Authors: Carol Plum-Ucci
He told the classic story of being on the receiving end of mean girls placing bets just to hurt him. At least the guy could laugh at himself.
"Maybe
you
should go talk to her," I said. "She warmed to you. Honestly. When I walked in and saw her gripping your hand like that ... she's not real easy to touch. Once in a while she'll melt down for Rain or Owen. Other than that it's been me and nobody else."
"Except Henry."
"Sonofabitch..." I wished Tyler hadn't said his name. The guy had been in her room, which in my book was kind of a sacred shrine, and sat his perverted ass on her bed.
Tyler showed the same twitches I had. "No, maybe
you
should go talk to her. She might think I'm a spook again."
Cora's medication switch.
She needed me, no matter how awkward it was. I'd hit Marg up for info and then head up there, I decided.
I looked at my watch. It was a little past noon. "We eat in twenty minutes. It's really good food."
Shahzad stood up slowly, rubbing his stomach. "Miss Marg won't let us make to the McDonald's. Now I wish we had not been caught."
They followed me up the stairs to the dining room, and I got out the silverware container, the smell of hot roast beef floating through the air. The chairs were all pushed out of place from this morning, and Tyler went around straightening them as I put the stuff on the buffet.
"Sorry," he said. "I could not sit in a room that looked like this. You know what obsessive-compulsive disorder is?"
"Sure," I said.
"You don't want to live in a car with a man who has this atrocious thing," Shahzad said, pouring himself a glass of water. He shuddered. "Go and see for yourself. You would think it is brand new, not the residence for two hackers for a day and night."
Marg came out of the kitchen, carrying a pitcher of juice.
"You need some help around here," I said. "You're an RN who shoots.
Jeezus.
That's enough talent for one person."
"Until Omar's lab is found and they know it's not near here, they won't let anyone work on this property who isn't actually USIC. I'll get by somehow. I always do."
I felt very soothed over and genuinely guilty. "Can I help you out with Cora now?"
She opened a drawer, pulled out a stack of paper napkins, and laid them on the buffet. "Very primitive, our setup right now. I've no background in, uh, banquet facilitating."
"Well?" I didn't like her pause.
"She's under sedation. I was up there twenty minutes ago. She was out like a light."
I flopped back down in the chair, not liking that either. "She didn't want to be sedated last night. What changed?"
Marg said nothing. And I really didn't like that.
"I'm going up there." I moved toward the door.
"I just told you, she's out."
"I've seen her awake, and I've seen her asleep. What's the—"
She turned around, looking at me with what I perceived to be sympathy. "It's more than having been betrayed by someone she liked. It's more than realizing a second terrorist had sidled up to her and could have killed her. There's another issue having to do with her mother that surfaced on one of her tapes early this morning. She'll have to tell you about that if she ever wants to—I can't. Trust me on this. She needed a sedative, and right now, she needs to sleep."
I backed toward the door, swapping gazes with her. "Call me when the security crew shows up," I said, and turned to run up there. I could at least park myself between her and the window in case she hallucinated again. Problem was, I nearly banged into Cora, who was coming through the door, looking like some kind of a zombie.
TYLER PING
TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2002
12:01
P.M.
DINING ROOM
M
Y BELOVED CORA HOLMAN
had raccoon eyes—with such deep lines under them that you'd think she'd been hit in the nose with a Frisbee. She had a blank look that overly medicated people can get. I'd seen my share while in the psych ward of Beth Israel when I was turning my mom in.
Scott pulled the chair out for her, and she slid into it, didn't say thank you—didn't say anything—just put her camera case on the table and stared past it. She'd been behind me when I did most of my talking in last night's meeting. So it turned even my big mouth to stone to watch her look so disheveled yet sit so straight, like a ballerina might, or a princess. She had the air of a queen, without saying anything and without looking anywhere except the dead center of the place mat, in front of her camera case.
Scott pulled the chair to the left up beside her, sat down, and started slowly rubbing her back. I don't think she noticed at first. After an eternity, his obviously experienced Don Juan hands went to her neck. He massaged, and her eyelids drooped a little.
