laughed. "Nope. And you might even get the girl."

  Condor smiled. "I like that. What exactly are you hoping to get from our interview?"

  "I want to get into your head. Learn what makes you, guys in your profession, tick. I want to understand the way you think, how you view your profession. I want a look, a real look, into something most people know zero about. How you plan a job, what your day-to-day life is like, how you feel when you complete a mission."

  "You want a lot," Condor murmured, glancing up at the black sky.

  "Yeah, I do." Luke looked at him. "But I'll take whatever you're willing to give. As far as anyone will ever know, everything in my book is a product of my imagination."

  Condor stopped. They'd circled the block and stood just feet from the bar's entrance. "I'll think about it," he said. "I'll contact you."

  "When?"

  "You'll know when I know."

  And then he was gone.

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  Part IV. John

  6

  Yosemite National Park , California , January 1999

  John sat on an outcropping of rock, one hundred feet above the Merced River in Yosemite National Park. He breathed in the cold, crisp mountain air, letting it fill his lungs and rejuvenate his soul.

  The beauty of this place called to him. The raw, undeniable power of it, of the river and the sequoias, the towering pines and flat blue sky. They hummed with life. They had been created by a force so much more powerful than anything man could hope to imitate.

  John bent and scooped up a handful of rocks. They warmed in his hand, their smooth, hard surfaces a subtle symphony of color. Mankind preferred to destroy. Oh, the human animal made great noises about the things he created, but the fact was, human history had been built on war, on destruction and killing. Those were the things man had perfected over the course of civilization.

  Nuclear power? He shook his head. What a joke. There was more power in these rocks than in the country's entire arsenal of weapons. When mankind succeeded in blowing himself into oblivion, the wilderness would still be here. In some form, it would live on.

  John brought his binoculars to his eyes, training them on the lone figure fly-fishing at the river's edge. He watched as the man backhauled and fronthauled, watched as the fishing line floated and danced on the air, then spun far out into the river, the movement sheer poetry.

  John smiled to himself. Clark Russell. Former comrade-in-arms. He had proved a hard man to get alone. But Russell, like all men, had a weakness. A place where he forgot safety to feed his desires. For some it was women, others drink or gambling. For Russell, it was fly-fishing.

  John had never understood some men's fascination with fishing. What satisfaction was there to be had from hooking creatures by their mouths and pulling them from the water? He understood the enjoyment of quiet and solitude, of the communion with nature, even the satisfaction one might get from the repetitive motion of casting. But the other seemed unnecessarily cruel to him. Barbaric and pointless. He understand sport hunting no better.

  He was a hunter, true. But of humans. This made sense. It completed the circle, kept order in the universe. Animals lived by instinct, not intent. They killed in order to survive. But humans destroyed for fun. They killed for pleasure. Or progress. Or out of arrogance.

  Of all the living creatures on earth, only humans possessed an unending capacity for evil, for inflicting physical and spiritual pain. Theologians called that capacity sin; John called it a darkness of the soul.

  The wind eased through the sequoias and lodgepole pines; they swayed, their trunks groaning. John closed his eyes, taking in the sounds, the music they created. He believed in the soul, though not in the afterlife. He believed in the power of creation, though not in God, in the presence of evil, though not in the devil.

  He reopened his eyes. Clark had caught a fish. It struggled desperately against its captor, arcing out of the water, the sun catching on its silvery scales, creating a small but brilliant flash of light.

  Perfect and brilliant light. Like his Julianna's.

  John fisted his fingers. Julianna's soul had held no darkness. She had been clean and without sin, emanating a true white light. With his mind's eyes, he saw her as he had that first time. Standing beside her mother, gaze cast downward, her long curls pulled away from her face with barrettes shaped like teddy bears, the same bears embroidered on the s
mocking of her jumper. Then she had lifted her gaze and smiled at him, purity and innocence radiating from her like the sun.

  Her purity had called to him. Her innocence had fed his soul. Both had touched a place deep inside him, one that had all but shriveled and died. One that had stopped responding to all but the majesty of nature.

  She had been an angel sent to earth and to him.

  He had loved her, and only her, from that first moment.

