Arch Enemy (4 page)

A
lex Morgan opened her eyes and was assaulted by the light glaring in through the unfamiliar window. She screwed her eyes and blinked, trying to get her vision to functional sharpness, but everything remained blurry and her eyelids seemed to stick together. Her head pounded, and her breath was absolutely heinous.

Hangovers. She was still getting the hang of those.

She shivered and noticed she had no shirt on. Only then did she feel the bulky presence boxing her in against the wall, emitting faint wheezy snores.

Alex felt an immediate desire to get the hell out. Normally she'd be able to get up and out without as much as a creak of the bedsprings, but the blue fiberglass cast on her right leg wasn't helping. She'd have to wake him up.

At least she still had her pants on.

She pulled up the sheets to cover her bare chest. “Hey,” she stage-whispered. “Hey, Devin.”

He stirred and mumbled, but gave no sign of waking.

“Devin, wake up,” she said in her normal speaking voice.

He opened his dark brown eyes, startled, and smacked his lips. He turned his head to look at her and smiled, crinkling his half-closed eyes.

“Good morning,” he said, meaning it just a little too much for her taste.

“Hi,” she said, tipping cheeriness into the word to the point of saturation, avoiding, she hoped, any hint of sexiness.

He stretched his arms, yawning, and stroked her hair, curling the frayed tips between his fingers. “That was amazing last night. I've never been with anyone so . . .
passionate
.”

“Ha. Right,” she said. “Yeah, I haven't—yeah.”

He leaned in to kiss her, mashing his lips against hers, morning breath and all. Nausea rose in her stomach and Alex had to hold back vomit. She lay a hand on his chest. “Listen, I really should get going.”

“Oh.” Disappointment was palpable in his puppy-dog blue eyes.

“I just really need to get to the library at some point today, and with this thing”—she motioned toward the cast that enveloped her leg with a nod of the head—“it can kind of take a while.”

“Sure, okay.” He got up off the creaky bed and stood as far away as he could in the cramped bedroom, flat against his dresser. Inching her bad leg over the side of the bed, she sat up, holding onto the sheet covering her chest.

“Could you . . . ?” She indicated the door with her eyes.

“Come on. It's not like I haven't seen it already.”

“It doesn't mean you get to see it again.”

He shuffled out into the hallway in his boxers, closing the door behind him.

She fell back on the bed, exhaling in exasperation. From the ceiling, a banner depicting the creepy baby from
Family Guy
leered down at her.

As a junior, Devin had a right to a single room, which he had decorated floor to ceiling with posters paying homage to various TV shows and bands as well as to the concept of drinking. She scanned the floor among the many shirts and Bermuda shorts for her shirt and bra, diminutive, vanishing next to his enormous dirty shirts and pants. Finding both at the foot of the bed, she stretched her arm, nearly toppling to the floor in the process. She clasped her bra and pulled on her shirt. She adjusted the bobby pins in her hair, which kept her bangs, long overdue for a trim, out of her eyes. Next were her crutches, resting against the footboard. Everything ached as she hoisted herself to her feet.

She opened the door to find him waiting just outside. He held it for her as she came out into the hallway of his dorm, all fluorescent lights and ratty blue carpeting. She paused to say good-bye, and he leaned in for a kiss. She didn't have the energy to stop him, but when he tried for tongue, she kept her lips sealed.

“I'll text you, I guess,” he said.

“Sure,” she said, packing in as little enthusiasm as she could manage. “Why not?”

She turned around and walked down the hallway without looking back, passing a jaded junior girl in her towel, headed for the bathroom with toothbrush in hand. With her limp, Alex's fifty-foot toddle to the elevator seemed interminable. At least her own dorm, Prather House, was right across the quad. The walk of shame would be a short one.

She never heard him close the door. He must have watched her until she disappeared into the elevator.

