Cause for Alarm

by Erica Spindler

  "The human spirit is resilient, Kate. With therapy she might overcome the damage. People have bounced back from worse."

  "I suppose." She turned her gaze toward the living room. Through the doorway she could see part of the couch and Julianna. "I feel so…bad for her," she murmured. "Twenty-four hours ago, I couldn't have said that. After what she did to me and Richard, I would have sworn I could never say that."

  "She gave you Emma."

  "Yes."

  They both fell silent. After a moment, Kate cleared her throat. "Even with everything, I always felt grateful for that. Someplace inside me, I was always thankful to her." She looked at Luke. "What does that say about me?"

  "That you love your daughter very much."

  "Or does it mean I didn't love my husband enough?"

  "Don't do this to yourself, Kate. It's destructive. Counterproductive. Let it go."

  He was right; she knew he was. But she couldn't let it go, as much as she longed to. "Julianna told me that in return for Richard, she gave me what I wanted most in the world." Her eyes filled with tears. "Did I want to be a mother no matter the cost?"

  The tears spilled over, and she swiped impatiently at them. "I've asked myself that question a hundred times. I've asked myself, if I could bring Richard back to life, if I could have our lives as they had been before, and all I had to do was hand Emma back-" Her throat closed over the words, guilt and grief and shame choking her. "I can't honestly say I would, Luke. I love her too much."

  Luke turned her into his arms. She laid her face to his shoulder, her tears spilling over. "I hate myself for that, Luke. I feel so guilty. So disloyal."

  "You are not responsible for Richard's death, Kate. You didn't cause it. And neither did Julianna. John Powers murdered Richard. He's the one you should blame, the one who should be punished. Not you."

  "I hate him," she said softly, fiercely, tipping her face up to Luke's. "He's not just a monster. He's the devil. And God help me, I want him dead."

  "The Agency will take care of him, Kate. We have to focus on getting what we need to make that happen."

  She nodded and drew away from him, wiping the tears from her cheeks. She dragged in a shuddering breath. "What next?"

  "Let's shake this bastard up a little bit, that's what." Luke smiled grimly. "Do you have a lipstick?"

  Kate went to her purse, dug one out and handed it to him. "Very Berry okay?"

  He uncapped it and rolled up the stick, admiring the color. "Perfect."

  "What are you-"

  "I'm going to leave him a message, that's what." He rolled up the lipstick and crossed to the white cabinet directly in front of him. "Let's just see how Mr. Powers likes being the hunted."

  72

  John surveyed the carnage, shaking with rage. How dare they violate the sanctity of his home? How dare they touch and destroy his things.

  Didn't they understand who they were dealing with?

  John picked his way through the wreckage of his living room. When he reached the kitchen, he stopped short. They had left him a message, scrawled in red across his virgin white cabinet fronts, like a wound.

  We're going to get you, asshole.

  John stared at the words, the blood spinning crazily in his head. His hands began to shake and his breath came in short, angry bursts. He flexed his fingers, any semblance of control and self-discipline gone. They would pay for this, he vowed. They would suffer.

  If it was the last thing he did, he would make certain they died like pigs.

  73

  "Good morning," Kate said as Julianna appeared at the connecting door between their rooms. It was just after

  8:00 a.m. The other woman had slept through the night- Kate knew this because, unable to sleep, she had checked on Julianna a half dozen times.

  Julianna met Kate's eyes, then slid her own gaze uncomfortably away. "Morning."

  Kate finished diapering Emma, resnapped her pajamas, then scooped her up. Julianna hadn't moved from her position in the doorway. "How are your hands?" she asked.

  Julianna held them out; they looked awful, like they had gotten caught in a meat grinder. She tried to bend her fingers, wincing at the effort. "They hurt."

  Emma propped on her hip, Kate crossed to the trash and dropped the used diaper in. The infant began to fuss and Kate shifted her from her hip to her shoulder. She motioned Julianna in from the doorway. "Come talk to me."

  Her expression wary, she crossed to the double bed closest to her and sat on its corner. "Where's Luke?"