Then he shook her shoulder and said, "Spit it out. Or do you want these guys to leave?"
She raised her eyebrows to help open her eyelids all the way again. "No, they can stay, I ... may I have a Kleenex, please?"
Scott chuckled, like a private joke was passing between them, and Marg handed him the box from the buffet. He laid it in front of her.
"Voilà," he said, and after she pulled one out and mopped her forehead with it, he said, "Talk to me. Come on."
She said nothing. Scott simply waited, like this was some normal thing coming down around here—Cora not speaking when spoken to.
His eyes glanced down to Marg's shoe and flipped back, and he said so innocently you would never have guessed he'd been prompted, "If you're this tongue-tied, it's got to have something to do with your mother. What'd that she-devil do now?"
"You mustn't call her that."
"Okay..." The sarcasm came through slightly.
"I ... something just happened ... and I had to think quickly. And I hope ... that I can help USIC to catch Henry," she said.
Scott flopped back in the chair. "You are not helping to catch Henry," he said. "No penance is due. Don't be stupid."
"It's already done." She pulled a cell phone out of her sweater pocket, laid it in one palm on the table and kept flipping it to the other, studying it.
"I failed to ask yesterday, all things considered, where you got that," Scott said.
"It's his. He gave it to me. He called just now ... asked me to meet him. I said I would."
Scott's face flushed and he swapped gazes with Marg. He looked back at the phone again and only then started shaking his head. All he said was, "Whoa."
Shahzad reached past me, took the cell phone, and opened it. He made some passes through, obviously looking for the phone number Henry had called from.
"Well?" I said.
He laid it in front of me. "Blocked. Name only."
"Where's Hodji?" Scott said. He had Cora suddenly gripped by the arm, like she might try to get up and walk out of the house in her zombie state.
"I'll find him," Marg said, and left the room.
I picked up the phone and looked through some of its lesser-known subfiles. "I can find out the number to this phone and the number he called from. I can find out approximately how far he was from here when he made that call. Problem: There's a tracer on this phone. He'll know as soon as I do it."
"Can you do it from some other phone?" Scott asked. "Or your computer?"
"If I hack. It could take a few hours, and I'd say time is an issue," I said.
Scott turned to Cora. "What time did you tell him you would meet him?"
"In fifteen minutes."
He slumped backwards again and came forward in one motion.
"Where?"
"In the woods. Right where the main path meets with the trail off to his cabin. He was going to spot-paint the tree trunks for me the other day so I couldn't get lost again. He wants me to come out so he can show me the markings. He's obviously not aware of how much USIC knows."
"So, you told him you would
come?
" Scott asked.
"I thought I would lead USIC agents to him. Maybe I wouldn't even have to see him."
Scott slumped back again. "Problem: They're spread out across Griffith's Landing and Astor College. That's a twenty-minute drive in either case, not including the time they'll need to sprint to their cars. Here, it's Hodji and Marg with firearms."
Hodji's footsteps came trudging up the basement stairs after Marg called for him. Scott told him the dilemma. He looked focused but not like any bundle of raw nerves. I should have guessed.
He said, "Obviously, we're not sending Cora out there. We can wait the extra ten minutes and get USIC to nab him."
I got restless over the thought. "Ten minutes late? It could make him suspicious enough to take off."
"Or, worse, it could draw him to the house to come look for her," Scott put in. "I don't want the guy anywhere near the house."
"I can get the local police that fast," Hodji said, taking out his cell phone. He dialed Mr. Steckerman, and they only talked maybe a minute before he hung up.
"He's getting four local Port Republic cops to meet us at the water hole. They know the trails. They can be here in five minutes in an unmarked car. I'll just keep them belly down until he comes into sight."
He was wearing a gun in a shoulder holster and went to the hall to put on a jacket. I didn't feel comfortable. What if Henry had more guys with him?