 

Alex cast a guilty glance at the fresh fruit that made up her breakfasts in the beginning of the fall semester, back before she had broken her leg. On this day, she loaded up on bacon and pancakes, acutely aware of the tightness in the waist of her pants. Healthy living seemed like another life for her. She took her tray to the tables, where she spotted her roommate, Katie, sitting alone with a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats and a cup of diet cola, clad in her usual yellow sweatpants–Springhaven University hoodie combo, wild brown hair reined in by a pink headband. She waved her spoon in the air when she saw Alex, sending droplets of milk flying at a passing girl who looked down at her and scowled. Alex set her tray down and began the laborious task of lowering herself onto her seat.

“A little birdie told me you disappeared with Devin Monroe last night.” Of course, Katie somehow would have heard about it already.

“All we did was make out.” She played with a slice of crispy bacon on her plate, running it along the syrup.

“Yeah right, you slut.” Katie said the word with sibilant relish. She shoveled a spoonful of cereal into her mouth, milk dribbling down her chin, and spoke with her mouth full. “So, how was it? Juicy details now, please.”

Alex didn't bother to argue. “It was . . .
meh
.”

Katie swallowed through her indignation. “I
cannot
believe you, Alex Morgan. Do you know how many girls would kill—
kill
—to hop into the sack with the star pitcher of the Springhaven baseball team? I mean, those arms.” She emitted a sort of shudder-groan.

“He's kind of a . . . sloppy kisser.” Alex felt the heat bloom on her cheeks as she blushed. “And he didn't really seem to know what he was doing. He would take his—”

She was interrupted by the clatter of a tray being set down next to Katie's. A skinny, smooth-faced boy in a plaid button-down open over a plain white T-shirt, the standard uniform for suburban alt kids.

Simon Burczyk. Sweet, innocent, and head over heels in love with Alex.

“Am I interrupting anything?”

“Alex was just telling us about her scandalous escapades in a young gentleman's bed last night.” Katie somehow always knew the exact wrong thing to say.

“Oh?” said Simon. “Do tell.” His voice quavered.

Alex's stare burned on Katie's face. Not that Katie even noticed. “Ugh,” Alex said. “It was nothing. Total mistake.”

“Two hundred pounds of pure lean man meat of a mistake.”

“It's really none of my business,” said Simon.

Alex was desperate to change the subject. “Are you ready to work after breakfast?”

“What's this about work?” said Katie with a yawn. “It's Saturday morning.”

“Simon's teaching me some basic programming.”

“How nice of him,” Katie said with a theatrical nudge and wink. “Are you making it worth his while?”

Alex was about to make a rude comment when she was interrupted by a beep of her phone. She checked—e-mail. From her adviser Dr. Strimling, a motherly, soft-spoken humanities professor. It was her third message to Alex about her grades. Alex had opened none of them but made an educated guess that the problem was definitely not that they were too high.

She deleted the e-mail, unopened.

“Katie,” Alex said. “Shut up.”

L
isa Frieze woke up with her head against the fiberboard surface kitchen table again, snuggled up to a half-eaten box of General Tso's Chicken, one-quarter of a wineglass of cheap chardonnay, and her laptop, fully drained of battery life.

She picked up her cell phone, which was at two percent, and found through squinting eyes a missed call from—

“Peter,” she whispered to herself.

She hated herself a little bit for the fluttering heartbeat, her eagerness in looking at the time stamp—6:57 that morning. It was now just past 10
A.M.

Most of that, she reminded herself, was the loneliness of moving to a new city. She had no friends, not even any acquaintances in Boston outside of work, excepting the ever-elusive Peter Conley. Online dating was too much work for too little reward, and hookup apps were plain depressing.

How does an adult make friends in a new city anyway?

She stood up with a grunt, rubbing her temples, and made a point not to respond to the missed call before taking a shower, which did its intended work of reviving her. She towel-dried her hair in front of the mirror, working its loose auburn curls with her hand, trying to get it into some kind of shape that worked with her big nose, her bony, angular face, before giving up, giving it a shake, and letting it do what it would. She held her gaze on the mirror, now touching her fingers to the shrapnel scars on her left shoulder. The ache still smoldered deep when it was cold, but the memories had finally faded to the point where the anxiety was more like an unwelcome dinner guest than a growling tiger. Then, her bare skin tingling in a cold draft, she rooted through the boxes still scattered around her one-bedroom apartment for the day's clothes.