  "He went for coffee and rolls." Emma cried out and squirmed in her arms, and Kate adjusted her hold again. "We're going to check out after we eat."

  Julianna curved her arms across her middle. "He found us another place?"

  "This morning. It's not going to be very nice, I'm afraid. Most places require a credit card to register, for security purposes. Problem is, Luke's registering us under an alias. He called around this morning."

  The younger woman eyed Emma, a frown creasing her brow. "What's wrong with Emma? I never heard her make that sound before."

  Kate glanced down at the child. She held her in a cradle hold, body tipped slightly toward her. She was, indeed, making a different sound, a cross between a whimper and a whine.

  Kate frowned, unsettled by the fact that Julianna had noticed it and she hadn't. "She's a little fussy today. She didn't sleep well. Babies get like this."

  Awkward silence stretched between them. Julianna broke it first. "I'm glad I gave her to you. And that I couldn't have the…you know."

  The abortion. Kate shuddered at the thought of how close Emma had come to not being. "I'm glad, too. She's a very special little person."

  Julianna reached up and trailed her fingers across Emma's downy head, then drew her hand back, eyes bright with tears. "I'm sorry I freaked out like that yesterday."

  "You have nothing to be sorry for."

  Julianna bowed her head. "I don't know why I…I never saw before. I must have known how…wrong…how sick…" She lifted her gaze to Kate's, her expression anguished. "I allowed it. I'm as much to blame as he is."

  "That's not true." Kate crossed to her. "Listen to me. You were a child, he was an adult. He preyed on your innocence and trust. On your helplessness. What he did to you was a crime, Julianna."

  "But why didn't I stop him?" She balled her hands into fists. "Why didn't I fight him or tell someone? And when I was older, why did I stay with him? I think about it and I want to curl up and die."

  Julianna was silent a moment before continuing. "I knew," she said softly. "Deep down. That's why I-" Her throat closed over the words and she cleared it. "That's why I got pregnant. I wanted a normal relationship. The kind other women had."

  A normal relationship. Like her and Richard's.

  Even as a wisp of anger speared through her, Kate laid a hand on Julianna's shoulder, hurting for her, hating John Powers with a ferocity that stunned her. "A psychiatrist could help you deal with what John did to you. He could help you understand your feelings, why you did what you did. He would help you feel better."

  She stood, struggling, Kate saw, to keep from falling apart. "I better go get cleaned up, Luke will be back any minute."

  "Julianna, wait." Kate caught her wrist. "Promise you'll think about it, seeing a psychiatrist, I mean. When this is all over."

  Julianna extricated herself from Kate's grip, a ghost of a smile touching her mouth. "All right, Kate. I promise."

  74

  Luke arrived back at the motel just as Julianna emerged from her room, her duffel bag packed and slung over her shoulder. Her hair was wet from the shower, her eyes red and puffy from crying.

  Luke noticed, Kate was sure by his subtle double take at Julianna, but he didn't comment. "Macs was the best I could do in a hurry," he said, setting the McDonald's bag and beverage tray on the dresser. "I got sausage biscuits and fat-free muffins. Take your pick."

  Kate propped Emma on her hip and reached for a coffee. The inf
ant squealed in protest, and Kate made a sound of exasperation. "What is wrong with you today, Emma?"

  "If you want to eat now, I'll hold her," Julianna offered. "I mean, if that's okay?"

  Kate hesitated, but only a moment. She needed a break. She had been walking, jiggling and bouncing a fussy baby for hours and she'd had it. "Okay," she said. "But don't say I didn't warn you."

  Kate handed her over with only a twinge of misgiving. The fear that Julianna was going to run off with Emma had all but evaporated. In truth, as Julianna took Emma awkwardly into her arms, she looked more nervous than Kate.

  New arms momentarily distracted the infant and with a sigh of relief, Kate helped herself to a coffee and a biscuit.

  "I called the P.I. while I was out," Luke said, folding back the plastic tab on his coffee's lid. "From a pay phone. He found both addresses and travel records for Wendell White and David Snow. The addresses were useless, mail drops and answering services. But the travel records could prove to be a gold mine."