  He had tried to protect her from the corrosive influence of others, from the ugliness of a world gone mad, an ugliness that would spoil her as surely as the worm spoils the fruit.

  So she would know what he never had, he had cherished her, had nurtured her bright inner flame.

  Once upon a time, he, too, had had the special light. But his had not been nurtured. It had been smothered, the darkness cultivated. He hadn't wanted that for his Julianna.

  But her mother had seen fit to darken that soul. She had seen fit to frighten Julianna away, to introduce her to things she had been unaware of. Rage burgeoned inside him, icy cold and awesome.

  Her mother and Clark Russell. Destroyers.

  John lifted the binoculars once more. He scanned the river's edge in both directions, then the rocks and forest above, making certain he and Clark were alone.

  It wasn't too late for Julianna. He knew it wasn't. He had to find her.

  But first, Clark Russell would pay for his crime.

  John stood and started down to the river. He picked his way effortlessly and nearly soundlessly over the rocks and through the dense underbrush. His breathing elevated, but only slightly; the oxygen fed and readied him, as did the adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream.

  Killing wasn't personal. It shouldn't be. Get in, do the job as quickly, as impersonally as possible, and slip away. That was the way he had been trained; his ability to do just that had made him one of the Agency's most efficient specialists; it had earned him the code name Ice.

  But this was different. John narrowed his eyes, closing the distance between himself and the other man, hatred burning in the pit of his gut. Clark had crossed the line; he had made this personal. A gunshot to the back of the head wasn't good enough; neither was the garrote or the blade.

  No, John wanted him to know what was happening, who was killing him. And why. He wanted to look into Clark's eyes as the life faded from them.

  The rush of the water masked the last of his approach. John disabled Clark with a sharp, edge-of-the-hand chop to the back of his neck. A bird screamed overhead. The man dropped to his knees, then onto his side. John delivered another blow, this one with his heel to the solar plexus, followed by one to his kidneys. Sprawled flat on his back, Clark looked up at him, conscious but completely immobilized.

  "Hello, Clark." John smiled at the fear that crept into the man's eyes. The fear of death, the certainty of it. "You crossed the line. You put your nose in my business. That made it personal. Now you have to pay."

  He brought his heel down again, but this time in a crushing blow to the man's larynx, finishing the job. It took little more than a nudge with the toe of his boot to tumble Clark's remains into the water.

  John watched the body bobble on the water as it was swept downriver.

  Part V. The Open Door

  7

  Julianna kept her promise to Dr. Samuel. In fact, she had thought of little else for the next twenty-four hours. The way she saw it, her choices were slim and few. According to the doctor, she had to have this baby. She thought of seeing another doctor, or going to an abortion clinic and lying about the date of her last period. She figured it would be hard for them to tell, after all she wasn't that far past twenty-four weeks.

  She had driven by one of the clinics, had seen the protesters out front, waving signs and holding up posters. Ones with pictures of mangled baby parts, pictures of bloody appendages and torn, mutilated flesh. The images had made her feel ill. They had frightened her. She had heard horror stories about botched abortions.

  She had to have this baby.

  But she didn't have to keep it.

  So here she sat, in Citywide Charities' comfortable waiting room, hands clenched in her lap, silently rehearsing what she would say to the social worker she had spoken with on the phone.

  She wouldn't tell her the truth, of course. Not the whole truth, anyway. She wouldn't tell her about John, or about planning to get pregnant, or about her mother.

  No, her story would be a familiar one, one the woman had probably heard dozens of times before. She had slipped up and gotten pregnant; she didn't know who the father was; she had no one to turn to for support and didn't want to be a mother. Period.

  "Hi. You must be Julianna Starr."

  Julianna looked up. The woman crossing the room had a perky, if not pretty face and she wore a welcoming smile. Slightly plump and motherly looking, her appearance instantly reassured Julianna.

  "I'm Ellen Ewing, Citywide's director."

  "Hi." Julianna stood.

  "Why don't we go to my office and chat?" She motioned toward the hallway directly across from them. "Madeline," she said to the receptionist, "hold my calls, will you?"

  Ellen made small talk, mostly about the weather, as they made their way down the hall. They reached her office, a peach-and-teal affair, and she motioned Julianna to one of the comfy-looking chairs in front of the desk.