Some foreshortening illusion made it hard for the fact that she'd already been there a month to sink in, and that she should have enough shame to finally unpack the boxes and get some damn furniture other than the flimsy kitchen table and single, nonmatching chair she'd picked up for thirty bucks (for the pair) at a yard sale. She hadn't even unboxed her kitchen supplies, which meant she was already on friendly terms with all the area's delivery boys. She
had
meant to cook the night before. Instead, she distracted herself with work and ended up calling Hunan Garden for the fifth time in as many days.

All she was missing to complete the pathetic tableau was a cat.

Okay
, she thought to herself once she had pulled on her graphite wool pants and blue button-down top. It'd been long enough to convince herself that she was not desperate. She pulled the chair (the one) to the corner of the living room where her phone was plugged into the wall and returned his call.

“Lisa,” he said in greeting. “Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.”

The smarmy son of a bitch.
“Hey, Peter. Been a while.”

“Yeah, it really has.” She tapped her bare foot on the tile floor.
That's right, squirm in the awkwardness
. “Lisa, I know you must be busy, so I'll get right to the point. I need your help.”

She picked at the chipping paint on the wall. “Peter Conley waits until he needs something to call you back. Big surprise.”

“I wouldn't be calling if it wasn't—”

“Oh, oh, let me guess,” she said with feigned enthusiasm. She reclined against the chair and stretched her free arm. “It's critical, national security, yadda yadda yadda. It could be pivotal in an investigation of—what is it this time? Nuclear weapon? Bioagent? Nerve gas? I don't care.
It's not my problem
.”

“Lisa, I—”

“Don't
Lisa
me. Our entire relationship consists of me doing favors for you, and I'm sick of it.”

“But—”

She stood, yanking the power cord out of the phone. She was on a roll now. “Do you understand that my FBI salary doesn't begin to cover this? And I can't take money from you because that would be graft, although God knows I'm already plenty screwed if anyone finds out I've been feeding a clandestine intelligence outfit information for the better part of six months.”

“I know you—”

“And I'll have you know that I have things to do. I have a rich, fulfilling life where there's no place for me to keep waiting around for you to call. I have plenty enough going on that has nothing to do with you in the slightest bit. Now will you please just tell me what the hell you want?”

She was left panting by her long tirade. Conley didn't miss a beat.

“A man called Dominic Watson.”

She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of being less quick on the uptake than him. “Doesn't ring a bell. Friend of yours?”

“Corpse. Took a free fall in an elevator at Acevedo Tower yesterday.”

“Huh. Doesn't live up to your usual level of insanity.”

“Does the prospect of a mysterious deadly conspiracy do anything for you?”

Lisa Frieze looked at the unpacked boxes, the remnants of Chinese food and wine for one. Not like there was anything else going on in her life. “All right, where do I meet you?”

 

Acevedo Tower. Twenty-one stories of steel and mirrored glass on the corner of Congress and Water, displaying the name of the company in white six-foot letters to the heart of Boston. Frieze found Conley smoking a cigarette, bundled in a parka and leaning against one of the steel and glass pillars that lined the entrance of the building, all six-foot-seven of him, his long, masculine face, strong nose and a jawline sculpted for Hollywood. She couldn't suppress the quiver of attraction in her gut as she laid eyes on him. He waited for her to initiate the greeting with an almost cocky schoolboy aloofness.

She walked straight past him, up the steps that led to the lobby door.

“Hey!” he called out.

“Try to keep up.”

He ran up the steps at a jog. “Thanks for coming. I really owe you one.”

“You owe me several,” she said, without breaking stride. “But who's counting?” She pushed the revolving door to emerge into the warmth of the spacious lobby. Sunlight filtered through the tinted glass, falling on dark blue carpeting, gray patterned panels on the walls and assorted potted palms, which somehow made it even blander than the local FBI office. Yellow police tape cordoned off the two elevators beyond the front desk.

She flashed her badge at the receptionist. “Lisa Frieze, FBI. This guy's with me. Special consultant.” Conley handed over whatever fake ID he was using. “I'm here about the elevator accident.”