He didn't seem concerned. "Marg, guard the keep. Don't draw arms with all these kids in the house unless you hear shots," Hodji said. "And Scott, you lock the door behind me. Both of you, go around now and make sure all the doors are locked, just in case. And don't, under any circumstances, let anybody in unless it's the USIC faces you know."
Scott went around checking windows and doors on the first floor after locking the door behind Hodji. Marg disappeared into her room and then went quickly down to the basement to do the same. I watched from the middle of the parlor as Hodji darted across the grass and disappeared down the trail to the pond. Shahzad had come up beside me. He was too quiet.
"I don't like this..." he said quietly.
"Why not? USIC will be here fast, and it'll be five to one until then."
"Where is Miss Rain?" he asked suddenly. We hadn't thought of that. I ran back to the TV room and whispered "whew." She was dozing on one end of the couch, and Owen was dozing on the other.
"Maybe they won't even have to know of this," Shahzad said, and we headed back to the dining room, where Scott was pacing around and Cora sat, still flipping the little phone from hand to hand. It rang suddenly. She jumped a foot, and Shahzad grabbed it from her, hit the speakerphone button, and set it in front of her. He nudged her.
"Hello?" she said. I thought she might turn to pudding, considering how bad she looked. But her voice didn't even falter, to my amazement.
"Hi. I'm a little early," the voice came through.
"Okay. I'll try to hurry."
"Don't bother. I'm here."
We all froze. We were watching the porch. The floor never creaked, but when the door from the basement swung open, we realized Henry wasn't on the porch. A tall man and a really short guy came into the hall, shutting the door behind them, which would prevent the alarm from sounding.
The tall one snapped his cell phone shut, looked at the four of us, and said, "
That
was easy..."
SCOTT EBERMAN
TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2002
12:13
P.M.
DINING ROOM
I
DIDN'T KNOW
whether Marg was alive or dead, and the thought would have to wait if I were going to keep my sanity. I got calm beyond what would be conceivably possible, watching Henry and Ibrahim Kansi come through the dining room.
I must have looked worse than I realized because he said, "Don't worry. I'm not carrying a gun." He closed the double doors and leaned against them. "I'm not a violent man." Then he laughed. "Well, put it this way. I don't like guns."
His little monkey friend walked around to me and simply said, "Excuse me," and I let him pass to the far end of the table. He had a gun sticking out the back of his jeans. I could have pulled it.
Nervy guy.
He was banking that we were stupid? He could have separated my face from my body before I figured out how to undo the safety lock. He stood looking at us with his arms folded across his chest, his nunchucks folded in the middle of them somehow.
"For me to have a gun would be redundant. I have him." Henry nodded down the table. "Because our dear friend Ibrahim could cause any one of the Trinity Four to hemorrhage in thirty seconds, and truth be told, we only need one of you to get hurt. Where's Cora?"
My heart didn't even lurch, though I knew it was all this weird defense mechanism my ambulance squad called CBS (calm before the storm). We'd get the calmest calls from spouses of people in coronary arrest. It's usually gone by the time we get there.
She was really calm, too. She raised her hand. The backrest of the velvet chairs came six inches above her head, and he poked his face around. "Hi there."
"Whatever drama you're creating, Henry, please just finish it before you disgust me too thoroughly and I ralph all over this table and horrify my friends."
It was her sweet voice but not her words. He sighed in fake frustration. "You cut me to the quick! I'm a man who loves beauty—under a microscope or in the world at large." He pulled something out of his pocket, and I quickly realized it was a handful of syringes. He kept pulling off red caps and tossing them in front of her on the table, but she refused to take her eyes off the pitcher of water Shahzad had left.
He put his hand on her shoulder, and that's when I stopped breathing. The needles were inches from her face. She finally turned her eyes to the side and looked away again.
"Henry. You're trying to scare people about dying when they're growing used to the idea."
"Well, you could be dead tomorrow. Scott could be dead tomorrow. I know who these other young men are, and, well, come to think of it, they could both be dead by tomorrow, too. But that's not what we want."