  "Juice? Soft drink? Bottled water?"

  "Orange juice?"

  "Got it." Ellen picked up the phone, buzzed Madeline and asked her to bring an OJ and a Diet Coke, then turned back to Kate. She laughed, only slightly self-consciously. "I'm addicted to Diet Cokes. I drink them all day, I'm afraid. With this figure, you'd think I was drinking the sugared variety." She sighed. "It sometimes seems that the less I eat, the bigger I get."

  Madeline appeared at the door with the refreshments. While Ellen retrieved them, Julianna looked over the office. It was pretty, soothing and very feminine. The right side of Ellen's desk was heaped high with manila folders, the left with books. By the lamp sat a cut crystal vase filled with a bouquet of cheery flowers. Behind the desk, covering the entire wall, were pictures of children, from infants to school-age.

  Ellen handed Julianna her juice, and smiled, following her gaze. "Those are my kids."

  "Your kids?"

  "In a manner of speaking." Ellen took her seat. "They're all Citywide adoptees."

  "All of them?" Julianna moved her gaze over the wall, amazed. "There are so many."

  Ellen smiled, skimming her own gaze over the wall of smiling faces. "They're all special to me. Almost as if they're part mine." She turned back to Julianna. "We take great pride in our maternity and adoption program, Julianna. Bringing families together is a special and completely rewarding endeavor."

  She popped open her can of soda. "I don't want you to feel pressured. We don't just place children and babies for adoption here. Bringing families together also means helping women decide if they want to parent. If that's what you decide to do, we won't be angry or disappointed. We won't pull our support. Quite the contrary, we will do whatever we can to help you in your decision. We only ask that every step of the way you're honest with us about your feelings and plans."

  "That sounds good to me." Julianna set her carton of juice on Ellen's desk. "But you don't have to worry, I'm not going to decide to parent."

  "Your mind is made up? You want to give your baby up for adoption?"

  "Yes. Definitely."

  A small frown marred Ellen Ewing's brow, then disappeared. "Why don't you tell me a little about yourself."

  So Julianna did, repeating the things she had rehearsed.

  "And the baby's father?" Ellen asked when Julianna had finished. "What does he think about your being pregnant?"

  "I don't know who the baby's father is."

  Ellen was silent a moment. "You're sure? Because in this state, the father has to sign off on the adoption. Even if the baby's already been placed with a family, if a man s
hows up claiming and able to prove paternity, he'll have the right to the child. You can imagine how painful, how destructive that would be to all involved."

  Don't defy me again, Julianna. You won't like the consequences.

  Their throats slit, gaping and bloody, like perverted smiles.

  "Honestly," Ellen continued, "getting sign-off is usually not a problem. In our experience, the last thing these daddies want is any kind of responsibility, financial or otherwise. And if you're uncomfortable talking to him, we will approach him for you. Take care of everything."

  Julianna stared at the woman a moment, then shook her head. "I told you, I don't know who the father is."

  Ellen narrowed her eyes slightly, studying her. "You're certain? This is important, Julianna."

  "No, I mean…yes, I'm certain. I slept around…a lot." She hung her head. "I'm not proud of my behavior."

  "It happens, Julianna." Ellen's voice soothed. "To more girls than you imagine. But let's not focus on the past. The thing that's important now is deciding where you go from here. Deciding what's the best thing for you and your baby."

  Ellen went on to describe how Citywide worked-that they were a national organization funded by private donations, grants and fund-raising efforts. Maternity and adoption services was only one arm of the organization. She also explained what services they provided their birth mothers and how Julianna would choose parents for her baby.

  "We work intensely with about a dozen couples a year. To put your mind at ease, we screen them very carefully. First and foremost, they are nice people and committed couples. They all have a great desire to be parents. All are now infertile and cannot conceive on their own, believe me they've tried. It's a painful and heartbreaking journey that brings these couples to us.

  "They range in ages, up to forty. Their income level and educational backgrounds vary. We have several couples who are quite well off, a couple of modest means and the rest in between. Our couples all live in the region, though some in the country, some in the city. We have a variety of religious persuasions, women who plan to be stay-at-home moms and others who have demanding careers. Several couples already have one child, either adopted or biological.