“I'm going to need to call it in,” said the young receptionist, picking up a telephone receiver. As she waited for the person on the other end, she said to Conley, smiling just a little too much, “Consultant to the FBI, huh? Must be exciting.”

This grated on Lisa.

The girl exchanged a few words with her supervisor, entered their information into the system, and gave each a badge for the turnstile.

Guarding the crime scene was a single square-faced policeman, sitting on a borrowed office chair sipping on a cup of cheap coffee and reading a copy of the
Globe
. Frieze approached with Conley in tow.

“Take the stairs,” he said, without looking up from his paper. “Elevator's out.”

Frieze cleared her throat. The policeman looked up from his paper, and his pupils dilated when he read the three prominent capital letters on Frieze's ID.

“Lisa Frieze. This is Peter Morris. He's a special consultant.”

“Officer Prezelin,” he said, fumbling to stash the newspaper under the chair. “I didn't know this case had gone federal.”

“I came on a strictly informal basis. Hopefully we can agree that, officially, I was never here.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Don't worry about it.” Knowing she wasn't supposed to be there relaxed him and gave him the attitude of a coconspirator. “Is this here more than an accident?”

“I don't know any more than you do. Where's everyone else?”

“Pretty much done. Seemed open and shut, and to be honest nobody was too excited to stick around on a Saturday morning. I'm just waiting for the paperwork to come through so I can release the scene. They've called for cleanup already. I think I heard someone say they're coming early in the afternoon.”

Conley broke in, “Are you the only one on the premises?”

“From the precinct. But there's a technician from the elevator company looking at the machinery on the roof.”

Lisa punched Conley in the arm. “Ready to leg it up twenty-one stories?”

Grateful that she'd opted for flats, Frieze pounded the concrete, every step amplified and echoing in the endless stairwell. She was pleased to realize that she was in better shape than Conley and would climb just fast enough so that he had to catch up at every landing. Nice to have him chasing her for a change.

They met the technician coming down, between the tenth and eleventh floors. He was fat, maybe forty-five, and balding, sporting a thick gray mustache. He had on a heavy gray jumpsuit with a logo embroidered on it—Hornig Elevators.

Frieze showed him her badge. “I'd like to ask you a couple of questions. What's your name?”

“Upshaw.” He had a gruff, raspy voice. “Ask your questions while we walk. I got places to be.”

He walked faster than she'd have guessed given his figure, and they had to struggle to keep up and talk at the same time. “What did you find?”

“Elevator went up all the way and the motor didn't stop. Just kept on pulling until the cables snapped.”

“What about the emergency brakes?” Conley asked.

“They never deployed. Straight drop down from the top floor.”

“I thought they were mechanical. You know, automatic, going off if the elevator hits a certain speed.”

“That's how it's supposed to work,” Upshaw said.

“So it didn't?” asked Frieze. “What happened?”

“Look, that elevator down there is a big twisted pile of scrap metal. One look ain't enough for me to tell you what happened there. But I'll tell you one thing. Whatever made that elevator act all wonky in the first place, it wasn't mechanical.”

“Oh?” said Frieze.

“I tested the motor, couldn't reproduce the error. It stopped every time the program told it to.”

“So the problem is the software?” she said.

“That'd be my guess. The computer folks should be going over the electronic records now.”

“Could we get a copy of those records?”

“You'll have to check with the boss. They tend to be pretty territorial about what they show anyone, so I wouldn't be surprised if they asked for a warrant. But call 'em up. You never know.”

“Mind if I take your card?” Lisa asked.

Upshaw stopped at the landing on the fifth floor. He reached into his pocket and handed her a business card with a greasy, sweaty hand.

They parted ways at the lobby, the technician moving off toward the exit while Conley and Frieze hung back.

He was all business. “If we go over there soon maybe we can—”

“No, you can do that yourself,” she said. Man, it felt good saying no to him. “I need to go if I want to keep my job.”

“They won't talk to me.” He laid his knobby, masculine hand on her shoulder. “Not without you.”

She shoved his hand away. “Tell you what. I'll call Hornig from the road and see what I can do.”

She turned her back on him.

“Where are you going?”

“To do my job.” She dropped her card at the turnstile and walked out into the street.