  Luke took a sip of his coffee, then smiled. "White and Snow visited some pretty exotic locales in the past couple of years. Colombia. Mexico. Israel. The U.K. I asked my guy to do a search on Nick Winters as well as to continue with the other names."

  Kate set aside her biscuit, too anxious to eat. "So how does that help us?"

  "We need to prove Powers is a loose cannon, right?" Kate and Julianna nodded. "The book will give us the information we need. All we have to do is break the code. The travel records will help us."

  At the two women's blank looks, he explained, "In theory, once we make one of the book's entries, we can use it to decipher the rest. Like an alternate alphabet. I already did a little checking. According to my P.I., David Snow traveled to Mexico on June fourth last year. He returned on the fifteenth. There's a coded entry in the book, dated June fourteenth."

  "Then we have him," Kate said.

  "Maybe. Maybe not. What if the dates are a code, too? Twisted in some way? Or what if Snow was in Mexico on legitimate business? We've got to do this right. I say we go a step further. We find a library and using these travel dates as a guide, we search the back issues of newspapers on microfilm looking for reportings of deaths of government officials or any other important or prominent person. Then we put the two together.

  "It's a long shot." Luke looked from one woman to the other. "But it's the only one we've got. And in my book it beats the hell out of sitting around waiting for Powers to strike."

  The three exchanged glances, then leaped into action, a sense of urgency pressing in on them. They had to move fast. Time, they knew, was one thing John Powers was not going to allow them.

  They checked into the new motel-a dismal affair done in a medieval knights theme, as if medieval castles had been papered with red-black-and-silver foil, flocked wallpaper. The woman manning the front desk hadn't had a clue where the nearest public library was, let alone the main branch, but offered the motel's yellow pages.

  The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, they learned, was located at 901 G Street N.W. in the old downtown business district. The library had both the Washington Post and the New York Times on microfilm.

  The day was long, their search tedious. Exhausting and frustrating. As the hours slipped by, Kate became more convinced that they were on a wild-goose chase, more aware that with each minute they searched, John Powers got that much closer to them.

  Their progress was slowed even more by Emma. Her crabby mood only worsened as the day progressed. Kate and Julianna took turns walking the halls with her. They bounced her, sang songs and read to her. Nothing worked. At times the infant was almost inconsolable.

  When they finally called it quits around two that afternoon, Kate had a screaming headache. Her eyes and shoulders ached and for the first time since arriving at Luke's, she felt hopeless.

  She wasn't alone in her feelings. Julianna was subdued and retreated into her own world the minute they reached the hotel; Luke on the other hand, paced. He was frustrated and uncommunicative, and the one time Kate had tried to talk to him, he had all but bitten her head off.

  Kate watched him pace for a moment, then returned her gaze to Emma, worried. "What's the matter, sweetie?" She tickled her daughter's lips with the bottle's nipple. "Come on, you've hardly eaten anything all day."

  To her great relief, Emma latched on to the nipple and began sucking. A moment later, however, she jerked away and started to cry, the sound high-pitched and hurting.

  A thread of panic wound through Kate. Something wasn't right. This was more than Emma being a little fussy because of lack of sleep or her schedule being disrupted. Kate laid a hand on her forehead; it felt hot.

  Luke stopped pacing. "What's wrong?"

  "I don't know. I think she has a temperature." Kate bent and pressed her lips to her daughter's forehead. "She's definitely hot."

  "Let me check." Luke came over and laid his hand on her forehead. "She does feel a little warm. But maybe she's just hungry? Or sleepy?"

  "I tried to feed her, but she wouldn't take the bottle. I'm worried, Luke. She's never been sick before."

  "You don't know that she's sick, Kate. It could be she's just…upset."

  "Her pediatrician's in Mandeville, all my child care books, I-" She dragged in a shaky breath. "This whole thing's been too hard on her. I never should have subjected her to it."

  "What would you have done instead?" he asked, impatiently. "Stayed put in Mandeville so she could be murdered in her crib?"

  Tears flooded Kate's eyes at his blunt words, and she swung away from him, clutching Emma, struggling not to cry.

  He put his arms around her and Emma from behind. He bent and laid his cheek against her hair. "I'm sorry, Kate. I shouldn't have said that. It was wrong."

  "No." She shook her head. "It wasn't wrong, it was true. We're just going to die later rather than sooner."

  He turned her in his arms so they faced one another. "Don't say that. We have-"

  "Nothing, Luke. We have nothing. We're no better off now than we were in Houston."

  "We knew from the beginning that it wasn't going to be easy. We need a little more time, that's all."

  "And time's just what we don't have." A sob rose in her throat. "It's impossible, like looking for a needle in a haystack. And now Emma's sick. I can't keep dragging her from one place to another like this. It's not good for her."

  "Look at me, Kate. We don't even know for sure that John has made the connection between you and me. And even if he has, almost no one knew we were headed to D.C."

  "He has made the connection. Somehow, he'll find us." She broke away from his arms. Emma began to cry, and Kate held her to her chest, trembling. "I feel him, Luke. He's watching us now, this minute. Nipping at our heels, laughing at our feeble efforts. And now Emma… something's wrong with…"

  "Calm down, Kate." Luke closed the distance she had put between them and cupped her face in his palms. "I'll call the front desk, they'll know where the nearest Ready Med is-"

  "What then?" she asked, tears welling. "Change hotels? Run forever? You know as well as-"

  "Stop it!" Julianna leaped to her feet. "I can't take it anymore!"

  Kate and Luke swung toward her, surprised. Even Emma was momentarily startled into silence.

  "Don't you see?" she implored them. "We've got to stick together. If we're going to beat him, we've got to stick together. We've got to stay positive-"

  She stopped suddenly. She brought her hands to her mouth, her expression stunned. "Oh, my God. That's it. I know what we should do, how we can get John. I can't believe I didn't see it before."

  She turned to them. "Senator Jacobson. Clark Russell. We've had the answer all along."

  "Senator William Jacobson?" Kate asked, drawing her eyebrows together. "Didn't he die last year? Wasn't he murdered?"

  Julianna nodded. "I read about it in the paper, but it never made sense to me. The newspaper account reported that he had been found dead in his Washington hot
el room. But whenever he stayed in the city, he stayed with my mother."

  "Your mother?" Luke murmured, frowning.

  "She was his mistress."

  "I see what Julianna's getting at," Kate said, turning to Luke. "John told Julianna that he'd killed her mother. If she and the senator were together that night-"

  "He would have killed him, too." Luke nodded. "That would mean the true facts of the murder were concealed to protect the senator and his family. It could be. It happens all the time."

  "Billy was married," Julianna said. "Mother mentioned his wife a bunch of times. She came from big money, I think."

  "She did." Kate nodded. "I read something about that. She came from some important family. Really important, with political ties."

  "You're right," Luke said, excitement edging into his voice. "You mentioned two names, Julianna. The other was-"

  "Clark Russell. He was with the CIA. Investigative branch, I'm pretty sure. He and mother had been lovers, a long time ago. He's the one who told her what John did for a living. Until then, even though they had been together for years, she hadn't known the truth. When I didn't believe her, she called Clark. He showed me some classified photographs, ones of…of John's victims. I believed them then. And I ran."

  "Clark Russell made it personal," Luke murmured. "He crossed the line."

  Kate drew her eyebrows together, something suddenly occurring to her. "Wait a minute, you're telling us that all three of these men were at one time or another your mother's lover?"

  "Yes."

  "And now, two out of the three are dead."

  "Yes. John admitted to me that he killed Clark."

  Luke sat. "If we can prove Powers killed a United States senator, I think we'd have it."

  "Don't we have enough now?" Kate asked, sounding breathless to her own ears. "Couldn't we go to Morris, lay it all out for him and-"

  "I don't think so. We don't have anything solid to tie Powers to the murders."

  Kate made a sound of disbelief. "Even though all three were at one time Sylvia Starr's lover? Even though two of the three are recently dead and now John Powers is after Sylvia's daughter? What do they want, it delivered wrapped in a gift bow?"